I have very good, charitable, and patient friends. I learned this, again, this week past week. It was a funny week; an ironic week. On Tuesday, in my RCIA class we practiced for the Rite of Welcoming, the first step for someone joining the Catholic Church. That Rite took place tonight at the Saturday evening Mass. It was surreal. On Wednesday, I went to a Community Conversation in the Protestant church my wife and I attend. It was about the... Read more
As I’ve been headed down this journey towards becoming a Catholic there have been lots of new discoveries—hidden treasures—that have got me really excited. Last time, when I wrote about the saints, I wrote about the excitement of discovering that there were thousands of holy Christians out there who’ve gone before me, who are ready, willing, and poised to pray for me. I called it a hidden treasure because that’s what it felt like—the saints had been there all along (I... Read more
So I’ve been writing about my conversion experience and what’s been drawing me in to the Catholic Church and the bulk of it, in the beginning, was theological, historical, and intellectual. It began with notions of sola scriptura, the Protestant belief of the Bible as the sole authority in the Christian’s life. For me, it fell apart, and I found the teaching authority of the Catholic Church to make a lot more sense. And the more I learned about the Catholic Church... Read more
If you’ve been reading my conversion story from the beginning you’ll know that my journey towards the Catholic Church had, in the beginning at least, a lot to do with the authority of the Bible. That’s where it began. After some exposure to the Catholic Church through a podcasting priest from the Netherlands, a Protestant pastor and close friend asked me that fateful question, “What’s more important, tradition or the Bible?” My journey took me to reading a lot of Catholic... Read more
David Ahlquist is the brother-in-law of the late, great Larry Norman—arguably one of God’s greatest gifts to Christian music. Ahlquist is also the president of the American Chesterton Society and a convert to the Catholic Church from Protestantism. As Ahlquist tells in his own conversion story it was Norman who first encouraged him to read G.K. Chesterton and it was Chesterton who convinced Ahlquist to become a Catholic. As Chesterton himself tells it, one of the cruxes that finally led him... Read more
I’m on a G.K. Chesterton kick today. Chesterton, a Catholic convert from Anglicanism (and an atheist before that) is an intellectual giant in terms of modern Christian writers. He is eclipsed, in writers of his era, perhaps only by C.S. Lewis, another hero of Christianity who actually credited Chesterton’s writings for his own conversion. As an atheist himself, Lewis approached Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man with a measure of skepticism. He later wrote in his autobiography Surprised by Joy that, A young man... Read more
I was talking to a friend yesterday when I came to realize, from hearing someone else’s story, that not everyone’s misconceptions or notions about the Catholic Church fall so easily. As someone making his way into the Church I still find myself astonished to hear some of the things that my fellow Protestants believe about Catholicism. I’m shocked, for example, when someone asks, “But don’t they worship Mary?” But I shouldn’t be. Just a couple of years ago I would’ve believed... Read more
I wrote last time about attending Mass for the third time and how I experienced it differently after reading and learning more about the Mass and the Catholic faith. I found Mass to be incredibly beautiful, breath-taking even, and experienced it much differently than I had ever experienced it before. I wanted to write more, much more, but I calmed myself down, poured a cup of tea, and broke that post up into two. So, in this post, the second, I... Read more
I’m taking a break from writing about my conversion experience to write about my experience today. I went to Mass today, for the third time ever. I’ve been to Mass twice before. My first Mass was with my friend John, a cradle Catholic who came to my Protestant church service in exchange for me going to Mass with him. Mass with John was an absolutely confounding process. We went to a noon-hour Mass at the Catholic college on campus. It was chaotic and... Read more
Pastor Dan had dropped a bomb, and left. He’d asked me, “What’s more important the Bible or tradition?” When I answered that it was, “the Bible,” he was quick to point out that the Bible was put together by tradition. Tradition came first. He was right and I found that very difficult to reconcile with my Bible-only faith. Our conversation—Dan’s question—sent me on a deeper journey. I recently came across an eight-year old blog post on Catholic and Protestant traditions. It must’ve... Read more
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