Why did you convert to a Non-Catholic Religion? or vice versa

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PattyPryor

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I always wanted to know why people left the Catholic Church for Non-Catholic Religion. If you haven’t and became Catholic from a Non-Catholic Religion why did you make the move?

Would love to hear your story.
 
Well I converted from a non Catholic religion, and before I knew a thing about it, I was always drawn by the fact that it was so old, yet still going strong, and the fact that it transcended income, language, ethniticity, race, nationality, and any other boundaries. And once I looked into Catholicism, I realized how logical it was, and all the questions I had that were never answered in a way that satisfied me were there in the Catholic Church(of course a lot of things were hard for me to accept at first being raised protestant like birth control being a sin, for a while purgatory, and the immaculate conception was the hardest).
 
TeenageConvert said:
Well I converted from a non Catholic religion, and before I knew a thing about it, I was always drawn by the fact that it was so old, yet still going strong, and the fact that it transcended income, language, ethniticity, race, nationality, and any other boundaries. And once I looked into Catholicism, I realized how logical it was, and all the questions I had that were never answered in a way that satisfied me were there in the Catholic Church(of course a lot of things were hard for me to accept at first being raised protestant like birth control being a sin, for a while purgatory, and the immaculate conception was the hardest).
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Not really sure why I converted to Catholicism except my wife started watching programs on EWTN and became interested in reading the Catholic books they were talking about so often. One day she went shopping at our local Catholic book and gift shop where she got to talking to the check-out clerk who told her about a parish near our home that was beginning an RCIA class, which she decided to attend. I came along for the ride, so to speak, but after a few weeks I began to feel at “home” even though I’d never been in a Catholic church in my life. During the RCIA course Catholicism just sort of grew on me. As to the different Catholic doctrines that many non-Catholics find difficult, I had very little if any problem with them, since I wasn’t raised in any church setting as a child and became a protestant at age 26, and that a pentecostal! My wife however struggles alot with things Catholic because she was Southern Baptist as a child. Our Catholic coming home happened in 2002 I am now 65 and wife is 59 so we came into this late in life. One of the things that drew me away from being protestant was some of the weird things that were happening in the pentecostal assemblies we were attending. One preacher who preached a sermon I had a lot of questions about, told me I had a “demon of intelligence” that needed to be cast out. (He really had no answers for my questions so I believe he said this to scare me off!) Rather than scared I was simply disgusted. If there really is such a thing as a demon of intelligence I wish someone would cast some INTO me instead of casting them OUT!:rolleyes:
 
I have not yet converted, due to transportation issues, which are steadily being resolved. However, I hope that my experience will here be acceptable.

I will present below the factors which led me, slowly to, first, lose faith in Rome’s claim to the unadulterated fullness of the Apostolic Truth, and second, to reject Rome’s more … problematic dogmas (the non-problematic dogmas are within Orthodoxy to begin with):

First, the quotations used by apologists, lay or clerical, for Rome’s Papal claims, when placed in their original contexts do not say what said apologists wish them to say.

Second, the Western notion of Original Sin (whose description has changed over the centuries) and the later dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which relies upon the above conception are originally traceable to a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 (compare the DR with the NAB; the NAB has the Greek represented correctly).

Third, The dry or irreverent liturgies (there is great potential for beauty, but it is seldom used).

Fourth, the illegitimate and illegal addition of the Filioque to the Creed, regardless of whether it is correct doctrine or not, though the evidence I have found points to not.

These are the issues I have, which had formed after I had been given, a year later than I should have in RCIA, a fair introduction to Orthodoxy. Perhaps I needed, as an Orthodox friend of mine once said, the step towards Orthodoxy which is Roman Catholicism in order to be able to find Orthodoxy. Have a good night, all of you!
 
I left Christianity the first time around because I thought I was too smart for it. Went into New Age until I was forced to face what I was really dabbling in. I would have easily joined the RCC if I felt that, as a single young woman without family, I would be accepted; also, there are still some issues I cannot reconcile myself with: The need to constantly confess specific sins, rather than just feel remorse for being a sinner; and, the ban on birth control. The latter has been explained to me time and time again, over and over, but I just find the whole position untenable and without Biblical backing. The ECF may have opposed it but from a cultural point of view I don’t think they opposed it for the same reasons given for opposition to it today. It would be similar to the banning of women wearing perfume or cutting their hair.

Perhaps someday I will be Catholic if the sin-confession issue can be explained to me in a way I can understand. As it is now I am happy enough in my small Anglican parish.
 
TeenageConvert said:
Well I converted from a non Catholic religion, and before I knew a thing about it, I was always drawn by the fact that it was so old, yet still going strong, and the fact that it transcended income, language, ethniticity, race, nationality, and any other boundaries. And once I looked into Catholicism, I realized how logical it was, and all the questions I had that were never answered in a way that satisfied me were there in the Catholic Church(of course a lot of things were hard for me to accept at first being raised protestant like birth control being a sin, for a while purgatory, and the immaculate conception was the hardest).
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So you converted to have sex, drink and slack off?
 
From Orthodoxed Evangelical Catholic to Pentecostal because I found Jesus and I was re-born. From a Latino Teen.
 
You mean as a Catholic you NEVER knew Jesus? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I have heard this story replayed from so many “converts” i.e. people who leave the church over the years that it bores me.

You have come here full of “Holy Ghost power and fire” to save us all. Don’t bother. Jesus already has done that but hey, best of luck.

Signed,

FORMER Pentecostal, now member of God’s one holy, true, catholic and apostolic church through the water and the spirit Sunday April 1, 1990 A.D./ Confirmed April 3, 1999 A.D. -Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ!
 
I was Roman Catholic by birth, and Baptists convinced against it when I was young. I spent my formative years searching through everything and considered myself a Taoist for a while. Then I had a reintroduction to Catholicism through a friend who rediscovered his faith in the church and started studying hard with the full intent to return to Rome, which is where I learned of Holy Orthodoxy. The more I read, the more it made sense, and I was chrismated into the Church Pascha 2011.
 
I was raised Catholic and found Paganism in my late teens. I call it my “quiet rebellion” because I didn’t go out drinking and partying in my teens, I just had all these questions about Catholicism that none of my teachers could answer to my satisfaction. “This is something you just have to take on faith,” they would say when I kept asking questions. I struggled with the fact that, as a woman, I couldn’t be a priest like boys could. I also struggled with guilt and often cried during confession.

I think high school really opened my eyes in that respect. I wanted to go to the same (public) high school as my brothers, and it was the first time I was able to talk with people who didn’t share my religious views. Up until then, my worldview had been very black-and-white, and suddenly I was seeing all these gray areas that no one had ever talked about in Catholic school. I remember thinking that everything I had learned in elementary school had been a lie (in retrospect, it was more like everything in elementary school was an oversimplification). I mentioned earlier that I had wanted to be a priest when I grew up, so finding books on Wicca (which not only worships a Goddess but has priestesses on an equal level with priests) was shocking and exhilarating at the same time. It gave me this sense of worth that I had never felt in the Church. There were other things too, but I don’t have time to go through them all.
 
The solidly Catholic principle of “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” brought me to the Orthodox Church. When I found the faith that truly embodied that, I knew I couldn’t be in the Roman communion anymore. We only have so much time on this earth. We owe it to God and to our souls to worship Him as befits the Creator of all things, and to live as His servants, even as workers at the eleventh hour (as in my case)., exhorting one another to transformation and sanctification through prayer and fasting. This is why I am Orthodox now. 🙂
 
PattyPryor said:
I always wanted to know why people left the Catholic Church for Non-Catholic Religion. If you haven’t and became Catholic from a Non-Catholic Religion why did you make the move?

Would love to hear your story.
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I had the misfortune to attend Catholic school for 12 years and, therefore, knew so little about my religion that was easily manipulated by the lies and slander of Protestantism.

Fortunately, a little bit of research brought me back to the true faith.
 
I left Catholicism because I finally allowed myself to accept what I’d always known - that my experience of Divinity had never been what I was told to expect from Catholicism. My experience of the Divine had always been more akin to what I read in the Tao Te Ching or what I found in researching some aspects of the Neo-pagan religions.

The day I finally left, the sky was bluer, the air sweeter, and colors more brilliant. I felt like a weight was lifted from me.
 
cheese_sdc said:
The day I finally left, the sky was bluer, the air sweeter, and colors more brilliant. I felt like a weight was lifted from me.
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That’s how I felt when I returned to God’s Church and how I feel everytime I take the eucharist, go to confession, pray the rosary or partake in any of the other numerous gifts God gives us through His Church.
 
mikelionheart said:
That’s how I felt when I returned to God’s Church and how I feel everytime I take the eucharist, go to confession, pray the rosary or partake in any of the other numerous gifts God gives us through His Church.
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I believe you do.
 
cheese_sdc said:
I left Catholicism because I finally allowed myself to accept what I’d always known - that my experience of Divinity had never been what I was told to expect from Catholicism. My experience of the Divine had always been more akin to what I read in the Tao Te Ching or what I found in researching some aspects of the Neo-pagan religions.

The day I finally left, the sky was bluer, the air sweeter, and colors more brilliant. I felt like a weight was lifted from me.
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It does feel good to be liberated from guilt… That is, what I’m assuming you mean by “experiencing” Divinity. But as far as Tao Te Ching, I find it to be a little empty of compassion and honest love. It’s got to be that liberation experience that feels aost “divine”.
 
Well I went to a Catholic school my whole life but I kind of turned agnostic, “fire and forget” view that god left the universe alone.

Twords the end of my highschool I took a world religions class and became interested in paganism through a report I did on Germanic pre Christian religion. I did some research and after some hard thinking I became a solitary eclectic Wiccan.

I just never realy felt anything in catholicism, it felt like alot of the aspects of Christianity were man made. To me the pantheistic idea of god simply makes more sense.

I can answer any specific question if people have them.
 
I converted from no religion at all to Christian. When I did that, I was 12 and it was Baptists who taught me my Christianity. I had no familiarity with Catholicism at all. I got neither support nor opposition in being a Christian from my family. They were nominally Christian but paid very little attention to anything religious or philosophical; their daily lives were all that seemed to matter to them.

Later in my teens, I went through several years of doubt of… well, everything. I had a deep hunger for truth but didn’t know what it was. So I investigated many different philosophies, religions and spiritual paths. Many were interesting but none seemed really true. I became a rationalist skeptic for a while, and found that unsatisfying too, because there were mysteries that science couldn’t explain and parapsychology convinced me that a spiritual realm existed. I checked out Taoism and Zen, and that was, I still believe, on the right track at least. They gave me more pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle and I began to see a pattern.

And then I discovered C.S. Lewis. His spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, was a revelation. Here was a genuine intellectual, an Oxford don, a rationalist skeptic and atheist, who came to believe, much against his will, that the Gospel story was actually true. If he could believe that, it was worth going back and giving it a thorough re-examination. And when I did that, I came to the same conclusion Lewis had. It took me 2-3 years of pondering after that, but I returned to Christianity and have not strayed from the fold again.

I have been through a number of different denominations, mainly Baptist and Pentecostal of various flavors, but none of them seemed exactly right. I am currently a member of an Episcopal/Lutheran (both TEC & ELCA affiliations) “emergent” Anglo-Catholic church with Benedictine influence, and am very happy with it. That’s the closest to Catholic I’ve ever been. Never say never, but I don’t expect to come any closer; I have too many doctrinal differences that don’t seem reconcilable.
 
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