Chris

Mine's a conversion story. The vocation pre-dates my coming into the Church. I knew I didn't belong in ministry in Protestantism, and the arrival of my wife into my life (she's named Erin) made it clear that my vocation is to be a husband and dad (though since my conversion I have had repeated thoughts about the possibility of entering the permanent diaconate, many years down the road). Here now, from my very first blog post, is my story. My blog is http://romancatholicbychoice.com.

The title of the blog is Roman Catholic by Choice. So, my conversion story:
I was born into a family that, from both sides, was Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist Church (not really called that) is an organization with a central governing body called the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) with state sub-groups set up ( Tennessee Baptist Convention, etc.) So - it's not the independents, or the free-wills, or the primitives, or the Americans, it's Southern (An' we like it that way!) The organization is rather heavy-handed on some rather minor matters - you might remember a few years back they called on all Baptists to boycott Disney. More on how the organization played into my conversion later.

I will refer to various churches as just Baptist, because that is what the sign in front of them says. There are no American Baptist churches I'm aware of in Nashville, and so everyone calls the Southern Baptist churches "Baptist." My earliest church memories are at First Baptist Church, Goodlettsville, TN. My parents taught Sunday school - and I specifically remember my Sunday School classes in Kindergarten (my teacher also ended up being my 2nd grade school teacher.) At the age when some of the basics of theology start to gel for a kid, I realized that I should call myself a Christian. I reasoned that since I had been going to church since as long as I could remember, and I believed (at whatever level a 3rd or 4th grader can) what I was taught and all those miracles and Bible stories, I must be one. Due to disagreements of some sort (no idea of details here) we started attending First Baptist Nashville (downtown.) We attended here a few years until my grandmother passed away, and my parents decided we should attend church with my widowed grandfather, so we moved to Dalewood Baptist Church. This was a pretty strongly traditional church...no musical instrument except the holy ones (organ and piano), traditional hymns, etc. Nonetheless, I'm still a pretty traditional kind of guy. I think that Life Teen is a good thing as long as liturgical integrity is maintained, but 7/11 songs (i.e., sing the same 7 lines eleven times) just don't appeal to me. DBC was what I needed at the time - I identified with my youth pastor very closely because of similar personalities and interests. There was a close bonding there. He and I got along well, but he rubbed some youth the wrong way - mainly, just for doing his job. What I learned from him was an openness to thought and debate, which put me on a path out of the Baptist denomination.

There's another point that plays into this part of the story, though. I was attending Goodpasture Christian School , which although it claimed no affiliation, was affiliated with Madison Church of Christ. From 5th grade through 12th, I spent time every day receiving a Church of Christ indoctrination. The Church of Christ claims that every bit of their doctrine comes from the Bible. In fact - they claim that there is no Church of Christ "doctrine" because it can't be doctrine if it comes out of the Bible. One of the CoC's claims to fame is that they do not use music in worship because the Bible doesn't say anything about the early Christian Church (which they claim to be direct descendants of) using musical instruments in their worship. Apparently, in the Bible, omission excludes something. If the Bible doesn't say it, it wasn't there. I think anyone who thinks for even a moment can tear down this line of reasoning very easily (for example, Jesus doesn't say that His story of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable, but it is widely thought that it is.) Now, for the most part, Baptist and COC views are pretty close to the same, but I found a lot more of the "we're right and everyone else is wrong" attitude among these people.

As a result of this rather hostile-to-thought environment, my wits were significantly sharpened, and I developed the ability to argue (and even to play the devil's advocate just to irritate my classmates.) The COC seems to be very good at developing people with a paper-thin faith - something very superficial and easily argued into a corner. After high school it was on to college in Rome, Georgia at Berry College. Berry has a predominantly Baptist student body, with strong numbers of Methodists, Presbyterians, a few Episcopalians, Catholics, and Lutherans. The faculty and staff are very hostile toward religion in any form (except Baha'ai or Universalism, by and large.) The religion staff especially seems to have a great time tearing down the weak faiths of many of the students who attempt to discuss religion with them. I got a job with the Chaplain's Office at Berry, running sound for the weekly campus church services (which were evangelical and nondemoninational, but fairly conservative.) I also had occasion to run sound for various other functions, including the Catholic Student Association's Explanatory Mass. I found it really interesting my Freshman year, and discovered as Father Linus explained some of the rituals, that some parts of Catholicism made sense to me. I still had far to go, but it looked to me, at least, that Catholicism was not on a totally different planet (not to say I was ever Anti-Catholic; it just seemed a little overly legalistic and ritualistic to me.)

Everything was going fine in the campus church, until I found myself in love with a Catholic girl. We had been in classes together since Freshman year, but now it was February of 2000, and we had several of our School of Education classes together. As we began seeing each other outside of classes, working together to develop units and lesson plans, our relationship developed into a personal one. We began discussing differences in our faith traditions. I remember the first thing that really clicked with me was that Catholics can't tell you the specific date that their life changed and they "acceptedjesuschristintotheirheartastheirpersonallordandsavior." I ran that together because that's how people say it. You see, as a Baptist, I never had that "date" - I didn't have a single experience of salvation. My "testimony" was as boring as watching paint dry, because I hadn't ever been a bad kid, so I couldn't "turn my life around." As I said before, I had been in church since birth. I had been learning about the faith the whole time, and although I was baptized in 7th grade, that was not the beginning of my Christian life. Erin sat across the table explaining that Catholics teach that faith formation is a lifelong process that begins with the baptism of an infant and moves through logical phases. This was an 'aha' moment for me. And, it continued from there. Piece by piece, more of Catholicism made sense to me.

But, Erin made it clear that she didn't want to force me into Catholicism - and I didn't want to push her either. We visited numerous churches in the Rome area. After we graduated from college, we got married, and we did a hybrid Catholic/Protestant wedding (not a Mass, co-officiated by Fr. Linus and a Baptist pastor,) so our marriage is recognized by the Catholic Church. After our November 2001 wedding, we pretty much continued to attend Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church.

In the summer of 2002, I started reading Catholic Apologetics websites on my lunch breaks, and learned the logical answers to the common misconceptions and objections to Catholic teachings. After the summer camp that is a part of the organization that employs me was over, we went to Navarre Beach, FL, for a few days of R&R, and it was there that I saw EWTN for the first time - the local cable system carried it. In addition, shortly thereafter, Erin started having an adverse reaction to her birth control pills, and I started looking into alternatives. Since our marriage was conducted by Fr. Linus, it was blessed by the Church - I had already heard of Natural Family Planning, but had written it off as legalistic nonsense, due to a weak explanation at Pre-Cana. Well, call me selfish, but I didn't want my wife having weird reactions to drugs, especially in the reproductive area, so I looked into NFP. Found Couple to Couple League, ordered the CCL home study kit, and we threw out the last pack of pills.

As you can tell, I had decided that I did indeed want to join the Church. Each time I learned more, I realized that many of my beliefs are matched or closely matched Church teachings, so it seemed to only make sense for me to join the Catholic Church. I joined RCIA and 9 months later, was received into the Catholic Church, April of 2003. My life has been packed with unexpected blessings since my decision to start RCIA. When I started in the fall of 2002, we were living in a duplex. In January 2003, we began searching for a house, and found a beautiful home not far from the duplex. We put a contract on it at the point when interest rates just happened to hit their lowest level in about 50 years, and we wound up with a house payment 17 cents higher than our rent payment! Various other blessings have come to us, and I take them as an affirmation that I am in the right place right now. I know that there will be difficult times as well, but I have developed a core of friends, especially my wife, that keep me strong in the faith. My wife was a great influence toward my decision to join the Church, but she was simply a tool of the Holy Spirit toward that eventual end. Church teaching, apologetics, and conversion stories of particular individuals, such as Scott Hahn have all been great influences. Of late, I have been listening to EWTN via the web a great deal, and you'll get some of my impressions from that listening on this blog.