What Is Truth?
a former Protestant minister. Like many others, I traveled the roads that lead to Rome by the route known as Protestantism. I never imagined that one day I would convert to Catholicism. By temperament and training I am more a pastor than a scholar, so the story of my conversion to the Catholic Church may lack the technical details in which some theologians move about and some readers delight. But I hope I can adequately explain why I did what I did, and why I believe with all my heart that all Protestants ought to do the same.
I will not dwell on the details of my early years, except to say that I grew up in a typical Protestant family, with good parents who gave me plenty of love. I went through most of the experiences that were part of childhood and adolescence for an American of my generation. I was taught to love Jesus and to go to church on Sundays.
I also managed to stumble into the foolish mistakes so many others of my generation were making. But after a season of youthful rebellion, when I was twenty I experienced a radical conversion to Jesus Christ. I turned away from the pleasures of the world and got serious about prayer and Bible study. As a young adult I made a real commitment to Christ, accepting him as my Lord and Savior and praying that he would help me fulfill the mission in life he had for me. The more I sought, through prayer and study, to follow Jesus and submit my life to his will, the more I felt a burning desire to devote my entire life to serving him.
Gradually, the way the first rays of dawn appear on a dark horizon, the conviction began to grow in me that the Lord was calling me to be a minister. This conviction grew ever stronger while I was in college, and later during my work as an engineer. I could not ignore the Lord’s call for long; I was convinced that the Lord wanted me to become a minister. I left my job and entered Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in a suburb of Boston. I earned my degree in divinity, and shortly afterward I was ordained a Protestant minister. My six-year-old son, Jon Marc, had recently memorized the Boy Scout pledge: “I promise to do my best to serve God and my fellow man.” That earnest childhood vow sums up quite well my own reasons for leaving my engineering career so that I could serve the Lord with total dedication in ministry alone.
I took my new pastoral duties very seriously and wanted to carry them out rightly and faithfully, so that at the end of my life, when I stood face to face with God, I might hear him say those all-important words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” As I settled into the rather comfortable new life of a Protestant minister, I felt pleased with myself and with God. I finally felt I had arrived! But I had not arrived! Very soon I found myself facing a host of confusing questions of theology and administration. I wrestled with exegetical dilemmas over how to interpret a difficult Bible passage correctly, and with liturgical decisions that could easily divide the congregation. My seminary studies had not adequately prepared me to answer such a wide range of questions.
All I wanted was to be a good pastor, but I could not find consistent answers to my questions—not from my fellow pastors and friends, not in the “how-to” books on my shelf, and not from the leaders of my Presbyterian denomination. The impression I got was that each pastor was expected to hold his own opinion on these matters. This “reinvent the wheel as often as you need to” mentality, which lies at the heart of Protestantism’s pastoral character, troubled me deeply. Why should I have to reinvent the wheel? I asked myself in frustration. What about the ministers of centuries past who had faced these same dilemmas? What did they do?
Protestantism’s emancipation from Rome’s laws and precepts, “man-made rules that had shackled Christians for centuries” (this, of course, is how we were taught in seminary to view the triumph of the Reformation over Romanism), was beginning to look more like anarchy than genuine freedom. I never got the answers I needed, even though I prayed constantly for direction. I felt I had exhausted my resources and did not know where to turn. Ironically, that sense of frustration, of being without answers, was providential. It prepared me to be open to the answers offered by the Catholic Church.
I am sure that if I had felt I had all the answers, I would not have been willing or inclined to investigate things at a deeper level.
A Breach in My Defenses
In ancient times, cities were built on hilltops and surrounded by thick walls that protected the inhabitants from invaders. When an invading army surrounded a city, as Nebuchadnezzar’s army surrounded Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1-7), the inhabitants were safe so long as they had food and water, and so long as the walls could withstand the violent battering of catapults and the picks of sappers. But if a breach was opened in the wall, the city was lost. My openness to considering the positions of the Catholic Church began as the result of a breach in the wall of Protestant Reformation theology that surrounded my soul. For nearly forty years I had labored to build that wall stone by stone, to protect my Protestant convictions. The stones were made of my personal experiences, my seminary education, my relationships with other Protestants, and my successes and failures in ministry. The mortar that cemented the stones in place was my Protestant faith and philosophy. My wall was high and thick, and I thought it impenetrable to any invading force. But when the mortar began to crumble and the stones began to shift and slip—imperceptibly at first, then with alarming speed—I began to worry.
I tried hard to discern the reason for my growing lack of confidence in Protestant doctrines. I was not sure whether I was looking to replace my Calvinist beliefs, but I knew my theology was not invincible. I read more books and consulted theologians in an effort to patch the wall, but I made no progress. I often reflected on Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” That exhortation haunted me and consoled me at the same time, as I wrestled with the doctrinal confusion and procedural chaos of Protestantism. The Reformers championed the idea of the individual’s private interpretation of the Bible, a position I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable with in light of Proverbs 3:5-6. Bible-believing Protestants say they follow this passage’s teaching by seeking God’s guidance.
The problem is that there are thousands of doctrinal paths down which Protestants feel the Lord is teaching them to travel. And those doctrines vary widely from denomination to denomination. I wrestled with questions like: How can I know God’s will for my life and for the people of my congregation? How can I be sure I am preaching what is right? How do I know what the truth is? In light of the doctrinal mutilation that exists within Protestantism, where each denomination marks out doctrine for itself based on the interpretation of the man who founded it, the criterion Protestants boast of—“I believe only what the Bible says”—was beginning to ring hollow. I had vowed to look to the Bible alone in my search for truth, but the Reformed doctrines I had inherited from John Calvin, John Knox, and the Puritans clashed at many points with those held by my Lutheran, Baptist, and Anglican friends. In the Gospel, Jesus explains what it means to be a true disciple (Matthew 19:16-23). It is more than reading the Bible, or having your name on a church membership roll, or attending Sunday services regularly, or even saying a simple prayer to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.
These things, good as they are, do not by themselves make us true disciples of Jesus. Being a disciple of Jesus means making a radical commitment to love and obey the Lord in every word and every attitude, and striving to radiate his love to others. Jesus says the true disciple is willing to give up everything, even his own life if necessary, to serve the Lord. I was deeply convinced of this, and while I tried to practice it in my own life (not always successfully), I also did all I could to convince my congregation that this call to discipleship is not optional; it is something every Christian must strive for. The irony was that my Protestant theology left me powerless to call them to radical discipleship, and left them powerless to hear that call and follow it. One might ask: If all that is required to be saved is to confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9), why should I change? Yes, of course I should turn from my sinful ways. I should strive to please God. But if I don’t, does it really matter? After all, my salvation is assured.
There is a story about a reporter in New York City who wanted to write an article about what people believed was the most incredible discovery of the twentieth century. He took to the streets, interviewing people at random, and got a variety of answers: the airplane, the telephone, the automobile, the computer, nuclear power, space travel, antibiotics. The answers went on along those lines until one man gave an unexpected reply: “That’s obvious. The most incredible invention is the thermos.” The thermos? the reporter asked, raising his eyebrows. “Sure. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold—how does it know?”
That anecdote holds a meaning for me. Since it was my duty and my desire to teach the truth of Christ to my congregation, my growing worry was: how could I know what was truth and what was not? Every Sunday I stood in my pulpit and interpreted Scripture for my flock, knowing that within a fifteen-mile radius of my church there were dozens of Protestant pastors who all believed that the Bible alone is the sole authority for doctrine and practice—yet each one was teaching something different from what I was teaching. Is my interpretation of Scripture the right one or not? I asked myself. Maybe one of those other pastors is right, and I am misleading these people who trust me. There was also the stomach-churning certainty that one day I would die and stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Judge, and answer not only for my own actions but also for how I had led the people he had given me to shepherd. Am I preaching truth or error? I asked the Lord again and again. “I believe I’m right—but how can I be sure?” This dilemma haunted me.
I began to question every aspect of my ministry, my theology, and the Reformation itself, from the most trivial matters to the most important. I now look back with a certain embarrassed humor at how hard I struggled in those days of trial and uncertainty. I even reached the point of wrestling with whether or not I should wear a clerical collar. Since there is no required form of dress for Presbyterian ministers, some wear clerical collars, others suits, others robes, and others a combination of all of the above. A minister friend of mine kept a clerical collar in the glove compartment of his car, just to wear in case it might at some point bring him an advantage, such as getting out of a speeding ticket. When he told me this, with a conspiratorial grin, I decided not to wear a clerical collar. At the Sunday service I wore a simple black robe over my suit. As for the form and content of the Sunday liturgy, each church has its own views on how things ought to be done, and each pastor is free, within limits, to do as he pleases. With no binding denominational guidelines to direct me, I did what other pastors were doing: I improvised. Hymns, sermons, Scripture selections, congregational participation, and the administration of baptisms, weddings, and the Lord’s Supper were an open field for experimentation.
I shudder at the memory of one particular Sunday when, in an effort to make the youth service more interesting and relevant, I said the words of the Lord over a pitcher of soda and a plate of potato chips: “This is my Body; this is my Blood. Do this in remembrance of me.”
It was the theological questions that vexed me most. I remember standing beside a hospital bed where a man lay close to death after a heart attack. His anxious wife asked me, “Is my husband going to heaven?” I hesitated a few moments before giving her my suitably Presbyterian answer, as I considered the wide range of answers I might have given depending on what one was—Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Nazarene, Christian Science, Foursquare Gospel, Jehovah’s Witness, and so on. All I could manage was to murmur a pious but vague sort of answer: “We must trust the Lord with your husband’s salvation.”
This man had given his life to Christ, had been regenerated, and was confident he was one of God’s elect—but was he really? I was deeply troubled, knowing that no matter how honestly he had believed himself predestined for heaven (interestingly, all who preach the doctrine of predestination firmly believe that they themselves are among the elect), and no matter how sincerely those around him believed it, he might not have gone to heaven. What if he had secretly strayed, fallen into sin, and been living in a state of rebellion against God at the moment the heart attack caught him by surprise?
Reformation theology told me that if that were the case, then the poor man had been deceived by a false assurance, thinking he had been regenerated and predestined for heaven when in fact he had never strayed from his road to hell. Calvin taught that God’s elect must persevere in grace and election. If a person dies in a state of rebellion against God, it proves he was never one of the elect. What kind of absolute assurance is that? I wondered. I found it very difficult to give a clear and convincing answer to the kind of question my parishioners put to me: Is my husband going to heaven?
Every Protestant pastor I know has a set of criteria he considers “necessary” for salvation. As a Calvinist, I believed that if a person publicly accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he was saved by grace through faith. But even as I comforted others with those well-intentioned words, I was troubled by the worldly and at times openly sinful lifestyles that some now-deceased members of my congregation had led. After a few years of ministry, I began to doubt whether I should continue.
Consider the Sparrows
One morning I got up before dawn and, taking a folding chair, my journal, and my Bible, I headed to a very quiet field behind my church. It was my favorite hour of the day, when the birds are singing the world awake. I have often marveled at the exuberance of birds in the early morning. What wonderfully short memories they have. They begin each day of their simple existence with a symphony of praise to the Lord who created them, utterly carefree and without plans.
Sometimes I think about the sparrows and ponder the simplicity of their lives. Sitting quietly in that field blanketed by daybreak, waiting for the sun to rise, I read Scripture and meditated on the questions that had been troubling me, laying my worries before the Lord. The Bible had warned me not to “rely on my own insight,” so I was determined to let the Lord guide me. I had been considering leaving the pastorate, and I saw three options. One was to become the youth ministry leader at a large Presbyterian church that had offered me the position. Another was to leave the ministry altogether and return to engineering. The third possibility was to go back to school and complete my scientific education in a field that could open even more doors for me professionally. I had been accepted into a graduate program in molecular biology at Ohio State University.
I reflected on these options, asking God to guide my steps. “An audible voice would be great,” I smiled, as I closed my eyes and waited for the Lord’s answer. I had no idea what form the answer would take, but it was not long in coming. My reverie ended abruptly when a sparrow flew past, chirping merrily, and let its droppings fall on my head. What are you telling me, Lord? I cried out with the anguish of Job.
The twittering of the birds was the cynical reply. There were no heavenly voices (not even a discreet whisper), only the sounds of nature stirring from its sleep in an Ohio cornfield. Was it a divine sign, or just brother bird’s editorial comment on my worries? Disgusted, I folded my chair, picked up my Bible, and went home. Later that day, when I told my wife about the three options I was considering and the incident with the sparrow, she laughed and, with her usual wisdom, exclaimed: “The meaning is clear, Marcus. The Lord is saying ‘none of the three.’”
Even though I would have preferred a less humiliating means of communication, I know that nothing happens by accident, and that neither sparrows nor what they drop falls to the ground without God’s knowledge. I took it as a good-humored hint from God that I should stay in the ministry. But I kept realizing that my situation was not right. Maybe what I needed was a bigger church, with a bigger budget and more staff. Surely then I would be happy. So I set off in the “bigger church is better” direction, thinking it might satisfy my restless heart.
Within six months I found one I liked, and its large congregation seemed to like me as well. They offered me the position of senior pastor, with an office staff and a budget ten times larger than the one I had had at my previous church. Best of all, it was a strong evangelical church, with many members actively interested in Scripture study and lay ministries. I enjoyed preaching before this new, approving congregation every Sunday. At first I thought I had solved the problem, but only a month later I realized that “bigger was not better.” My frustration grew proportionately greater. Polite smiles beamed at me all through every sermon, but I was not blind to the fact that, for many in the congregation, my impassioned exhortations to live a virtuous life merely skittered across the surface of a vein of religiosity, like drops of water on a hot skillet.
Many would say, “Great sermon—it really blessed me.” But I sensed that what they were really thinking was: “That’s fine for other people, Pastor—for sinners—but I have already arrived. My name is already written in the rolls of heaven; I don’t need to worry about all those things. But of course we agree with you, Pastor; that’s what we have to tell all the sinners: get right with God.” One day I found myself standing before the local leadership as spokesman for a group of pastors and laypeople who defended the idea of calling God Father, not Mother.
I defended that position by appealing to Scripture and Christian Tradition. To my dismay, I realized that the faction I represented was a minority and that we were fighting a losing battle. The issue would be settled not by sound reasoning or appeals to Scripture or Church history, but by the majority votes of the liberals, in favor of neutral language. It was at that meeting that I first recognized the anarchic principle lodged at the very heart of Protestantism. These liberals (grievously mistaken as they were in their project of reducing God to the mere functions of “creator,” “redeemer,” and “sanctifier” instead of the Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) were simply good Protestants. They were only following the course of protest charted for them by their theological forebears: Martin Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers. The Reformation maxim of “submit to no teaching unless I believe it to be correct and biblical” was being invoked by these liberal Protestants in support of their protest against masculine names for God.
Suddenly I understood that I was watching Protestantism in its full glory and in its natural habitat: protesting. What kind of church am I in? I asked myself, disheartened, as the vote was taken and my group lost. Around that time my wife, Marilyn, who had been the director of a pro-life crisis pregnancy center for women, began challenging me to resolve the inconsistency between our unshakable pro-life convictions and the pro-abortion stance of our Presbyterian church. “How can you be a member of a denomination that approves of killing unborn babies?” she asked me. Our church’s leadership had bowed to pressure from radical feminists, homosexuals, abortion advocates, and other extremist pressure groups within the denomination (even though prominent members of other sister congregations held pro-life views) and had imposed strict liberal guidelines on the process of hiring new pastors.
When she pointed out to me that a portion of the donations my congregation sent to the Presbyterian General Assembly was, in all likelihood, paying for abortions, and that there was nothing I or my congregation could do about it, I was stunned. Marilyn and I knew we had to leave the congregation—but where could we go? That question led to another: where was I going to find work as a minister? I bought a book that profiled most of the Christian denominations and began sizing up some of the ones that interested me. As I read the doctrinal summaries, I would think, “This one’s all right, but I don’t like their views on baptism,” or “This one isn’t bad, but their vision of the end times is a bit panic-driven,” or “This one looks like exactly what I’ve been looking for, but I’m uncomfortable with their style of worship.”
After examining every possibility and finding none I liked, I closed the book in frustration. I knew I was going to leave Presbyterianism, but I had no idea which denomination was the right one to join. There seemed to be something wrong with each of them. What a pity I can’t build the perfect church, tailored to my own liking! I thought wishfully.
Around that time a friend from Illinois called me on the phone. He too was a Presbyterian pastor, and he had heard the rumor that I was thinking of leaving the Presbyterian church. “Marcus, you can’t leave the church,” he scolded me. “You can never leave the church; you’re committed to the church. It doesn’t matter that some theologians and pastors are crazy; we have to stand by the church and work to renew it from within. We must preserve unity at all costs.” “In the first place,” I answered grumpily, “if that’s true, why did we Protestants separate from the Catholic Church?”
I don’t know where those words came from. Never before in my life had I given the slightest thought to whether or not the Reformers had been wrong to break with the Catholic Church. It had been the natural essence of Protestantism to try to bring about renewal through a process of division and fragmentation. The motto of the Presbyterian Church is “Reformed and always reforming.” One might add, “and reforming and reforming and reforming… and so on.” I could move to another denomination knowing that eventually I would have to move to yet another once I began to grow dissatisfied, or I could decide to stay where I was and put up with it. But then, how could I justify staying where I was? Shouldn’t I instead return to the previous denomination from which we Presbyterians had defiantly split off? Neither of these options seemed right to me, so I decided I should leave the ministry until I settled the matter one way or the other.
Going back to school seemed the easiest way to take a breather from all this, so I enrolled in a graduate program in molecular biology at Case Western Reserve University. My goal was to combine my scientific and theological knowledge in a career in bioethics. I figured a doctorate in molecular biology would earn me better standing among scientists than a degree in theology or ethics would; besides, earning a doctorate in theology or ethics would have required learning Latin and German, and at thirty-nine I imagined my brain cells were in advanced decline for that kind of mental rigor. The drive to the university in Cleveland took more than an hour each way, and over the next eight months I had plenty of quiet time for introspection and prayer. Soon I was deeply immersed in a genetic engineering research project that involved extracting and replicating DNA taken from a person’s homogenized kidneys.
The program was very challenging, and I liked it—although, comparing the complexity of amino acids and biochemical cycles with having to wrestle with Latin conjugations and German declensions, the latter suddenly seemed much easier. The project fascinated me and frightened me. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of scientific research, but I also saw how dehumanizing laboratory research can be. Genetic tissue taken from the bodies of patients who died at the Cleveland Clinic was sent to our laboratory for DNA research. I was deeply moved by the fact that this tissue came from people—moms, dads, children, and grandparents—who had once lived, worked, laughed, and loved, and who were now dead.
In the laboratory, those carefully numbered vials of tissue were simply experimental material, totally dissociated from the human person to whom they had belonged. I wrote a paper on the ethical problems involved in fetal tissue transplantation, and I began speaking to Christian groups about the dangers and blessings of modern biological technology. Things seemed to be going according to plan—until I realized that the real reason I had gone back to school was not to earn a degree. It had been so that I would buy a copy of the Cleveland local newspaper!
One Friday morning, after making the long drive to Cleveland, I was eating breakfast, killing time before class and trying to stay awake. I usually try to get a little studying done, but that morning I did something out of the ordinary: I bought a copy of the Plain Dealer. As I dropped the coins into the newspaper vending machine, I had no idea that I had come to the fork in the road and was about to set out on a path that would lead me out of Protestantism and into the Catholic Church (I suppose that had I known where it would take me, I would have gone the other way). Skimming the headlines with little interest, I came upon a small announcement that startled me: “Catholic theologian Scott Hahn to speak at local Catholic parish Sunday afternoon.”
I choked on my coffee. Catholic theologian Scott Hahn? It couldn’t be the Scott Hahn I had known. We had attended Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary together in the early 1980s. Back then he was a faithful Calvinist, the most staunchly anti-Catholic man on campus. I had hovered around an intense Calvinist study group that Scott led, but while he and the others spent long hours poring over the Bible like detectives, trying to uncover every angle of every theological implication, I played basketball. Although I had not seen Scott since he graduated in 1982, I had heard the rumor that he had become a Catholic. I had not given it much thought; surely the rumor was false, or dreamed up by someone jealous of the intensity of Scott’s convictions—or else Scott had gone off the deep end. I decided to make the hour-and-a-half trip to find out. I was totally unprepared for what I was about to discover.
Your Great Learning Is Turning You Mad
I was nervous as I pulled into the parking lot of the great Gothic structure. I had never been inside a Catholic church and did not know what to expect. I hurried into the church, skirting the holy water fonts, scurrying down the aisle, unsure of the correct protocol for taking a seat in the pews. I knew Catholics genuflected or bowed toward the altar before entering the pews, but I simply slid in and, with a creak, sat down, hoping I had not been recognized as a Protestant. After a few minutes, when no scowling usher tapped me on the shoulder and, pointing a finger at the door, said, “All right, buddy, out you go—we all know you’re not Catholic,” I began to relax, and I gazed in amazement at the church’s interior—strange, but incomparably beautiful.
A few seconds later Scott stepped up to the podium and began his talk with a prayer. When he made the sign of the cross, I knew he really had switched teams. My heart sank. “Poor Scott,” I groaned inwardly. “The Catholics won him over with their clever arguments.” I listened closely to his talk on the Last Supper, titled “The Fourth Cup,” trying hard to detect errors, but I found none (Scott’s talk was so good that I plagiarized most of it in my next communion sermon). As he spoke, using Scripture at every step to support Catholic teaching on the Mass and the Eucharist, I found myself mesmerized by what I was hearing. Catholicism was being explained in a way I had never imagined possible: from the Bible.
The way Scott explained the Mass and the Eucharist was neither offensive nor strange to me. At the end of the talk, when Scott made a moving appeal for radical conversion to Christ, I wondered whether perhaps he was only feigning a conversion so as to infiltrate the Catholic Church and bring renewal and conversion to spiritually dead Catholics. It did not take me long to find out. After the audience’s applause died down, I went up front to see whether he would recognize me.
He was surrounded by a crowd of people with questions. I stood a few steps back and studied his face as he spoke, with his typical charm and conviction, to the large group. Yes, it was the same Scott I had known in seminary! He now sported a mustache and I a beard (quite a change from our clean-cut look of seminary days). When he turned in my direction, his eyes lit up with a smile in silent greeting.
In a moment we came together, exchanging a warm handshake. He apologized in case he had offended me in any way. “No, of course not,” I assured him, as we laughed, sharing the joy of seeing each other again. After a few moments, and the obligatory “How are your wife and family?”, I blurted out what was on my mind: “I suppose what I heard is true. Why did you switch teams and become a Catholic?” Scott gave me a brief account of his struggle to find the truth about Catholicism (the circle of people around us listened intently to this mini version of his conversion story). He suggested I pick up a copy of the tape of his conversion story—copies of which were disappearing like hot cakes from the table in the vestibule. We exchanged phone numbers, shook hands again, and I made my way to the back of the church, where I found the table covered with tapes on the Catholic faith recorded by Scott and his wife, Kimberly, as well as tapes by Steve Wood, another convert to Catholicism who had also studied at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. I bought a copy of every tape, and a book by Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, which Scott had recommended to me. Before leaving, I stood at the back of the church, soaking in the strange yet attractive essence of Catholicism that surrounded me: icons, statues, altar furnishings, candles, and dark confessionals.
I stood there for a moment, pondering why God had brought me to that place. I stepped out into the cool night air, my head spinning with so many thoughts and my heart brimming with a bewildering tangle of emotions. I stopped at a fast-food place and bought a hamburger for the long drive home, then slipped the tape of Scott’s conversion into my car’s tape player, planning to discover where he had gone wrong. I was not yet halfway home when I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I had to pull over to the side of the road to clear my head.
Although Scott’s journey to the Catholic Church was very different from mine, the questions he and I had wrestled with were essentially the same. And the answers he had found—answers that had so drastically changed his life—were very convincing. His testimony persuaded me that the reason for my growing dissatisfaction with Protestantism could not be ignored. The answers to my questions, he declared, were to be found in the Catholic Church. The idea pierced me to the marrow. I was at once frightened and excited at the thought that perhaps God was calling me to the Catholic Church. I prayed for a while with my head resting on the steering wheel, gathering my thoughts before starting the car again and driving home. The next day I opened Catholicism and Fundamentalism and read it straight through, finishing the last chapter that very night.
As I was getting ready for bed, I realized I was in trouble. It was now clear to me that the two central dogmas of the Protestant Reformation (sola scriptura and sola fide) stood on very shaky biblical ground—and therefore, so did I. My appetite had been whetted. I began reading Catholic books, especially the early Church Fathers, whose writings helped me understand the truth about pre-Reformation Catholic history. I spent countless hours debating with Catholics and Protestants, trying to subject Catholic truths to the toughest biblical arguments I could find.
Marilyn, as you might have guessed, was not at all happy when I told her about my struggle with Catholic doctrines. Although at first she told me, “You’ll get over it,” eventually she too became intrigued by the things I was learning and began to study on her own. As I worked my way through book after book, I shared with her the clarity and common sense of the Catholic Church’s teachings that I was discovering. More and more often we arrived together at the conclusion of how much more sense, and how much more truth, there was in the Catholic view of Scripture than in anything we had found across the wide range of Protestant opinions. We found in the Catholic position a depth, a historical strength, a philosophical consistency.
The Lord was working an incredible transformation in our lives, persuading us shoulder to shoulder, step by step, together the whole way. Along with the good things we were finding in the Catholic Church, we also ran up against confusing and disturbing matters. I met a priest who thought me odd for considering the Catholic Church; he believed conversion was unnecessary. We met Catholics who knew very little about their faith, and some whose lifestyles did not square with the moral teachings of their Catholic Church. When we attended Mass, we found ourselves unwelcomed, and no one offered to help us. But despite these obstacles blocking our path to the Church, we kept studying and praying for the Lord’s guidance.
After listening to dozens of tapes and digesting several dozen books, I knew I could no longer remain a Protestant. It was clear to me that the Protestant answer to church renewal was completely unbiblical. Jesus prayed for unity among his followers, and Paul and John both challenged their followers to hold fast to the truth they had received, not allowing opinions to divide them. As Protestants we had acted freely, setting personal opinions above the teaching authority of the Church. We believed that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to direct any believer who sincerely seeks the true meaning of Scripture. The Catholic answer to this view is that it is the Church’s mission to teach with infallible accuracy. Christ promised his apostles and their successors: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
The early Church believed this as well. One very powerful passage struck me as I studied the history of the Church: The Apostles preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, in short, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ: both things, therefore, came about in an orderly fashion by the will of God. And so the Apostles, having received their commands, fully assured by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and confirmed in the faith by the word of God, went forth, filled with the certainty the Holy Spirit had poured into them, to announce the glad tidings that the Kingdom of God was at hand. And so, proclaiming the good news through countries and cities, they baptized those who obeyed God’s design, and appointed the first fruits among them, after testing them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of the future believers. And this was no novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about long before.
Scripture, indeed, says: “I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith” (Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians 45:1-5). Another patristic quotation that helped open a breach in the wall of my Protestant assumptions was this one from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons: “Since, then, the testimonies are so many, it is no longer necessary to seek from others the truth that is so easy to receive from the Church, since the Apostles deposited in her, as in a rich storehouse, everything that pertains to the truth” (Rev 22:17). “This is the entrance to life” (John 10:1, 8-9). “For this reason we must avoid them, and instead love with all our heart whatever belongs to the Church and hold fast the Tradition of the Truth. Then, if any disagreement arises even over some small matter, would it not be fitting to turn our eyes to the most ancient Churches, in which the Apostles lived, in order to take from them the doctrine to settle the question—which is clearer and surer? Even if the Apostles had left us no writings, would it not have been necessary to follow the order of the Tradition which they handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches?” (Against Heresies 3:4:1)
I studied the causes of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church in those days desperately needed renewal, but Martin Luther and the other Reformers wrongly chose an unbiblical method of dealing with the problems they saw in the Church. The right way was, and still is, exactly what my Presbyterian friend had told me: “Don’t leave the Church; don’t break the unity of the faith. Work for genuine reform based on God’s plan, not man’s, pursuing it through prayer, penance, and good example.” I could no longer remain a Protestant. To do so would mean denying Christ’s promise to guide and protect his Church and to send the Holy Spirit to lead her into the fullness of truth (Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; 28:20; John 14:16-25; 16:13). But I could not bear the thought of becoming a Catholic. I had been taught for so long to despise “Romanism” that, even though I had discovered intellectually that Catholicism was the truth, I had a very hard time shaking off my emotional prejudices against the Church. One key difficulty was the psychological adjustment to the complexity of Catholic theology. By contrast, Protestantism is simple: admit you are a sinner, repent of your sins, accept Jesus as your personal Savior, trust in his forgiveness, and you are saved.
I went on studying the Scriptures and Catholic books, and I spent many hours debating difficult subjects with Protestant friends and colleagues—Mary, prayer to the saints, indulgences, Purgatory, priestly celibacy, and the Eucharist. Eventually I understood that the most important issue was authority. All the wrangling over how to interpret Scripture leads nowhere if there is no way of knowing with infallible certainty that a given interpretation is the right one. The Church’s teaching authority in the Magisterium centers on the chair of Peter. If I could accept that doctrine, I knew I could trust the Church in everything else.
I read The Keys of the Kingdom and Upon This Rock by Father Stanley Jaki, along with the documents of the Second Vatican Council and of the earlier councils, especially Trent. I carefully studied Scripture and the writings of Calvin, Luther, and the other Reformers to test the Catholic arguments. Time after time I found that the Protestant arguments against the primacy of Peter were simply neither biblical nor historical. It was clear that the Catholic position was the biblical one. The Holy Spirit literally sent a shaft of his light into what remained of my anti-Catholic prejudices when I read Cardinal John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In fact, my objections evaporated by the time I had read twelve pages of the book, where Newman explains the development of papal authority. My study of the Catholic position took me about a year and a half. Throughout that period Marilyn and I studied together, sharing as a couple the fears, hopes, and challenges that beset us along the road to Rome.
We attended Mass together weekly, traveling to a parish far enough from our town (my former Presbyterian church was less than a mile from our house) to avoid the controversy and confusion that would undoubtedly have arisen if our former parishioners had learned I was exploring Rome. Gradually we began to feel comfortable doing all the things Catholics do at Mass (except receiving Communion). Doctrinally, emotionally, and spiritually we felt ready to enter the Church formally, but there remained one barrier we had to overcome. Before Marilyn and I met and fell in love, she had been divorced after a brief marriage.
Since we were Protestants when we met and married, this posed no problem as far as I or my denomination knew. It was not until we felt ready to enter the Catholic Church that we were informed we could not do so unless Marilyn received an annulment of her first marriage. At first we felt God was playing a joke on us. Then we went from surprise to anger. It seemed to us so unfair and so ridiculously hypocritical: we could have committed any other sin, no matter how heinous, and with one confession it would have been adequately washed away for admission into the Church; but because of this fault our entry into the Church came to a screeching halt. But when we remembered what had brought us to this point in our spiritual pilgrimage, we had to trust God with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding.
We had to acknowledge him and trust that he would make straight our paths. It was evident that this was the final test of perseverance sent by God. So Marilyn began the difficult investigative process for the annulment, and we kept waiting. We went on attending Mass, remaining seated in the pew, our hearts aching as everyone around us went forward to receive the Lord in the Holy Eucharist and we could not. It was through being unable to receive the Eucharist that we learned to appreciate the incredible privilege Jesus grants his beloved ones: to receive his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament.
The Lord’s promise in Scripture became real for us at those Masses: “The Lord disciplines him whom he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). After nine months of waiting, we learned that Marilyn’s annulment had been granted. Without any further delay our marriage was blessed, and we were received with great expectation and celebration into the Catholic Church. It felt so incredibly good to be home at last, where we belonged. I shed tears of joy and gratitude at that first Mass when I was able to walk forward with my Catholic brothers and sisters and receive Jesus in Holy Communion. Many times I had asked the Lord in prayer, What is truth? He answered me through Scripture, saying: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Now, as a Catholic, I rejoice that I not only know the truth but also receive Him in the Eucharist.
Summing Up in a Few Final Words
I think it is important to mention one more idea from Cardinal Newman that made a crucial difference in the process of my conversion to the Catholic Church: “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” That single line sums up the key reason why I abandoned Protestantism, steered clear of the Orthodox Church, and became a Catholic. Newman was right. The more I read Church history and the Scriptures, the less comfortably I could remain a Protestant. I saw that it was the Catholic Church that was established by Jesus Christ, and that all the other churches pretending to the “title” of true church must step aside. It was the Bible and the history of the Church that made a Catholic of me, against my will (at least at the beginning) and to my immense surprise.
I also learned that the flip side of Newman’s adage is equally true: to cease to be deep in history is to become a Protestant. That is why we Catholics must know why we believe what the Church teaches, as well as the history behind these saving truths. We must prepare ourselves and our children to be always ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks the reason for our hope (1 Peter 3:15). By living and proclaiming our faith courageously, many will hear Christ speaking through us, and he will lead them to the knowledge of the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church. God bless your own journey of faith!
Author: Marcus Grodi
Source: Voxfidei.com
Courtesy of The Coming Home Network
