Catholic Answers is pleased to announce the addition of Nathan Poe as development officer. Nathan was raised in Lakeside, California—next door to Catholic Answers HQ in El Cajon—in a faithful Evangelical family that taught him to love Jesus and pursue truth, and that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive.
His first encounter with Catholicism was through St. Augustine’s City of God, which his parents encouraged him to read. While attending Patrick Henry College in Northern Virginia, Nathan began to study Church history as a hobby; after reading St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, and Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Catholic Answers founder, Karl Keating, he began considering converting to Catholicism.
During this time he visited the Catholic Answers website again and again with various dogged queries, and he credits his conversion to the good work of the apostolate as well as to his parents who, though not Catholic, faithfully tilled the garden of his soul from an early age, preparing it for God to make bloom.
“Becoming Catholic actually got me kicked out of college,” Nathan said. Patrick Henry College was serious about its Protestant identity, and when he learned of Nathan’s increasingly Catholic leanings, the college president called him in for a series of friendly religious debates. Every two weeks for a whole semester, Nathan and the president discussed everything from apostolic succession to the canon of Scripture to Eucharistic metaphysics, and Nathan often came prepared with Catholic Answers apologetics resources.
No minds were changed, but a mutual respect and friendship developed, and when Nathan was asked to leave it was without any feelings of animosity. The president wrote a letter of recommendation for Nathan to the King’s College in New York City, from which he graduated with a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics. Catholic Answers played a pivotal role in Nathan’s life, and he looks forward to speaking with Catholic Answers’ donors—present and prospective—about the apostolate’s effect on their own lives and how together we can further the mission and impact of Catholic Answers for years to come.