John Calvin Made Me Catholic

I was baptized on April 29, 1973, in East Paris Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My religious upbringing until college was completely CRC; my schooling through college was in Christian schools sponsored by the CRC. I can’t say that I was aware of any Protestant denominations other than the CRC. The first time I heard the words of the "Hail Mary" was from the lips of my CRC minister during a high-school catechism class. My only other contact would have been the pictures of the seven Catholic sacraments in the family encyclopedia. In many ways this "cloistered" upbringing was a great blessing to me later on: I grew up free from any anti-Catholic prejudices, and so there was no anti-Catholic bigotry on my part that had to be overcome before my conversion.

When I was about twelve, my mother made me a brown, terrycloth bathrobe. My family had a tradition of going camping every year, and there were sand dunes behind the campground. I can remember vividly pacing up and down these sand dunes in my brown bathrobe, pretending to be a monk. I could have had no idea at that age what a monk was (perhaps I got the idea from television), but there I was, in my robe, walking in my "desert."

I went to a "Bible camp" for a number of years as a child. I remember one summer sitting around the campfire singing the simple song, "God is so good." And for some reason, I started crying. The simple words of that little song caused a disproportionate reaction in me. I was crying because God was good and I was not. But I was also crying because God is good, and the simple beauty of that thought overwhelmed me. I felt that God was really present to me at that moment.

There is only one other time I have felt that presence in any similar way. It must have been my junior year in high school. My brother and I went before the elders of our CRC church to make profession of faith (something like the sacrament of confession, although the CRC doesn’t believe that the profession of faith is sacramental).

Profession of faith is a two-stage process: First, the elders of the church quiz you about what you believe and tell you if you "made it" or not; and then, on the next Sunday, you stand before the entire congregation and "profess your faith." After the quizzing, my brother and I had been sent out for the elders to deliberate, and then we were called back into the meeting room and told that our professions before the elders had been accepted.

One of the elders reminded the pastor that it was customary to sing in thanksgiving at this point the song "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow." As we started singing, I got to thinking how the faith I had just professed was the same as the faith of these fifty- and sixty-year-old men around me. Even more than that, I could see with the eye of my imagination all the saints of the ages past together with us, looking on that little room and praising God with us. And if I had felt the presence of God that time at camp, what I was feeling now was the presence of God through the communion of the saints.

Like all good CRC kids, after high school I went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (I think I may have applied to one or two other places, but only pro forma; Calvin was where I wanted to go.) Due to a couple things that had happened the summer before, I chose pre-seminary as my major and then changed it to classical languages and theology. My idea was to become not a pastor but a "pastor to pastors"—a professor of Church history in a seminary.

During my first year at Calvin, my interest in monasticism resurfaced, mostly through the coming to Calvin of a couple of brothers from the Taizé community. This community is an ecumenical monastery in France (founded by a small group of men from the French Reformed tradition) whose primary work is prayer for reconciliation. When the two brothers came to Calvin, we had a chance to talk to them, and they also let a Taizé-style prayer service: very simple and beautiful, with scriptural refrains sung repeatedly.

The summer after my first year at Calvin, some friends of mine and I went to a larger meeting in Dayton, Ohio, and got to see the founder of Taizé, Brother Roger. I don’t know if you can see holiness in someone, but if so, I saw it in the eyes of Brother Roger.

During that weekend, my friends and I were walking around Dayton, and I just happened to duck into a church for a while. It had to have been a Catholic church, but I don’t think I realized it at the time. As anyone who knows me can verify, I have a weakness for church literature racks. In this church I saw a pile of little baggies on a table and took one; I don’t remember if I opened it before or after I got out of the church. But inside were a small plastic rosary, a few pamphlets, and some other items. I put the whole thing in my pocket and thought nothing of it.

When I returned to Calvin in the fall, I began using the crucifix on that rosary during my devotions (which consisted of reading through the Psalms on a thirty-day cycle) as a way of centering my eyes and my thoughts on the God. Before I left Calvin, I was praying the rosary—I may be the only person who has prayed a rosary in the prayer rooms in Calvin’s chapel—but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

During my first year or so at Calvin, I grew to be a good friend of the college chaplain. My sophomore year I think it was, Chaplain Cooper asked me to join a group he had formed that got together each week to read and discuss a section from the Institutes of John Calvin. With my own interest in theology, I ate up everything we were reading. This was at last something to really sink my intellectual teeth into.

The first semester of my junior year at Calvin, a couple of interesting things happened. One day coming home from my CRC church, I happened to catch the last part of the local televised Catholic Mass. More interesting to me than the Mass was the little ten-minute discussion show afterwards, where a priest and another fellow were discussing the Catholic teaching on Mary. I was kind of interested, so I wrote to the address given at the end of the program, and the priest-host of the show sent me a copy of the text they had been discussing—chapter eight of Lumen Gentium, one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. It was interesting, but at the time it didn’t make a big impression on me.

Another interesting thing that year was a class I was taking in the fall semester on early and medieval theology. In the course of one semester we were supposed to read two thousand pages—although I don’t think even the professor did— and cover fifteen hundred years of Christian history, from the apostolic Fathers to Erasmus. Two authors I read in that class really captured my imagination. I say now that Irenaeus of Lyons introduced me to the beauty of the Catholic faith, and Thomas Aquinas introduced me to its lucidity.

Also around that time I became a friend with a fellow in that class who had converted from the CRC to the Episcopal Church. I started going with him to the Wednesday night services at the local Episcopal parish, which introduced me to a liturgical form of worship. (Later, perhaps in the spring of my junior year, I even had the Episcopal priest bless the brown scapular that was also in the baggie from Dayton. He didn’t know what a brown scapular was, but he blessed it anyway. I still wear the scapular, now properly blessed and imposed by a Catholic priest.)

The defining moment in my conversion came in January of my junior year, if I remember correctly. Around that time I was reading Peter Kreeft’s Fundamentals of the Faith, but that wasn’t really what did it. The first major impetus in my decision for Catholicism came from a passage in John Calvin. The discussion group I mentioned had come to the section in the Institutes where Calvin gives a number of reasons why a group may break from the Church and go into schism. And as the discussion progressed that evening, a question occurred to me. I asked it: "Granted that these are the reasons Calvin gives for going into schism, what happens if, by the grace of God, the church you broke away from should repair the error that was the occasion for the schism? Do you have then an obligation to rejoin the church you broke away from?"

Silence. We talked about it for a bit, but we didn’t come up with an answer. Chaplain Cooper didn’t have an answer. And that did not satisfy me, not one bit.

It was at that moment that, looking back on it, I can say that I started taking John 17 seriously. Here we see our Lord’s dying wish to his Father, as it were, that his followers be one (17:21). This is not some hypothetical, invisible unity, but a unity so real that the only model for it our Lord uses is his own unity with the Father. And I began thinking to myself: If unity among his followers was the last wish of the one I call Savior and Lord, I had better do everything in my power to fulfill it.

So I began reading about Catholicism. I wrote to the priest-host of the show I mentioned and also to Peter Kreeft—the only graduate from Calvin that I knew of who had converted to Catholicism. Both gave me good lists of books that I began reading, and I found others on my own. Two of the most influential books I read were John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and Francis de Sales’s Catholic Controversies. The first has a marvelous passage connecting all of Christian doctrine to the fundamental belief in the Incarnation; the second raised the all-important question, granting that the Church needed reform at the time of the Reformation, who gave the Reformers the authority to do what they did?

In all this study, I was finding that one of three things was true. (1) The Catholic Church teaches what I already believe, for example, the articles of the Apostles’ Creed. (2) The Catholic teaching was a logical extension of what I already believed. For example: Because of the communion of the saints, I can ask you or any other Christian here on earth to pray for me. Well then, why can’t I ask for Mary or one of the other saints in heaven to pray for me? (3) There were a very limited number of instances where the Catholic Church taught differently than what I believed as a Reformed Protestant, and in each case the Catholic Church was right. For example, I came to reject Calvin’s teaching on double predestination.

By my senior year at Calvin I was more or less a Catholic in my convictions. I was simply waiting for the right time to convert. I chose to go to Notre Dame to do my graduate work because it is a Catholic school (and again, it was really my only choice). But for my first year there, I was still waiting. What really made me decide to take the plunge, so to speak, was a conversation I had with a Protestant friend in the spring of my first year in South Bend.

Because I usually wear my heart on my sleeve, this friend and I had gotten to talking about my journey toward Catholicism. I began explaining the Catholic position on the subject of the Eucharist to my friend, based on John 6. I talked about how the first part of the chapter demonstrates that Jesus can do miraculous things with bread (John 6:1–14). The second part (John 6:15–21) shows us that Jesus can do miraculous things with his body. And then we get to the Bread of Life discourse, which concludes with the promise of the Eucharist.

At some point in the conversation, it was like my mouth went on autopilot. Outside, I was still talking; but inside, I was thinking to myself, "You know, I really believe this stuff." I realized that Catholicism was no longer for me a clever intellectual system; I had received the gift of supernatural faith. And so I decided then and there that I would enter the Catholic Church the next school year (for reasons I won’t go into, I had already decided to go through an RCIA program when the time came, so I had to wait for the next "rotation"). On Holy Thursday, March 27, 1997, I became a member of the Catholic Church and received my first Holy Communion, and two days later during the Easter Vigil was confirmed Catholic, taking Irenaeus as my confirmation patron.

It was only looking back on everything a few years later that I noticed how Mary had been with me throughout the whole process, leading me in her own subtle, humble way to deeper intimacy with her Son. She had been named in the Hail Mary that my Protestant pastor had spoken those many years ago. It was her rosary that I discovered in Dayton. It was Lumen Gentium, chapter eight—some of the most beautiful words the Church has ever spoken about our Lady—that put me in contact with a Catholic priest for the first time. And it was at the University of Notre Dame, our Lady’s university, that I was received into the Catholic Church.

Of course, my journey with God continues to be written, and I still struggle to know and do God’s will. But I cannot imagine my life without being a Catholic. John 17:21 still haunts me, and I still wish for everyone to experience the fullness of the Christian faith, the fullness I now possess. With the words of Paul, I conclude, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Phil. 3:12).

I find it hard to believe that anyone could possibly think the Holy Spirit is not involved in the opening on one's mind and heart to the Gospel message.

Great! That would mean that you are not a Pelagian. In fact you are probably closer to Calvinism than you think. I suspect I am as well.

However you stated that coming to Christ "is always a rational decision." If that were true, then there would be no need for the Holy Spirit. Man could come to some kind of saving knowledge of Christ without any compelling influence of the Holy Spirit. But man is so utterly messed up as the result of sin that man is wholly incapable of coming to that decision without first having his heart and mind changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me ask you this. Think about it carefully before you answer. Did you pursue God or did God pursue you?

And a couple of followup questions:

When you came to Christ, were you there by divine appointment? Was that a divinely scheduled event?

Did you pursue God or did God pursue you?

I heard the Gospel message, it made complete sense; an, I accepted Christ at that time - no hesitation.

When you came to Christ, were you there by divine appointment? Was that a divinely scheduled event?

Some things don't happen by chance. I don't think everything is predestined, but I think God has a way of putting people into situations where they are compelled to make a decision for or against Christ.

I could not more strongly believe that Saul/Paul was predestined to be the most powerful witness ever for Christ.

Is there a relationship between Calvinism and this double predestination thing? If you have to believe in double predestination to be a Calvinist, I am definitely not one of those.

I heard the Gospel message, it made complete sense; an, I accepted Christ at that time - no hesitation.

That is a great answer! Unfortunately it was not the answer to my question. My question (and I asked you to think carefully about the answer) was:

Did you pursue God, or did God pursue you?

I think God has a way of putting people into situations where they are compelled to make a decision for against Christ.

Another good answer. But again it was not the answer to my question. My question was:

When you came to Christ, were you there by divine appointment? Was that a divinely scheduled event?

I do not pretend to know the mind of God.

Does that mean you don't know? Or you haven't thought about it?

As I look back at my salvation experience, I know that God pursued me in my quest to get as far from him as I could. I did not pursue God. He wrestled me to the ground and beat me into submission. I did not come willingly.

I suspect that your journey was the same. I suspect that God brought you kicking and screaming to the foot of the cross and then when he opened your eyes to Christ, you fell to your knees, your will broken and your eyes wide open.

You were willing because God had pursued you and brought you to him. It was not the result of chance and logic and reason. It was the work of the Almighty God coming to pass. When you arrived it was because you had a divine appointment with God.

Would you disagree?

Your salvation experience was different than mine. I was not trying to avoid God and did not submit unwillingly.

Not everyone has a similar salvation experience. Everyone’s background is different. Whether one was willing or unwilling is not relevant as to whether one is saved.

I do not impose my experience on others. My experience was what it was and you, yours. Neither is better nor more valid.

Just because you came to Christ kicking and screaming does not mean everyone else does.

Do you think the Gospel message makes snse? Isn’t Jesus Christ a historical person and isn’t the Bible historically accurate? I think the evidence is clear. Rather than coming to Christ kicking and screaming. I’ve always wondered why so many people struggle with accepting Christ as their Savior.

Accepting Christ is different for different people.

Back in the day, a friend was dating this really really cute guy from a different High School. They liked to get high and that sort of thing. One New Year’s Eve we all went to a party at a friends house. I don’t know who the Lord put there that night but something happened to the young man. The difference was night and day. His conversion happened like a lightening strike. Most of his pot-smoking /drinking friends left him, immediately. The girl broke up with him. You could see a noticeable difference in him in the space of the evening. He walked away from the sin in his life. Saw him a few years later, still committed to Christ.

I think for most people it’s a process.... like changing tides... and then you just know. I always knew I couldn’t do the same things my friends did, get high, sleep around that sort of thing. I knew I was different, not in a snotty-I’m-better-than-you way. I just knew. And when I ignore that calling... well, just say, it’s been a barren desert of my own making. He always takes me back when I repent.

That’s the point.

I’ve always wondered why so many people struggle with accepting Christ as their Savior.

Here's your answer:

(1 Corinthians 2:14 KJV) But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Your response was NOT a natural response. It was a supernatural miracle.

God Bless.

Marlowe

And they were not infallible. Only God's Word is infallible! I will rely upon it! God gifted me with the ability to read and Paul said even "if an angel preaches a gospel contrary to Scripture, let him be accursed." Catholicism proclaims "another gospel."

By the way, I spent ten years as a drunk and drug addict. Three rehab centers and worldly train physicians "could not put me back together again." When I fell before God on my knees, cried out for mercy and deliverance, His power set me free. That was 26 years ago! Today I'm a SBC pastor and very familiar with Scripture. I'll rely on Him who has given me eternal life, joy, peace and freedom in the Spirit. I prefer to have Him intercede on my behalf. As blessed as Mary was, she was not without sin. She was the mother of Jesus in His humanity my friend, but not in His Deity. Mary was lost and needed a Savior as we all do, nor did she ascend as Jesus --- according to Scripture.

Dear Friend ,I,m glad to hear that through the Grace of God you were given the ability to overcome addiction.Wonderful!

It seems you don,t understand Infallibility
We all are sinners ,including the Pope. He is no different from the rest of us in that respect.

Lets look at scripture....
“But when Simon Peter saw this, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord’
...And Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; henceforth thou shall catch men’.” Luke 5:8-10.

The Catholic teaching on Faith and Morals are Infallible.
Truth is ,you would probably agree with most of it if shown

Like it or NOT ,It was the Catholic Church that exercised its authority and infallibility over fifteen hundred years ago by deciding which books of the Bible were inspired by GOD and which books were not.
It required an infallible decision by Jesus Christ’s infallible Church to proclaim the canon of that one inerrant book

You also said ...
“Mary needed a Savior”

This is true.
The Catholic Church does not deny that the Virgin Mary needed redemption, for She was a child of Adam together with the rest of humanity. Yet, Her redemption was effected in another, “more sublime manner”, namely, “redemption by pre-emption.” One can be cured of a disease after having contracted it, or one can be spared of that same disease by being inoculated against it in advance. The Virgin Mary’s redemption was effected in this latter manner, thus sparing Her from ever being under Satan’s domination.

Dear Friend ,because you don,t know much about Catholicism please be careful not to be caught in the sin of presumption.

Myself and others would be more than happy to show you the historical inaccuracies of anti catholicism.

I wish you and your family a Blessed evening!

Because we are told in Scripture to worship the Triune God of creation; to thank Him for His gift of grace through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ; and to remain confident that He who began a good work in us will see it through to the end.

And by the indwelling Holy Spirit, we do just that, knowing full well whom we have believed.

You know, we believe the same things, Dr E. But...we're also following the balance. Calvinists browbeating Catholics for "picking and choosing" scripture?

Pot, meet kettle.

I think everyone has areas they struggle with in their life. I certainly have mine. It just happens that the Gospel message made complete sense to me when I first heard it. At the time, I wasn't bothered by whether the Holy Spirit was involved or how much He was involved. I just knew I was saved. It’s a good thing that people don’t have to understand all the nuances of Salvation before being saved. There’d be far fewer in the Kingdom of God if that was the case.

God gifted me with the ability to read and Paul said even "if an angel preaches a gospel contrary to Scripture, let him be accursed."

There is a subtle difference between what Paul said and what you say. St Paul said this to the Galatians: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." It is generally thought that St. Paul wrote this around 50 AD, which would mean that St. Paul did not have a copy of the New Testament scripture handy.

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