Posted on 08/05/2007 4:53:34 PM PDT by NYer
I was born into a nominally Jewish family, but we practiced only rarely. My parents divorced when I was about 5. I was a latch key kid and was influenced by the neighbors kids - the most stable families were Catholic. I had a "Sunday school" education where I learned all about the old testament and zero about Christianity. It was a dispassionate historical approach, very few of my classmates believed in God at all. At that time I was an agnostic, not hostile to religion, because I had no grievance against the believing world. That's not to say I wasn't angry. I had a very deeply submerged anger at my parents who told me they loved me (and I imagine they did) but always had reason to be elsewhere. I was strongly encouraged to be as independent as possible, when all I wanted was to belong. I became outsider lone wolf type , a contrarian who never quite fit in.
This attitude accelerated at college when both my parents moved out of state in my freshman year. I was an agnostic conservative at a large impersonal very liberal university steeped in PC (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). I remember the yearly "take back the night" marches by angry feminists and being asked point blank my political leanings in my german class by the teachers assistant ( I was the only conservative).
I was lonely trying to fit into whatever groups I could. I remember envying the Gays who appeared to have instant "acceptance" and "community". Did I say I was also naive? It was not as if you could tell me anything either because I was also arrogant. I knew only the popular press version of Christianity, that and what was professed by sincere door to door missionaries I spoke to once or twice. I was ignorant and I didn't know nor did I care. I had Science and Art which I thought led to Truth and Beauty. I remember the luminous Madonna and Child painting of an old Master in the campus museum, the child was so beautifully rendered he seemed to breathe. This search became my focus and I studied Zen Buddhism for a while, but as a philosophy not a religion. In my private life I was either lonely (most of the time) or in a loveless "relationship" now and then.
I graduated not knowing what to do or where to go, so I delayed the real world with graduate school. I intended to re-tool my frivolous Botany BS into an authentic career with graduate degrees. Texas A & M accepted me and I was privileged to move to a much more conservative (and less politicized) campus. I eventually began dating a Catholic Texas girl (Miss Waller County 1976) who against her better judgment agreed to marry me. We moved to California where we both had jobs and eventually got married by civil service in a trailer park (such glamor).
We lived the San Francisco Bay Area so I know the horrors of guitar masses and liturgical dancers. I didn't know any better, and since I just sat on my hands in incomprehension when see went up to communion, I never objected. These folks were the just the sweet well-meaning hippies I knew in school, or so I thought. Despite what my parents think , my wife never pushed her religion on me and I never argued against it. I didn't want any resentment between us. I knew what divorce was like (my mother has been married and divorced 3 times) and I wanted to to all I could to avoid it. Besides faith was a beautiful compelling idea. I wanted faith, but at that time I sincerely didn't believe and I could not respect a God who could not tell the difference. I wouldn't criticize it but I couldn't fully participate either. Oh don't get me wrong I had prayed now and them especially when I was truly lonely or down, but these were the weak prayers of the faithless.
We decided to get married in the Church, not that I was becoming Catholic, but because it cemented the bond and pleased her family. We went through the engaged encounter in the Church and was married in a lovely ceremony (not a full mass) by priest back in Texas.
As for my career I had landed a good post doc job at Stanford but I found myself (being pigheaded) arguing with my boss. I opened the Bible a family friend had given us at our wedding and found a random passage about pride. I recognized my failing and prayed sincerely to Jesus for the first time and asked for a sign (I told you I was arrogant). The next day my apology and my bosses charity ended the argument and I got my little sign.
Now at the time the only Gospel I knew was Matthew (written for Jews) and I always loved that part about the sparrows. How God knows each sparrow and how we are worth many sparrows. So the next day the young Mexican janitor who's English was weak but whose smile was real found a hummingbird in the bathroom and asked me what to do with it. He Handed me the bird with an arm tattooed with an elaborate cross and I held the beautiful bird in my hand and felt it's rapid heartbeat. We got a Dixie cup with sugar water and held it up the birds beak and it sat in on my shirt pocket and drank with it's forked tongue for about 15 minutes. I took this as my sign, my dark mood lifted and I never had a argument with my boss again.
I told my wife all about it and on the Feast of the Assumption I felt moved to being RCIA. This time my wife returned the favor went with me through the RCIA process. There are a few good stories there too with a mixed group of teachers one of whom was an ex-priest (I don't know what they were thinking). The next Easter I was baptized , confirmed and received communion for the first time.
At the same time we were trying to start a family. We failed and after several miscarriages we began to look for alternatives. We investigated in vitro and was put off my the callousness of clinic. A chirpy young lady told us in all her bright eyed sincerity that if we were to get pregnant with a Downs child we could get an abortion and a refund. In retrospect that statement was a giant red flag that sent us in the opposite direction. We started the adoption process, but before we were successful my wife became pregnant. She carried to term and God gave us a healthy boy of our own.
Her there's a bit more. On the day my son was born I received a more complete sign. As soon as the midwife passed my infant son to me I felt the Spirit. I felt it physically with my heart although I couldn't see or hear it. I felt love being poured down from the ceiling on me and filling my heart and billowing out to the whole room. I cannot do the sense of the Spirit justice. I felt the vast overabundance of love being poured out and I recognized myself as a tiny inadequate vessel that could capture only a cup of it. I've never felt anything like it and other had some sense of it as well. It lasted only a few minutes but it was indescribably joyful and overwhelming.
Today (4 years later) I'm waiting for the arrival, in October of my second son. God is Great.
Welcome home, David! I hope you will have an opportunity to meet other Jewish converts through the Hebrew Catholic organization.
Welcome home, David! I hope you will have an opportunity to meet other Jewish converts through the Hebrew Catholic organization.
**My parents divorced when I was about 5. I was a latch key kid and was influenced by the neighbors kids - the most stable families were Catholic. **
So sad when this happens. The latchkey kids always seemed so lost when I operated a childcare center.
**On the day my son was born I received a more complete sign. As soon as the midwife passed my infant son to me I felt the Spirit. I felt it physically with my heart although I couldn’t see or hear it. I felt love being poured down from the ceiling on me and filling my heart and billowing out to the whole room. I cannot do the sense of the Spirit justice. I felt the vast overabundance of love being poured out and I recognized myself as a tiny inadequate vessel that could capture only a cup of it. I’ve never felt anything like it and other had some sense of it as well. It lasted only a few minutes but it was indescribably joyful and overwhelming. **
I, too, can feel his heart being filled with the Holy Spirit. What a vivid description. Tears in my eyes.
God bless them as they await their second child!
You showed your parents. Do they speak to you, assuming they’re still living?
I think I felt the Spirit reading that last full paragraph.
John Calvin Made Me Catholic
Journey Home - May 21 - Neil Babcox (former Presbyterian) - A minister encounters Mary
Going Catholic - Six journeys to Rome
My (Imminent) Reception into the Roman Catholic Church
From Calvinist to Catholic
A Convert's Pilgrimage [Christopher Cuddy]
From Pastor to Parishioner: My Love for Christ Led Me Home (to the Catholic Church) [Drake McCalister]
Lutheran professor of philosophy prepares to enter Catholic Church
Patty Bonds (former Baptist and sister of Dr. James White) to appear on The Journey Home - May 7
Pastor and Flock Become Catholics
The journey back - Dr. Beckwith explains his reasons for returning to the Catholic Church
Famous Homosexual Italian Author Returned to the Church Before Dying of AIDS
Dr. Francis Beckwith Returns To Full Communion With The Church
Catholic Converts - Stephen K. Ray (former Evangelical)
Catholic Converts - Malcolm Muggeridge
Catholic Converts - Richard John Neuhaus
Catholic Converts - Avery Cardinal Dulles
Catholic Converts - Israel (Eugenio) Zolli - Chief Rabbi of Rome
Catholic Converts - Robert H. Bork , American Jurist (Catholic Caucus)
Catholic Converts - Marcus Grodi
Why Converts Choose Catholicism
The Scott Hahn Conversion Story
FORMER PENTECOSTAL RELATES MIRACLE THAT OCCURRED WITH THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
John Calvin Made Me Catholic
Journey Home - May 21 - Neil Babcox (former Presbyterian) - A minister encounters Mary
Going Catholic - Six journeys to Rome
My (Imminent) Reception into the Roman Catholic Church
From Calvinist to Catholic
A Convert's Pilgrimage [Christopher Cuddy]
From Pastor to Parishioner: My Love for Christ Led Me Home (to the Catholic Church) [Drake McCalister]
Lutheran professor of philosophy prepares to enter Catholic Church
Patty Bonds (former Baptist and sister of Dr. James White) to appear on The Journey Home - May 7
Pastor and Flock Become Catholics
The journey back - Dr. Beckwith explains his reasons for returning to the Catholic Church
Famous Homosexual Italian Author Returned to the Church Before Dying of AIDS
Dr. Francis Beckwith Returns To Full Communion With The Church
Catholic Converts - Stephen K. Ray (former Evangelical)
Catholic Converts - Malcolm Muggeridge
Catholic Converts - Richard John Neuhaus
Catholic Converts - Avery Cardinal Dulles
Catholic Converts - Israel (Eugenio) Zolli - Chief Rabbi of Rome
Catholic Converts - Robert H. Bork , American Jurist (Catholic Caucus)
Catholic Converts - Marcus Grodi
Why Converts Choose Catholicism
The Scott Hahn Conversion Story
FORMER PENTECOSTAL RELATES MIRACLE THAT OCCURRED WITH THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
Laus Deo.
Ever notice that Jews converting to Catholicism don’t result in the same hissy-fits in American Jewish “leadership” that occur when a Baptist so much as thinks of “witnessing” to a Jew? Wonder why that is?
"It might interest you to know I've found another reason for hope. 'Found it in a funny place too: Right in the middle of an ocean, right in the middle of a war." -- The Enemy Below
I’ve yet to have a child of my own and sometimes regret it.
But I’ve seen newborns faces just beaming, radiating in a smile. And I felt the love and innocence and was certain that although they were on earth, they still were connected to heaven.
You say you used to be a Jew.
You better do some thinking about that.
Christ is a Jew.
And Salvation is of The House of Judah.
I've never heard anyone else describe this phenomenon which I, too, experienced when mine was born — as if a light shone directly down, warm but not overheating, filling me with profound awe.
"I knew that my family was unlike any other, and not just because of its size. On television — my parents had finally relented after years without a set — I had seen an Apollo rocket blurring through space. I knew this to be a marvel for everyone said so. But to me, it seemed fairly straightforward: a giant bottle rocket. My family was a far greater spectacle, an imponderably dense collection of bodies in orbit, laws and bylaws, public transactions and stolen privacies, exceptions and mysteries, all its energies directed toward a mission whose goal I couldn't articulate but that I knew to be centered on God. I wanted to know everything about this enterprise, and my want was only deepened by the realization that I never could." — From Choosing My ReligionThere is lots more here. Dubner is co-author of "Freakonomics"The youngest of eight children, Stephen J. Dubner grew up in a family that was industrious, rambunctious, and above all, Catholic. His parents were true believers, their faith extending to every corner of their lives. But they were also Jewish converts. During World War II, a beautiful ballerina named Florence Greenglass and a lonely soldier named Sol Dubner fell in love first with Catholicism and then with each other. The new life they created left no room for the old, and by the time Stephen was born, their pasts had been locked away.
Only when he reached his twenties did he discover his parents' extraordinary story, a story full of bitter estrangements, hard-fought triumphs, and deep secrets (Ethel Rosenberg, executed as an atomic spy in 1953, was his mother's first cousin). In excavating the story, he felt the tug of the religion his parents had abandoned and began to pursue it as vigorously as they had pursued their adopted faith. Along the way, he met dozens of his own Jewish relatives, traveled to his grandparents' shtetl in Poland, re-created the life of his late father, wrestled with the implications of the Holocaust, and saw his relationship with his mother curdle so thoroughly that it would fall to the Archbishop of New York, John Cardinal O'Connor, to help broker a peace.
Choosing My Religion is a luminous memoir, crafted with the eye of a journalist and the art of a novelist. In turns comic and heartbreaking, it tells the story of a family torn apart by religion, sustained by faith, and reunited by the truth that is revealed in these pages.
What burns my biscuits so badly is the fact that while "official Jewish leadership" raises holy Hinnom over Fundamentalist Protestants proselytizing Jews Catholics continue to brazenly boast of their thefts from the Jewish fold without a squeak of protest. Oh well. At least Catholics are "intellectuals," unlike the nose-picking rustics that allegedly make up the Protestant hinterlands (and perhaps the Book of Joshua). I note also that Catholics scream bloody murder when Protestants convert them, but apparently it's alright for them to convert Jews.
I am not a Protestant and I'd dearly love all my beloved Fundamentalist people to shuck off their unorthodox and unappreciated chr*stianity for the Noachide Laws. Unfortunately they stubbornly maintain their loyalty to a religion that despises them and considers them an embarrassment. Despite the falsity of their chr*stian beliefs I sincerely hope that HaShem will look on their hearts and reward their intentions because their so-called "co-religionists" certainly don't give them any credit.
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