A conversion to Catholicism is rarely reducible to a single doctrine or event. When someone begins to study, pray, and engage the many issues that separate Protestants and Catholics, the truths and articles of faith converge and illuminate each other in a way that prevents the convert from simply retracing his steps in a linear manner.
As I look back on my own journey, I too have a great deal of difficulty extrapolating those isolated issues from the whole of Catholicism that tipped my scales toward Rome. The sacred deposit of faith is one. The Eucharist is connected to the priesthood, which cannot be isolated from the episcopacy and apostolic succession, and so on. All of these individual articles comprise deposit of faith, which flows from one source—Jesus Christ.
Converts such as myself who wish to recount their journey are therefore doomed from the beginning because we can only narrate fragments or increments of a pilgrimage towards the true faith, which is always whole and undivided. With these difficulties in mind, I will attempt to give a brief sketch of where I came from and some of the central issues that lead me to the Fullness of the Christian Faith.
In the Beginning
I was raised in a family that went to Church on Sunday and attended Wednesday evening Bible-study sessions. For as long as I can remember, my sister and I participated in the typical youth ministry activities offered in Protestant communities such as Sunday school and Bible camp. My biblical formation included the memorization of the books of the Bible and standard verses such as John 3:16 and the Lord’s Prayer.
My entire family—Mom, Dad, sister, and me—were baptized on Easter Sunday when I was thirteen years old. Our baptism consisted of the traditional Baptist formula of a public profession before the congregation and a total submersion in water. I took my faith seriously—even to the point of bringing my friends from high school to church with me—but I hadn’t thought through the foundations of Christianity.
After high school I went through a period of nominal practice of my faith. During this period I served in the military and lived a thoroughly sub-saintly life. At age twenty-one, in the fall of 1993, I entered college at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota. For all practical purposes St. Cloud State was (and still is, I presume) a completely secular university. Only a handful of the professors were Christian among a sea of atheists, Zen Buddhists, and agnostics. The professors preached tolerance except, of course, when it came to Christian doctrine and moral standards. As you can image, this environment did little to mitigate my sub-saintly lifestyle.
Good Samaritans
Fortunately, during my first year I took a class in chemistry, which happened to be taught by one of the few Christian professors, Dr. Russell T. Arndts. My encounter with him turned out to be a turning point in my life. After a few chats during his office hours I discovered that Dr. Arndts was also Baptist. He was firm enough to tell me that anyone claiming to be Baptist needs to be attending church on Sunday and that I was welcome to attend his church if I wanted to. I accepted his invitation and began attending church again regularly.
The classroom and campus environments at St. Cloud State were challenging to my Baptist faith. As my friendship with Dr. Arndts grew, I shared these struggles with him. Having lived as a Christian in this environment for many years, Dr. Arndts understood well my predicament and introduced me to Christian apologetics. Dr. Arndts himself is an expert in the shortcomings of atheistic evolution and philosophical materialism. He quickly exposed me to a large body of literature that was geared toward defending the faith against the atheistic and relativistic culture on campus that I found myself in.
Well-known Protestant apologists such as R. C. Sproul, J. P. Moreland, Philip Johnson, William Lane Craig, and C. S. Lewis became my guides through the minefield of the secular university. This body of literature fascinated me because I had never been taught that Christianity could be defended rationally. As I began to grasp the internal consistency of the Christian worldview, my faith grew significantly as well. Studying topics such as: the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the reliability of the Bible, and the complexity of the universe inspired in me a wonder and awe that gave me a deeper appreciation of creation and its Triune creator.
Dr. Arndts tutored my studies for the next year and a half. At this point in my growth, my beloved Baptist mentor dropped a bomb on me: During a discussion about a certain philosophical problem, he suggested that I seek the answer in a book called the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. I was literally shocked at his suggestion. By now I had grown to be anti-Catholic, even to the point of bringing my Catholic coworkers and friends with me to my church on Sunday. Besides my prejudice against the Catholic Church, I had a skewed view of Aquinas. And I had never heard of the Summa.
When I finally opened Aquinas’s magnum opus, I was dumbstruck by his profundity. His unique combination of biblical penetration and philosophical depth affected me in an unforgettable way. My first encounter with Aquinas did more than just shake me up spiritually—it shook my superficial anti-Catholic presuppositions to their foundations. I could no longer hold my quasi-pagan caricature of Catholicism. My newfound love for Thomas and new respect for Catholicism primed me for another relationship with a Christian professor at St. Cloud State.
During this same period, Dr. Arndts introduced me to one of his closest colleagues on campus, Dr. Anthony Buhl. Dr. Buhl is a devout Catholic and Thomist. Like the Arndts’ family, Dr. Buhl and his wife were very generous with their time and had me as a frequent guest in their home. Dr. Buhl taught courses in intellectual history. Through his courses I learned how and why the foundations of modern philosophy are fundamentally at odds with the biblical and philosophical foundations that guided Christian thought for nearly fifteen hundred years of its existence.
Borrowed Capital
These developments, which are by necessity of length an oversimplified sketch, led me to several realizations about who and where I was as a Christian. I was fostering a daily prayer life and becoming more outspoken in defense of the faith. However, I began to realize a chasm between my Protestant theological tradition and the endeavors of the Protestant apologists and philosophers that I was reading. Most of the members of our congregation looked down on the study of apologetics that Dr. Arndts and I were engaging in.
The chasm existed because most of the tenets of Reformation theology such as “faith alone,” “scripture alone,” and the “total depravity of man” are logically inconsistent with the use of reason that apologetics requires. The Protestant apologists whom I was reading and enjoying were working off of borrowed capital, and it was a capital that cannot be reconciled with the pessimistic view of human nature held by the Reformers and the Evangelical Protestant tradition. I found myself caught between Protestant doctrine that pitted faith against reason and the basic, commonsense understanding of reality found in Scripture, the early Church, and Thomas Aquinas that kept faith and reason in a healthy harmony.
At this stage, my movement toward Catholicism was quickening. There were several theological factors that fell into place. It was now clear that the place of the Eucharist and the Lord’s Supper in my denomination was inadequate relative to the biblical data. John 6 was a significant text, but, even more so, it seemed that the whole biblical narrative from Melchezidek in Genesis 14 on pointed to a much richer theology of the Eucharist and worship than I was currently adhering to.
In fact, I was developing a deep longing for the Eucharist, and as time passed reception of the Eucharist became my principle spiritual desire. The Sunday service at my church had little if any continuity with the liturgy of the New Testament Church recorded in the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters (cf. Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11; 1 Cor. 10:14ff, 11:23ff). Likewise, the earliest non-canonical Christian writings all disclose a much stronger Eucharistic emphasis than my own denomination practiced (cf. Didache 9, 10 and 14; St. Ignatius of Antioch Ad Ephesians 20, Ad Smyrnaeans 7; St. Justin I Apology 65-66).
Another troubling theological issue was the discrepancy between the Protestant and Catholic canon of Scripture. I saw the inclusion of what Protestants call the Apocrypha in the Catholic canon as clear evidence that Rome was deep in error. However, a little study into the issue proved the opposite. The Greek version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint contains the extra books found in the Catholic canon, while the Hebrew Masoretic text does not. Generally, Protestantism adheres to the Hebrew canon. What I didn’t know was that the Masoretic text as we know it today wasn’t formulated until after Christ, and is therefore a post-Christian canon, while the Septuagint is a pre-Christian text.
Furthermore, there are quotations in the New Testament that correspond directly to the Septuagint and not the Hebrew text. The most famous example is the use of the Emmanuel prophecy from Isaiah 7:14 “Behold a virgin shall conceive” quoted in Matthew 1:23. The Masoretic (Hebrew) text of this passage from Isaiah does not have the Hebrew word for virgin (betûlâh). The Hebrew text refers to the female conceiving as a “young woman” (alma) not a virgin, while the Septuagint has the same Greek word (parthenos or virgin) that Matthew quotes.
This led me to the realization that if the inspired New Testament authors had taken the Greek Old Testament seriously enough to quote from it, my tradition, which rejected the Greek text out of hand, needed some rethinking. The main reason my tradition rejected the Greek Old Testament was not because it had stronger historic or theological reasons for accepting the Hebrew text. Rather, my tradition followed the canonical criterion laid down by the Reformers who used the same reasons against the Septuagint as those who formulated the Masoretic text in a highly anti-Christian environment.
The Lost Son Comes Home
I still had a few steps to take before going all the way to Rome. I even tried a few other non-Catholic ecclesial communities that were more liturgical than my own. However, my desire for Catholicity and the valid Eucharist couldn’t be quenched in these places. At that time I understood that my desire for the Eucharist and liturgy could not be divorced from a sound theology of the Church and the sacraments (especially the priesthood, which is intimately connected with the Eucharist) and other important tenets of the Catholic faith like the Petrine ministry.
Thankfully, as I moved closer to Catholicism, I didn’t experience any sleepless nights or moments of distress about the direction I was moving. At each step God gave me the grace to move forward without hesitation. As the Catholic faith was explained to me, or as I studied it, I could see that it all fit together with divine revelation, a harmony of both head and heart. The differences between my faith and Rome were due to my own errors and stubbornness, not any shortcomings on the part of Catholicism.
At the beginning of the summer of 1996—with surprising ease considering the importance of the moment—I asked Dr. Buhl how I could enter the Catholic Church. He put me in touch with two wonderful priests (Fr. Zylla and Fr. Maciej) who agreed to catechize me twice a week. Equally surprising was the support or at least lack of resistance that my family and friends gave me when I informed them of my decision. During my catechumanate, I fell in love with Eucharistic adoration. I also learned that Catholic spirituality was more “spiritual” than I had ever imagined. Attending Mass and adoration and learning Catholic devotions such as the rosary brought me to a new and ever-growing intimacy with Christ.
On December 1, 1996, at St. Anthony’s Parish, in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with Dr. Buhl as my sponsor, I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. My family, numerous other relatives and friends, including Dr. Arndts, kindly attended the ceremony that day. While they have continued to remain Protestant, I cherish the love and support they have shown me despite our differences.
A New Creation
I had no idea what God would do with me once I became Catholic. Here is a brief chronology of what I’ve been up to for the last four and a half years. The spring following my conversion (1997) I graduated from St. Cloud State and entered the master’s program in theology program at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. I spent two wonderful years in Steubenville studying theology and growing as a Catholic. In May of 1999 I graduated and was married to Susan Van Vickle, whom I met in a class my first semester. (Thanks, Dr. Militec!)
My story is that of a lost sheep being guided home by the Good Shepherd. My entrance into the Church, my marriage to Susan, the opportunities to study, the support from my non-Catholic family and friends, the relationships with Dr. Arndts and Dr. Buhl and everything else that I have benefited from can only be explained by God’s loving guidance.
I would like to close with a few lines from a letter that Cardinal Newman wrote in 1820 which are an apt summary of my own journey: “That among the ordinary mass of men, no one has sinned so much, no one has been so mercifully treated, as I have; no one has such a cause for humiliation, such a cause for thanksgiving.”