{"id":1623,"date":"2013-03-28T11:29:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T16:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/happycatholicbookshelf\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2013-03-28T11:29:25","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T16:29:25","slug":"why-im-catholic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/happycatholicbookshelf\/2013\/03\/why-im-catholic\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I&#8217;m Catholic"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Jen Fitz here, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theanchoress\/2013\/03\/28\/why-am-i-catholic\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\">answering the call from Patheos<\/a> to explain ourselves!\u00a0 Here\u2019s my story:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. I\u2019m Catholic because my parents had me baptized as a baby.\u00a0<\/strong> We went to church sporadically.\u00a0 I\u00a0 knew very little about my faith, but always knew I was Catholic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. I\u2019m Catholic because I know what it\u2019s like not to be.<\/strong> By the end of high school, I was so Catholic I won the parish \u201cCatholic Student of the Year\u201d award.\u00a0 By the end of college four years later, I had completely, totally, departed from the faith.\u00a0 But within a few years, I was yearning for God, crying out for Him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. I\u2019m Catholic because God answers prayers.<\/strong>\u00a0 I started inching toward Christianity.\u00a0 In February 1998, I had a powerful conversion experience at the hands of a baptist deacon.\u00a0 I was filled with an irresistible desire to attend Mass.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. I\u2019m Catholic because I was finally taught by a good, faithful priest.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>For the first time in my life, someone taught me the fullness of the faith.<\/p>\n<p><strong>6. I\u2019m Catholic because it\u2019s true.<\/strong>\u00a0 My husband did not revert to the Church for another decade.\u00a0 I was forced to learn what we Catholics really believe, and why we believe it.<\/p>\n<p>There are good, strong, reasoned proofs of the Catholic faith.\u00a0 I accept them.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m Catholic.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jen Fitz here, answering the call from Patheos to explain ourselves!\u00a0 Here\u2019s my story: 1. I\u2019m Catholic because my parents had me baptized as a baby.\u00a0 We went to church sporadically.\u00a0 I\u00a0 knew very little about my faith, but always knew I was Catholic. 2. I\u2019m Catholic because I know what it\u2019s like not to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why I&#039;m Catholic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jen Fitz here, answering the call from Patheos to explain ourselves!\u00a0 Here&#039;s my story: 1. 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