My husband and I I converted to Catholicism at the age of 47 after spending all our lives as evangelical Protestants.
When we started studying Catholicism, we realized that THE issue was authority.
In the Catholic Church, it is the CHURCH that is the Authority for the Christian. (This is also true in the Orthodox Church.) We believe that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, and that the Pope is His earthly vicar who speaks for Him on this earth, and that the Magisterium and the College of Cardinals has Authority, and that the local bishop and priests have authority given to them by the Authoritative Church.
But in the Protestant churches, each individual believer is their own Authority. They say that Jesus Christ is their only Authority, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit. But for all practical purposes, it is the individual believer who is “in charge” of their life and their decisions.
Yes, in most Protestant churches, the individual believer recognizes the authority of the local church or the pastor or the denomination to delineate doctrine, interpret Scripture, teach faith and morals, etc. But Protestants do not accept a central “binding” authority, and Protestants generally do not accept “apostolic succession.” Protestants do not accept the teaching that Jesus established a real, physical, visible “Church” with a real, physical, visible Authority on this earth. Protestants believe that Jesus established “The Church,” as an invisible, spiritual entity comprised of all believers in Jesus Christ (including Catholics who have accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.)
The individual believer is free to depart from a church, a pastor, a denomination, if the teachings do not agree with his individual interpretation of the Bible. And although that particular church or denomination may shun the apostate and refuse to allow him entrance unless he repents in public or performs some other “penance,” most individual Protestant Christians will continue to recognize that the person is saved and going to heaven. He has just switched churches. That’s his right, since he is “in charge.” He has not violated any “Authority,” since such an “Authority” doesn’t exist.
This issue of authority was the most difficult one for my husband and me to deal with. We realized that if we accepted the Authority of the Catholic Church, then all the other issues would fall into place. The Veneration of Mary, transubstantiation, the “extra books” in the Catholic Bible, asking the saints to pray, infant baptism, the liturgy, etc. etc.–for all of these “difficult” issues, the answer was, “The Church said it, I believe it, that settles it.”
It was very very difficult to contemplate giving up our freedom to run our own lives. Even an issue like “going to church on Sundays” would no longer be our “choice.” If we became Catholic, we could no longer choose to sleep in on Sunday, because to deliberately do this would be mortal sin and we would lose our salvation.
That teaching was particularly difficult to accept. We had believed most of our lives that salvation could never be “lost.” My husband had grown up in the Assemblies of God, and they believed that salvation could be lost if a believer turned their back on God and rejected His salvation. But according to the Assemblies of God, this rejection of Christ would be manifest through a continued lifestyle of sin, not just one sin of “skipping church” on Sunday. The very idea of losing our salvation over one sin was incomprehensible to us. BUT–if we became Catholic, we would have to accept that the Church had the Authority from Jesus Christ to pronounce that skipping Mass could be “mortal sin” and cause the loss of heaven to a believer.
We saw this as a loss of our “freedom.” And this was very, very hard.
You want the “human side?” Here’s one example of how difficult it was for us to accept the “Authority of the Catholic Church.” All of our lives, we had been taught that masturbation was a perfectly natural, normal act of growing up. Protestant teachers that we revered and trusted had taught this from the pulpit and in writing. After all, there’s nothing in the Bible forbidding it. (Some Christians try to stretch that Old Testament story about Onan spilling his seed to prove that masturbation is wrong, but that doesn’t say anything to women! And it really doesn’t forbid masturbation, it forbids not cooperating with God.)
And yet the Catholic Church calls masturbation grave sin, even mortal sin.
We had to get to a place where we could accept this. I’ll be honest, after five years of Catholicism, we don’t accept the teaching against masturbation emotionally. But we OBEY the Catholic Church because we DO accept the Authority of the Catholic Church. We don’t have to agree, we just accept and obey.
I personally believe that this “freedom to choose” is one of the main reasons why Catholics leave the Catholic Church to become Protestants. The freedom is heady. You can actually skip church if you choose, and no one will say “boo.” Your pastor can have any kind of church service that he or SHE chooses–rock music, plays, panel discussions, classical concert, children’s, teenagers preaching, outdoors, in someone’s living room, etc.
And you don’t have to check in with the Church every time you read the Bible. You can just read it yourself and arrive at your own conclusions, trusting that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.
I think some Catholics find this freedom very exciting and appealing.
My husband and I find just the opposite–that submitting in docility to the Authority of the Catholic Church is true freedom. We KNOW we are on the right path because the Church tells us we are. We were weary of bouncing around from Protestant church to Protestant church and discovering different teachings in each denomination. We were weary of wondering exactly who was in charge at each new church. We like being followers of Christ rather than pretending that we knew we were in His will.
