Bishop Ronald Gainer presided as Mike Allen and his family were confirmed as Roman Catholics on Aug. 13.
Posted on 09/06/2005 8:57:27 AM PDT by NYer
Park United Methodist Church minister Mike Allen knew it would turn his life upside down -- cost him his job, his home and his preaching credentials.
Despite the certain consequences, the Lexington pastor made his choice.
One Sunday in January, he stood in front of his stunned congregation and broke the news: He was going to follow his heart and convert to Roman Catholicism.
With that decision, Allen joined not only thousands of members who are leaving mainstream denominations, but hundreds of Protestant ministers who are joining the Roman Catholic Church.
For Allen, conversion was an eight-year process of study, prayer and reflection.
It began in about 1997 with Graham Greene, a British novelist whose books Allen devoured.
The writer "was kind of a tortured Catholic, and there were very strong Catholic themes in his books, and it really sparked an intellectual curiosity about Catholicism," Allen said.
The Asbury Seminary graduate, who knew little about the 1.1 billion-member church, bought books on Catholic theology and tuned in to Catholic radio.
There was much he didn't understand: the devotion to Mary, the prayers to the Saints, the belief that the Eucharist becomes -- literally -- the body and blood of Christ.
"I had a lot of false perceptions and presuppositions about the Catholic Church," he said.
But as he studied the Scriptures, the catechism and the writings of the early church fathers, his views slowly shifted.
The turning point, in spring 2004, was a book called Catholic Christianity and another called Journeys Home. The latter includes the testimonies of other clergy converts to Catholicism.
"When I started reading those two books, it was all of a sudden like my heart was about to explode or jump out of my chest," he said. "I was experiencing this stirring ... that I really hadn't felt since my conversion" to Christianity as a youth.
"I just think there is a fullness of truth there," he said of Catholicism. "There is a historical authenticity. There's a depth of tradition."
He understood his new beliefs would have consequences.
Network of ex-Protestant preachers
Nationwide, hundreds of clergy have made similar journeys. There's even a Catholic support group for former Protestant preachers. Formed in 1993 by ex-Presbyterian pastor Marcus Brodi, the Coming Home Network has nearly 600 clergy converts on its rolls, according to assistant director Jim Anderson. Of those, 12 live in the Bluegrass state.
In Central Kentucky, at least three other clergy have converted to Catholicism during the past three years.
• Third-generation Southern Baptist minister David Walker joined St. Luke's parish in Nicholasville on Easter 2003, while a student at Asbury College.
"I grew up pretty anti-Catholic, to say the least," said Walker, who now works for the diocese of Denver. "It's a radical journey."
• Jeffrey Hopper of Elizabethtown, an Episcopal Army chaplain and priest, switched on June 1, 2003 -- the day he retired from the military.
"Some of my brother chaplains, especially some of the more fundamentalist ones, looked at me like I was crazy and couldn't understand," said Hopper, who is scheduled to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood on May 27.
• Mary Purcell, the first woman ordained in the Episcopal diocese of Lexington and the first to lead a parish, voluntarily left the Episcopal priesthood in 2004.
Converts often are evangelicals from liberal denominations, but there are Pentecostals and Orthodox, too.
"They have a high view of Scripture. They have a high view of the authority of God and his church. They have a high view of Christ and his teachings and a strong trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit," said the Coming Home Network's Anderson.
The conversions are especially bad news for mainline Protestant denominations, which have lost millions of members since the mid-1960s. The United Methodist Church, which had 11 million members in the United States in the late 1960s, now has 8.3 million followers. The Catholic Church in the United States, which had 45.6 million adherents 40 years ago, claims 64.8 million today.
For ministers, the journey to Catholicism often is costly.
Roughly one-quarter of all converts, primarily male Episcopalians and Lutherans, become Catholic priests, Anderson said.
The Vatican sometimes allows married Protestant ministers to enter the priesthood after they join the church, exempting them from the celibacy requirement.
Most converted former ministers, however, will never lead congregations again.
'Gap has been narrowed'
Conversion to Catholicism might have seemed scandalous half a century ago. After Vatican II, though, ecumenical cooperation increased, and doctrinal differences decreased.
Later, evangelicals and Catholics joined forces on key moral issues -- battling abortion, gay marriage and the increasing secularization of American culture.
Today, there is no longer a vast chasm between the groups.
"The gap has been narrowed so much, and the opportunities for friendly conversation have increased so dramatically. It's almost like a new world," said Mark Noll, a professor at Wheaton College and the co-author of Is the Reformation Over?
Today, switching from Protestantism to Catholicism (or vice versa) is common.
Some Catholic priests, especially those who oppose the church's teachings on celibacy, switch to Protestant churches -- where clergy are allowed to marry. But it's hard to ascertain how many.
For lay people, conversion is sometimes an afterthought, coming sometime after "Will you marry me?" and before "I do."
More is at stake when a minister switches.
There are costs, especially for pastors who leave conservative denominations.
Some clergy converts are kicked out of the pulpit and quickly evicted from church housing, Anderson said.
Friendships can be severed, and marriages sometimes end.
Members were saddened
Discord wasn't a problem in the Allen household, Angie Allen said. She had been listening to Catholic radio, too, "so many of the things they taught made sense."
Last fall, after consulting with the Coming Home Network, Mike Allen shared his story with Bishop Ronald Gainer, leader of the Lexington Catholic diocese. In late November 2004, Allen informed church officials he was leaving.
The defection saddened many Methodists.
"It was a great loss to us to lose Mike, but we support his decision and the leading of God in his decision," said the Rev. Paige Williams, the denomination's Lexington district superintendent. "He's just a wonderful, wonderful person, an excellent, excellent pastor."
Conference leaders allowed Allen to stay in the pulpit until a new pastor was found.
At first, the news was withheld from the congregation, but in January, with the news about to leak, Allen shared his secret.
It was a difficult day, Angie Allen said.
"There was a lot of confusion there, and there was some pain," she said. "The people ... were all so loving, even though they didn't understand."
Congregants gave the family baby gifts and cooked for them when their seventh child, Zoe Carolyn, was born. They also organized a farewell reception for their pastor.
Meanwhile, Mike Allen was job-hunting, house-hunting and praying as his days as a Methodist minister dwindled.
In June, Allen prepared to give his final sermon, surrender his preaching credentials and move his family out of the parsonage.
With no job lined up, his last Sunday approaching and unemployment looming, it was hard not to worry.
"Nothing was really going anywhere, and that sense of panic and that sense of fear was overwhelming," he said. "We truly had to completely rely on God just for survival."
But joblessness never arrived. The day before the Allens moved out of the parsonage, Gainer called and offered him a position as the diocese's director of marriage and family life.
The new job began July 1.
Gainer also held out the possibility that some day, if Allen feels called, he could join the Catholic priesthood.
Reciting profession of faith
For Allen, conversion meant a pay cut. But he was delighted and grateful for the job and eager to enter Catholic life.
Weeks later, at Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary Parish, Gainer welcomed Allen and his family into the "one holy catholic and apostolic Church."
With relatives and a handful of Park UMC parishioners on hand, the former preacher, his wife and their four oldest daughters recited the profession of faith by heart: "I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God."
Zoe Carolyn, the Allens' youngest, also was baptized during the Mass.
"It was just a very moving experience," Mike Allen said afterward. "I would compare it to our wedding day or maybe the birth of our first child."
A heartwarming story.
ping from a UM with a new ambiguously female minister... who is thinking about making the switch myself.
Marcus's show is on EWTN @ 8 pm EST..it is really riveting television.
I, too, am a United Methodist pastor and a graduate of Asbury Seminary. I think (not positive) that my path has crossed that of Mike Allen at some point. I have one other friend (pastor) who has gone Catholic (Byzantine), and I'm in occasional contact with him. He was a courageous pastor, and it was a loss for the denomination when he went elsewhere.
There are some appealing things about the Catholic Church, but there are also a few that I doubt could be overcome; not the least of which is my calling into ministry.
Nonetheless, I consider myself in both the spiritual and kingdom lineage of those on whom hands have been laid since the inception of the church.
The website, http://enarefem.org/, is by a Methodist/Asbury dropout into the Catholic Church. Some of its articles might be useful.
You are absolutely right. Marcus Grodi's show (which is on Mondays at 8:00 PM on EWTN) is my favorite TV show.
If you have access to cable, check with your local provider to see if they supply EWTN. Marcus Grodi hosts a live program on Monday evenings at 8pm.
In the meantime, you may enjoy listening to some of the previous programs, through Real Audio at this link:
Journey Home , click on 'Past Programs'.
Marcus also hosts his own web site - The Coming Home Network. The above link includes a separate link to that site.
We have several converts here in the forum, and others who, like you, are somewhere along their own journey. Should you have any questions or simply, please do not hesitate to ask.
Rest assured of my prayers for you and your family!
for some reason this link is not working for me.
I was once UMC. When it became clear that she had nothing of substance to offer I left her for something more satisfying.
Though, you are welcome to head back to Rome, and I'm sure they hold open the door for all Protestants who think that the Reformation was a mistake, I personally don't think that the RC has anything to offer either. When you set up a Religion where the Sacraments are controlled by the church instead of grace being free in the hands of the Lord, you set up an institution which is nothing more than a means of control by intimidation and fear. Just look at how Rome reacted to the Reformation by Trent.
Personally, I have found free grace to be much more satisfying.
***A heartwarming story.***
Wouldn't you agree Chaplain?
These are the sacraments of the Catholic faith:
Baptism
Eucharist
Reconciliation (Confession)
Confirmation (Chrismation)
Marriage
Holy Orders (Ordination)
Anointing of the Sick (Extreme Unction)
The indeed form the center of our spiritual life.
To learn more about Sacraments of the Catholic Church, visit The Seven Catholic Sacraments
see #5
This article appears to be pretty fair and balanced; even if I could never see myself becoming a roman catholic, for a number of reasons.
Yes, if you have bought into the idea that the church and the church alone by means of an alter Christus (I hope I remember my Latin right) and through the sacraments are how grace is given. Thankfully, grace is not trapped in an institution of men, but free. The only real fruit of claiming to be the sole means by which a man is able to get grace is that you get to hold your subject under penalty of removing grace from them and damning them.
God is free. Grace is free. No King but Jesus.
Correct and the Roman Catholic Church is not an institution of men. It is the physical manifestation of what Jesus laid out in Mathew 16.
This is what the Catholic Church really teaches:
Sacraments are outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification (Catechismus concil. Trident., n.4, ex S. Aug. "De Catechizandis rudibus").
[...]
Almighty God can and does give grace to men in answer to their internal aspirations and prayers without the use of any external sign or ceremony. This will always be possible, because God, grace, and the soul are spiritual beings. God is not restricted to the use of material, visible symbols in dealing with men; the sacraments are not necessary in the sense that they could not have been dispensed with. But, if it is known that God has appointed external, visible ceremonies as the means by which certain graces are to be conferred on men, then in order to obtain those graces it will be necessary for men to make use of those Divinely appointed means. This truth theologians express by saying that the sacraments are necessary, not absolutely but only hypothetically, i.e., in the supposition that if we wish to obtain a certain supernatural end we must use the supernatural means appointed for obtaining that end. In this sense the Council of Trent (Sess. VII, can. 4) declared heretical those who assert that the sacraments of the New Law are superfluous and not necessary, although all are not necessary for each individual. It is the teaching of the Catholic Church and of Christians in general that, whilst God was nowise bound to make use of external ceremonies as symbols of things spiritual and sacred, it has pleased Him to do so, and this is the ordinary and most suitable manner of dealing with men. Writers on the sacraments refer to this as the necessitas convenientiae, the necessity of suitableness. It is not really a necessity, but the most appropriate manner of dealing with creatures that are at the same time spiritual and corporeal. In this assertion all Christians are united: it is only when we come to consider the nature of the sacramental signs that Protestants (except some Anglicans) differ from Catholics. "To sacraments considered merely as outward forms, pictorial representations or symbolic acts, there is generally no objection", wrote Dr. Morgan Dix ("The sacramental system", New York, 1902, p. 16). "Of sacramental doctrine this may be said, that it is co-extensive with historic Christianity. Of this there is no reasonable doubt, as regards the very ancient days, of which St. Chrysostom's treatise on the priesthood and St. Cyril's catechetical lectures may be taken as characteristic documents. Nor was it otherwise with the more conservative of the reformed bodies of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther's Catechism, the Augsburg, and later the Westminster, Confessions are strongly sacramental in their tone, putting to shame the degenerate followers of those who compiled them" (ibid., p. 7, 8)
We have a former Methodist who is a priest here. The problem is that he hasn't really made the switch - possibly because he converted a long time ago, around the time of VatII, when people were not really challenged to accept the truth. He brought Methodist wishy-washiness to the Catholic Church, which did not exactly need it at that point...and he still seems to believe that the Church is one giant therapy/12-Step group, which is the current Methodist model.
Oddly enough, it seems that since the election of BXVI, he's been trying very hard to become Catholic. So maybe there's hope.
Lead Kindly Light Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me.
If you say so. Merely for the fact that, according to Roman dogma, I cannot receive grace except by your sacraments, you prove my point. Grace is not free.
You know, I have literally watched people get completely hysterical over the fact that their babies were not baptized. Rather than be a blessing and a comfort, I see fear. If a man in an institution does not perform the rite, grace is not given. I am told that babies who die before this rite go to Limbo.
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