Originally this was going to be a story about my own journey to the Catholic Church, but due to my own procrastination in getting it written, it is now happily the story of my whole immediate family’s journey to the Church.
My father was a cradle Catholic and my mother was raised Methodist. At my father’s insistence she became a Catholic. By her own admission, this was strictly an external act for her; inwardly she remained unconverted. My brother, sister, and I were baptized as infants in the Catholic faith, but my father died at the age of thirty-one, which meant the end of our Catholic upbringing. But even though we weren’t raised Catholic, I believe our Catholic baptism influenced us throughout our lives. I never could completely shake an inexplicable attraction to Catholicism, which I tried to explain away as my fallen nature’s attraction to “paganism.”
When I was about twelve, my brother became involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at school, which included regular Bible study. He would come home telling my mother, sister, and me about what he was learning from the Bible, and what he told us challenged me. There was a page in the front of the New Testament explaining the claims of Christ and the need to make a decision, one way or the other, about him. I made a decision for Christ then, experiencing a profound conversion.
At first I attended the United Methodist church, since that was the denomination of my grandparents and the only one I had any familiarity with. I was ignorant of the modernism that had infiltrated many of the mainline Protestant churches, and it wasn’t until I heard my Sunday school teacher deny the existence of a personal devil that I began to understand that not all who call themselves Christians believe everything in the Bible. As I began looking for another church, I thought about the Catholic Church and even attended Mass a few times, but my mother’s and her family’s negative comments about Catholicism prejudiced me against considering it. I wound up in another mainline church that taught me nothing.
It wasn’t until college that I found a Reformed Baptist church that taught systematically from Scripture. I’m grateful to this day for what I learned in that church. The pastor was the best expository preacher I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to (I wish Catholic priests were taught to preach so well), and for the first time I became grounded in Christian theology.
In my college years I became involved in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship along with my future husband, Tom. We attended weekly Bible studies and activities, and he hosted and co-led a Bible study in his apartment. After college, Tom and I had a challenge in trying to find a church home. We became church-hoppers, attending churches of all theological stripes and not ever being fully satisfied.
During this time I was also involved in an inter-denominational crisis pregnancy ministry. I met fine Christians from various denominations, but I was always troubled by the disunity of belief among us all. How could such sincere and good Christians have so much disagreement about what they believed? And how could I be so certain that everything I believed was true?
Tom and I eventually settled on the Presbyterian Church in America after agreeing that infant baptism is biblical. I thought we’d found a spiritual home, but the six years we were in the PCA saw the intensification of the questions that had been rising up in the back of my mind for years. I saw no respect for the teaching authority of the church in my congregation. I heard people talk about how they didn’t believe everything the church taught (freely exercising their belief in personal interpretation of the Bible), and there was open defiance when predestination or infant baptism were preached.
It was around this time that the Lord began to providentially arrange for answers to the questions that were plaguing me. First, my mother-in-law became Catholic, which surprised me. I discovered that the Catholic Church didn’t view me or my other Christian friends as lost souls but as separated brothers and sisters in Christ. I knew my conversion experience had been real, so hearing that the Catholic Church didn’t deny the reality of that experience kept my mind and heart open to hearing more.
And there was a desire to learn more, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Anti-Catholicism was alive and well where I lived, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I was checking out the Catholic Church. The Internet was where I decided to go to “safely” and anonymously investigate the Catholic faith. I went to Catholic chat rooms and talked to Catholics. Most weren’t that helpful (many simply reinforced negative stereotypes I had of Catholics), but there were a few who helped me, and the one who helped me the most was a cradle Catholic named Joan.
I also began receiving an Eastern Orthodox publication, The Christian Activist. One article in particular, about how we got the Bible, shook me up. I had never really given it much thought, just sort of assuming, as many Protestants do, that the Bible has always been here as we know it today. For the first time I found out the Church existed before the Bible (as we have it now), which obviously dealt a death blow to sola scriptura. This revelation had me literally trembling inside.
At Joan’s encouragement, I attempted to pray the rosary. I had a small rosary that my father had bought for me when I was a baby, the only possession I had that came from him. Even before I considered becoming Catholic, I sometimes pulled the rosary out of its little plastic box and look at it, attracted to it for some unknown reason. But this time I got the rosary out to pray it. I told the Lord that I wanted only to honor him, and if it honored him to honor his Mother, then I wanted to honor his Mother as well. Despite this, I was so nervous at the thought of praying to someone other than God that I half expected to be struck by lightning. Lightning never did strike, which I took as a good sign, so I prayed it again.
Ironically, the last theological hurdle for me to jump wasn’t about Mary, the papacy, or purgatory but predestination. None of the Catholic sources I had read addressed it directly or thoroughly, and I had to have my questions cleared up on that issue, because it’s a “biggie” in Reformed theology. I decided to write Scott Hahn himself about it, and he graciously provided me with exactly what I needed. I found that Catholic teaching on predestination was much more satisfying than the Calvinist one, and it perfectly reconciled apparently contradictory verses in Scripture in a way that I never saw dealt with convincingly in Calvinist theology.
Now that I was completely convinced, I had the difficult task of sharing this news with others, the first being my husband, Tom. He was very surprised when I dropped this bomb on him. I hadn’t said anything at all to him during my search, because I hadn’t expected to find the Catholic Church to be true. I told him that I would go to the Catholic Church by myself but would continue to attend the Presbyterian service with him, if he wished. I didn’t want him to become Catholic just to please me but only if he believed it to be true. He agreed to attend Mass with me because he wanted us to be together as a family, and he even attended RCIA with me. It wasn’t until we were approaching the Easter Vigil and were asked to choose a patron saint and confirmation name that I found out that Tom had decided to become Catholic as well. So on Easter Vigil 1998, we entered the Church together.
I was so grateful to the Lord that a wedge hadn’t been driven between my husband and me, but my experience with friends wasn’t as positive. There was a change in attitude toward me at the crisis pregnancy center where I volunteered. We had had a few Catholic volunteers for years, but apparently someone becoming Catholic was too much. I was surprised to find myself being questioned about my views of salvation and being on the receiving end of negative comments on the Church.
My brother had undergone his own conversion to Christ not long before, and while I was preparing to enter the Church, he was being challenged to leave it by his Protestant friends. He asked me why he should remain Catholic, and I gladly mailed him tapes by Scott Hahn and others explaining the biblical basis of the Catholic faith. He’s been a convinced Catholic ever since. My mother didn’t react negatively, as I had expected, when I told her I was becoming Catholic. My sister had difficulty accepting it at first—she had negative perceptions of the Church—but I just shared with them what I was learning, answered their questions, and left the rest up to God. After a few years my mother and sister started attending Mass regularly, and last year they started going to RCIA together. This past Easter Vigil my sister entered the Church and my mother returned to it. For the first time my mother, sister, brother, and I were all Catholic—in heart, not just in name—and we had the joy of receiving the Eucharist together.
I missed my father growing up, and I often wondered why he died so young. But God works all things for the good of those who love him, and I believe that my father’s intercession after his death played a key part in God granting us the gift of our Catholic faith. God remained true to his covenant promises we were heirs to by virtue of our Catholic baptism, and my family and I rejoice in his faithfulness and love.