Well Gene, I don’t think my testimony into the Catholic faith is a very heartfelt or incredible one, but here it is.
As far back as I can remember, I had always considered myself to be a Christian, and I always will. I give credit especially to my family and to the Navigators Youth Bible Study for helping me hang onto it in high school.
As I got older and toward the end of college, I held onto my faith, but I could tell it was slipping and I became apathetic. I began to struggle with doubts as my environment seemed to become more increasingly atheist and anti-religious. I would ask my pastors and friends theological questions and they just didn’t seem to answer be able to really answer them—it often lead to “Pray and read your Bible.”
After I had been dating this girl I met in English class (who I eventually fell in love with and seven years later married), her brother Fito and I became great friends and roommates. He was and still is one of the smartest guys I have ever known. But while I was struggling with doubts, I was blown away by his interaction with Atheists. I never knew anyone like him growing up. My Christian friends had so much compassion and Biblical knowledge, but Fito had something many of them didn’t seem to offer, which was when emotions fluctuate, intellectual truth will always stand still, even among the most skeptical, hard-headed, and convincing arguments against theology. I’d see Atheists try to corner him about his faith, and within 5 minutes, he had them cornered.
Fito was big into Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Augustine, and Dominic. In college, I was so discouraged with all of the anti-religious rhetoric that Christians are stupid, gullible, crazy, bigoted, naïve, and lack reason. Fito and I would stay up for hours and he would go into depth about why it’s actually atheism itself that lacks reason. We’d talk about cosmology, Dawkins and Hitchens, how something can’t come from nothing, etc. It rejuvenated my faith in God and it brought back a great sense of credibility to the scriptures I read.
But how did I get from Protestantism to Catholicism? When I reached my point of knowing God was absolutely true, it was time I approach my faith like a man instead of like the kid I once was. I wanted to learn about the earliest days of Christianity, the reformation, Martin Luther, and the Papacy. I wanted to learn about from where and when the different denominations came.
As a protestant, I was always under the impression that the reformers were actually the traditionalists and that the Roman Catholics had perverted the Church Christ founded. As I read, I came to find that the Christian teaching I was brought up with was considered to be heresy even by the earliest Protestants, not just Catholics. John Calvin considered Helvitius to be a heretic on the basis of things that fellow Protestants and I overwhelmingly believed in, like that Mary wasn’t always a virgin. I was concerned that the scriptures were becoming more about our own personal interpretations and not about the truth. Martin Luther said, “There are as many
theologies as there are heads.” It was a matter of who was the final authority of the interpretation of the scriptures. In Protestantism, everyone was. But how? I had met so many Protestants who had total disagreements on interpretation—both can’t be right.
Now that I had a solid foundation for the existence of God, I didn’t want to do Him wrong and offend Him. I researched and prayed, and everything seemed to direct me more and more to Catholicism. It bothered me because I wanted Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura to be the right thing because they were comfortable, but the right thing trumps comfort. But when I got close to that, I had to ask the questions that I was especially concerned about; "Do Catholics worship Mary and the saints?" "Why confess your sins to a priest when God is always listening?" "What's with the Eucharist?" "What’s with Purgatory?" "Do Catholics believe you have to work your way into heaven?" The answers I found brought so much clarity to the scriptures, but luckily for me, continued to provide Christ His dignity and role as the only one worthy of worship (I don’t think I’d ever be a Catholic if it meant giving anyone beyond Him worship). I read more about the early Church fathers, their roles after Christ ascended into Heaven, and the some of the people who studied under them like St. Ignatius of Antioch--legend is that the child Jesus called to in Matthew 18:2 was Ignatius. (I highly recommend checking out his letters. Incredible stuff).
So I after much prayer, scripture reading, and research, I became a Catholic. My faith has never been stronger and my relationship with God has never been closer.
There’s probably a lot I left out, but I don’t want to make this testimony a novel.
I just hope the discussion on it will bless someone.
