Those of you who were young converts

  • Thread starter Thread starter jujubee
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

jujubee

Guest
I just read in another thread about how some people had either decided to or attempted to convert to Catholicism when they were something like 10 years old. I am really curious about this. If this story applies to you, would you mind sharing with me what that was like? How much did you understand at the time?

I returned home to the church a little over a year ago. My oldest son is 7 1/2. My husband is nominal protestant. It is your typical sensitive and sticky situation. I have been trying to gently, yet honestly, explain the Catholic faith to my son while still showing respect to his father and his journey. If any of you have heard Steve Ray’s “big ship and the 30,000 rafts” analogy to explain the Catholic Church and its relationship to the Protestant churches, that is the metaphor I’ve used with my son. My son’s best friend is Catholic.

So he is telling me now that he wants to be Catholic.

Great, right?

But he is 7 1/2. How much of this is my persuassion and his desire to be more connected to his best friend. Does it matter? It might to my husband. But then I don’t want to take credit for the Holy Spirit’s work either.

Perhaps hearing your stories will help me discern. He is starting faith formation in the fall.
Thanks!
 
Well, I converted when I was 18, which was about 10 months ago, but I started looking at the Catholic Church when I was 16. I have a very sensitive situation with my parents as well because they are strong non-Catholic Christians so I sort of understand your situation.

As far as the best advice I can give you. I am assuming he hasn’t been baptized yet either Catholic or Protestant? If so, I would just encourage him to learn as much as he can while he’s going through faith formation, but don’t push him or make him feel like he should do it to make mommy or his friend happy. The most important thing is to pray for him, as you have just entered yourself and he is only 7 1/2, which means I doubt you or him are ready to go on a deep talk on how transubstiation(sp?)

When you feel prepared, and when you sense that he understands enough to know the faith in basic terms, and know what he’s doing and he still wants to do it, then encourage him to do so.
 
A quick story so that you know a little bit where I am coming from. When I was young my family was very involved in a fundamentalist Baptist church. When I was 11 or so my cousin ( she was 13) decided to get baptized in the church. My sisters also wanted to get baptized (they were seven), and there was a lot of pressure on me to get baptized but I refused. A few years ago when I was looking at becoming Catholic, I talked to my sisters about why they both did it. There response was everyone else wanted them to so it seemed like the right thing to do. I asked them if they really understood what they were doing at the time and they’ve said that they really had no idea. They did it because the familiy seemed to approve of them saying yes, and disapprove of me saying no. As an aside, one is now pagan and the other one is searching.

I’m not saying that your son does not truly want to convert. But I also think its very easy at that age to be inspired by others but not really know why you are doing what you are doing.

So here is my advice:
Pray. Pray with you son. Pray with your son and husband. Sit your son down with his father present and talk to him about why he wants to be Catholic. What does it mean to him? How much does he truly understand? If he’s not really serious and only wants it because you and his friend are Catholic, than this would be a good time for a family talk about religion. If he really is serious than it might help your husband if he knows that it is coming from your son, and not cause you pressured him. Either way you need more info before you can proceed.

Best of luck,
Historybrat
 
The Church accepts 7 as the age of reason. Sounds like you have one reasonable young man.

As long as his father is not opposed, call your Parish and arrange for your son to enroll in CCD.
 
when an adult comes into the Church through RCIA, generally the children are prepared and celebrate the sacraments at the same time, in a class with their peers. Each year we baptize and bring into full communion 10-20 school age children grades 3-12, as well as a few adults. Most of these children are in at least nominally Catholic families, with at least one parent who is Catholic and are really “delayed baptisms”, because for whatever reason the child was never baptized as an infant, but there is really not a matter of coming from another religious background.

But there are always some children, usually with parents, from families who really have no religion, or come from a background in a non-Catholic religion. Also, almost every year, there will be at least one child, usually jr high or above, who has been drawn to the Catholic Church for whatever reason, and of his own volition, not due to family influence. Often there are peers, Catholic friends in CCD, preparing for Confirmation, who “pre-evangelize” and invite them, but often they come to us quite without any outside support.

bottom line in all these cases, whatever the age, the Church considers a person over age 7 to be an adult for the purposes of RCIA and the initiation sacraments, and the preparation must include the stages prescribed for RCIA–pre-evangelization, catechumenate, Lent, and mystagogy–and the rites proper to each stage. Moreover those preparing the children, with their sponsors and the pastor, must take care to discern the actual conversion process, and yes, there must be conversion, although it is experienced and expressed uniquely for each individual.

as long as the request is coming from your son, and there is not going to be a battle with the other parent, speak to the pastor or your RCIA director, who will arrange to place him in a class with his peers. He will go through, as would any candidate, the process of asking questions, gaining more information, and being assisted through the process and the rites in making his own decisions.

In the case of several members of the family in the RCIA process, it generally becomes quite evident of one person has doubts, reservations, is feeling pressured, or is just not ready to proceed, and each situation is dealt with individually, with the pastor, RCIA director, catechist, sponsor and parents. In canon law we would not be allowed to let a child or teen be baptized or confirmed without their consent, and if we learned he was being pressured, the pastor would counsel waiting, more learning, more prayer, more preparation, but would not allow the sacraments until satisfied the child was doing it of their own free will.
 
jujubee said:
I returned home to the church a little over a year ago. My oldest son is 7 1/2. My husband is nominal protestant. It is your typical sensitive and sticky situation. I have been trying to gently, yet honestly, explain the Catholic faith to my son while still showing respect to his father and his journey. If any of you have heard Steve Ray’s “big ship and the 30,000 rafts” analogy to explain the Catholic Church and its relationship to the Protestant churches, that is the metaphor I’ve used with my son. My son’s best friend is Catholic.

So he is telling me now that he wants to be Catholic.

Great, right?

But he is 7 1/2. How much of this is my persuassion and his desire to be more connected to his best friend. Does it matter? It might to my husband. But then I don’t want to take credit for the Holy Spirit’s work either.

Perhaps hearing your stories will help me discern. He is starting faith formation in the fall.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
I don’t think it matters. Protestant kids grow up protestant because their parents are protestant. They get baptized when they feel like it because that is encouraged by their parents. My kids are Catholic converts from an evangelical background. They were all baptized Catholic at ages 4 and 12. It was my choice, they agreed.

What can be better than to give your kids a rudder for that big Catholic ship you are talking about? 😃
 
Yes, I have no problem giving him the rudder, as you say. I want him to be Catholic for sure. But because of the potential for conflict with my Protestant husband I am really trying to discern if this is the appropiate time to really go to bat for him. So a lot of this is a timing issue. For me, it isn’t a matter of whether but when.

Thanks to all who have shared. I hope to hear more stories and perspectives!
 
This is my first post here at Catholic Answers, though I’ve lurked here for a while now.

I grew up in a Lutheran home, and was raised in their traditions, I was much to young at the time (only four years of age) to think abut such things of religion deeply, but I believed in the Christian God as much as anyone of that age could. My father is an interesting man, he has lived all his life a Protestant, and his parents, while Lutheran, were not particuraly devout. However as he entered his college years he joined Campus Crusade, and it brought him to a level of faith he’d never reached before. He went on to become quite known in inner circles of the Evangelical movement, and become great friends with the wife and siblings of the great 20th century theologian, Dr. Francis Schaeffer. However he had something to balance this all out, during college at Brown university he met a good Catholic friend, who I will not name for his own privacy, but I will tell you went on to become a parish priest. This friend gave my father a deep appreciation for the Liturgy and the traditions of the Christian church, but my father remained Protestant, though became a more conservitive Lutheran one which he found slightly theologicaly liberal, but did keep the service traditional (this was an ELCA church.) All this made my father a strong Christian, but his ties to any particular sect fairly weak.

For this reason one summer at the age of six I participatecin a more Evangelical church’s summer sunday school week. It changed my life, I truly felt the call of Christ. However this was a one time summer experience, and I continued to worship at our Lutheran church, but that passion was not wasted, for I now understood the beauty of the service so much more. But I was a curious young fellow and by the age of nine I had read much into Eastern thought. I never renounced my Christian faith but it was a much more alien kind of Christianity. Eventualy I renounced these Eastern thoughts as I studied even harder at them. However the Eastern thought left it’s scare and through the ages of ten through twelve, though I didn’t relise it, I had become a bit of a Diest, and I refused to believe God directly effected the modern world.

But at the start of the seventh grade, my father took me on a trip to Austria, along with us came what turned out to be his life long friend, the Catholic priest he met in college. My father and him were alwase quite the intellectuals and enjoyed talking as we ate and walked the city and I too had been raised in such a way that I joined in. The result of being with him during this trip, (and he has had many other trips with me before this case, creating a strong friendship between us) was that I wanted to understand his faith.

My story goes on like any other converts, I read many books of both sides, searched the internet franticly, finding this site and others, and came to a conclusion: I want to join Communion with Christ, I want to join the Church. But alas, I am but thirteen years of age my friends, I have many years ahead of me before adulthood, and that choice of religion. I have spoken with this priest fiend of mine, and he sympathises with me, and tells me, in time, I will join the Church, and so now, I patiently wait, as I learn and grow in my faith.

Amen.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top