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]

Many of the nonCatholics posting refuse to disclose their affiliation while they attack Catholics, which is hypocrisy.

An erroneous accusation...and a leap in logic.

[CynicalBear]

>>First, any divine command that comes later modifies divine commands that came earlier.<<

What an interesting and revealing comment. It tells us that either the Catholic Church does not consider the scriptures divinely inspired or that the Holy Spirit is not divine. The apostles admonition to not eat blood was given after Jesus ascension. If the Catholic Church considered all of scripture divinely inspired it would mean the Holy Spirit directed the apostles to still command not to eat blood after Jesus comments recorded in Mark 7. Thus by their own standards the directive by the Holy Spirit in Acts 15:20 supersedes Jesus comments recorded in Mark 7.

So which do you think it is Heart-Rest? Is all of scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit or is the Holy Spirit not divine?

>>Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink" (Col 2:17, 16).<<

Now here we have some interesting double speak by Catholics. Using Col 2 in an attempt to justify eating blood but overlooking other portions. As an example let's look at verse 16 which you referenced.

Colossians 2:16 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:

Yet Catholics would insist that Sunday is a Sabbath day and require it's observance as they do for other "holy days" that they have determined.

So which is it Heart-Rest? Why take only parts of verses or passages to apply and not other parts?

>>One concerned abstaining from idol meat, yet later Paul says eating idol meat is okay so long as it doesn't scandalize others (Rom 14:1-14, 1 Cor 8:1-13).<<

Romans 14 is talking about whether to eat meat at all or restrict ones diet to vegetables. Nothing changing any admonition to not eat blood.

1 Corinthians 8 gives the Catholics a conundrum. It says that by eating meat sacrificed to idols or any meat for that matter causes the weak to stumble and is therefore a sin against Christ.

1 Corinthians 8:12 But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.

So which is it Heart-Rest? Do you eat meat sacrificed to idols and cause someone to stumble thus sinning against Christ?

>>but there is one Person whose life you must have in you, "Christ who is your life" (Col 3:4).<<

So now you want to use that verse to claim that by eating His flesh is how we get Christ into us? Yet in your above use of Mark 7:18 you showed that "what goes into the stomach is eliminated".

So which is it Heart-Rest? Do you get Christ into you by eating His real flesh or is it simply eliminated?

Your cut and paste claims the Jehovah's Witnesses have problems with other portions of scripture but the Catholics have them beat by a mile in that regard. The double speak is palpable. On the one hand Catholics say you can eat anything but on the other hand had long held that eating meat on Friday was anathema. On the one hand they say that Sunday Sabbath is mandatory yet use portions of a verse that says that is not so to support eating blood. On the one hand they claim that eating Jesus flesh is how they get Jesus into them yet on the other hand claim that what a person eats simply is eliminated.

So which is it Heart-Rest?

[af_vet_1981]

An erroneous accusation...and a leap in logic

True and demonstrable

[BipolarBob]

Not all Sabbatarians are Adventists. The Jews were Sabbatarians (including Jesus). Throwing the baby out with the dishwater? But make your assumptions as you will. I am a former Adventist if you were referring to me.

[BipolarBob]

Colossians 2:16 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:

My question to NYer, before she excommunicated me, was did she know the difference between the ordinances/ceremonial laws and Gods Law (The Ten Commandments)? So Heart-Rest do you know the difference?

[af_vet_1981]

Not all Sabbatarians are Adventists. The Jews were Sabbatarians (including Jesus). Throwing the baby out with the dishwater? But make your assumptions as you will. I am a former Adventist if you were referring to me.

1. The Jews are not Protestant Sabbatarians.
2. I, from a Protestant apologetics site, listed Sabbatarianism and Adventism as two examples of many cults descended from Protestantism.
3. Why would someone leave Adventism, and for what alternative ?

[Resettozero]

Throwing the baby out with the dishwater?

Gotcha! Washing the infant with the dishes again!

[BipolarBob]

1. The Jews are not Protestant Sabbatarians.

I do not see anywhere in my post that I stated that.

3. Why would someone leave Adventism, and for what alternative?

To, as closely as possible, follow Jesus example. His followers were Jewish Christians not Catholics or any other denomination. Biblically speaking, that appears what we should be doing. YMMV

[af_vet_1981]

Although the author’s religious background is evident, and even though he has experience several changes in his life direction, I found no evidence he has experienced the kind of second birth that Jesus said is a requirement and that he is now a believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. His story is sappy and lacks both conviction and persuasion.

This comment is Exhibit A. This, of course, is a textbook response in certain denominations, sects, and cults to those who seek to leave their cages for matters of conscience. Coming from a tradition of protest and rebellion the hypocrisy in it is evident. It is cognitive dissonance used to defend the OSAS doctrine of those "of Calvin."

[verga]

You asked a question and were given a very specific answer to that question. Instead of addressing the answer you went off on a completely unrelated tangent TWICE. Thank you for proving that it is impossible to have an intelligent discussion with any member of the prot posse. I apologize for violating my own rule and giving you a springboard to rant or have a hissy fit. I will now go back to ignoring you.

[af_vet_1981]

To, as closely as possible, follow Jesus example. His followers were Jewish Christians not Catholics or any other denomination. Biblically speaking, that appears what we should be doing. YMMV

Shall we pick a new name for this movement. Why not "Yet Another Restorationist Cult for Dissatisfied Gentile Protesters Who want to Pretend They are Jews Because They Cannot Find or Abide an Authentic New Testament Church ?" We would have to run it by the lawyers though to make sure it is not claimed and all the love offerings we need to buy our properties are tax deductible. Otherwise those in orbit will probably not give money.

[Resettozero]

Some FR RF posters who are railing against Protestant denomations while defending erroneous RCC indoctrination, are in fact, kicking against the goads, as Lord Jesus Christ might say.

[BlueDragon]

Oh, SHUT UP already.

[Resettozero]

....denomominimations...

[verga]

?Many of the nonCatholics posting refuse to disclose their affiliation while they attack Catholics, which is hypocrisy.

This is one of the truest statements ever made on FR.

Personally I think it because they "home church" and are about one good rant away from being the next Westboro Baptist cult church.

And lets face it the only reason to "home Church" is so you can be your own pope.

[af_vet_1981]

I do not see anywhere in my post that I stated that.

Your post was a response to my example of Protestant derived cults. You apparently sought to defend Sabbatarianism by using Jews as a counter example, which I rejected because Jews that are not yet in the New Covenant remain under the law of Moses until such time they are included. They are a special case.

[BipolarBob]

Shall we pick a new name for this movement.

No, let's not. I have a recurring theme in my posts which seem to elude you. Follow the Bible. I know you are used to following the priests and Popes but IF you've read the Bible, you'd know the answer already.

[verga]

I believe that the truth has struck a nerve.

[Elsie]

First, any divine command that comes later modifies divine commands that came earlier.

Quite Mormon like!