Agreed. I think all of us (myself included) need to remember that.
I don’t think that you see the hard words in the rcc conversion testimonies. They are so rcc to rcc’s that they don’t realize how cutting they are to a non-rcc.
That actually doesn't surprise me. When one's faith is challenged, even gently, it is painful. Scott Hahn's conversion caused many hard feelings at his undergraduate Alma Mater (which is very Calvinist). He spoke there about two years ago for the first time since his conversion.
But that doesn't change the one point that I mentioned in 116. The converts' tone is very important. It is very rare for the convert to Catholicism (at least the ones that I've seen here or on EWTN) to speak badly about their former churches; on the contrary, many cite their time in Protestant churches (some are 'reverts' to Catholicism) positively because it was there that they first truly believed in Christ, where they learned Scripture, etc.
Indeed. A fundamental question: why? Why can't the Catholic Church spark this kind of faith on her own -- why does she so often rely on the "heretics" to produce it?
This issue is a major obstacle to swimming the Tiber for me. Every person I've ever known who really lived a conspicuously Christian life, has been an Evangelical. If I returned to the Catholic Church I'd take my Biblical knowledge and zeal with me (as did, for example Jimmy Akin), but... would it survive another generation? Would my kids "catch" faith in Catholicism, or would they have to go Evangelical to find God?