To start, I’ve been Catholic since I was born, so 18 years. And for those 18 years, I’ve gone to mass every Sunday. But something just isn’t right to me… As I read more into scripture and about the early church, it just seems there is a huge gap between what it was like then and now.
A lot of my friends are Protestant and go to non-denominational churches with bands, flashing lights, and pastors that are awesome at preaching the word. I leave these places and I feel so energized and ready to be a good follower of Jesus, but I feel the opposite when I leave mass. Maybe it’s just my parish, but everyone seems like they’re there because they have to be, and don’t really believe what they’re hearing at all. I just don’t feel that awesome ENERGY that I spiritually thrive on!
So I’m at a crossroads. I know the Catholic Church was original and I want to keep going, but these more modern churches just motivate me so much. Does anyone else have this problem? Do I just go to both?
Hey, I’m 20, a convert. I was baptized and confirmed when I was 17, and my conversion began due to some intellectual arguments made by a good friend of mine that I just couldn’t logically refute. The number one thing that
made me convert, in the end, was
authority, specifically that of the Papacy. I simply could not accept some silly mythology made up in the last millennium by some people in the middle part of Europe about this magnificent thing, called Catholicism, any longer.
When I was a Protestant before, I had no ill will to my faith (if you can call it that), but my experience of religion in general was… antiseptic, suburban, and boring. You see, I attended a rather large megachurch-type Baptist church somewhere in the Great Lakes region, and the thing is, the very things you are talking about is what I was, honestly, kind of disgusted by. Bands, flashing lights, and “pastors that are awesome at preaching the word” make me recoil. It’s kind of like I am temperamentally allergic to that kind of stuff, because I necessarily perceive it as fake and grabby. I can become extremely uncharitable, to say the least, if I am made to put up with that.
Now, the people themselves, I had and continue to have no complaints about. But it was the content of the belief and the manner in which it was communicated–gimmicky, commercialized goofiness–that left me wanting.
My grandmother, a German immigrant, was/is Catholic, so I always had that in the back of my mind, and Catholicism to me in general was this sort of mysterious, fair city in the mists that always interested me. The idea of there being an “original Church” was extremely fascinating to me and it was a delicious thing to savor in my mind. So when this friend of mine who I mentioned earlier began talking to me, I had a way, and a prompting, to begin to research Catholicism in earnest. With hindsight, I can thank God for my friend inadvertently evangelizing me.
You might say I was already intellectually converted by the time I began my research, and the research and the RCIA process was simply a formality.
I guess the biggest thing you have to grapple with is, are these churches legitimate? I can state unequivocally that they are not. They have no authority, no legitimate history, no Sacraments, usually a very flawed interpretation of Scripture, absolutely no Tradition to speak of, and no claim to being anything except a community of self-starting, ultimately misguided, historical accidents that were never intended by Christ. You and I are clearly quite opposite in temperament, and I guess that’s fine. Anyway, you might want to do some good research on the early Church. You know, “non-denominational” communities weren’t even there.
Now, I have my own gripes about the Church. But for me it would simply be unthinkable to extend these to heresy or apostasy. I would be a traitor of God.
I don’t look for an experience, as such, when I go to church. I want things to be truly beautiful, but I don’t want or expect that it be like a movie theater or a theme park ride. I can go elsewhere for that.
