What Made You Choose To Be A Catholic?

[mercygate]

Mincemeat pie.

You’ve heard of “rice Christians?” I’m a mincemeat pie Catholic. When we moved into our new town, DH wanted to get a feel for the real estate market and knocked on the door of the Catholic rectory (who should know more about real estate than the Catholic Church: right?).

We struck up a friendship with the Pastor, who sent us the MOST amazing mincemeat pie from the New York Athletic Club every Christmas. Who could resist? It took 20 years, but we became Catholic.

The rest of the story is history. I was a High Church Episcopalian, already with a life “more” Catholic in form and content than half the Catholics in the pews these days, and the undeniable chain of continuity back to the Upper Room eventually wore me down.

A fuller version of my story (without the mincemeat pie) is on the Journey Home broadcase page on the EWTN’s web site. Not that anybody cares.

 

[pismopal]

What led me to the Church was a strong “feeling” that there was more to communion than most non Catholic denoms express. The feeling was vague at first but it became stronger and stronger until John 6 finally began to come into focus. In fact, my mind seemed to resist the miracle of Holy Communion because it was so foreign to the teaching of non Catholics, including Baptist.
After I began my study of the Catechism everything the Church teaches became clearer and clearer. I am not just talking about Holy Communion but all the Churches teachings.
I no longer worship the Bible…I worship Christ…with and in His Church.

 

[CarolinNC]

I became Catholic almost by accident. My 16 year old daughter was dating a catholic boy. When they became engaged, she decided it would be good for her to convert (or at least check out the possibility), so I went to RCIA with her to make sure they weren’t pressuring her and to find out what the Catholic Church was all about (if I was going to support her in her decision, I thought it was the least I could do). We were Mormons at the time, but had stopped attending due to questions on doctrine, etc.

Well after about two or three weeks of RCIA, I began to really listen and hear the message that Holy Spirit was sending me. I began to study and learn more and more. I felt like I had come home after a very long journey.

Well, my daughter, her older sister (also my daughter, lol) and I joined that Easter (1985) and my baby daughter (4 yrs old) was baptized. Two years later my husband (who had sworn never to darken the door of a Catholic Church) and 3 of our sons joined the Catholic Church.

We are now happily, fully and blessedly forever Catholic, active in our Parish, and have never regretted it for a second.

Our oldest son is still not Catholic (he’s an active Baptist), but there is always hope and prayer.

 

[Ruthie]

I was raised Unitarian - i.e. liberal Democrat. I became an agnostic in my teens, believing in a Creator who was disinterested in His creation once He set the earth spinning.

In my late 30s, I had a conversion experience, a sort of private revelation, that brought me to Christ. I joined a local non-denominational church, which split over doctrine in about 3 months. I stayed with one of the splinters, but began studying the Bible in earnest, in hopes of figuring doctrine out on my own. Eventually, I stopped going to the splinter church.

I began doubting the method of “proof-texting.”

In the late ‘90s I bought some Bible study software, which came with access to a private Bible study forum. I was an eager participant, and got to know the main posters’ theology pretty well - but still didn’t agree.

I married my husband in '97. At that time, he wasn’t Christian, but I felt called to marry him. His brother and SIL joined me in praying for him to find the Lord, and eventually he did. We were still not attached to any church.

Around 2004, one of the posters on the forum put up a diatribe against the Catholic church. It was really awful, and I didn’t believe it for a minute. I wanted to refute it, but figured that saying “I wouldn’t believe that manure if you said it about Hitler” wouldn’t do the job. So I googled one of the more extravagant claims, and was led right here - to the Catholic Answers library, and the articles on the Chick tracts.

I kept finding myself saying, “but that’s what I believe!” about things like the centrality of the Gospels, and taking the Bible as a whole instead of as a series of quotations. I was so impressed that I decided to read up on the things I had problems with, such as Mariology, confession, and the many aspects of chastity. Again, CA’s library filled my need. To my surprise, I found nothing to disagree with.

Just to show you that I didn’t do this on my own (hello, Holy Spirit!), just after I had made up my mind that I had to be Catholic, and was psyching myself up to tell my hubby, he came to me. He said that, after much e-mail conversation with his old friend L., he had decided that he needed to be a Catholic!

He and L. had served in Korea together, living the party life. Both were fallen-away Catholics, but L. had returned. Their conversations about faith began with the death of dear Pope JPII.

Since DH had never been confirmed, we both went to RCIA, and entered the Church together on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2006!

Blessings,

Ruthie

 

[Henning]

Short story. Sometime after my divorce I picked up a KJV Bible at Borders and just started reading, that’s been pretty much my Christian experience thus far, no church or anything. I found the evangelicals I watched on TV were shallow. Depth I saw/found watching EWTN and decided to enroll in RCIA at the local perish. That’s where I’m at now.

 

[pismopal]

Just a little PS to my “story”. After I entered the Church at Easter of 1998 I went on a trip with my wife. We had attended her work Christmas Party and had won a trip…first class airfare for 2 anywhere the airline went and we had chosen Madrid. This was some time before my choice of CC. We knew we were standby passengers and as such “first class” might be iffy. The gate agent told us he thought we could get first to Madrid but he said I know I can get you to Rome on first class. We were off to Rome …and St Peter’s and the Vatican. This was the most emotional visit I have ever made. If you are a Christian save your butter and egg money and go to Rome…words fail me. I am so blessed.