Why I am Catholic

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would become a practicing Catholic. And never did I imagine it would cause such a ruckus. I mean, if somebody came up to me and said, "I'm joining the Lutheran Church," I'd probably just smile and say, "Good for you!" But joining the Catholic Church garners a whole list of negative remarks.

I was baptized Catholic but never given any Catholic education whatsoever. My parents quit going even before I was born and just had me baptized to keep up appearances with my very Catholic grandmother. We went to Mass sometimes on Easter, and we went to Mass for a few months when we had a foreign exchange student from Ecuador, because she was Catholic and my mom didn't want her to think we were pagans. But I just sat in the pew (or crawled around underneath them) and wondered. When I was heading off to two weeks of Girl Scout camp at the age of 11, my mother was reading over the packet and learned there would be religious services. She told me to go to the Catholic one and to go ahead and receive Communion. That's all the preparation that I had -- hardly appropriate for a First Communion.

So basically, I was raised atheist. I think other Catholic parents who fail to give their children the instruction they promised to give them at the baptism should keep this in mind. No education = atheist kids.

In high school, a bunch of my friends became evagelicals. I was intrigued and I went to their Bible studies, but it didn't add up for me. Nothing stirred in my soul. It just seemed like a ridiculous amount of effort for a fairy tale.

In college, out of loneliness because I was in a place where I didn't fit in at ALL, I went to a Bible study that was advertised on photocopied posters stuck up around campus. I walked in wearing torn jeans and sloppy t-shirt and moccasins that I had made myself because, well, that's what I wore every day. The room was filled with girls in dresses and boys in button-down shirts and ties. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and the students were rude and stand-offish to me. I remember in particular one girl looking derisively at my clothing. She said something, too, but I can't remember what it is. It doesn't matter. However, to make matters worse, the text for the day was one that I had had a lot of trouble with in the high school Bible study. So I had a well-crafted argument ready, and I let them have it.

I never went back.

Like most college students and young adults who have no moral compass, I lived a pretty hedonistic lifestyle after that. I struggled with all my relationships -- friendships, roommates, employers, peers, romances -- because of what my family was like. I was too dumb to figure out that most other people don't operate with the levels of hostility and dishonesty that I grew up with.

I hit rock bottom when I was 24 years old. Out of work, about to become homeless, virtually friendless and desperately short on cash. I remember crying out, "Oh, God!" and listing off all my troubles. I didn't think of it as a prayer, because I didn't believe in God, let alone praying.

In a panic, I called somebody I hardly knew, but had hit it off with the handful of times we met. I knew I had just enough money to get to her town on a Greyhound bus with a little to spare, and begged her to take me in until I could earn enough money waiting tables or bartending to go on my way. For some very strange reason, she agreed. Two days later, she picked me up at the bus station.

What I didn't know about this woman was that she was a Christian. She called on her friends to pray because she knew I was trouble.

Two weeks after I arrived, I had a good job -- in my field, not waiting tables. I had money in my pocket from a freelance job. I had a home and new friends. And suddenly I remembered the prayer that was't a prayer, and I felt deep down in my soul the presence of God saying to me, "I heard you, and I answered you."

Now, I knew a little about religion because I'd been trying to get a minor in it in college, just because I found it interesting (I was one class short at graduation). I knew about Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and Christianity and a few other prominent religions. And what I knew at this point, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the God that had come to me and rescued me was the God of Christianity. In all other religions, it's about us trying to get to God. But in Christianity, God comes to us.

So I was a Christian now, but I had to decide what kind of Christian. I looked around a little and I think I might have even called a Catholic priest, but the conversation was obviously forgettable. Anyway, it was easier to go to the Assemblies of God church with my roommate.

That's what I did. I got baptized again because they told me my first baptism didn't count, and I agreed with them. I read the Bible again, but this time all the way through. I learned a ton. I also went to an ecumenical Bible study program called Bible Study Fellowship and learned a ton more. I taught Sunday School. I volunteered with the youth group. Evetually, I became a part-time secretary in the office. I also met and married my husband at this church.

But then something went horribly wrong. The A/G was infiltrated by a terrible thing called the Brownsville Revival. Now, I know that some people think the Brownsville Revival was just peachy. But Christ said to judge things by their fruit, and that's what my husband and I did. We saw broken marriages, children neglected, teens experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex. We saw various ministry programs falling apart because nobody was interested in giving any more -- only getting. Donations to the church dropped. Volunteering numbers hit an all-time low. Visitors would come on Sunday and then run for the door once things started getting nutty.

Worst of all, when my husband and I sat down with the senior pastor with open Bibles to share our concern, he told us, "Close your Bibles. The spirit is doing a new thing."

If you know A/G at all, you know it's a Sola Scriptura church. So how is closing the Bible a good thing? What "spirit" was at work here?

My husband and I struggled. I quit my job. We quit our voluteering roles in the church. In time, we left. And it was horrible. Like a divorce. We lost friends over it. People refused to talk to us. We found out later that the church leadership had decided to lie to the youth group and tell them we had moved away.

For the next six years, we floundered. We attended an Eastern Orthodox church for a while, which I loved but my husband found too difficult to take. Then we started going to a little church where everybody in the congregation was an escapee from one denomination or another. The pastor and his wife were nice, and we learned the liturgy there, but it was never quite right.

Eventually, my husband admitted to me that he thought God wanted us to become Catholic. I thought he was nuts. I mean, anything but Catholic was acceptable. Catholics weren't really Christian at all, were they?

At that point, however, my husband was the godliest man I knew. I decided that as long as we were both committed to finding out the truth, it would be okay to take a class in Catholicism.

What an eye-opener! I learned that I had been lied to about Catholicism by the A/G and by others. I learned that Catholicism is actually biblical and holy and Christ-centered. And so we became Catholic.

I still think it was the right decision. In a lot of ways, my faith has grown. When it comes to sin, I've seen victory over some habitual sins that never went away when I was an evangelical. If you judge things by their fruit, the way Jesus told us to, then Catholicism is definitely the right thing for us.