I Hated the Idea of Becoming Catholic

Aleteia ^ | JUNE 20, 2014 | ANTHONY BARATTA

[NYer]

It was the day after Ash Wednesday in 2012 when I called my mom from my dorm room at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.

“You’re not going to become Catholic, you just know you’re not Southern Baptist,” she said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

A pause. “Oh boy,” she sighed.

I started crying.

I cannot stress enough how much I hated the idea of becoming Catholic. I was bargaining to the last moment. I submitted a sermon for a competition days before withdrawing from school. I was memorizing Psalm 119 to convince myself of sola scriptura. I set up meetings with professors to hear the best arguments. I purposefully read Protestant books about Catholicism, rather than books by Catholic authors.

Further, I knew I would lose my housing money and have to pay a scholarship back if I withdrew from school, not to mention disappointing family, friends, and a dedicated church community.

But when I attempted to do my homework, I collapsed on my bed. All I wanted to do was scream at the textbook, “Who says?!”

I had experienced a huge paradigm shift in my thinking about the faith, and the question of apostolic authority loomed larger than ever.

But let’s rewind back a few years.

I grew up in an evangelical Protestant home. My father was a worship and preaching pastor from when I was in fourth grade onwards. Midway through college, I really fell in love with Jesus Christ and His precious Gospel and decided to become a pastor.

It was during that time that I was hardened in my assumption that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t adhere to the Bible. When I asked one pastor friend of mine during my junior year why Catholics thought Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth when the Bible clearly said Jesus had “brothers,” he simply grimaced: “They don’t read the Bible.”

Though I had been in talks with Seattle’s Mars Hill Church about doing an internship with them, John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life clarified my call to missionary work specifically, and I spent the next summer evangelizing Catholics in Poland.

So I was surprised when I visited my parents and found a silly looking book titled Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic on my father’s desk. What was my dad doing reading something like this? I was curious and hadn’t brought anything home to read, so I gave it a look.

David Currie’s memoir of leaving behind his evangelical education and ministries was bothersome. His unapologetic defense of controversial doctrines regarding Mary and the papacy were most shocking, as I had never seriously considered that Catholics would have sensible, scriptural defenses to these beliefs.

The book’s presence on my father’s desk was explained more fully a few months later when he called me and said he was returning to the Catholicism of his youth. My response? “But, can’t you just be Lutheran or something?” I felt angry, betrayed, and indignant. For the next four months I served as a youth pastor at my local church and, in my free time, read up on why Catholicism was wrong.

During that time, I stumbled across a Christianity Today article that depicted an “evangelical identity crisis.” The author painted a picture of young evangelicals, growing up in a post-modern world, yearning to be firmly rooted in history and encouraged that others had stood strong for Christ in changing and troubled times. Yet, in my experience, most evangelical churches did not observe the liturgical calendar, the Apostles’ Creed was never mentioned, many of the songs were written after 1997, and if any anecdotal story was told about a hero from church history, it was certainly from after the Reformation. Most of Christian history was nowhere to be found.

For the first time, I panicked. I found a copy of the Catechism and started leafing through it, finding the most controversial doctrines and laughing at the silliness of the Catholic Church. Indulgences? Papal infallibility? These things, so obviously wrong, reassured me in my Protestantism. The Mass sounded beautiful and the idea of a visible, unified Church was appealing - but at the expense of the Gospel? It seemed obvious that Satan would build a large organization that would lead so many just short of heaven.

I shook off most of the doubts and enjoyed the remainder of my time at college, having fun with the youth group and sharing my faith with the students. Any lingering doubts, I assumed, would be dealt with in seminary.

I started my classes in January with the excitement of a die-hard football fan going to the Super Bowl. The classes were fantastic and I thought I had finally rid myself of any Catholic problems.

But just a few weeks later, I ran into more doubts. We were learning about spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and I was struck by how often the professor would skip from St. Paul to Martin Luther or Jonathan Edwards when describing admirable lives of piety. Did nothing worthwhile happen in the first 1500 years? The skipping of history would continue in many other classes and assigned reading. The majority of pre-Reformation church history was ignored.

I soon discovered I had less in common with the early Church fathers than I thought. Unlike most Christians in history, communion had always been for me an occasional eating of bread and grape juice, and baptism was only important after someone had gotten “saved.” Not only did these views contradict much of Church history but, increasingly, they did not match with uncomfortable Bible passages I had always shrugged off (John 6, Romans 6, etc).

Other questions that I had buried began to reappear, no longer docile but ferocious, demanding an answer. Where did the Bible come from? Why didn’t the Bible claim to be “sufficient”? The Protestant answers that had held me over in the last year were no longer satisfying.

Jefferson Bethke’s viral YouTube video, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” was released during this time. The young man meant well, but to me he only validated what the Wall Street Journal called “the dangerous theological anarchy of young evangelicals,” attempting to remove Jesus from the confines of religion but losing so much in the process.

Ash Wednesday was the tipping point. A hip Southern Baptist church in Louisville held a morning Ash Wednesday service and many students showed up to classes with ashes on their forehead. At chapel that afternoon, a professor renowned for his apologetic efforts against Catholicism expounded upon the beauty of this thousand year old tradition.

Afterwards, I asked a seminary friend why most evangelicals had rejected this beautiful thing. He responded with something about Pharisees and “man-made traditions.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do this anymore.”

My resistance to Catholicism started to fade. I was feeling drawn to the sacraments, sacramentals, physical manifestations of God’s grace, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. No more borrowing, no more denying.

It was the next day that I called my mom and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.

I didn’t go to classes on Friday. I went to the seminary library and checked out books I had previously forbidden myself to look at too closely, like the Catechism and Pope Benedict’s latest. I felt like I was checking out porn. Later, I drove to a 5pm Saturday Mass. The gorgeous crucifix at the front of the church reminded me of when I had mused that crucifixes demonstrated that Catholics didn’t really understand the resurrection.

But I saw the crucifix differently this time and began crying. “Jesus, my suffering savior, you’re here.”

A peace came over me until Tuesday, when it yielded to face-to-windshield reality. Should I stay or leave? I had several panicked phone calls: “I literally have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow morning.”

On Wednesday morning I woke up, opened my laptop, and typed out “77 Reasons I Am Leaving Evangelicalism.” The list included things like sola scriptura, justification, authority, the Eucharist, history, beauty, and continuity between the Old and New Testament. The headlines and the ensuing paragraphs flowed from my fingers like water bursting from a centuries-old dam. 

A few hours later on February 29, 2012 I slipped out of Louisville, Kentucky, eager to not confuse anyone else and hoping I wasn’t making a mistake.  

The next few months were painful. More than anything else I felt ashamed and defensive, uncertain of how so much of my identity and career path could be upended so quickly. Nonetheless, I joined the Church on Pentecost with the support of my family and started looking for work.

So much has changed since then. I met Jackie on CatholicMatch.com that June, got married a year later, and celebrated the birth of our daughter, Evelyn, on March 3rd, 2014. We’re now in Indiana and I’m happy at my job.

I’m still very new on this Catholic journey. To all inquirers out there, I can tell you that my relationship with God has deepened and strengthened. As I get involved in our parish, I’m so thankful for the love of evangelism and the Bible that I learned in Protestantism.

I have not so much left my former faith as I have filled in the gaps. I thank God for the fullness of the Catholic faith.

[NYer]

Col. 2:16 is out of context and dealt with additional man made holidays that Churches and emperors liked to impose at the time.

I disagree but, setting aside your disputed scriptural extract, the evidence remains. Jesus, during his earthly ministry, began to prepare the way for changing Sabbath worship from "the letter of the law" to "the spirit of the law." Remember that one of his greatest arguments with the Pharisees concerned Sabbath worship. He constantly rebuked them for placing the rigid observance of mere details above the spirit of setting aside a day to rest from unnecessary servile work and to worship God. By this Jesus made it clear that the Sabbath may be changed to meet the needs of man. By effecting these changes as "the Son of Man," Jesus used his human authority to show us that he is "Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mk 2:28).

Special honor is shown to Sunday throughout the New Testament. Christ rose from the dead on Sunday, and he first appeared to his disciples that Easter Sunday evening (Jn 20:19). One week later—and from the context we can see that this meant the following Sunday—Jesus appeared to them again when Thomas was present (John 20:26). Luke records that Sunday was observed by the Christian community from the very beginning: "On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread" (Acts 20:7). To "break bread" refers to the celebration of the Eucharist (Mt 26:26, Mk 14:22). As previously mentioned, Paul ordered the Corinthians to gather their offertory collections on Sunday (1 Cor 16:2); that set the scriptural precedent we follow today of gathering our offerings on Sunday during Mass. John records in Rev. 1:10 that he was granted a vision of heaven’s own worship while he was at worship ("caught up in spirit") on "the Lord’s day." John’s disciple Ignatius of Antioch tells us in his Letter to the Magnesians that "the Lord’s day" is not the ancient Sabbath; therefore, "the Lord’s day" must refer to Sunday.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The Catholic Church also says that the Muslims have a terribly distorted view of the One True God. Because, you see, Islam is a strange mixture of the true and the false, created (I believe) by the devil to deceive by this shape-shifting, mixed-message means.

Muslims, for instance,believe that there is One God who is the creator of heaven and earth, the giver of Moral Law. So do we.

But we believe in the Trinity and they do not.

Muslims believe that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel and was born of a virgin mother, Miryam (Mary). And so do we.

But we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and savior of the world, and they do not. They believe he was simply "a man" "created" in the womb of his mother, not conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore the Divine Son of God.

Muslims believe that Jesus (whom they call Issa) will come again at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead, and so do we.

But we believe that Jesus has saved us through His death on the cross, thus opening heaven and permitting us to be saved by His mercy, while the Muslims believe that Jesus was NOT cucified, that it is blasphemy to say Jesus was crucified, and that Allah ("the one God") grants salvation to none but Muslims.

Their so-called 'prophet' Muhammad is, point for point, almost a diametrical opposite to Jesus in every ssense, as different as vice and virtue. Yet they think Muhammad --- a lecherous man, a bloody-handed man, a slave-trader, rapist of captive women, a fanatical warlord --- was the perfect God-pleasing man whose example should be followed. I could go on and on.

The bottom line is, inasmuch as any person on earth worships the One God who is Creator of heaven and earth, the giver of Moral Law, and seeks to do His will, that person is to that extent worshipping the One God.

But to the extent that their belief is so bizarrely twisted --- twisted bak ino its opposite, over and over, at every point --- you can at best say that they have been taken in by a strong delusion about this One True God.

It's heart-breaking, really.

For your interest: a Muslim kid here at East Tennessee State University put out this music video called "I Believe in Jesus" (YouTube link).

Before beginnng the video, be sure to click on SHOW MORE so you can read the lyrics.

Thought question: what would you say to this guy? And how would you say it?

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Then they do not need to be, right?"

You lost me. Who does not need to be what?

[af_vet_1981]

But Rome has their savior.. a Greco roman Latin one... And the pope’story is he was born on their holy day of December 25 and raised on their holy day easter.. I am guessing catholics celebrate his circumcion on the 8th day like Torah says- which would be January 1st every year.. that is a world holy day anyway except for people who observe our Heavenly Father’s calendar whose year begins in spring,not in winter.. They probably celebrate his dedication in the temple after Mary’s 40 days of purification on February 2nd of their pope calendar.. the world, at least America, has that as another ‘holy day’ ,although it tends to be only holy around Punxsutawney. A Catholic may be able to confirm this if these days have special services on January 1 and Feb 2nd to make December 25 seem like at least a little biblically consistent.. None of that is biblical truth.. They are biblical counterfeits.. All are welcome to base one’s work, worship and faith life on Rome’s system. It will blind.. even the elect..

And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?

[mdmathis6]

I’d start with 1 John 4! Muslim beliefs about Jesus are so suffused with the spirit of antichrist, that it makes the heart heavy even considering what their beliefs are about the living Christ.

[BipolarBob]

Remember that one of his greatest arguments with the Pharisees concerned Sabbath worship.

Agreed. Did Jesus break the Sabbath or not? He healed a man. That's not breaking the Sabbath nor is it changing anything. He defined it.

"Christ rose from the dead on Sunday"
That must have meant He rested on the Sabbath, right?

"and He first appeared to His disciples that Easter Sunday evening"
Wrong again. He appeared Passover evening. Neither Jesus nor His Disciples celebrated Easter. Neither did they hide Easter eggs.

Lastly the letter of Ignatius to the Milk of Magnesians could very well be a forgery - courtesy of the RCC. It does NOT hold the weight of Scripture.

[Mrs. Don-o]

1 John 4 is very good, since it warns so explicitly about the antichrist.

[NYer]

Lastly the letter of Ignatius to the Milk of Magnesians could very well be a forgery - courtesy of the RCC. It does NOT hold the weight of Scripture.

Oh Bob, you are a constant source of entertainment. Always enjoy your comments.

[Zionist Conspirator]

He probably just lost his belief in the facticity of Genesis 1-11. The Catholic, Orthodox, and liberal Protestant churches is where such people belong.

[Mark17]

Sometimes, more watering helps the seeds grow. Navigators provided needed water at a dry point in my life.

I can identify with that bro. It took them about 3 months to talk some sense into me, but it wasn't so much what they said, it was their pure lifestyles that silently spoke volumes to me. Not one of them ever did anything to get the false doctrines out of me. That kind of took care of itself over a period of time.

[Mark17]

Hmmm. Nicodemus may be right, since there is no evidence in Scripture that he was ever born again of the Spirit.

I think the only evidence we might have, is that Nicodemus asked the others if the law condemned someone before they heard him, and I believe he was with Joseph of Arimathea after the death of Jesus. I suppose those might be good signs, but other than that, we don't know. I would like to think that later, the rich young ruler came to his senses, but again, we simply don't know. But then again, I don't think the Bible was written to give us a blow by blow description of everything that happened, but was written to point us to faith in Christ

[delchiante]

And believers in scripure should reject Rome..
You and I agree..

Worship Him who made heaven, earth the seas and the contains of water..

Or follow the satanic trinity in Revelation 13 that breaks the first four commandments..

Revelation 14:12
Here is the patience of the saints,. Here are they that KEEP (strongs #5083- keep, guard, observe, obey) the commandments of Yah AND the Faith of Yahshua.

There is a satanic trinity today.. and it is centered in Rome.

Rome has changed laws (ten commandments) and times (sunday , pope Gregory calendar)

Two strikes Prophet Daniel gave us in 7:25

Guilty..

Now, people can call today Saturn’s day like the world, or what our Heavenely Father called it- His 5th day of the week.

If today is His 5th day,tomorrow is His 6th day, the preparation day before His Sabbath.

Both Jews and Christians have decided the pope’s calendar is far more efficient than our Heavenly Father’s calendar in scripture and in His sky.. the same calendar places like the United Nations has endorsed..a motley crew to be sure..

Funny,that seems to be the warning giving in the verses you gave..rudiments of the world... I will be give you another,. Be not conformedto the world.

Best not to touch anything Rome handles.. including their counterfeit savior..

They have counterfeited our Heavenly Father’s calendar, Sabbath, Holy Days and the Savior..

Worship Him..
or don’t..
Entirely up to us whether we commemorate His awesome Creative and Redemptive work through His Genuine Son or give days each week to the sun, saturn, moon, god Tiw, god Woden, god Thor, goddess Friya..

Worship is a rather big deal in Revelation.. and worshipping the satanic trinity’s system is not a winner.
Again, that’s the system that breaks our Heavenly Father’s first four commandments.(revelation 13) and causes others to do the same..

Those are the four commandments that deal with worship in Exodus.. unless you are a catholic- they have ‘changed’ their first four.

True worship is really important..

The name Jesus, December 25th, easter and Sunday can be explained away with scripture and our Heavenly Father’s calendar in same scripture and in His sky.

Not much left of Rome if those go bye bye..
Not much left of Christendom either...

And one can still worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the finished work of Yashua/Joshua ,His Beloved Son and our Savior without having to deal with Rome or her daughters and their world accepted counterfeits.

Come out of her my people.. or stay in... our choice...

[CynicalBear]

>>if they have or are, you will lose your Greek original stance.<<

Keep listening to those Hebrew roots cult people all you want but it only puts you in the likes of Catholics building beliefs on speculation and "it could have been". Not a good base to say the least.

>>But they were not Greek that wrote it,.. they were Hebrews who knew Hebrew language..<<

That's a totally carnal perspective. The Holy Spirit chose the Greek write and to preserve the word of God for today.

>>I know it pains one to know they have faith in the pope’s counterfeit, especially when they argue against the pope...I was there..<<

Not germane to this conversation. I'm not Catholic nor do I belong to any Protestant organization.

[BipolarBob]

Matthew 5:17 "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill."

My understanding is the Catholics think Jesus obliterated the Law and Judaism altogether. Me reading what The Man Himself says, with my ordinary reading comprehension skills, is the complete opposite. Even Paul says do make void the law? Nay, we establish it. How would we know what sin is without the Law? Because sin is the breaking of the Law. Now, I will let you two have the last word but I put a lot of credence in what Jesus says. A lot.

[CynicalBear]

>>John records in Rev. 1:10 that he was granted a vision of heaven’s own worship while he was at worship ("caught up in spirit") on "the Lord’s day."<<

Please show from scripture that what he was referring to was the first day of the week.

[CynicalBear]

You show all those differences still the Catholic Church claims they serve the same god. How can it be the same as the God of scripture if the God of scripture sent His son who was the creator and who rose from the dead? Either you serve the same god or you don’t. Your leaders say you do. Do they not even know what god they serve?

[terycarl]

When an RC is truly born of the Spirit, historically, he/she most often wants to divorce themselves from Roman Catholicism and start life anew.

I think that you are quoting Luther, Storch,Henry VIII, Calvin,Knox,Smyth,Wesley brothers....etc etc....all of whom, along with the fallen away Catholics, were wrong.

[af_vet_1981]

You and I agree..

Actually, probably not as I think you belong to one of the many Protestant cults.

[Kenny Bunk]

It was not Greeks who translated the OT into Greek. It was groups of Jewish scholars who wanted to make the texts more readily accessible to those of their bretheren who no longer spoke Hebrew as their everyday language due to living in the far-flung Greek-speaking Hellenic world, just as many English Jews might refer to the King James version of the OT, even if they had studied it in the original Hebrew.

Neither did those Jewish scholars translate the OT into Classical Greek, but into the common vernacular of the daily life of those far removed from classical antiquity. Likewise, St. Jerome's Latin version of the Bible is fairly simple, non-classical Latin. Hence it's name: The Vulgate.

[Elsie]

Jesus Himself, in His own words, proclaimed this:

 

John 6:28-29

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”