Where did you come from, convert dear? Out of the everywhere into here...

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Teresita

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I have a nebulous but definite anxiety that the majority of converts to the Faith (certainly all the ones I know at present) are converting from other Christian groups, notably evangelical/fundamentalist and ‘high’ Anglican/Episcopalian. I’ve set up the poll to discover how true this is of the participants in this Forum (so it does exclude those who haven’t yet converted to the Catholic faith, or are in RCIA).

If my fear is correct, it means that, though we can give the fulness of truth to those who have it in part, we’re not currently reaching the huge numbers who have no Christian faith at all - in other words, we’re letting other Christians do our work for us, and then pinching their converts. If that’s brutally put, I apologise - but is it true?

Sue
 
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Teresita:
If my fear is correct, it means that, though we can give the fulness of truth to those who have it in part, we’re not currently reaching the huge numbers who have no Christian faith at all - in other words, we’re letting other Christians do our work for us, and then pinching their converts. If that’s brutally put, I apologise - but is it true?

Sue
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Having Baptists do your dirty work, eh? 😃

But seriously, I would say that people who have no Christian faith at all come in all different sizes and shapes and beliefs. Some might be secular Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, humanists, etc. Maybe the Protestants are ‘Catholic-Lite,’ a necessary stage for many before they enter into Catholicism whole hog.
 
I always considered myself a Christian, I had a strong belief in God, Jesus and the Holy spririt. However I was never baptized, and whenever we did go to church, I would classify it as “church hopping” One here, one there. I can’t even remember any of the demonitations. I guess you’d call me Mainline Protestant? Although I had no idea what the differences were between Protestant and Catholic. It always bothered me that there were so many demoninations, and no one could tell me what was “right” (Well til now!)

I married my husband in the Catholic Church, he is a cradle catholic. After attending, then not attening, we’ve been faithful church goers for about the last 3 years, and then I decided to join the RCIA. I got tired of feeling like an outsider. I felt that if I believed this strongly, I really should do it. I am truly thankful that I did!
 
I converted from the Baptist religion eight years ago this Easter. It was the best thing I could have ever done. I think that everyone needs to do their share of evangalization. My husband loves to take his Catholic tracks to the grocery store and pass them out, lay them in the restrooms and I also like to send them in the mail with our bills or when you get junk mail and it has a postage paid envelope, just put one of our tracks in it and stick it in the mail. Maybe most people don’t even read them but if just one person does it sure will give them something to think about and we at least know we are trying to do our part. Pray for them as well.
 
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mommy:
I married my husband in the Catholic Church, he is a cradle catholic. After attending, then not attening, we’ve been faithful church goers for about the last 3 years, and then I decided to join the RCIA. I got tired of feeling like an outsider. I felt that if I believed this strongly, I really should do it. I am truly thankful that I did!
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I am a cradle Catholic and my wife was a cradle Protestant, after our marriage she became a practising Catholic. Now she is leading Rosary. The Catholics always welcome the new comers, then why you feel like outsider.
 
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selvaraj:
I am a cradle Catholic and my wife was a cradle Protestant, after our marriage she became a practising Catholic. Now she is leading Rosary. The Catholics always welcome the new comers, then why you feel like outsider.
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Let me clarify, I don’t feel that way NOW. But for awhile I did simply because I didn’t understand what was going on around me, there were all these prayers everyone else knew, I didn’t even know when to stand or kneel, and obviously I didn’t recieve communion.

Then I just felt that this is something I needed and wanted, and really shortly after starting RCIA, and understanding the faith and learning more, I really began to love it, and embrace it, and no longer do I feel like I’m an outsider looking in.

No, it wasn’t anyone who made me feel that way, everyone was perfectly nice, I just felt like I was on the outside perhaps metaphorically, looking in, seeing, but not participating in, or understaning what was going on.
 
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Teresita:
I have a nebulous but definite anxiety that the majority of converts to the Faith (certainly all the ones I know at present) are converting from other Christian groups, notably evangelical/fundamentalist and ‘high’ Anglican/Episcopalian. I’ve set up the poll to discover how true this is of the participants in this Forum (so it does exclude those who haven’t yet converted to the Catholic faith, or are in RCIA).

If my fear is correct, it means that, though we can give the fulness of truth to those who have it in part, we’re not currently reaching the huge numbers who have no Christian faith at all - in other words, we’re letting other Christians do our work for us, and then pinching their converts. If that’s brutally put, I apologise - but is it true?

Sue
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The vast majority of converts are in Africa and Asia and are not on these forums.

God Bless.
 
Indeed. But I fail to see how that’s relevant to the point I was trying to make. Our vocation, by and large, is not to reach out to potential converts in Asia and Africa, but here in Europe and America; and, looking at the poll so far (clearly too small to have statistical significance, but interesting, nonetheless), it seems to confirm my impression that we were letting Protestants do the donkey work.

Sue
 
This is an excellent post. I think it’s true that many of the converts are coming from some kind of established Christian fatih.

I think that if your point is that we as a group of ‘evangelists’ need to get better at evangelizing, I would have to agree.

I love our evangelical brethren. We can learn so much from them. They really emphasize a personal relationship with God; and that’s not to say that we don’t, it’s just that we take it for granted that that’s how everything works. I think because we don’t make a big deal about it, many outside our Church assume that it’s not critical to Catholicism.

They are also very passionate about praise and worship and looking for God in everyday aspects of their lives. My in-laws are Pentecostal pastors (both of them) and I have a great respect for their faith; it is very real to them and I learned to feel great about being a Christian from them.

When these types of people learn what we really believe, and how it is in fact biblical (that is sound in terms of biblical ideas, not necessarily spelled out explicitly in a particular chapter or verse), they can often fall madly in love with Rome. It can take everything they felt and give it an authenticity (historical especially) that was lacking. Read the posts from some of the converts on here, they often say that converting was the best thing they ever did.

I think that because a full understanding of Christianity with 2000 years of growth (and I mean legitimate growth, not distortion, apostacy or any other such idea) is not something you can grasp if you have never had faith in Jesus at all. Hence, faith systems that offer a much simpler approach to first getting to know God and how we fit into His plan are easier for ‘newbies’ to digest. Once they do, they are often ready to really accept all of what Christ started 2000 years ago (the Church is a lot more now than it was then**).

** This is where I want to start a new thread about how so often people want a Church that looks exactly like a first century Church. The reality is, there isn’t one, and I don’t think there should be. The Catholic Church was started 2000 years ago by Jesus and his apostles, if it still existed today looking exactly the same, it would have been a disastrous failure. It was meant to grow and develop, and yes understand better the nature of our Triune God (see, there’s a development right there, the definition of the Trinity), how Grace is dispensed, what we are to do with it, how we become receptive to it, how each person in the whole family relates to each other, and how the whole Body of Christ relates to the rest of creation. But as I said that’s another thread.
 
This was not my experience. I was baptised Catholic, but raised without any religion and got into paganism as a young adult. When I was 22, I had a dream where I met Jesus. It was an incredible experience - He said “I want you to know who I am”, and somehow I *knew. *After that I spent about a year researching Christianity, searching for the true way of following Jesus. My search led me to the Catholic Church and I went through RCIA and was confirmed at 24. To me, evangelicalism was always a turnoff, because it seemed overly simplistic and illogical. It was because of my encounters with ‘fundies’ that I initially wrote off Christianity as unworthy of a thinking person, and it was in learning about Catholicism that I realised Christianity could make sense.
 
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BlindSheep:
This was not my experience. I was baptised Catholic, but raised without any religion and got into paganism as a young adult. When I was 22, I had a dream where I met Jesus. It was an incredible experience - He said “I want you to know who I am”, and somehow I *knew. *After that I spent about a year researching Christianity, searching for the true way of following Jesus. My search led me to the Catholic Church and I went through RCIA and was confirmed at 24. To me, evangelicalism was always a turnoff, because it seemed overly simplistic and illogical. It was because of my encounters with ‘fundies’ that I initially wrote off Christianity as unworthy of a thinking person, and it was in learning about Catholicism that I realised Christianity could make sense.
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I understand how you feel. I myself am a revert. Cradle Catholic-cum-apostate-cum-Catholic. I researched my way back home as well. Your comment about fundamental Christianity not being for the thinking person is interesting. Some might say they put the ‘fun’ back in fundamental (others might say they put the mental back in there) ← humour.

Oft times intellectuals want no part of a faith system; they might think they have powers of reason that are far above believing in anything unseen. I say, intellect doesn’t preclude faith…intellect perfects faith.
 
I have been married to a catholic for ten years and found myself at a point in our marriage when the question of how our children should be raised came up. My father being a Mormon Bishop and my mother being a bishops wife have struggled for years with the fact that thier second oldest of six children married outside the covenant and that my four children are their only grandchildren out of fifteen that were not blessed in the church, but baptized catholic. I had not gone to church for ten years , except for Christmas and Easter mass, when the question of the children came up. Having feelings of guilt and preasure from my parents I started a crusade to prove to my wife that the LDS church was the true and restored gospel and that the Catholic church was the great and abominable apostasy or the whore of babylon. I found that the true and everlasting gospel has been here for two thousand years from Christ to Peter to Pope John Paul II. My journey began with a the goal of giving my children a single religous up bringing to finding the truth and becoming a better man, husband, and father. I will receive the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, Penance, First Communion, Confirmation and validation of the Sacrament of Matrimony performed 10 years ago in the catholic church on holy Saturday March 26, 2005 at St. Elizabeth Anne Seaton Parish in Tucson, Arizona
 
That’s a wonderful story! I’m thrilled for you. I would have put slots in the poll for Mormons, JWs and Adventists, but there are only seven options available (probably sensibly - after all. where do you draw the line?).

Sue
 
We might consider, though, that some/many Protestants that are converting might have been lapsed Christians. It’s possible that they have fallen into secularism so-to-speak.
 
I was raised in a ‘high’ or anglo-catholic Episcopal parish. (ECUSA) The parish, which draws about five people every Sunday, is very conservative and beautiful.
Unfortunately most of the local Episcopal community drive to the incredibly pro-gay church not too far away.

It’s been hard leaving Canterbury, but I’m so glad to be crossing the Tiber!
 
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ex-mormon:
I have been married to a catholic for ten years and found myself at a point in our marriage when the question of how our children should be raised came up. My father being a Mormon Bishop and my mother being a bishops wife have struggled for years with the fact that thier second oldest of six children married outside the covenant and that my four children are their only grandchildren out of fifteen that were not blessed in the church, but baptized catholic. I had not gone to church for ten years , except for Christmas and Easter mass, when the question of the children came up. Having feelings of guilt and preasure from my parents I started a crusade to prove to my wife that the LDS church was the true and restored gospel and that the Catholic church was the great and abominable apostasy or the whore of babylon. I found that the true and everlasting gospel has been here for two thousand years from Christ to Peter to Pope John Paul II. My journey began with a the goal of giving my children a single religous up bringing to finding the truth and becoming a better man, husband, and father. I will receive the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, Penance, First Communion, Confirmation and validation of the Sacrament of Matrimony performed 10 years ago in the catholic church on holy Saturday March 26, 2005 at St. Elizabeth Anne Seaton Parish in Tucson, Arizona
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Congratulations, and may God bless you and your family.
 
I find the poll interesting in that it leaves out two very large groups. LDS(Mormons) and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both have a larger presence in this country than Judaism, Islam and some of the Christian denominations mentioned.
 
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ex-mormon:
I have been married to a catholic for ten years and found myself at a point in our marriage when the question of how our children should be raised came up. My father being a Mormon Bishop and my mother being a bishops wife have struggled for years with the fact that thier second oldest of six children married outside the covenant and that my four children are their only grandchildren out of fifteen that were not blessed in the church, but baptized catholic. I had not gone to church for ten years , except for Christmas and Easter mass, when the question of the children came up. Having feelings of guilt and preasure from my parents I started a crusade to prove to my wife that the LDS church was the true and restored gospel and that the Catholic church was the great and abominable apostasy or the whore of babylon. I found that the true and everlasting gospel has been here for two thousand years from Christ to Peter to Pope John Paul II. My journey began with a the goal of giving my children a single religous up bringing to finding the truth and becoming a better man, husband, and father. I will receive the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, Penance, First Communion, Confirmation and validation of the Sacrament of Matrimony performed 10 years ago in the catholic church on holy Saturday March 26, 2005 at St. Elizabeth Anne Seaton Parish in Tucson, Arizona
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I too am an ex-LDS. I came into the church in 2003. Since then my life has taken on a whole new meaning, a whole new sense of what is important. I too, am becoming a better man, husband and father. I am so happy for you! Congratulations and welcome home.
 
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