[Titanites]

Never before had I come across such clear, intelligible, scripturally- saturated explanations of Catholic teaching. While I was intimately acquainted with the various facets of Protestant theology, I was almost completely ignorant of true Catholic teaching.

I quickly learned that my understanding of Catholicism was extremely misinformed and that my ideas about Catholics were obviously wrong.

[Macoraba]

**and my childhood heroes included men like Martin Luther, John Calvin,...**

I don’t see how one can have both Luther and Calvin as heroes. Don’t their doctrines disagree with each other?

It would be like having both President Jefferson Davis of the C.S.A. and Lincoln as heroes. Or the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and Juarez.

[NYer]

I was also ardently anti-Catholic. I thought that the pope was the Antichrist, and that the Catholic Church was the “whore of Babylon.” Little did I know that things were about to change.

Indeed!

[NYer]

By the end of that month, I had worked my way through about forty books on numerous issues in Catholic theology, apologetics, and history. I don’t say this in a prideful way, but only to express how urgent all of this was to me. Never before had I come across such clear, intelligible, scripturally- saturated explanations of Catholic teaching. While I was intimately acquainted with the various facets of Protestant theology, I was almost completely ignorant of true Catholic teaching. I quickly learned that my understanding of Catholicism was extremely misinformed and that my ideas about Catholics were obviously wrong.

And here is your reading assignment :-)

[livius]

Never before had I heard the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ described as divine sonship. I had always thought that justification was mere legal acquittal.

An important point that would be a revelation to many of the sons of Luther.

[Macoraba]

**I thought that the pope was the Antichrist, and that the Catholic Church was the “whore of Babylon.”**

Regardless of their many doctrinal disagreements that is the one thing that ALL protestants have in common!

[NYer]

Outstanding article!

I had just finished a chapter from a book by a Catholic theologian on the Church’s teaching on salvation. Never before had I heard the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ described as divine sonship. I had always thought that justification was mere legal acquittal. This theologian was telling me that it was much more than that: It was divine adoption. Salvation meant being made a son of God.

This about says it all.

[Salvation]

**I was home.**

Wonderful words. And what a feeling that must be for converts. The story of a lady in our parish — she was Lutheran and had moved to the little town close to Salem. She set out a plan to follow down the main road reasearching locations and attending each church in the path. When she got to the Catholic Church, her words, “I knew I was home.” And she searched no more. She was received into the Catholic Church this last Easter Vigil and is already active in parish activities.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

A fellow convert’s welcome to Mr. Cuddy. May Our Lord bless and keep him as he begins what will no doubt be a lifetime of significant contribution to the Church Christ founded. We are truly blessed to have him!

[marsh_of_mists]

Nothing is more amusing to the convert, when his conversion has been complete for some time, than to hear the speculations about when or whether he will repent of the conversion; when he will be sick of it, how long he will stand it, at what stage of his external exasperation he will start up and say he can bear it no more. For all this is founded on that optical illusion about the outside and the inside which I have tried to sketch in this chapter. The outsiders, stand by and see, or think they see, the convert entering with bowed head a sort of small temple which they are convinced is fitted up inside like a prison, if not a torture-chamber. But all they really know about it is that he has passed through a door. They do not know that he has not gone into the inner darkness, but out into the broad daylight. It is he who is, in the beautiful and beatific sense of the word, an outsider.

-G. K. Chesterton

[ikka]

I will keep this thread in mind whenever another thread is accused of “bashing Catholics”.

[Iscool]

Never before had I heard the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ described as divine sonship. I had always thought that justification was mere legal acquittal. This theologian was telling me that it was much more than that: It was divine adoption. Salvation meant being made a son of God.

Have to wonder what this fella had been reading all that time...Apparently his Theology and Philosophy classes didn't include a bible...