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)
That is a ridiculous post, I never gave any statistics, I never separated Protestants by race, and lapsed Protestants do not identify as non-religious or atheists, anymore than a lapsed Catholic would, they would just say that they don't go to church.
Statistics would be saying things like out of the last 19 elections, Catholics voted against the Republicans 14 times.
It would be posting things like this.
Consistent truth, not ease, alights the narrow path. Christ was born into history. Despite a maelstrom of conflicting claims, true doctrine stands out by examining the historic Church.
Do people convert to Catholicism? Sure the unsaved want to be in charge of their salvation, they want to be saved because they deserve it.. Catholicism offers that.
Some convert because they like all the pomp of the services ,the incense and the golden vessels, the vestments , the candles the statues and the rules all look holy.. .. they want to feel holy even if they do not really know what it means..
I do not believe a saved person would convert to Catholicism .. they would have too many spiritual issues with the doctrine.. ..so i have no problem with them going..laymen or pastors.. as scripture tells us as time comes near the ends.. the tares will be bundled together and I am personally glad to get the tares out of the pulpit
Bingo.... to use a catholic theological term :)
And what do we call people that say they are catholic but do not want to see a priest until they are on their death beds? Children of the darkness??
Well they could always get an annulment (the Catholic form of divorce )
But this is all has very little to do with religion. Are you criticizing Catholic ethnic groups or religious principles?
"The Roman Catholic Church, in its pagan form, unofficially came into being in 312 A.D., at the time of the so-called "miraculous conversion" to Christianity of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Although Christianity was not made the official religion of the Roman Empire until the edicts of Theodosius I in 380 and 381 A.D., Constantine, from 312 A.D. until his death in 337, was engaged in the process of simultaneously building pagan temples and Christian churches, and was slowly turning over the reigns of his pagan priesthood to the Bishop of Rome. However, the family of Constantine did not give up the last vestige of his priesthood until after the disintegration of the Roman Empire -- that being the title the emperors bore as heads of the pagan priesthood -- Pontifex Maximus -- a title which the popes would inherit. (The popes also inherited Constantine's titles as the self-appointed civil head of the church -- Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Bishops.)
Prior to the time of Constantine's "conversion," Christians were persecuted not so much for their profession of faith in Christ, but because they would not include pagan deities in their faith as well.
I have never heard of that. Who are you talking about?
I don’t see a definition of “evangelical” in the article. The author could be including Unitarians and those new fancy gay embracing protestant denominations.
Pelosi, Kennedys, and Kerry are all catholic.
“Their prior church had theological reasons for not remarrying them after they got divorced. “
Like Mel Gibson?
No greater truth than John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8,9. It doesn’t take religiosity to be saved. There is only way way, and He gave us the knowledge, yet we reject it.
That chart isn’t “ancient history” and it doesn’t include the FDR elections, JFK gave us the Vietnam War and the 1960s and the 1965, Ted Kennedy immigration bill, those years spelled the end of America and the beginning of third world colonization and our eventual disappearance as anything that we will recognize.
Catholics continued to vote against the Republicans in 1968, 1976, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008. The few times they didn’t go against the Republicans were generally for a reelection of a sitting President.
The Catholic vote is to the left of the Protestant Hispanic vote.
That is totally false. Your website is a bogus source.
This Catholic Encyclopedia passage is based on unquestioned historical evidense:
"Christians from the very beginning adorned their catacombs with paintings of Christ, of the saints, of scenes from the Bible and allegorical groups is too obvious and too well known for it to be necessary to insist upon the fact. The catacombs are the cradle of all Christian art. Since their discovery in the sixteenth century — on 31 May, 1578, an accident revealed part of the catacomb in the Via Salaria — and the investigation of their contents that has gone on steadily ever since, we are able to reconstruct an exact idea of the paintings that adorned them. That the first Christians had any sort of prejudice against images, pictures, or statues is a myth (defended amongst others by Erasmus) that has been abundantly dispelled by all students of Christian archaeology. The idea that they must have feared the danger of idolatry among their new converts is disproved in the simplest way by the pictures even statues, that remain from the first centuries. Even the Jewish Christians had no reason to be prejudiced against pictures, as we have seen; still less had the Gentile communities any such feeling. They accepted the art of their time and used it, as well as a poor and persecuted community could, to express their religious ideas."
So what comes to the Catholic church are people still looking to be saved.. or feel holy or become famous or move up in an ecumenical group that has catholic leadership.. in other words they are seekers for themselves .
So we are actually glad they outed themselves as tares and will not be teaching or preaching in our churches.
So the list you present has no meaning for us.. just good riddance
The Big Flock Mentality.
Their works are not those of faithful Catholics.
Again, by definition there are no faithful, beleiving Catholics who vote liberal. That is all there is to it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.