{"id":31102,"date":"2019-03-22T12:01:56","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T16:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/?p=31102"},"modified":"2019-03-22T12:01:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T16:01:56","slug":"catholic-conversion-some-silly-protestant-analyses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/2019\/03\/catholic-conversion-some-silly-protestant-analyses.html","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Conversion: Some Silly Protestant “Analyses”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

We converts to Catholicism are often told that we didn\u2019t understand Protestantism before we left it (and that was, of course, supposedly\u00a0why<\/em> we left \u2014 we were dupes of Rome and her nefarious, deceitful apologists because we were so stupid in the first place). In most conversion stories to Catholicism that I have seen, this isn\u2019t the case at all.<\/p>\n

In fact, the exact opposite is usually true: it was the commitment to Protestant Christianity and all that is good in it which made these inquirers study and ponder a further move into Catholicism, with its sacramentalism, Mariology, tradition, papacy, etc.<\/p>\n

We saw (I<\/em>\u00a0certainly saw) the move as a simple progression upwards<\/em>; not a reversal<\/em> or revolution<\/em> or rejection of what we had already learned. We were committed Protestants, \u201cgood\u201d Protestants; who really believed in the system and tried to live it out.<\/p>\n

In any event, the argument is made that we converted because we were either ignorant, or non-observant, already-compromised Protestants. We were never really part of the club: we had the smells and bells and attraction to mysticism and the goddess-Mary and a perverse desire to give up our mind and submit to every jot and tittle of the pope\u2019s utterances (including when we should blow our nose and what color socks to wear in the morning) in our warped souls, and so were easy-pickin\u2019s for Rome.<\/p>\n

I exaggerate<\/em>, of course, but to read some cynical observations of Catholic converts, they aren\u2019t all that different from this scenario.<\/p>\n

This is \u2014 for the most part \u2014 all a bunch of nonsense, of course (as those of us who are converts are well aware). But how often and how much do we hear about similarly ignorant converts from Catholicism to Protestantism? Did they really know their faith before they left it? Were they dupes of the anti-Catholic Protestant apologists and sophists?<\/p>\n

Or did they have an inexorable, irresistible attraction for private judgment and sola Scriptura<\/em> in their souls from the beginning, and an irrational longing for whitewashed walls and plain clapboard churches and 90-minute hellfire-and-brimstone sermons and altar calls with the sinner\u2019s prayer and the King James Version or interminable pentecostal worship<\/a> sessions where the people say \u201cPraise God\u201d and \u201cHallelujah\u201d and \u201cThank you Jesus\u201d 742 times without engaging in \u201cvain repetition\u201d and the same person goes up front to get \u201csaved\u201d (which is supposed to be a one-time thing) for the sixth time in seven weeks? See how silly the rhetoric sounds if we turn the tables?<\/p>\n

If we can cast doubt on Catholic converts due to alleged ignorance and compromise in their former faith-lives, why not apply the same<\/em> standard to Protestant converts? Yes, why not<\/em>? But, as I have shown over and over, anti-Catholics are nothing if not admirers of double standards.<\/p>\n

Now, I do wish to note that the Catholic Church bears a great deal of blame insofar as atrocious, abominable catechesis has been scandalously widespread for well over a generation now. Liberalism and many other cultural and sociological factors have made ignorance and nominalism almost the norm.<\/p>\n

Yet the individual remains responsible for his own soul, too (Catholics are not just a bunch of mindless clones: we must learn on our own also). A proper understanding of Catholicism is no further away than a couple of books (or even several solid, \u201cmeaty\u201d articles): either apologetics or catechetical material. Now with the Internet it is even easier to learn. Within a solid week of study, anyone could have a working knowledge of what they are required to believe as a Catholic, and why they should believe it.<\/p>\n

And this is why I do what I do and am so passionately committed to it. The more educated Catholics are, the more likely they will remain Catholics, and confident, spiritually thriving ones. The less-educated they are, the more likely they will leave the faith.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Dr. Mark Noll (of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church) has been on the Wheaton College faculty since 1979 and is the co-founder and present director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College. In recent years Dr. Noll has been a visiting teacher at Harvard Divinity School, University of Chicago Divinity School, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Regent College of Vancouver, B.C. He co-authored with Carolyn Nystrom, titled \u201cIs The Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism\u201d (Baker Academic, 2005).<\/p>\n

In an interview on the Ignatius Insight<\/em> web page, Dr. Noll stated:<\/p>\n

Most of the ex-Catholics I know or know about tend to be pretty severe on their Catholic past. Most ex-Catholic evangelicals of my acquaintance were not well catechized, and often their Catholic experience was nominal, mechanical, or (in some instances) abusive; by contrast, many ex-evangelical Catholics reasoned themselves into Catholicism from articulate evangelical positions. That difference helps explain the contrast in \u201cex\u201ds (if, in fact, my experience speaks to a general situation).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

Some Protestants argue that Catholic converts are sick of the fighting and divisions in Protestant circles and so they split and cross the Tiber. No doubt they are tired of the fighting and little \u201cpastor-doms\u201d (we had our share of what I disdainfully called \u201ccivil wars\u201d in Arminian, non-denom circles, too).<\/p>\n

But they fail to go to the next<\/em>\u00a0step: maybe, perhaps (some small shred of possibility) people instinctively realize that division and bickering and proliferating denominations were not how God intended Christianity to be, and that there is something inherent<\/em>\u00a0in Protestantism (in its structure and belief-system) which produces this division that is demonstrably unbiblical and sinful (most Protestants freely admit that all the division is sinful, but they don\u2019t seem to have a clue as to what to do<\/em>\u00a0about it).<\/p>\n

In other words, maybe those of us who have converted figured out that the Protestant system<\/em>\u00a0had something wrong with it, which in turn produced the division that most Protestants excoriate.\u00a0That would mean that conversion was motivated not by purely personal interests and comfort zones and touchy-feely stuff, but by the principle of considering that Protestant ecclesiology and rule of faith are fundamentally flawed, and thus no longer worthy of allegiance. Just a thought . . .<\/p>\n

(originally 3-6-04, 3-30-04, and 9-26-05)<\/p>\n

Photo credit:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Fork in the road on Roughdown Common,\u00a0<\/strong>Boxmoor, UK.\u00a0\u00a9 Copyright\u00a0<\/span>Graham Hale<\/a>\u00a0and licensed for\u00a0<\/span>reuse<\/a>\u00a0under this<\/span>\u00a0Creative Commons Licence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We converts to Catholicism are often told that we didn\u2019t understand Protestantism before we left it (and that was, of course, supposedly\u00a0why we left \u2014 we were dupes of Rome and her nefarious, deceitful apologists because we were so stupid in the first place). In most conversion stories to Catholicism that I have seen, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":31105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2334,1438,2335,1439],"class_list":["post-31102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conversion-and-converts","tag-catholic-conversion","tag-catholic-conversion-stories","tag-catholic-converts","tag-religious-conversion"],"yoast_head":"\nCatholic Conversion: Some Silly Protestant "Analyses"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I & many converts viewed conversion as a simple progression upwards; not a reversal or revolution or rejection of what we had already learned. 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Chesterton\\\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \\\"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\\\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \\\"Quotable Wesley\\\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. Dave maintains a popular personal Facebook page, a Facebook author page, and has a Twitter account as well. He offers almost all of his books in e-book form on his own Biblical Catholicism site (http:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/), at a permanent deep discount: only $2.99 for ePub, mobi, and AZW, and $1.99 for PDF. His writing has been enthusiastically endorsed or recommended by many leading Catholic apologists, authors, and priests, including Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Devin Rose, Mike Aquilina, Al Kresta, Karl Keating, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. They have three sons and a daughter, and reside in southeast Michigan (metro Detroit).\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/\",\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dave.armstrong.798\",\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@LuxVeritatisApologetics\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/author\/davearmstrong\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Catholic Conversion: Some Silly Protestant \"Analyses\"","description":"I & many converts viewed conversion as a simple progression upwards; not a reversal or revolution or rejection of what we had already learned. 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Formerly a campus missionary, as a Protestant, Dave was received into the Catholic Church in February 1991, by the late, well-known catechist and theologian, Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave\u2019s articles have appeared in many influential Catholic periodicals, including \"This Rock\" (now called \"Catholic Answers Magazine\"), \"Envoy Magazine\" (Patrick Madrid), \"The Catholic Answer,\" \"The Coming Home Journal,\" \"Gilbert Magazine\" (American Chesterton Society), and \"The Latin Mass.\" He also writes a featured column for every issue of \"The Michigan Catholic\": published by the archdiocese of Detroit, and was editor for most of the apologetics tracts published by the St. Paul Street Evangelization apostolate. Dave\u2019s apologetics and writing apostolate was the subject of a feature article in the May 2002 issue of \"Envoy Magazine.\" He served as the staff moderator at the Internet discussion forum for The Coming Home Network, from 2007-2010. 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Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \"The Catholic Verses\" (2004), \"The One-Minute Apologist\" (2007), \"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\" (2009), \"The Quotable Newman\" (editor: 2012), and \"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \"The New Catholic Answer Bible\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. Chesterton\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \"Quotable Wesley\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. Dave maintains a popular personal Facebook page, a Facebook author page, and has a Twitter account as well. He offers almost all of his books in e-book form on his own Biblical Catholicism site (http:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/), at a permanent deep discount: only $2.99 for ePub, mobi, and AZW, and $1.99 for PDF. His writing has been enthusiastically endorsed or recommended by many leading Catholic apologists, authors, and priests, including Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Devin Rose, Mike Aquilina, Al Kresta, Karl Keating, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. 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