Former Catholics return to the church: Why did these Catholics leave and what brought them back?

Former Catholics return to the church

Why did these Catholics leave the church and what brought them back?

Katie Bahr | Catholic Herald

Ashleigh Buyers | Catholic Herald Illustration

Maybe they had a bad experience with a priest. Maybe they were upset about a church teaching. Maybe they lost their faith or never had it. No matter the reasons, the sad truth is that Catholics leave the church every day.

According to a recent study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, approximately one-third of survey respondents who were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as such. Nearly 10 percent of all Americans identify themselves as former Catholics and of the Catholics who remain, only 24 percent attend Mass on any given Sunday.

So why do Catholics stop practicing their faith? The reasons vary widely from person to person. Below, five local Catholics share why they left the church and what brought them back.

‘Nobody asked me why I quit going to church’

After growing up in a Catholic family in South Dakota, Melanie Rigney stopped going to church two weeks shy of her 16th birthday. She had just lost her first boyfriend to her best friend.

“I was coming home from babysitting one night and decided to stop in the church because I was heartbroken and wanted to talk to God,” Rigney said. “The church was all locked up. … I sat in the parking lot and said to God, ‘I needed you. Where were you?’”

After that, Rigney stopped going to church and before long, she stopped thinking about religion at all.

“Nobody ever asked why I quit going to church,” she said. “I got used to not going.”

As the years passed, Rigney married a nonpracticing Lutheran and built a career. Things got hard when her husband was in and out of work, Rigney lost her job, and the relationship was strained because of the financial stress. Eventually the couple split and Rigney was on her own again. After noticing that her friends who prayed were able to cope with life better, she thought about going back to church. Then a therapist suggested she check out St. Charles Borromeo Church in Arlington.

That night, Rigney walked by St. Charles and decided to stop in. This time, the church doors were unlocked. Rigney got a drink of water, sat in the sanctuary and decided to give God a second chance.

She enrolled in Landings, a program for returning Catholics, got her questions answered and met a community of faith-minded friends. After 33 years away, she received the Eucharist for the first time on Christmas 2005.

“I cried all the way down the aisle,” she said.

Through the years, Rigney has joined prayer groups, Bible studies and gone on a Cursillo weekend retreat.

“There’s something great about knowing when you’re going through a bad time that people are praying for you,” she said. “The Eucharist and the community — the body of Christ, as flawed as it may be — in the end will come out for you every single time.”

‘I just thought, this isn’t my thing.’

In some respects, Father Stephen J. Schultz, parochial vicar of St. Timothy Church in Chantilly, grew up doing everything right faith-wise. He was an altar server for many years in a family that prayed together and attended 7:30 a.m. Mass every Sunday. Despite all this, when he got to George Mason University in Fairfax in 1990, he stopped going to church.

“I didn’t have a difficulty with the Catholic faith, I was just lazy,” Father Schultz said. “I think I went to Mass two or three times at GMU, but it was in a lecture hall and I just thought, ‘This isn’t my thing.’”

His indifference to the faith followed him into adulthood when he began working for a fast-growing Internet company. His career thrived and it wasn’t long before he was vice president of the company and a millionaire. Only then did he realize something was missing.

“I was hugely successful in the Internet business, had more money than I ever thought I’d be making and was content, but I realized I wasn’t really happy,” Father Schultz said. “I knew that there was more.”

At his brother’s invitation, Father Schultz joined the choir at St. Mark Church in Vienna. He started going to Mass again, participated in an evangelical Bible study and got serious about studying the faith. Though he put it off for months, he finally went to confession. And when he reached his lowest point — after losing all his money in a lawsuit with the people who bought his company — Father Schultz began thinking about the priesthood.

“I remember driving to church for choir practice one evening and praying to God, ‘I don’t think I can go on,’” Father Schultz said. “God spoke to me in my heart for the first time ever and asked me a question: ‘Aren’t I enough?’ In that moment, God was real to me. Three or four months later, I felt very strongly called to the priesthood.”

Father Schultz believes people fall away from the church because they don’t realize what they are leaving behind.

“So many people don’t know that they can be themselves with God in prayer, so many people don’t understand that the church is where we meet the Lord in fullness,” he said. “Don’t settle for an idea about God, don’t settle for your opinion about God. He wants to give you all of Himself and this is the way, through the church, the sacraments and the Scriptures.”

‘I became furious with God’

Mary Ellen Gilroy, a parishioner of St. Charles, spent more than three decades away from the church for one not-so-simple reason: She was angry at God.
Growing up in an Irish and Italian family with strong ties to the church, Gilroy attended Catholic school at Mother Cabrini High School and Fordham University in New York.

“As I like to say, I was raised to be a true daughter of the church militant,” she said.

Those years of Catholic education could not prepare her for the string of tragedies she experienced in her mid-20s.

“I truly believed that if you prayed to God, He granted your specific request,” she said. “My father died right before Christmas and three weeks later, an aunt died after battling cancer. I prayed to God to spare these people and God didn’t answer my prayers so I became furious with God.”

As the years past, Gilroy’s career flourished. She joined the foreign service and lived all over the world. Through it all, she never completely lost her faith, but she refused to pray to God. If she had to pray, she would talk to Mother Cabrini instead.

“I figured I was a Mother Cabrini girl, I went to her high school so maybe she’d have some faith in her heart for me,” Gilroy said.

Everything changed in 2004 while Gilroy was living in Barbados. Soon after her arrival, a Category 4 hurricane headed straight for the island.

“We knew we were going to get hit very hard,” Gilroy said. “We alerted the citizens, nailed down everything that could be nailed down, and I remember sitting down at the front lines, looking up at the amazingly gorgeous Caribbean sky and for the first time in 30 years praying directly to God: ‘God, I have done everything I possibly can. Over to you.’”

The storm passed with minimal damage. When her assignment ended and she moved to Arlington, Gilroy decided to recommit to her faith. While attending Mass at St. Charles, she saw a listing for Landings and decided to join.

"That was what really launched me coming back because at first I was really nervous,” she said.

Through Landings, Gilroy was encouraged to confess her sins to a priest. She can still remember how good she felt after being forgiven.

“I was high. It was brilliant. I never felt so good in my entire life,” she said. “It was during Lent in 2009, so Palm Sunday was the first time I received Communion in 30 years. It really made a difference for me.”

‘You just give into the sin of the world’

Paul Ehmann, a parishioner of St. Raymond of Peñafort Church in Springfield, fell away from his faith as a teenager. Though he received all the sacraments and attended religious education, he never felt connected to his faith.

“It was kind of my lifestyle. I just fell away from it,” Ehmann said. “You just give into the sin of the world. I don’t know how to really describe it, but I was just doing what others did.”

Ehmann stopped going to church in high school. In the years that followed, he led an active social life that revolved around partying and friends. Only after a breakup did he begin looking for something different.

When Ehmann was 25 years old, a friend invited him to join the Catholic Sports Club, sponsored by the diocesan young adult ministry. There, he met Catholics who were fun, normal and welcoming.

“I met tons of people who were devout Catholics, who would go out to bars on the weekend and not drink seven beers,” he said. “We played sports and it was really refreshing to see people my age practicing their faith. That group showed me what I’d never seen before in modern culture.”

After meeting other young people who lived their Catholic faith, Ehmann felt free to get more involved. He started studying the faith, attending young adult ministry events and made a new set of friends. Eventually, he signed up for a Catholic dating site, catholicmatch.com, where he met Christina. Two years later, they married.

Looking back, Ehmann sees a big difference in how he lives today versus four years ago. Now he wants to show others there’s more to life than what’s depicted on MTV.

“I’m leading a better life,” he said. “I feel really good on the inside. I have a craving to learn more and to be a positive example in every instance to make people want to convert.”

‘It wasn’t something I really thought about’

For Ann Leggio, a parishioner of St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax, leaving the church was not a conscious decision. After growing up Catholic and attending a Catholic college, she simply “drifted away” as an adult.

“I left college in 1967 so the church was really something the ‘old people’ did,” she said. “None of my friends went to church so I didn’t either.”

For more than 30 years, Leggio didn’t give her faith much thought. Instead, she decided religion was “something from the past.”

“I didn’t feel like, ‘I wish I could go back,’” she said. “It just wasn’t anything I thought about.”

Still, from time to time, she would feel drawn to the church. If a crisis was happening, she’d sometimes sit in a church to collect her thoughts.

“It still had some emotional pull for me, even through all those years,” Leggio said.

In 2002, Leggio lost her job. That, combined with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left her feeling lost.

“I felt kind of adrift and lost,” she said. “I felt really isolated and scared and didn’t know what was going on, or what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”

With nothing else to do and lots of spare time, Leggio went to church. Once there, she was surprised by how emotional it made her and how much she remembered from childhood. While looking online for a church with activities she could join, Leggio stumbled across the website for St. Mary of Sorrows, which was starting a Landings program.

After signing up, Leggio found a community of friends and encouragement to return to the sacraments. She stayed involved by taking classes at the parish, becoming a lector and taking a leadership position with the Landings team.
“I came at this from a point of feeling adrift and it gave me a community to belong to,” she said. “That was really important to me.”

“Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum
Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you?

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him

Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”

Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?”

He was referring to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot; it was he who would betray him, one of the Twelve.” [John 6: 49-71]

Did you read any of the stories? They realized they were missing something

A brain?

"Having read [Francis Beckwith]?s book, I am appalled at the blatant misrepresentation of both the Reformed teaching as well the teaching of Roman Catholicism. His lack of knowledge on historical issues is forgivable, given his ignorance, but to misrepresent and caricature the Reformed faith and to misrepresent the salvation teachings of Rome is simply irresponsible and dishonest..."
-- from the internet article Why Scripture and the Facts of History Compel Me, a Former Roman Catholic, to Remain a Committed Evangelical Protestant

There are many, many "former-Protestant-turns-Catholic" conversion stories posted on FR that bear these same marks. The majority focus on converts with a poor command of their former faith, who swam the Tiber in their early to mid twenties. Some bear witness to converts already being swayed by "every wind of doctrine" before they converted. Most of these conversion stories fall into a common theme - "fringe member (or non-member) starts out illiterate and ignorant of his/her own confession, then gains publicity and fame on EWTN by making a loud, trumpeted conversion to Catholicism."

Take, for example, the story of James Akin. A convert in his mid-twenties, he was actually a whole lot of things before he became Catholic in his mid-twenties, but one Catholic FReeper hawked James as being a "former Presbyterian".

Another favorite is the story of Rodney Beason, supposedly a former Calvinist, and re-solicited as "a powerful conversion story". A first year college student, he claimed to have "a library full of Calvin, Luther, Warfield, Hodge, Murray, Owen, Machen, etc" and to have "helped plant a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church". A little digging on Google, however, and his conversion story was called into question. In the end, Rodney Beason himself signed up to FR just to provide all with the rest of his "powerful conversion story". Having abandoned the Catholic Church within two years of his 2002 conversion, he wishes Catholics would stop (re)publishing his story.

And then there's the tale of Rob Evans. I know what you're thinking - "who is Rob Evans?" Evans' previous claim to fame was a direct-to-VHS children's series titled The Donut Repair Club, marketed to children in Evangelical households in the early 1990s. When he wasn't entertaining children, Rob was a ~~Presbyterian~~ ~~Pentecostal~~ ~~Baptist~~ multiple-church-splitting spiritual wanderer, who was kicked out of at least one congregation before his conversion to Catholicism. His conversion nicely coincided with EWTN acquiring broadcasting rights to his out-of-production Donut Repair Club.

Finally, there's Fr. Erik J. Richtsteig, billed as a "former Mormon" The problem is, Fr. Richtsteig stopped being Mormon when he was eight years old, meaning he had never held office, never been on a mission, never been through a Temple ceremony. His "Mormon" experience was limited to Sunday attendance (without his mother) "sporadically".

I wonder how many of these Catholic converts actually attended churches that proclaimed the whole council of God? A question I would ask is how many Catholic converts previously went to churches with strong systematic confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession, and how often were they taught the confession, like in a Sunday School class, and how well did their minister cover all the doctrines in the confession of faith? I would expect some rather weak answers.
-- from the thread Systematic Theology and Catholic Converts

“as if the greatest minds of catholicism, i.e. the church fathers, et al, nvr heard any of the ‘arguments’ rehashed liked warmed over stew in GPH’s little mind.”

Yea, damn those church fathers and all their ideas that weren’t invented till the 16th century!

Cyril of Jerusalem on Sola Scriptura:

“Have thou ever in your mind this seal, which for the present has been lightly touched in my discourse, by way of summary, but shall be stated, should the Lord permit, to the best of my power with the proof from the Scriptures. For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the Faith, not even a casual statement must be delivered without the Holy Scriptures; nor must we be drawn aside by mere plausibility and artifices of speech. Even to me, who tell you these things, give not absolute credence, unless thou receive the proof of the things which I announce from the Divine Scriptures. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning , but on demonstration of the Holy Scriptures.” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Lecture 4, Ch. 17)

John Chrysostom on Sola Fide

“By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. See he calls the faith also a law delighting to keep to the names, and so allay the seeming novelty. But what is the law of faith? It is, being saved by grace. Here he shows God’s power, in that He has not only saved, but has even justified, and led them to boasting, and this too without needing works, but looking for faith only.” (Homily 7 on Romans III)

“For this is [the righteousness] of God when we are justified not by works, (in which case it were necessary that not a spot even should be found,) but by grace, in which case all sin is done away. And this at the same time that it suffers us not to be lifted up, (seeing the whole is the free gift of God,) teaches us also the greatness of that which is given. For that which was before was a righteousness of the Law and of works, but this is the righteousness of God.” (John Chrysostom, Homily 11 on Second Corinthians, 2 Cor 5:21)

Theodoret, Bishop of Syria, on the same:

“The salvation of man depends upon the divine philanthropy alone. For we do not gather it as the wages of our righteousness, but it is the gift of the divine goodness.” (On the 3rd chap, of Zephaniah.)

Clemens Romanus, on the same:

“Whosoever will candidly consider each particular, will recognise the greatness of the gifts which were given by him. For from him have sprung the priests and all the Levites who minister at the altar of God. From him also [was descended] our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. Romans 9:5 From him [arose] kings, princes, and rulers of the race of Judah. Nor are his other tribes in small glory, inasmuch as God had promised, Your seed shall be as the stars of heaven. All these, therefore, were highly honoured, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Letter to the Corinthians)

Augustine on irresistible grace, final perseverance, limited atonement, and whatever else I missed which he touches on here:

“But of such as these [the Elect] none perishes, because of all that the Father has given Him, He will lose none. John 6:39 Whoever, therefore, is of these does not perish at all; nor was any who perishes ever of these. For which reason it is said, They went out from among us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would certainly have continued with us. John 2:19”. (Augustine, Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints)

“I assert, therefore, that the perseverance by which we persevere in Christ even to the end is the gift of God; and I call that the end by which is finished that life wherein alone there is peril of falling.” (Augustine, On the Perseverance of the Saints)

“And, moreover, who will be so foolish and blasphemous as to say that God cannot change the evil wills of men, whichever, whenever, and wheresoever He chooses, and direct them to what is good? But when He does this He does it of mercy; when He does it not, it is of justice that He does it not for “He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens.” And when the apostle said this, he was illustrating the grace of God, in connection with which he had just spoken of the twins in the womb of Rebecca, who “being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calls, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.” And in reference to this matter he quotes another prophetic testimony: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” But perceiving how what he had said might affect those who could not penetrate by their understanding the depth of this grace: “What shall we say then?” he says: “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” For it seems unjust that, in the absence of any merit or demerit, from good or evil works, God should love the one and hate the other. Now, if the apostle had wished us to understand that there were future good works of the one, and evil works of the other, which of course God foreknew, he would never have said, not of works, but, of future works, and in that way would have solved the difficulty, or rather there would then have been no difficulty to solve. As it is, however, after answering, God forbid; that is, God forbid that there should be unrighteousness with God; he goes on to prove that there is no unrighteousness in God’s doing this, and says: “For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” “ (Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Chapter 98. Predestination to Eternal Life is Wholly of God’s Free Grace.)

“But that world which God is in Christ reconciling unto Himself, which is saved by Christ, and has all its sins freely pardoned by Christ, has been chosen out of the world that is hostile, condemned, and defiled. For out of that mass, which has all perished in Adam, are formed the vessels of mercy, whereof that world of reconciliation is composed, that is hated by the world which belongeth to the vessels of wrath that are formed out of the same mass and fitted to destruction. Finally, after saying, “If ye were of the world, the world would love its own,” He immediately added, “But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” And so these men were themselves also of that world, and, that they might no longer be of it, were chosen out of it, through no merit of their own, for no good works of theirs had preceded; and not by nature, which through free-will had become totally corrupted at its source: but gratuitously, that is, of actual grace. For He who chose the world out of the world, effected for Himself, instead of finding, what He should choose: for “there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. And if by grace,” he adds, “then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 15:17-19)

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