Conversion Story Part 5: History Lesson

After I went off to college (almost a thousand miles away from my parents) I joined a local church choir.  This made sense, because I was studying music.  This went along swimmingly for a while, and then the choir director quit/was fired/I'm not exactly clear what happened but it seemed a little wonky.  I became friendly with the next choir director, who was a graduate student at the same university I was attending, but I didn't really like the way he ran things; he never practiced music more than a week in advance.  I felt that this was limiting what the choir could sing.  His response was that he picked the music after his weekly meeting with the pastor, at which she told him what the sermon would be about, and added that the sermon was the most important thing that happened at church on Sunday.  I vehemently disagreed with that, but didn't have a ready response as to what I thought was most important.  That got me thinking, "What is the most important thing?"

This second choir director didn't last long, and was fired for reasons even wonkier than the first, and I ended up thoroughly disgusted with the whole situation.  I started traveling a somewhat longer distance to a church where one of my professors was the music director.  He taught a Sunday School class on the history of the Church, going all the way back to the early Fathers.  Despite being a Calvinist, he painted a pretty clear picture.  It all made sense to me until we got to Luther, who seemed to me to be on the wrong side of his argument.  Probably the most important thing I took away from that class was a single statement:  "The writings of St. Thomas Aquinas are a good summary of what the Catholic Church still believes."

Sometime during this time I started wondering what exactly it means to be Catholic.  I discovered the Catholic encyclopedia at NewAdvent.org, and attempted to gain a picture of Catholicism by reading a whole lot of articles there.  Needless to say, it was a doomed attempt, and I got nowhere.

7Quick Takes (vol. 7)

I've been writing a series of posts about the story of my conversion to Catholicism.  They are written in bite size chunks, partly because that was the way it happened -- a little at a time --and partly because I have a short attention span.  If you are interested, you can read the beginning of the story here.

Because I'm in conversion mode, here are 7 reasons the Catholic Church is attractive:

1.  The Catholic Church is the only church which upholds the Gospel teaching on divorce and remarraige.  How can anyone claim to teach the Gospel faith who does not uphold something Christ made so abundantly clear?

2.  The Communion of the Saints.  Who wouldn't want all the holy men and women who have gone before us and who now stand before the throne of God to pray for them?

3.  The Catholic Church is not afraid of having things involved in prayer (pictures, rosaries, statues, chaplets, crucifixes) which is a great help to someone with a wandering mind (and a wiggling infant).

4.  In a similar vein:  Catholic churches are decorated with many things to look at, all of which are designed to draw the mind and heart to God.  I cannot imagine trying to entertain an infant in a whitewashed box.  My baby loves the statues.

5.  History makes it pretty clear that the Catholic Church is the only one which dates from the time of Christ.  All other Christian denominations point to a founder.  The Catholic Church points only to Christ and his Apostles.

6.  Confession.  We're all sinners.  Having a representative of Christ with the authority to forgive sins with the certainty of a Sacrament is pretty awesome.

7.  Diversity.  There is a place for everyone within the Catholic Church.  There are devotions, saints, and manuals of prayer to suit every type of personality and every level of education.  

7 Quick Takes hosted at Conversion Diary

Conversion Story Part 4: High school

In high school, all of my religious questions were shelved.  I was uncertain of my faith, uncertain of God, and enamored of science.  I had friends who were Catholic and I remember them talking about Confirmation classes, and Lent and fasting before Holy Communion.  I became peripherally aware of various Catholic practices.

Sometime around my high school graduation my mother introduced me to two different series of novels by Fr. Andrew Greeley.  Let me be very clear:  I do not recommend these.  Fr. Greeley has an agenda.  He's right about a great many things, and wrong about a few, and his novels have the potential to give scandal.  I saw this agenda and said, "Hello agenda.  I do not agree with you, agenda.  Goodbye, agenda," and went on my merry way.  So why do I mention these novels which I do not recommend?  They were, for me, a first glimpse into the Catholic world.  These novels were the first edges of the beginning of an answer to the question, "What does it mean to be Catholic?"

Small Successes (Vol. 3)

1.  I am within about a half-hour's work of finishing all the Christmas ornaments I am making for Christmas gifts this year.  I should be able to finish them today.

2.  Baby and I made it through Mass yesterday without deciding that the back of a more than usually crowded church was a the perfect place for blowing raspberries.  When she gets started on the raspberries, there's very little I can do to stop it.  For someone who skipped her morning nap and then stayed awake all the way through Mass, she was astonishingly good and didn't fuss at all.

3.  Umm...  Well, my kitchen is a mess and the laundry is overflowing... but I made cookies!

Now to go take care of that kitchen and laundry.

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.

Conversion Story Part 2: Communion

Communion was also an issue to me as a child.  It was the custom of the church I attended that unbaptized children did not generally receive communion, except on Christmas.  It was clear to me that there was an issue of worthiness; the unbaptized had not been made worthy to partake of something so holy (the exception on Christmas makes no sense, but it actually served to heighten my perception).

The church I attended also always used the Gospel narrative of the last supper at the communion service, so I heard, often, the words of Jesus, "This is my Body.  This is my Blood."  While my family, and the church we attended, did not teach the doctrine Real Presence, I believed.  When God said, "Let there be light," there was light.  When God said, "Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed after its kind upon the earth," it was so.  Why, when God says of bread, "This is my Body," should that not be so at His word also?

Please Pray

For little Rose.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us.