Protestant Converts: When did you start "Acting Catholic"

[TrueLight]

Hey new Catholics, Catechumens, Candidates and Pre-RCIA folks who converted from Protestantism:

Once you decided to convert, at what point did you “put away the old and put on the new” and begin to act in a Catholic manner?

– For example, is there a point where you stopped attending your protestant church?

– When did you stop taking protestant communion? I shared in another thread how I sing once a month in a protestant choir where sometimes the day when we sing fall on a communion Sunday. What would you do in that situation? Would you not take it? Have you been in similar situations?

– When did you buy your Catholic bible?

– When did you start saying the Rosary/Liturgy of the Hours etc

– When did you start crossing yourselves for maybe prayers over meals, or when passing a church etc. How did you feel when you just started?

– When did you start seeing yourself as Catholic?

I know everyone is different and I’m sure there is no standard “Catholic manner” but I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Thanks!

 

[Blacksword]

I bought my first catholic bible the weekend I made up my mind to start exploring the faith. Crossing myself took a few weeks to get into the habit of doing, haven’t said a rosary yet, but I’m planning to do so today!

 

[Barbkw]

Marcus Grodi hosts the program the Journey Home on EWTN. Past programs are available on EWTNyoutube.

ewtn.com/tv/live/journeyhome.asp

Also Marcus’ organization, “The Coming Home Network” has a website and bulletin board:

chnetwork.org/

 

[Annabelle_Marie]

Hey new Catholics, Catechumens, Candidates and Pre-RCIA folks who converted from Protestantism:

Once you decided to convert, at what point did you “put away the old and put on the new” and begin to act in a Catholic manner? We started Ash Wed. last year and from that moment started with a clean break. Started attending Mass every Sunday and no longer attended our old church.

– For example, is there a point where you stopped attending your protestant church?

– When did you stop taking protestant communion? I shared in another thread how I sing once a month in a protestant choir where sometimes the day when we sing fall on a communion Sunday. What would you do in that situation? Would you not take it? Have you been in similar situations? There is no way I could ever receive Protestant communion now…once I started back again…for me…there is no other communion. My husband has his first communion on Easter vigil but he will also not receive…he wouldn’t even take the “practice” hosts in RCIA…because he wants it to be totally reserved for Easter vigil…

– When did you buy your Catholic bible? Got our Catholic bible in RCIA…well…we got ours right after Easter last year when we attended the Catholics Can Come Home Class.

– When did you start saying the Rosary/Liturgy of the Hours etc Probably started both last fall…maybe 4 or 5 months in…once I figured out what the Liturgy of the Hours was.

– When did you start crossing yourselves for maybe prayers over meals, or when passing a church etc. How did you feel when you just started? Started that right away too…last Ash Weds.

– When did you start seeing yourself as Catholic? Immediately…once we started, we just fell in love…and haven’t looked back.

I know everyone is different and I’m sure there is no standard “Catholic manner” but I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Thanks!

 

[Augustus24]

I started thinking like a Catholic before I left the protestant church I was attending. I remember having a 2 hour long argument/debate with my pastor about prayers to the saints.

All I was saying was that Catholics and Orthodox have a point, not even that I agreed with it. Even that was simply way too Catholic for my former pastor.

Then I told our couples group that we had decided to stop using birth control, that the Catholic Church had a point in their objections. They looked at us like we were from another planet.

We moved a few weeks after that because I finished college at the Evangelical Christian university that I was attending. Checked out several protestant churches in our new area. I saw all the protestant churches we checked out as cheap entertainment and preaching falsehoods to their congregation, albeit pious falsehoods.

Then I finally decided that I was ready to check out a Catholic church, my wife said that she had be ready for years, and she was just waiting for me to be. God bless her.

I entered the RCIA about 3 months after that, and was confirmed in November 08.

For me, it wasnt so much about “acting” Catholic, as seeing the world in a Catholic light.

For me, conversion was like tasting fillet mignon when before I was eating bologna sandwiches. Yes I could survive on bologna, but who would want to, when there is a far better feast out there?

Oh yeah, it says you are anxiously anticipating RCIA. Big mistake. My RCIA experience was terrible. I think it actually detracted from me wanting to join the Church.

 

[TimeisnearJEN]

I have been practicing being Catholic for about 4 months now. I have not been through RCIA yet, but I still consider myself Catholic. I wanted to become Catholic when I ended up in a mental hospital and my boyfriends parents helped me through it. Since they were Catholic, they introduced me into going to church. I have had a really strong calling that this was the place I needed to be. It felt more spiritual to me then a protestant church. I felt connected. I found a Catholic bible at a flee market for only $3 bucks!! It was one of those huge old family bibles in perfect condition, it had everything you need to know to be a catholic in it beside the bible. His parents also bought me a beginners learning bible that has helped me out SO much.
I say the Rosary everyday, its my devotion. I also go to the church in the mornings to say it before Mass. My boyfriends dad gave me his grandmothers rosary. Its beautiful!!!
I started crossing myself once I knew what it meant. I didn’t know the reason behind it but now that I do, I cross myself everytime.
I know everyones experience is different, but I can tell you, my experience was the most wonderful. I will never regret converting.

 

[FaustinaClare]

Mine was a gradual process. I saw my mom go throught the RCIA program and watched her confirmation. That got me started investigating Catholicism when I used to be very anti Catholic. I joined my own RCIA class a couple weeks after and throughout the process I became more and more Catholic in my own right.

I had many obstacles to overcome

First praying the Rosary

Second birth control

Third confession to a priest

The weird thing is that I was soooo against these things and now I can’t imagine not doing them. I realize now just how truly ignorant I was of the truth. When I look back on who I was a few years ago I feel I have done a complete 180. However, I’m still growing and becoming more and more Catholic every day!

 

[ccl239]

I feel like I started slowly “acting” Catholic immediately upon deciding to convert - little steps at a time. But I didn’t start feeling Catholic until much later. I somehow felt like I was wearing a giant sign on my head that said “convert” and that someone would see me do something wrong and kick me out! Of course that never happened and it was all in my head.

In answer to your questions: I stopped attending protestant church immediately after attending my first Mass around Christmas. I fell so in love with the Catholic Church that I couldn’t stay away!

I have been in similar situations (taking communion) both before and after I converted and I did not/do not take communion. No one has ever questioned me about it.

I was given my first Catholic bible in RCIA. I didn’t actually purchase one until 7 years later!

I first started saying the Rosary during RCIA but I had a very hard time with it and set it aside. At some point I started saying it again and now I love it!

I started crossing myself for before and after prayer while in RCIA. It always felt really natural to me unless I was in a place with a lot of non-Catholics around (such as family gatherings). Then it felt awkward.

Congrats to all those converting and welcome home!!

 

[manualman]

As a cradle catholic, I only ALMOST count since I was practically ignorant of much of our faith through college and got most of my adult formation from a college evangelical group called the Navigators. It was only their pitiable lack of the Eucharist that made me hold on. I went to my friends’ “bible church” a few times and could not bring myself to participate in the basket of crackers and trays of little grape juice cups they passed around. That was the lifeline that kept me home when I couldn’t answer the theological charges against catholicism.

When I got to about the 40% mark in Karl Keating’s “Catholicism and Fundamentalism” I considered myself to have struck GOLD. Here were the PRECISE attacks and charges against catholicism I had experienced for 4 years and for the first time I found clear, concise, logical and well supported answers that not only defeated the attacks, but utterly turned the tables. Anybody coming from an Evangelical position would benefit from this book (though the first 1/3 is getting rather obsolete about has-been anticatholic groups).

To another poster’s comment, RCIA quality varies highly by parish. In any case, the book “Catholicism for Dummies” is a superb companion for anybody starting out RCIA. (Don’t get the more aptly named “Idiot’s Guide to Catholicism”)

 

[TrueLight]

Marcus Grodi hosts the program the Journey Home on EWTN. Past programs are available on EWTNyoutube.

ewtn.com/tv/live/journeyhome.asp

Also Marcus’ organization, “The Coming Home Network” has a website and bulletin board:

chnetwork.org/

The Journey Home was instrumental in my wanting to convert.

First, I found catholic.com, while I stumbled upon doing a search for “Christian Goth”, then I found out about The Journey home on EWTN (a channel I had never heard of), then I watched the Journey Home, which was awesome and showed me I could do it.

 

[Della]

Hey new Catholics, Catechumens, Candidates and Pre-RCIA folks who converted from Protestantism:

Once you decided to convert, at what point did you “put away the old and put on the new” and begin to act in a Catholic manner?

– For example, is there a point where you stopped attending your protestant church?

It was the summer before I started RCIA, in 1988. Wow! Has it been that long?

– When did you stop taking protestant communion? I shared in another thread how I sing once a month in a protestant choir where sometimes the day when we sing fall on a communion Sunday. What would you do in that situation? Would you not take it? Have you been in similar situations?

I stopped receiving at the Episcopal Church when I started attending Mass. If I was in RCIA I definitely wouldn’t receive Protestant communion. No one is obliged to receive communion in any church, so I wouldn’t receive. No need to explain or feel any kind of social angst about it.

– When did you buy your Catholic bible?

I believe it was soon after I was received in the Church. You know, I don’t really remember for certain. I was kind of “off” the Bible at the time because I had been so misled as to how to interpret it by a Pentecostal sect I couldn’t face reading it for quite some time. Hearing it read at Mass sufficed for quite a while, as I recall. We own 4 versions of the Catholic Bible now and I read the Daily Mass Readings M/F.

– When did you start saying the Rosary/Liturgy of the Hours etc

The rosary was before entering RCIA or even attending my first Mass. It was the rosary and Our Lady who attracted me to the Church, you see. The LOTH was quite recent, actually. Just a few years ago.

– When did you start crossing yourselves for maybe prayers over meals, or when passing a church etc. How did you feel when you just started?

After I’d been received into the Church. I guess I didn’t feel I was “entitled” before then–silly notion–I don’t know where I got it. I do it all the time now, though.

– When did you start seeing yourself as Catholic?

When I decided to enter RCIA. I’m the type that once I commit myself to something that’s it. At least I was like that at the time. With age I’ve learned to be a bit more cautious. Ha!

I know everyone is different and I’m sure there is no standard “Catholic manner” but I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Thanks!

Yes, God leads each of us according to our circumstances and the kind of person we are. There’s no “one size fits all” about becoming Catholic. Welcome to the process. I will pray for you as you are received Easter Vigil (that is when you are being received, I assume?)

 

[KarenElissa]

Once you decided to convert, at what point did you “put away the old and put on the new” and begin to act in a Catholic manner?

The whole process was rather gradual thing for me, there was no big moment or anything. I started going to Mass just before Easter, started RCIA that fall, and was received into the Church just before Advent that year. I went to Mass just because I was curious about liturgical worship, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. When I signed up for RCIA, I was pretty sure I was going to convert (I had to ask off work, so didn’t want to go just because, I needed to know I had some sort of commitment there). After the first class, I knew for sure I was going to convert.

– For example, is there a point where you stopped attending your protestant church?

I stopped about a month after I started RCIA. I was VERY involved in my previous church and wasn’t going to give it up until I was sure I was going to convert. I also wanted to give them some heads up time to find a new teacher for my Sunday School class and such.

– When did you stop taking protestant communion? I shared in another thread how I sing once a month in a protestant choir where sometimes the day when we sing fall on a communion Sunday. What would you do in that situation? Would you not take it? Have you been in similar situations?

I stopped receiving communion around the time that I started, I don’t remember if it was before or after, but it was right around then. I simply stayed in my seat when it was time for communion. Yes, it was a bit awkward since I was United Methodist and they allow pretty much anyone to receive communion, but you deal with it.

– When did you buy your Catholic bible?

I’ve actually never bought one. I got one in RCIA and use that one.

– When did you start saying the Rosary/Liturgy of the Hours etc

I started praying the Rosary a while before I started RCIA. Like many protestants, Mary was one of the biggest things I had to come to terms with and I figured that even if I wasn’t exactly sure about it all, the best way to figure it out was to experience it. I started praying the LOTH the lent after I became Catholic.

– When did you start crossing yourselves for maybe prayers over meals, or when passing a church etc. How did you feel when you just started?

I don’t really remember. I think I started crossing myself in private and in Catholic environments pretty soon after I started going to Mass. I don’t think I started crossing myself in more public environments until after I started RCIA.

– When did you start seeing yourself as Catholic?

Right after I started RCIA, I knew I was going to be Catholic, so that is when I started telling people and was open about it being the path I was headed down. I didn’t call myself Catholic until after I was received into the Church. As for feeling Catholic, it is one of those weird things. Someday it feels like I’ve always been Catholic, sometimes it still seems totally crazy, even now, 3 1/2 years later.

 

[jesuspsr]

TrueLight

Thank you for such a wonderfull post. I absolutely love reading posts like this.
I was born a Catholic and reading all of your post sends goosebumps all over my body like as if the Holy Spirit is moving thru me.
God bless

jesus g

 

[BriaMarie]

I stopped going to a Protestant church when I was about halfway through RCIA, but there were other things involved. I would have preferred not to have gone at all.

My denom rarely had communion, so the last time was over a year before I went through Inquiry.

I was given a bible during RCIA and haven’t bought another one yet.

I’ve never had a “prayer schedule”, but toward the end of RCIA I would say the rosary while in my car.

It took me a while to become comfortable with crossing myself openly. When I first started I felt quite strange because I didn’t know any other Catholics and growing up the gesture had always been ridiculed, so I felt a bit embarrassed. Now it’s second nature.

I began to identify as a Catholic intellectually even before I began RCIA, but it took me about three years to really begin to notice “culturally catholic” things about myself. I’m still very new (four years this Easter!) so I still find myself approaching things with the old attitude, but it’s a process.

 

[TrueLight]

Welcome to the process. I will pray for you as you are received Easter Vigil (that is when you are being received, I assume?)

I wish! I found this RCIA program a couple of weeks ago- too late to be confirmed this Easter. The next class starts in Sept. The good thing I have lots of time to study and learn.

 

[Annabelle_Marie]

I wish! I found this RCIA program a couple of weeks ago- too late to be confirmed this Easter. The next class starts in Sept. The good thing I have lots of time to study and learn.

But they could pray for my husband and I…we will be confirmed this Easter vigil:thumbsup:

One note for you…when I started last Sept…I thought…“boy…this is going to be a LONG trip…especially with Easter being so late”…and now…I can’t believe it’s almost here already!

 

[icamay]

I stepped into my first Catholics Come Home class the Saturday after Ash Wednesday. I had taken ashes at our local Catholic church because, being in a new town in a primarily Baptist area, I was struggling to find a Protestant service I would be able to attend. I had attended a church of my denomination in the next town, but never got “that” feeling from it. Since that Saturday, I’ve devoted this Lent to worshipping and studying as a Catholic - rosary, study Bible, several masses per week - and told myself to use Easter to decide to commit. It didn’t take that long!

I’m married to a Catholic, but I’m doing this without him, as he is away in training. We both think it’s been best that way, because doing this based upon my own conviction makes this entirely my own experience, which makes it completely true rather than influenced by his opinion.

 

[ChristIsTheWay]

– For example, is there a point where you stopped attending your protestant church?

I was raised a Protestant but I hadn’t attended a church service since about age 15. By about age 13, I had drifted into a sort of atheism/agnosticism/John Shelby Spong-type liberalism before settling on strong atheism at age 15. Then I had a “born-again” moment when I was age 17. My parents had split up and my world fell apart. The comfortable atheism of my teenage years gave way to a generic Christian faith. I began exploring denominations and considered myself, in a very loose sense, a Protestant. Then I began attending RCIA with intention to convert (I had attended a couple of inquiry sessions in preceding years) when I was 19 and I also began reading some of the literature online at Catholic Answers. Talk about a breath of fresh air! Christianity began to make a lot more sense and I was finally getting solid answers that didn’t rely on individual interpretation of the Scriptures, which had always confused me and made Christianity appear a bit relativistic.

– When did you stop taking protestant communion?

I came from a Pentecostal background and so reception of communion was quite infrequent, probably no more than a few times a year. The last time I received would have been, oh…longer than I can remember. Probably about five or so years before I was received into the Church. The Pentecostal churches I attended rarely had communion. It wasn’t a very meaningful experience and was usually open to anyone.

I shared in another thread how I sing once a month in a protestant choir where sometimes the day when we sing fall on a communion Sunday. What would you do in that situation? Would you not take it? Have you been in similar situations?

I have not been in such a situation but I would have probably politely declined. I saw very little meaning in the communion services I attended. Speaking in tongues and other “gifts of the Holy Spirit” were much more important elements of worship. I just got nothing out of any of the communion services I attended as a child and a teenager. And after I learned about the Real Presence, and who did and did not have it, well, I certainly would have declined the Protestant communion in the situation you mention.

– When did you buy your Catholic bible?

I actually received my first Catholic bible when I was about 12 years old. The Church has always held a deep fascination for me, even when I thought all Catholics were Hell-bound Mary worshipers. I bought my current Bible a few months after my reception into the Church.

When did you start saying the Rosary/Liturgy of the Hours etc

That was probably during RCIA, maybe a few months after.

When did you start crossing yourselves for maybe prayers over meals, or when passing a church etc. How did you feel when you just started?

I started doing that when I was about 17 or so. My journey into the Church took several years. It felt very natural, though.

When did you start seeing yourself as Catholic?

Probably a few years before I was formally received into the Church. I lost my Protestant identity long before I became Catholic. Looking back, I can’t see how I ever believed anything but what the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ teaches.

 

[thequeen]

right away I bought a statue of Jesus and the sacred heart and aMarion statue and a catholic Bible even started saying the rosary and i stopped taking communion in my protestant church be fore I started to regularly attend the Catholic Church in fact i was acting so Catholic that I was disfellowshipped from my pentecostal Church that i was formerly involved with.

 

[TrueLight]

right away I bought a statue of Jesus and the sacred heart and aMarion statue and a catholic Bible even started saying the rosary and i stopped taking communion in my protestant church be fore I started to regularly attend the Catholic Church in fact i was acting so Catholic that I was disfellowshipped from my pentecostal Church that i was formerly involved with.

Oh my! Were you sharing the Catholic faith with them or something?