When did you decide to be a Catholic?

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I decided this morning. 😃

(I borrowed that from Father’s homily last Sunday) šŸ˜‰
 
when life beat me up so bad I looked for help and he was the only one who had his arms wide open.
 
Some of us are fortunate to be pre-cradle Catholics, for generations.
 
I was born Catholic, but decided to fully embrace what that means when I was 25.
 
I was very impressed it’s an old film about St Joan of Arc when I was about six! I admired the idea of spirituality from then on but it was over fifty years later before I became a Catholic.

Recently I was introduced to someone’s spiritual director as a convert and standing back looking at me he said ā€œso it’s been a long journey! ā€œ I should have said ā€œyes, I took the scenic route.ā€ But alas I just smiled weakly and nodded.
 
Just this year at the age of 42, after 15 years of essentially agnosticism and 20 years of Baptist before that.
 
@tad , you ask when did I decide to be Catholic ?

Well , I wasn’t born Catholic as some mistakenly say . No one is by birth born Catholic .

At just over three weeks old back in 1946 I became a member of the Catholic Church through Baptism .

As the Catechism teaches ā€œHoly Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: ā€œBaptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word.ā€ā€

Now that is some big deal . And I knew nothing about it until I began to grow , and now more than 72 years later I am still taking to heart , being enlightened about what happened to me all those years ago .

I have never rejected my membership of the Catholic Church , though I have gone through some serious phases of doubt and soul searching .

I have questioned , as far as I know , all the essential teachings of the Church and have not found any to be false .

I understand what your priest meant in his homily .

Conversion is a daily process . Each day calls for a renewed committment to what I believe to be true . So every day I make a choice to be a member of the Church .

As for what happened to me in my Baptism , I am still embracing it , still making it my own , and I am sure I will spend eternity continually living out that Baptism , entering ever more deeply into its reality .

And I’ve got to say , "Thanks mum and dad for what you did for me by taking me to be baptised , and for the example you set me . "

And thank you @tad for giving me the opportunity to reflect on my own Baptism by means of this thread . We can get a bit stale and jaded as life goes on , and it’s good to be made aware of who we really are , what our true identity is .
 
When God told me it was going to be okay.

(Baptized Catholic, fell away, came back.)

Still working on living it out though.
 
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About three years after I was baptized (no, I was not a super holy toddler. 😜)
 
My husband and I and 5 kids were Episcopalian, of a traditional sort and considered ourselves Anglo catholic. Over a period of about 8 years things started going more and more downhill in the EC and as it did we realized more and more that the true Christian church should not have a nature that changes to suit society. The more we realized this the more research we did. I would have become catholic after the first couple of years of thought, but it took a longer for my husband to come around. Finally he did though and my whole immediate family came into the church together. Best decision we ever made!
 
The decision was made for me by my mom on 29 April 1962. Since that time I have never thought of being anything other than Catholic.
 
No one is by birth born Catholic .
Well, objectively, you’re right. It’s a manner of speaking that’s not meant to be taken literally. I use it because it’s easier than saying ā€œwhen I was born there was no chance that I wouldn’t be baptized Catholicā€ or something similar šŸ˜€
 
Similar to @gingersnap, I was raised Episcopalian. When I left my mother’s home at 15 to live with my father, my stepmother was Lutheran and we attended her church. Then, as an adult, I was…nothing. If you kwim. Just a vague sort of ā€œyeah, there’s probably a God and I should be a good person…if I can. Not getting up early on Sunday, thoughā€ and that was about it.

Fast foward, I’m 30, my mom had died six months earlier (she was the main ā€œtalkerā€ about religion in my life) and I had a friend who found herself with an unplanned pregnancy soon after moving in with another friend. She asked for advice. I opened my mouth to say ā€œYour choice, I’ll support you whateverā€ but what came out was ā€œYou can’t kill this child of Godā€. Coulda knocked me over with a feather. I actually thought someone else had said it. Went and found a friend from work who had been working on me about Catholicism and said ā€œSo. Tell me about this Catholic thing againā€. The rest is history. That was 21 years ago. Time flies.
 
When did you decide to be a Catholic?

I was Born into the RCC, but then after High school and not having money for college; I joined the USAF and never was stationed on a base that had a Catholic Priest, so I drifted away for a few years until I met the women I LOVE, and wanted to get married in the CC. That was 52 years ago {51 years married}.

Then about 30 years ago; my mentor and Best Friend introduced me to the Marian Catechist Lay Apostolate and I fell IN Love with Jesus all-over again. And I’ve never looked back

Thanks for asking,
Patrick
 
I was in India reading Rome Sweet Home. Scott Hahn came from the PCA, which was my denomination, so some of what he talked about really resonated with me. We even had a very similar ā€œI can’t believe what I’m hearing!ā€ moment when we were presented with the ā€œfallible collection of infallible booksā€ argument meant to ā€œdefendā€ Sola Scriptura. At the time, I had already been clearly moving more and more towards Catholicism in my sympathies, but that was really the moment when I decided to stop resisting God’s 10+ year pull to get me to become Catholic. (Really, once I got serious about looking, it took only a few months, but I can remember thinking that the Bible sounded strangely Catholic years before then.)
 
When I was 7 years old. I still remember the day he asked me: ā€œAre you sure this is something you want to do?ā€ Very memorable because the decision was left to me. I had just started going to a Catholic School, my father was Methodist and my mother Catholic. Catholicism attracted me from the start of me attending a Catholic school, and even more importantly, going to Mass every week. At my school students went to Mass every Thursday. The school was associated with the church.
 
Fifty-two years ago when I married a Catholic. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
 
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