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.

[Resettozero]

Ping to post 1000.

[Elsie]

Well said; Number and a half!

[Elsie]

I thought Elsie might have been referring also to the show because Fever might have pulled the Santa is dead stunt, too.

It mattereth not, for Mary is alive.

SHE gives good gifts to men. (I think; but, as a PROTestant, I could be wrong.)

[Elsie]

COULD BE?

You prots are ALWAYS wrong!!!

--Catholic_Wannabe_Dude(Hail Mary!!!)

[Springfield Reformer]

Are you saying the same audience in Hebrews can be at the same time partakers of the heavenly calling, partakers of the Holy Spirit, and not partakers of Messiah ? What do you think the heavenly calling is ? Who sent the Holy Spirit ?.

By immediate context, the "partakers of the heavenly calling" are never associated with falling away.  They are, as you have already indicated, the presumed genuinely Christian audience of the book, but only by general address.  Exceptions are possible, as noted in my previous post, and are addressed in chapter 6.  We note that the Holy Spirit has a well defined ministry that occurs both within and without the churches.  He convicts the world of sin and righteousness.  He comes to King Saul in a ministration of prophecy.  He empowers Judas to cast out devils and do other great works during the ministry of the seventy.  And we know it is the Holy Spirit and not some fourth rail of divine power during that last example because when the Pharisees accuse Jesus of doing His miracles by satanic power, Jesus says they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit.  Thus it is the Holy Spirit Who is responsible for the miracles that happen under the ministry of Jesus.  As there is no evidence King Saul or Judas were ever under the heavenly calling, or in any way had a share in the inheritance of Christ, I see no reason to accept the false premise that a work of the Holy Spirit could not occur to a non-elect individual who has no share in Christ. The downside for that individual is that they become so much the guiltier for having had that intense exposure, only to reject it.  No plea bargain for them. The maximum penalty. I shudder to think what it must be like to be Judas or the pharisees of unpardonable sin fame.

As for what is or isn't possible after Pentecost, I would take the writer of Hebrews at his word.  He is the one who makes the distinction between the short-of-salvation "partaking" of chapter 6 and the "better things" of verse 9 that "accompany salvation," which are no doubt reflections of the "partaking in Christ" and the "heavenly calling."   Metochos is one of those words that is highly context driven.  I can be in partnership with a business partner, but when that business dissolves, the partnership goes away.  Or I can be in partnership with my spouse, in a relationship that is in God's eyes incapable of being dissolved.  Both are legitimate partnerships, but quite different in meaning based on the totality of the circumstances. As Paul says, we must rightly divide the word of truth.

As for translation from the Greek, I don't see the English Scriptures as inadequate for the two-fold purpose of Scripture, to lead us to salvation that comes from faith in Christ, and to make men and women of God fully prepared for every good work.  See 2 Tim 3. Many people have no trouble setting the word in order and coming up with a perfectly wholesome understanding of God's grace without ever touching the Greek or Hebrew.  The Lord knows those who are His.  His word will not fail to reach them or instruct them as He sees fit.  These technical discussions are for the benefit of those whom God has chosen to reach by that means. Everybody's different.  Peter only had to see the empty tomb.  Thomas had to see Jesus in person.  

Furthermore, as you should readily acknowledge, God has given the Ecclesia a specialized gift of teaching that He uses to guide us into all truth.  It falls to those individuals to be sure when they are teaching they are doing so with the best possible understanding, because as James says, they will bear the greater burden.  It is not something to take on lightly, and those who do should be prepared to do their homework or get out the way and let others take that responsibility.

As for the notion of a universal language, I think we are all still suffering from the curse of Babel.  Part of Pentecost was the miracle of diverse languages being mutually understandable.  We don't see that exact miracle in evidence today (though in principle I have no doubt it could occur), as even the ministry of tongues among the Pentecostals doesn't work the way it did on Pentecost. But today perhaps that miracle is less needed than it was, at least for large numbers of people.  We have Wycliffe Bible Translators and others taking on the gargantuan task of translating the Bible into every language on earth, which at last count I recall at being over 6000.  And we have dozens of amazing original language tools, lexicons, grammars, commentaries, etc. etc. etc.., so that there really is no excuse for fussing about the occasional limitations of one 400 year old English translation. All of this information is easily discoverable to anyone truly interested in finding it.  

As a footnote to the language question, in the early days of my Greek study, I once contemplated a software project that would take all that knowledge and put it in one place, such that anyone could get an automatically generated translation that took all the fine points into account.  This could be extensible to other languages, so in the end you would have something like a Star Trek universal translator, but just for the Bible.  I had no appreciation at the time how hard that would have been.  Such is the hubris of the novice. Though happily cured by the travail of later learning.

Peace,

SR

[Resettozero]

Part of Pentecost was the miracle of diverse languages being mutually understandable. We don't see that exact miracle in evidence today (though in principle I have no doubt it could occur), as even the ministry of tongues among the Pentecostals doesn't work the way it did on Pentecost.

In agreement with this...but I don't argue the point with my charismatic Pentacostal friends.

[editor-surveyor]

My argument is the sole argument with cogent scripture as its foundation.

It it should falter, we are left without sound resources.

“Churchian:”

Those that are inclined to weight what they have heard from the pulpit over that which is clearly written in the scriptures.

Obviously neither the ancient scriptures, nor the writings of the NT witnesses are new, so your stone wall exerts its inertia.
.

[editor-surveyor]

Some are apparently born “gruntled” inversely.

.

[Springfield Reformer]

Like I said, come up with something new, and I will give it a listen. Otherwise, I think we’re done for now.

Peace,

SR

[editor-surveyor]

>> “He laid down his Glory and place at the Father's right hand, and submitted Himself to do the work that the Jewish religion could only anticipate, not complete.” <<

.
You really need to buy a Bible and read it!

Yeshua’s first mission was to expose the “Jewish religion” as the man made fraud that it is.

That is what Matthew 15, and 23 are all about.

The “Jewish religion,” born during the second temple period, consisted of a demolition of Torah, and replacing it with the commandments of men.

Yeshua’s second mission was to restore Torah, and proceed with the fulfillment of the “spring” feasts as both High Priest, and perfect sacrifice lamb.

His third mission was to send his apostles to “The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel.”

That mission is in its final phase. It will complete as the fulfillment of the “Fall” feasts gets under way just as the new moon makes its appearance in the sky as visible from Mount Moriyah, as the Last Shofar of Yeshua is blown at the commencement of the 7th Biblical month.

The mercy seat on which Yeshua’s blood was deposited is here on Earth; the very same mercy seat on which Antichrist will stand to demonstrate that he is God.

.

[Resettozero]

It will complete as the fulfillment of the “Fall” feasts gets under way just as the new moon makes its appearance in the sky as visible from Mount Moriyah, as the Last Shofar of Yeshua is blown at the commencement of the 7th Biblical month.

You know the exact hour?

[imardmd1]

Since you refuse to acknowledge the plain common sense of the Bible, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek (all plenary verbal inspired and inerrant); or English (uninspired and at times ambiguous) in the AV, which still is the Word of The God, as milk which poured into another container is still milk, you and I have no common ground to continue badinage, let alone serious trades of reality.

So, lacking an outlet with you that profits yourself or others, I leave you to your own devices without yielding one inch to your nonsensical responses.

Maybe you can waste someone else's time.

[imardmd1]

Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be

I'm trying to figure out how you can tell --

[Religion Moderator]

Discuss the issues all you want but do not make it personal.

[Elsie]

As long as they don’t react reciprocally.

[Elsie]

I can GUARANTEE that it WILL be between 2 and 3 AM!

[delchiante]

It isn’t my money... I am a steward of whatever He gives me..

Just a loan..
Just like the body He has given me.
The Spirit He gives me..

All out on loan.. He gives and He can take away..
He owns it all..

That money is a gift from Him..
I haven’t had to file a tax return for income tax purposes for two years. That hadn’t happened probably since I was a teen.

And I haven’t needed welfare or social safety nets or anything to pay bills or pay for food, clothing or shelter..the basic needs..

He has given me a job that pays nothing. And yet I eat, am clothed and can pay the bills I have

Amazing Grace!

He truly will supply all our needs..

And when He meets our needs, we can then think about why we all are here..
If life is about food, clothing, shelter or better food, clothing and shelter, man is just a consumer and tax payer.
Not living to love.. but just living to live.

Praise Yah my life is no longer about me, here or now.

May one day you be richer than me. It would mean you would have more love and less money..

If all you got out of this was dates, calendars, banks and trying to play gotcha, I am sorry for you..

[delchiante]

Resetto, and as that song goes in the link,does anybody really care!

[delchiante]

The Kingdom has a calendar. it has new moon days, six work days and His Sabbath.

Ezekiel 46 details it. And He is quoted there giving directions to Ezekiel!

Anything short of that is a system that will not follow scripture.. (Jews sort of use it- that is why passover can land on any days other than Friday)
If His Word is not used for our lives, then then world will certainly have a system that can be used.

That system in the past and now has been a roman run system - Julian and then the pope Gregory.

That is either very prophetic or just coincidence..

If you observed the new moon , six work days and seventh day Sabbath for a couple months, you would see how the world’s system does nothing but ignore His Word at the same time keeping a template of seven days.

On the testimony of that scripture, there are three types of days on His calendar..
The world only has two.

The world ignores New Moons.
Considering the Word details a New Moon day birth for the Savior, it makes sense the enemy would be interested in hiding and ignoring those days.

The enemy isn’t interested in New Moons, Sabbaths and Feasts.

The enemy will even have a system where you can work five days and get two off..
Or maybe four work days and three off..

The enemy’s system will appear to look like the real deal and even look like a better deal.

a father of all lies.
Lies are not Truth... it may be the world’s ‘truth’ but the beauty is His Word is Truth, and we can test and price all things..

If you can show me how the battle of Jericho didn’t violate a sabbath. I would be welcome to hear it given the world’s calendar.

It can be explained in His Word and in a book referenced in His Word.

And the answer lies in the New Moon Day. Something the world doesnt acknowledge.. and Jews tend to only pay attention a couple months put of their year..