A lot of you don't know this but for the past year or so I've been researching Catholicism. My boyfriend, when I started dating him was an atheist. Not long into our relationship he became a Christian. At first I was worried that it was only to please me but its been a very long time now, nearly two years and sometimes he's even more devote than myself. I was baptized at eight.
At first he was merely Christian. Denominations meant little to him. He went to church with me but he also learned from his parents who are Catholic, and after a while decided to rejoin the Catholic church, which he had left for atheism around high school.
And so we began to discuss the differences between our two doctrines. We argued in long discussions.
I remember in one instance we were arguing about infant baptism. We both argued that the early Christians practiced our own doctrine and the only way of ending this debate was to actually read up on early christian writings. So I borrowed a book from my youth minister. It was a text book from one of his Bible classes at Harding University. It had excerpts from Christian writings organized to deal with all sorts of issues. One chapter in particular concerned baptism. However, even though I got this book from a fellow Protestant, the writings themselves seemed to be advocating child baptism-- even the very earliest writings. We set up a meeting with a Bible teacher from Harding Graduate School. He wasn't able to assuage my doubts, but he did say that to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism you have to choose what voices you will listen to; The Bible and the general history and traditions of the Church, or ONLY the Bible. And this was a revelation for me. I realized I didn't know enough about the history and traditions of the Church to even judge the worth of them. Also for that matter, the Bible itself is a recording of the history and traditions of the Jewish People, so the argument for following the history and traditions of the Church, the
fulfillment of God's people, had some chance of holding water.
So I signed up for an
RCIA class at a Catholic church. (basically we go through the Catechism, the book of Catholic doctrine) I wanted to hear what the Catholics believed from the Catholics, not from any outsiders who might be prejudiced or misinformed. I talked to priests and lay people (regular Catholic Christians)
I severely
harassed my
RCIA teacher with every little argument against Catholicism that I could find. I was abrasive that I think I am not very popular with my fellow classmates and my teacher seems to dread my comments. It was all in the name of searching for the truth.
I talked to my youth minister, and other Church leaders about various things I had questions about and my mom even put me in touch with one of her friends who converted from Catholicism so I could hear her side of the story.
Having gone to a private Christian school I thought I should be educated enough to shoot the Catholic arguments down but all my education gave me was a bunch of superstitions and sick jokes about the Catholic church. I can remember laughing at the Catholic church in Mrs.
Efaw's Humanities class. But I only had half the story. For every corrupt Pope and Bishop, do you really think their weren't a million other sincere Christians? If you read up on the Catholic saints its like reading Jesus Freaks from across all of church history. They have accounts of Japanese Martyrs in 597 AD !
Yes there are corrupt people here and there, Protestants get their share of them even today (Mary
Winkler case anyone?) but that doesn't mean that the whole church was corrupt or had bad doctrine, only that
hypocrite misused that doctrine.
And all of this was to say that I have decided to join the Catholic church. I have no more argument against it and to deny what I believe is the truth would be to become a hypocrite worse than any child molesting priest, because even they in their sick way have
morally excused themselves.
I, however, have no excuse. This is what I believe and I must act on it.
I know many of you have problems with the Catholic Church and understand and respect that. It wasn't too long ago that I felt exactly the same but I looked into this for a long time and thought long and hard about it. Please trust me that I have made my decision.
If any of you want to talk about the differences between Catholicism and various Protestant doctrines I'm open to it but please be gentle and remember that I am new at this.
Remember the first time you became a Christian? And you were scared and nervous about how to talk to people about God? And you didn't know all the neat little quick answers to give, in part because you hadn't received a that full encompassing education Harding gave us yet or you were simply scared
shitless? That's me right now. Only when I first became a Christian nobody fired questions at me. But understand that, just as I terrorized my
RCIA teacher to get the truth, you may feel compelled to question me. I understand, I accept, and I will do my best. I only ask you to forgive me when I fall.
Also, please nobody mention this outside of this blog. I haven't told my parents yet, and when I do I want it to be in person, not through some second hand source on
Facebook. I go home Ester weekend to tell them. After I've told them I am going to post that I've become a Catholic on my
Facebook status. Then you will know you can talk about it to whomever freely. But for now, lets just keep it on the blog circle.
I also want to thank Dema who has been an amazing friend through this. Because she is so unbiased I have been able to explain my thinking process to her and she has been able to tell me if I, throughout this process, have been biased in anyway towards either side.
