How can you become Catholic? You know the Scriptures, you have the baptism
of the Holy Spirit! How can you be taken in by mistruth and dead works? Don't
you know that Catholics worship idols and put Mary on the same level as Christ?
These and many other questions were put to me when I became Catholic. I say
became Catholic rather than converted because my way of thinking was Catholic
long before I was in full communion with Christ's Holy Church. You see, each
conversion is its own odyssey. A voyage of the mind as well as the heart.
Remember that the heart can not adore what the mind cannot comprehend.
My personal odyssey began very early as I remember. I was about twelve or
thirteen years old, when in a very simple and direct way, God revealed His
will for me. I was sitting on a hillside by my home when I heard the voice
of my grandfather, "Boy! You need to be in church!" Very simple and very
very direct. I believe that God was already opening my mind to the concept
of the saints and how they help us. Because my grandfather died years before
I was born, I never knew him but there was no mistaking it was his voice
I heard that day. Well, granddad was not a Catholic and it would be many
years before I would find my spiritual home. He was a Methodist and a deacon
at that. The only person in my family still attending church was my aunt
who was also a Methodist. So it was the Methodist church I went to.
It was not long after I started going that they had a revival where the minister
explained that if you wanted to go to heaven you had to come forward and
accept Jesus as your redeemer. Jesus died on the cross and only through him
could my sins be forgiven. Well, this all sounded very good and right to
me. So I went up the altar rail and was lead in the sinners prayer. Now I
was Christian. I soon learned that Christians went to church, read the bible
and loved their neighbor but somehow I knew there must be more to it all
than this. Later that year I was baptized and began to read the history of
my church. I found out that John Wesley was its founder and he had been an
Anglican priest. I also learned of his devotion to the Eucharist which he
believed was truly the body and blood of our Lord. Again, looking back, I
see the hand of God preparing me to accept the truth of His Church.
It was when I was sixteen that it donned on me that if you really believed
the Bible, you had to visit the sick and the imprisoned and help the poor.
Since I did not have any money of my own, I decided that I would go to the
hospitals and pray with the sick. After doing this for awhile I became friends
with our county Sheriff. I asked him if I might visit the jail and
talk with the inmates, he agreed and I became the chaplain of Tucker County
jail (West Virginia) and a member of the county ministerial society. It was
through this society that doors were opened to me to preach at different
churches throughout the city and neighboring counties.
As I remember, my sermons were simple. Believe in Jesus and you could be
saved. I like Paul, Preached Jesus and Him crucified, not because this was
all I resolved to know, but because that was really all I did know. I think
that God was all the time setting down the foundations for the simplicity
of the Franciscan vocation that I would later embrace. In the summer of my
18th year, I was assigned to the Tyrand parish where I was to pastor three
small country churches in the tradition of the circuit rider. What followed
was that I entered college during this time.
It was during my first days of college life that I met with a temptation
that I was very much unprepared for. I met a young lady and we began to see
one another and shortly moved in together. I left college and the church.
I went to work and later into the service. Shortly after joining the military
the woman left me. No woman, no church and mad as hell. After all my faith,
why had things not turned out right? Over the next several years I would
try many different churches and a few non-Christian religions. I came very
close to losing the faith that I believed was the only real thing that made
any difference in my salvation. I got into the idea that one religion was
just as good as another as long as it was a religion of light, as I believed
light to be.
This is
where my head was at when I decided to settle down in the non-denominational
church and go back to college, this time a Bible college. What I didn't realize
then was that God's hand was again working in my life. It was in this college
that I began to realize that for truth to be truth it must be objective.
In this college
the teachers and students relied very heavily on the leading of the Holy
Spirit. The only problem I had is that the Holy Spirit would have had to
have been confused because one instructor would teach something as true and
another would teach that it was true but didn't apply to everyone.
This sounded very good to me just as it had years ago when this type of thinking
lead me very close to a faithless life. I remember that we a had a former
priest come in one day and teach us about sacramental Grace. It was at that
time I began to examine the teachings of the Catholic Church. Oh, by the
way, the former priest was never invited back. They thought that sacramental
Grace was to confusing to the students. But thats another story.....
As I said, I began to look
at the teaching of the Catholic Church. Why I did not look into it
before I can only say that God took that time to prepare my heart. I say
that because earlier in life I was so much of a do it my way person. I don't
think I could have accepted the authority of God as exercised through His
bishops in union with the Pope. Nor that there are truths that are binding
on all Christians , or for faith to be saving, it must be lived in works.
So, why Catholic? Because
that is where God has taken me in order to be more fully united to Him. Because
there is unity, because there is objective truth, and most of all, there
is a living Christ that is made physically present for all of us. A Christ
that is asking each of us to participate in the life of Himself and the father
through the Holy Spirit.
May God Bless You
Yours in Jesus and Mary