Posted on 08/05/2010 12:36:10 PM PDT by NYer
Is there a growing trend of Evangelicals converting to Catholicism? Many think so, including this recent article:
[There is a large] community of young believers whose frustration with the lack of authority, structure, and intellectualism in many evangelical churches is leading them in great numbers to the Roman Catholic Church. This trend of “Crossing the Tiber” (a phrase that also served as the title of Stephen K. Ray’s 1997 book on the phenomenon), has been growing steadily for decades, but with the help of a solid foundation of literature, exemplar converts from previous generations, burgeoning traditional and new media outlets, and the coming of age of Millennial evangelicals, it is seeing its pace quicken dramatically. [source]
The article gives the example of many such notable Evangelical converts from our generation, such as Scott Hahn, Marcus Grodi, Thomas Howard, Francis Beckwith and others. (It also mentions Patrick Madrid, but he is actually not a convert, from what I understand.)
The common threads that seem to be drawing many of these Evangelicals into the Catholic Church are its history, the Liturgy and its tradition of intellectualism.
So is this trend significant? Or is it dwarfed by what seems to be many more Catholics who seem to lose their faith or become complacent with it?
According to a 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, four people leave the Catholic Church for every one person that joins it. Keep in mind that this stat doesn’t count those born into Catholicism as “joining” it. However, it’s still a sad statistic. But we shouldn’t be misled by it.
There are also studies that show Catholicism has a higher rate of retention than all other religious groups. In other words, when people convert to Catholicism, they don’t do so because they didn’t like where they were and just wanted to try something new. Their conversion is deliberate and intentional and they generally stick with it. On the other hand, when people leave the Church, they generally drift around a bit from one denomination to another. This says a lot. The Catholic convert is actually experiencing real, lasting conversion. Those leaving the Church seem to be lost and searching souls that most likely had no idea what they were leaving in the first place.
I’ve long noticed, as have many others, a kind of trend as well. It’s not so much from “Evangelicals” converting to Catholicism necessarily. It’s that of intellectuals converting to Catholicism. And that’s not to say these intellectuals were strictly intellectual. But I mean it to say that they took their reasons for believing very seriously. We only have to look back a few generations to find Chesterton, Merton, Newman, etc. as part of the same trend.
In my own experience, I’ve seen that more people who convert to Catholicism do so on account of their reason. Whereas those that leave the Church do so based on some emotion or negative experience associated with the Church.
When I ask an evangelical why they left the Church. The answer is almost always an emotion. Something made them feel a certain way. Or they just didn’t like the way something was done in Catholicism. Or it didn’t suit their lifestyle. Or some other experience made them feel nice.
There is a long list of protestant (and other) leaders and scholars who have converted to Catholicism. The list for those going the other direction is devastatingly short.
This is why I think we are seeing, and will continue to see even more, protestant thinkers converting to Catholicism. Protestantism is running its course. All the protest is getting tired. And they are running out of places to find answers that don’t lead them deep into Church history, back to the ancient liturgy, and into the intellectual tradition that ultimately leads to one place: Rome.
Protestantism has drifted far enough away from orthodox Christianity that it can now look back at the trees and recognize the forest. And if you’re not entirely in the Catholic Church, that just might be the next best place to be…
“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place; and I tried to trace such a journey in a story I once wrote. It is, however, a relief to turn from that topic to another story that I never wrote. Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. It is only too probable that I shall never write it, so I will use it symbolically here; for it was a symbol of the same truth. I conceived it as a romance of those vast valleys with sloping sides, like those along which the ancient White Horses of Wessex are scrawled along the flanks of the hills. It concerned some boy whose farm or cottage stood on such a slope, and who went on his travels to find something, such as the effigy and grave of some giant; and when he was far enough from home he looked back and saw that his own farm and kitchen-garden, shining flat on the hill-side like the colours and quarterings of a shield, were but parts of some such gigantic figure, on which he had always lived, but which was too large and too close to be seen. That, I think, is a true picture of the progress of any really independent intelligence today; and that is the point of this book.
The point of this book, in other words, is that the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. ” - G. K. Chesterton (Everlasting Man)
Catholics put obama in office, as they did Kennedy, Kerry, Pelosi and any other number of liberal, Democratic politicians.
The Catholic vote could go a long way to turning this country back to conservatism. Too bad most Catholics are so liberal.
Given your church's voting history, you're in no position to cast stones about people's political views.
It's really irrelevant whether they practice their faith regularly. The Catholic church is more than happy to count them as members in spite of that.
It should own them under all circumstances, or start enforcing its own teachings and deny them communion and not count them as part of that one billion strong.
In larger evangelical groups I’ve been a part of 1/4 t 1/3 were ex-Catholics....who never heard the gospel or clear biblical teaching in the ceremony-only Churches of their youth.
With Beckwith and others...they just returned to the Church of their youth. And some, like Scott Hahn were fraudulently hyped...”Presbyterian minister” my eye! He went to seminary, and was an elder in tiny tiny house church—and while teaching at a Christian school (where he had fraudulently sworn that he believed their statement of faith—when at the time he did not) converted to Rome. His real story is not nearly as dramatic as the spin about it.
I can’t say I’m worried about any Evangelical-to-Roman Catholic trend, as there are far more ex-Roman Catholics in Evangelical circles, than ex-Evangelicals in Roman Catholic circles.
No they aren't, in 1952 for instance Reagan was already publicly campaigning for Eisenhower, and again in 1956 and also against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and so on.
There are many who never learned or lived their Catholic faith (like you), but as stated by Archbishop Charles Chaput: "But when we hear that 54 percent of American Catholics voted for President Obama last November, and that this somehow shows a sea change in their social thinking, we can reasonably ask: How many of them practice their faith on a regular basis? And when we do that, we learn that most practicing Catholics actually voted for Senator McCain."
LOL, yes it is patently true, 54% of Catholics voted for Obama.
How would that show a sea change, Catholics have been voting liberal since they started arriving in the 1830s and 1840s.
Gore got their vote in 2000. Obama in 2008, Clinton cleaned up with them of course.
The truth is that Rome is bleeding membership and the trend is for RCs to convert away from Rome rather than to Rome.
Rome is all PR and not much substance.
In another trend, many thoughtful evangelicals are also embracing the more rigorous and fact-oriented branch of our own tradition, the Calvinist approach to understanding "life, the universe, and everything." This is causing some turmoil among Baptists -- Ergun Caner, the recently disgraced and demoted dean of the Liberty University School of Theology had a passion for impugning Calvinists.
Very wise words.
>> “swimming the Tiber.” More picturesque.
What a horrid thought.
What the Catholic Church prohibits is remarriage after divorce if the other party is alive.
Crazy as it seems, this does appear to conform to Matthew 19 and all of Christian history prior to about 1950.
Yes they can (and they love to do it), but they are disobedient when they do so:
Mark 9:38-41
38"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us." 39"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40for whoever is not against us is for us. 41I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.
Yeah the problem is that I do know what I am talking about. She knew on the very first date that something was "a bit off", but she chose to ignore it. And worse she stuck with him after the first time he hit her, and subjected her children to it.
The children are the only victims here, after the first punch, hit, or slap, she was a willing particpant.
You looked for an excuse to justify your departure, iof that makes you feel beter great but that won't do you a bit of good on judgement day.
BTW look at how Jesus described the Pharisee's and Sudduces, and ask me again about bitter and sweet water.
I did ping her, to say other wise is for you to bear false witness
And GailA volunteered nothing that indicated that she knew beforehand that he was abusive.
She didn't have to "volunteer" it, I have worked with more than enough abuse "victims" (Male and Female) to know that each and every one of them knew long before they got married, exactly what they were in for.
There are true victims of abuse, they get out after the very first incident. She didn't there fore she gave tacit approval of the abuse.
Point number two in verga’s post was pure speculation on his part. It was totally uncalled for, so, yes, he did accuse her of something of which her had no knowledge, blaming her for marrying a man she knew was abusive. And it remains despicable that he would blame the victim.
Your correct if I was not an expert on abusive situations it would be speculation, the problem is that I have been dealing with it in adults and children male and female for about 15 years.
The problem is that you are so blinded by hatred for the Catholic Church, that you will believe anything nasty about her so that you can attack. This is the part where you say, "Whoa, that Verga is one smart dude, I better apologize and try to make things right."
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