Thursday, December 9, 2010

Conversion Story Part 3: Unity

The denomination of which I was a part has a particular love for the ideal of a unified Church.  I thought it ironic that someone thought it a good idea to found a new Christian denomination in order to contribute to the unity of the Church.  And then I kept thinking.  If the Church is already splintered into thousands of factions, then how could I best contribute to making those many factions closer to one.  Would it make sense to create a new faction, hoping that everyone else would join me?  But I can only control my own actions, and furthermore the creation of a new faction increases the disunity of the Church.  That would be the wrong direction.  However, if I were to join the largest denomination, then my joining would make that fraction of the Church larger, and therefore closer to one.  The largest Christian denomination is the Catholic Church.

I don't know when I began thinking along these lines.  I believe it was in my early teenage years, but it might have been earlier than that.  I had, as yet, no idea what the Catholic Church actually believes and teaches.  I did know that until the "reformation" all of Europe was Catholic, and that the Catholic Church was still the largest of the Christian Churches.  I also had no notion yet of the Catholic Church being the true Church, although realizing that it was the oldest, I was 90% of the way there.  This was the first time I was explicitly attracted to the Catholic Church.

2 comments:

  1. Hello, I found your blog at St. Blog's site. I think we have some things in common. I'm a convert as well and had a lot of the questions you expressed so nicely. I'm not a new mom, but after beginning conversion I sure felt like a new mom. We're expecting #7 next month. I enjoyed reading your conversion story.

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  2. I think I first started wanting to be Catholic when I saw "West Side Story" on tv. LOL But then as I grew older, I started looking for a church that reflected my heritage too. I was Presbyterian, but interested in knowing more about Christian history. Interested in reading how the rest of your story unfolds. :)

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