It is no wonder that Scot McKnight's "From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholic." as referenced in this article points out trends and patterns among those who have converted from Evangelicalism to Catholicism.
Most converts from Evangelicalism, according to this book experience "a desire for transcendance"
This desire for transcendence usually takes four forms:
(1) a desire for certainty;
(2) a desire for history;
(3) a desire for unity; and
(4) a desire for authority.
(1) Certainty This desire for full knowledge of truth spurs many converts to The Church to reject what they consider to be the "doctrinal mayhem" and "choose-your-own-church syndrome". They have a desire for knowledge that they believe is possible within Catholicism but not within Protestantism.
(2) History McKnight observes that many feel a "historical disenfranchisement" with Protestantism and want to be connected to the entire history of the Christian church and not just the period since the Reformation.
(3) Unity Most converts are disturbed by the divisions and countless denominations within Protestantism. McKnight quotes Peter Cram who
describes Protestantism as "one long, continuous line of protesters protesting against their fellow protesters, generating thousands of denominations, para-churches, and 'free churches,' which are simply one-church denominations."Converts instead look to the unity of the Roman Catholic Church.
(4)Authority
Converts are disturbed by either 1. the lack of authority in the denominations or authority vested in a pastor with no real credentials (see David Koresh) besides charisma. And in both these cases there is no tie back, the group of the pastor dies with the pastor. They prefer the authority of Christ as vested by Him in His apostles.
One of the converts David Currie says
"I see my decision [to convert to RC] as a natural outgrowth of my Evangelical commitment."or Stephen K Ray,
I "read' my way back to the Catholic Church. When I started reading books about what the church actually taught, I was forced to give up many mischaracterizations of her teachings. Indeed, I was struck by the sheer depths of the historical, and biblical arguments in favor of the Catholic faith.
This is a pretty impartial book in the sense that McKnight does not evaluate the validity or give his own opinion on which is better, he just notes down the reasons given, with none of his own opinion added, so it is interesting as a statistician's question WHY?
Of course, we can debate the validity of this, but the fact is that the split-split is a problem stated by ex-Evang's