But by the grace of God.
A spiritual journey from Evangelical to evangelical Catholic.
This is a deeply personal story, and one I have meant to write down for some time, but in telling any personal story there comes selective memory and unitended consequences. Particularly in the genre of conversions or in my case reversion stories, there can often be seeming slights at the group which one is leaving.
In my case it was a roughly five year journey as a church-going evangelical Protestant with many wonderful Christians I met along the way. So I suppose this is a disclaimer that I write this out of a desire to tell my story and pray that it does not seem vindicative of my Protestant friends, who I know are living for God everyday even if we disagree over the nature of the body of Christ.
My second and final disclaimer concerns theology. Inevitably as I tell this story I will touch on some theological points. However, I submit fully to the teaching authority of Mother Church and if at any point I wander outside of orthodoxy the error is entirely mine.
A Sunday at Reformed Worship
It was early on a Sunday morning and I sat in the pews with my bible in one hand and notebook in the other. This Baptist church, had been my religous home for the last eight months or so, and today the Pastor had invited a guest to preach the sermon for the day. This church was, and is, a thriving church in the Reformed tradition, and several George Washington University students would make the trips every week picked up by vans and driven to church.
I had taken to the church like a fish to water. I loved its systematic theology, its traditional worship, and its Christ centered preaching. Then as now, my soul found something deeply disappointing in the seeker friendly, power point and rock band worship services that was in vogue for evangelicals in the 2000's.
Having been raised Catholic but largely failed by a well meaning, but ineffective catechism program, I had come to know Christ as a summer camper at Ligonier Camp, about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. That awakening to the fact that there was more to life than secularism and an introduction to the numinous is a debt I will never be able to repay the wonderful people at Ligonier.
By the time college came around I would’ve considered myself 100% a protestant and was well versed in the Protestant critique of the Catholic Church.
So it should not have been shocking to me to hear, on that early Sunday morning at this baptist church, a thundering sermon on the Catholic idolatory of Mary and the evils of the Catholic Church. In some ways while I had never said such things with such a vitriol, I had believed some of the very things that came down to the pews that day.
And yet, I was bothered.
I remember vividly as we headed to the weekly college student lunch that happened after services that I was very uncomfortable. This was supposed to be my new spiritual home. I had even met with the pastor about the membership process, which was a very serious commitment. I looked around thinking, “Do all of my friends here really feel that way about Catholics.”
I mean, I didn’t disagree with the theological critique offered, especially on Mary. In fact, in my journey back over the Tiber to Rome, Marian theology remains one of my largest struggles, but the caricature that was drawn that morning of Catholics was deeply flawed.
I may have had theological struggles with Mary then, but I knew from my family that some of those most deeply devoted to Marian intercessory prayer were most deeply devoted to Jesus. At the time, I just wrote off their beliefs as unneccesary baggage but not the sort of evil that was clearly the official view of this church I was purpoting to join.
That would be my final service at that Reformed church. I knew I wasn’t welcome there, but I was far from returned to my Catholic roots.
The Early Church Speaks
Even if I didn’t like what it said.
At the same time as all this was going on, I was taking a series of Christian History classes at college from a lapsed Prebyterian Dewey Wallace. Professor Wallace had forgotten more about Christian history then I am likely to ever know. My ancient Christian History class with him would provide a spark that I could never have anticipated.
There is a certain evangelical protestant creation myth, if you excuse the term, that posits the first hundred or so years of Christinaity as a Golden Age of the church where the it most closely resembled the evangelical worship experience of the 20th century. Small groups sitting around studying scripture, complaining about Roman persecution, maybe strumming a lyre or whatever the closest guitar analogy of first century Roman empire was. Now I am probably being uncharitable here in that I am ascribing the belief I had that may not be held by all Protestants, but it certainly was fundamental to my belief system
This logically leads to a theology that posits that true Christianity ceased to exist in a demonstrable way from some indistinct time in the 2nd century AD when the church quit following Protestant theology to Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the door in 1517. That is 1,400 years without a biblical based Christianity.
So this Christian History class was an opportunity for me to learn more about this Golden Age.
After we finished reading the Gospels in the class, we turned to the first and most prominent early church document that we know about, the Didache.
“On the Lord’s own day, assemble in common to break bread and offer thanks; but first confess your sins, so that your sacrifice may be pure. However, no one quarreling with his brother may join your meeting until they are reconciled; your sacrifice must not be defiled. For here we have the saying of the Lord: ‘In every place and time offer me a pure sacrifice; for I am a mighty King, says the Lord; and my name spreads terror among the nations.’” — The Didache (40–60AD)
Sacrifice. The word jumped off the page at me.
“But, the Lords Supper is not a sacrifice. Christ died once and that is sufficent there is no need for the whole Catholic dogma on the Eucharist. It is distracting at best, idolatory at worst,” I said to myself as I re-read the passage we were studying in class.
Not only was the sacrificial theology of the Eucharist present, but we were supposed to confess our sins so that such sacrifice could be pure. This wasn’t anything like what I expected.
As a very interesting side note, the Didache prohibits Christians from having abortions. So whatever mainline churches might say, the pro-life cause has been one preached by Christians since day one of the faith.
This talk of sacrifice was very confusing for me, but even more alarmingly the document dedicated a tremendous amount of time to the Eucharist. It wasn’t the throw away that I had lived as an Evangelical. (There is obviously difference of opinions concerning communion amongst protestants but the church’s I attended were definitely memorialist in theology. In fact one of the churches I attended, briefly, was so ‘seeker friendly’ that they did communion just four times a year.)
Here was one of the earliest documents written by Christians for other Christians, and the church it was describing looked nothing like I expected. In fact it seemed vaguely, though not exactly, like my Catholic church upbringing.
So as I sat in a basement windowless classroom on an hyper secular university, the second piece of the puzzle of my journey back to Rome fit into place.
I became a voracious reader of early Church fathers, because at the time I thought I would find some backup for my previously held view on what the early church looked like.
I did not.
In fact the more I dug the more disturbed I became.
In fact, part of me was in some way angry or frustrated that in all the time I had spent attending Protestant churchs not once did Athanasius, St. Clement, St. Augustine, St. Justin, or any of these amazing Christians come up. It was as if history had stoped with the last sentence of Acts and then picked up with Martin Luther. (Occasionally Augustine might get thrown in but even that was exceedingly rare.)
It is a real shame, because theological issues aside there is two-thousand years of Christian history that can and should provide solace and encouragement to Christians both Protestant and Catholic today. Sadly, I think out of the fear of intercessory prayer they are often completely ignored amongst even highly engaged Protestants.
“Since then these things are manifest to us, and we have looked into the depths of the divine knowledge, we ought to do in order all things which the Master commanded us to perform at appointed times. He commanded us to celebrate sacrifices and services, and that it should not be thoughtlessly or disorderly, but at fixed times and hours. He has Himself fixed by His supreme will the places and persons whom He desires for these celebrations, in order that all things may be done piously according to His good pleasure, and be acceptable to His will. So then those who offer their oblations at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed, but they follow the laws of the Master and do not sin. For to the high priest his proper ministrations are allotted, and to the priests the proper place has been appointed, and on Levites their proper services have been imposed. The layman is bound by the ordinances for the laity.”
-Letter of St. Clement of Rome to the Church in Corinth
St. Clement’s witness here is probably the one that for me was the most impactful. Clemet was, depending on who you believe, the third or fourth Bishop of Rome (thus in Catholic terms Pope). In fact, traditional historical belief holds that he was consecrated to the priesthood by St. Peter himself. In any circumstances it seems exceedingly likely that Clement knew and studied under Peter and the people he was preaching to likely all knew someone who knew Jesus.
And yet he’s preacing about sacraments, sacrifices, and a priesthood divided from believers in general.
For me, I could no longer at this point uphold the construct in my head of the belief that the Church ever looked like modern Protestantism. If it was corrupt then it was corrupt from day one, but, and this is what both concerned and inspired me, if it was true then it was true from day one.
This drove me back to scripture to study what it said about communion, and I realized when I was reading it from the early church perspective that not only was the Catholic (and I should also include the Orthodox in this as well) view of the Eucharist compatible but scripture but truly it was pointed to by scripture.
Scripture Says What?
Or “Crap, how didn’t I notice this before”
So I dove back into the Gospels, in particular, I focused on Jesus’s teaching on the matter. It was here I realized I had been doing a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid what to me became the obvious implications of Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist.
I won’t here go through the entire biblical argument for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but I’ll cover what to me was the strongest argument, John 6.
So Jesus is in the public part of his ministry traveling and preaching, and he comes to the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum and he is preaching to the people. The day before he had miraculously fed them and they come looking for him again.
He says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” (John 6:26–27)
They then ask him what they should do to follow God and he answers, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” (John 6:29)
He then talks about God providing manna in the desert for his people, and that this was but a foreshadow (or theologically a type) of the real bread that is Jesus.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:47–51)
To me it was the next exchange that was the kicker.
The followers who came out to see Jesus then begin to argue amongst themeselves and say “How can this man give us his flesh to eat.” (John 6:52)
Note that the complaint wasn’t, wow how can this man save us from our sins, but rather it was a very specific complaint about them physically eating his flesh.
Jesus’s response is not to say, “You silly guys, I am talking metaphorically. It just means as long as you have faith in me as your savior then you will be ok.”
Instead he says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53–58)
In fact, Jesus changes his verb in greek after the followers question him about this difficult teaching from phago to trago. Trago’s literal translation is to chew or gnaw.
The followers respond, “This saying is hard; who can accept it,” (John 6:60) and then after an additional back and forth scripture says that, “many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” (John 6:66)
If Jesus was speaking only metaphorically why would this be hard lesson and why would many disciples of Christ fall away over a metaphorical confusion?
To me the most obvious answer is that Jesus meant what he said, we as Christians have to eat his flesh and blood. It was at the time for me an inescapable though unwelcome conclusion.
Now I actually had to do something about this intellectual exploration. If the Protestant churches that I attended were wrong on this fundamental issue of Christian life, and had been denying their followers the chance to partake in the body and blood, then how could I continue to attend services there.
So I looked around for an alternative and their were only two: Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Both which preached the historical orthodox view on the Eucharist. Now to be honest Orthodoxy which was entirely foreign to my life experience so I just reverted to my old ways.
The process was not immediate though. I began attending Catholic mass again while still harboring signifcant doubts on major theological issues and I would do so for some time.
But for me there was a sense of coming home.
Father King
Inspiring the Exorcist… and me.
Several months before my experience at the Reformed Baptist church. I had been invited by a friend from my non-denominational Christian fellowship group at GW, InterVarsity, to attend a mass at Georgetown’s Dahlgren Chapel that was said at 11:15pm by Father Thomas King S.J. My friend was considering entering the Catholic Church, and he had heard that this Mass was a sort of “must do” for those considering converting.
For those of you who never met Father King I can offer few words to describe the man other than to say he was a man of God. He exuded Christ’s love, and I have no better way to describe him.
History has some other notes on Father King. He was named Georgetown’s man of the century in 2000 and is rumored to have been one of the young priests involved in the original exorcism that inspired the Exorcist movie, and he was a renowned expert on Father Teilhard de Chardin S.J.
This Mass though was my first experience in what the Mass was meant to be. It was dark, candle lit, and reverent. While the use of the liturgial rubric was probably looser than I would prefer, I can hardly criticize a man who by all accounts brought thousands of people into the Church through his service in the Priesthood.
I remember vividly leaving the mass at midnight and thinking that it made the Protestant service I had attended earlier that day seem wholly uninspiring.
At the time I chalked it up to a sort of flimsy emotionalism and half chided myself to falling for it. Yet, today if you asked me when I started to head back towards Catholic practice I would definitely cite that Sunday night.
So after my realization that I could no longer attend my Reformed Baptist church, I began slowly attending more and more Sunday night masses with Father King.
In this re-telling I realize that it may seem like there was a clean break between attending my Reformed church and then becoming Catholic. That is not accurate. While I would never attend another service at the Baptist church, I did try out several other Protestant churches and when asked by my fellow students from the Reformed church, I never made it out as a huge epiphany just that I was looking for a church that fit my needs better. (A whole article could be written on the scourge of consumerism and “church shopping” that I fell victim to in my time in college.)
Eventually in my final semester at GW, I really returned back to the Catholic Church. I would attend mass Sundays at either the Neuman Center’s Sunday mass or up with Father King if I could. It wasn’t instantaneous but more so a gradual realization.
I even began attending daily mass most nights at Georgetown. A behavior that I have since failed to repeat in my life, but which I must recommend highly because such daily exposure to Christ’s presence has a grounding effect that is not entirely explainable.
Crossing the Tiber
In whole, my journey back to the Roman Catholic Church took a little less than a year. It is not a finished journey; I doubt anyones spiritual journey ever is. There are the ups and the downs. (Though I can say that there has been no greater balm to my Christian walk so far than having children and an amazingly faithful wife. There seems to be something rather inexplicable that draws one back to faith seeing a tiny human walk and talk for the first time.)
I find it fascinating, that my story is also largely told by the three men who had a tremendous impact on it, though in varying different ways, and ironically two of which are not Catholic. The guest pastor at the Reformed church for waking me up, Professor Wallace for exposing me to early Christian writings, and Father King for stimulating my spiritual hunger for something more.
Though this is the first time I have tried to commit this story to writing, it is not the first time I have told it. And it has been the reaction from its telling that motivated me to write it down.
I am not the only one. I’ve met now dozens of others who either have converted or rediscovered their Catholicism and it usually follows a similar path.
While this is just the journey of one person, I do think there is a pattern that exists that perhaps might give us some insight into the problems and opportunities the Catholic Church faces today.
Ultimately, the Church has three major things going for it that bring in new young and hungry believers.
First, foremost, and always, the Eucharist. Ultimately, myself and many other converts have discovered what millions of Christians have over the years which is the honor and humility that comes from worshipping with the Saints at the foot of the cross during Mass.
Every Sunday I have the chance to gather together with all of Christendom across time and space to worship Jesus and the mystery of faith that he created on the cross for our salvation.
Second, though I suspect its largely tied to the first, is a hunger for traditional liturgy. While much of the innovation in Evangelicism has been about the debasing of worship, I think it has created a hunger for something deeper than guitars and power points.
When I meet God in Heaven I suspect it will be a lot more like the pomp and circumstance presented in Revelation and evident in the writings of the early church fathers than the church services in movie theaters I used to attend.
I also find it ironic then that so many of the older reformers in the Catholic Church seem to want to water down the liturgy for fear of the “smells and bells.” I would posit that much of the energy of the new Evangelization comes precisely from the smells and bells.
When some of my low church friends take offense to the high church liturgy, I draw their attention to the Book of Revelation. Often in Protestant theology the fight about Revelation is all about eschatology, but the Catholic Church points out that it is also our insight into how the Heavens worship God, and which the Catholic Church believes provides a blueprint for our own worship on Earth.
There are choirs, candles, processions, incense, and vestments. Basically everything that happens in the High church. (I am using the low and high church delineation in a trans-denominational sense, there are certainly High church Protestants)
If you want to read more about Revelation as the archetype of the Mass I highly recommend two books I’ve read. “The Lamb’s Supper” by Scott Hahn and “The Mass: The Glory, The Mystery, and the Tradition” by Cardinal Wuerl.
The third marker of these converts tends to be a desire for the larger historical picture of the church. When I wrote early on about the 1,400 years of darkness, I’ve found I am not the only one deeply troubled by that theological view that Christ allowed orthodoxy to be extinguished for over a millennia that is the logical inference from much Protestant thought.
Having read the church fathers one is struck by the faith these people had. Many of them died for their faith, and they have incredible stories to tell and my faith is strengthened by witnessing in the 2,000 year long tradition in which they were involved.
In short, to be a Catholic is to be part of something much, much larger than ones self.
A Footnote Worth Noting
It’s not about me
There are a thousand different tangents that could come off of this story, but there is one that keeps coming back to me in discussions I find worth noting. Often my non-Catholic Christian friends ask me the biggest difference between before returning to the Catholic Church and afterwards.
The death of Individualism.
That’s the answer.
I don’t think it is an accident that Luther nailed his thesis to the door as the concept of individualism was being developed. I think the two are intertwined at their heart: the priesthood of all believers, the elimination of the sacrament of confession, the belief that all can understand God’s true meaning in the scriptures, the concept that salvation is through individual mental ascent. All of these things I suspect would make no sense to human beings before the renaissance, because they had to mental construct of individualism through which they could understand this.
For me though and for many of the people I talk to about this issue it is also one of the best unintended side effects of following the Church. Its no longer all about you.
Shopping for the right church? Thing of the past. Long nights worrying about the right theological constructs to systematize my belief system? Over. I submit fully to the teaching authority of the Magisterium.
Its not about me, God created a structure through which I get to experience him deeper every day. I’m home and it’s Rome.
