I was received into the Catholic Church in February of 1991 by Father John Hardon SJ., an event that a year earlier would have seemed to me completely inconceivable. Not much in my life would have indicated this surprising turn of events, but such a matter was a display of God’s ever-inscrutable mercy and providence.
My first knowledge about Christianity came in the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I was raised. The church that we attended, in a working-class neighborhood of the city of Detroit (Michigan, United States), seemed to me, as well as to any child in the early 1960s, to be in decline, sociologically speaking, so much so that the average age of the members was approximately fifty years or more. In my studies years later as an evangelical, I learned that the shrinking and aging of congregations were one of the visible signs of the deterioration of mainline Protestantism.
As it turned out, our church folded in 1968, and after that, I rarely attended church for the following nine years. My early religious education was not entirely for nothing, however, for as I gradually gained a respect for God, what I never abandoned was an understanding of His love for humanity, and an appreciation for the sense of the basic and sacred moral commandments.
In any case, for whatever reason, I did not have a growing interest in Christianity at this time. In 1969, at the age of eleven, I came into contact for the first time with the so-called quintessential altar of fundamentalist Christianity at a Baptist church that we visited two or three times. I went forward to be “saved,” absolutely sincerely, but without the knowledge or the willpower required (by the more solicitous evangelical standards) to carry out this temporary resolution.
During this period, I became fascinated with the supernatural, but unfortunately, it entered the realms of a vague occultism, for everything. I dabbled, with great seriousness, in ESP, telepathy, the Ouija board, astral projection, even voodoo witchcraft (with a vicious gym teacher in mind!). I read about Houdini (1) and Uri Geller (2), among others.
Meanwhile, my brother Gerry, who is ten years older than I, converted, in 1971, to Jesus Freak Evangelicalism (3), a trend that was at its peak at that moment. He underwent a truly remarkable transformation, leaving the cultural circle of the typical drug-addicted and quarrelsome rocker, and began to preach in a zealous manner to our family. This was a new spectacle to me. I had already been influenced by the hippie counterculture, and since I had always been somewhat nonconformist, the “Jesus Movement” had a strange fascination for me, although I had no intention of joining them.
I felt proud of my “moderation” with respect to religious matters. Like the majority of nominal Christians and sincere unbelievers, I reacted to any display of serious and devout Christianity with a mixture of fear, mockery, and condescension, while thinking that such conduct was “improper,” fanatical, and outside the mainstream of American culture.
In the early 1970s I visited the Messiah Lutheran Church from time to time in Detroit, where my brother attended, along with his long-haired “Jesus Freak” friends, and I would squirm in my seat under the conviction of the powerful sermons of Pastor Dick Bieber, a character of a kind such as I had never heard. I remember thinking that what he was preaching was indisputably the pure truth, and if it came to the question of “being saved” there would be no place for those of the middle ground or for cowards. Consequently, I was reluctant, so to speak, because I thought it would be the end of the fun and fellowship with my friends. Because of my rebelliousness and pride, God had to use the most drastic methods for my awakening.
In 1977 I experienced a severe depression for six months, which was totally atypical of my temperament before. The immediate causes were the pressures of late adolescence, but in retrospect it is clear that God was bringing home to me the ultimate meaninglessness of my life – – a vacuous and futile individualistic quest for happiness without purpose or relationship with God. I was brought, staggering, to the end of myself. It was a terrifying existential crisis in which I had no other way out but to cry out to God. He responded quickly.
It happened that at Easter of 1977 the extraordinary film Jesus of Nazarethby Franco Zeffirelli (still my favorite Christian film) was on television. I had always enjoyed films of the Bible, like The Ten Commandments. They brought the biblical figures to life, and the element of drama (as an art form) communicated the vitality of Christianity in a unique and effective way. Jesus, as He was portrayed in this film, left an extraordinary impression on me, and the timing could not have been better. He appeared as the ultimate nonconformist, who appealed to me.
I marveled at the way He treated people, and it gave you the sense of things that you could never expect from what He would say or do — always something with incomparable insight or impact. I began to understand, with my brother’s help, the reason of the gospel for the first time: what the Cross and the Passion meant, and some of the basic points of theology and soteriology (the Theology of Salvation) that I had never thought of before. I also learned that this Jesus was not only the Son of God, but God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity — something that, incredibly, I had not heard previously, or simply did not understand if I had heard it. I began to read seriously for the first time in my life the Bible (the Living Bible translation, which is the most informal paraphrase).
It was the combination of my depression and new knowledge of Christianity that brought about my decision to follow Jesus as my Lord and Savior in a much more serious way, in July of 1977 — what I would still consider a “conversion to Christ,” and what the evangelical view regards as the experience of “the new birth” or of being “saved.” I continue to see this as a valid and indispensable spiritual step, although, as a Catholic, I would, of course, interpret it in a manner somewhat different from the one I held previously. Despite my initial burst of zeal, I settled again into lukewarmness for three years until August of 1980, when I finally surrendered my entire self to God, and experienced a profound “renewal” in my spiritual life.
Throughout the eighties I attended Lutheran churches, the “Assemblies of God” (4), and nondenominational sects with strong connections to the “Jesus Movement,” characterized by youthfulness, spontaneity of worship, contemporary music, and warm fellowship. Many of my friends were former Catholics (apostates) (5). I knew little of Catholicism until the beginning of the 1980s. I regarded it as an exotic, austere, and unnecessarily ritualistic “denomination” that did not have much appeal for me. I was not by nature attracted to the liturgy, and did not believe at all in the sacraments, although I always had great reverence for the “Lord’s Supper” and believed that something real was imparted in it.
On the other hand, I was never publicly anti-Catholic. Having taken an active part in anti-cult apologetics work (specializing in Russellism, or Jehovah’s Witnesses), I quickly understood that Catholicism was completely different from the cults, in that it had correct “central doctrines,” such as that of the Trinity and the bodily Resurrection of Christ, as well as an admirable historical legitimacy; wholly Christian, although immensely inferior to evangelicalism (6).
I was, you might say, a typical evangelical of the kind that had a certain theological interest somewhat above average. I became familiar with the works of many of the “greats”: C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, A.W. Tozer, Billy Graham, Hal Lindsey, John Stott, Chuck Colson, the magazine Christianity Today, Keith Green and “Last Days” Ministries, the Jesus Peoplein Chicago and the magazine Cornerstone, the Christian fellowship InterVarsity(a university organization), as well as the Christian music scene: on the whole, influences beneficial enough that one need not feel regretful at all in the least.
My strong interest in evangelization and apologetics led me to become, with my church’s permission, a missionary on the university campuses for four years. I also became involved in the pro-life movement, and in Operation Rescue.
It quickly became clear to me that the Catholic rescuers were as committed to Christ and as devout as the evangelicals. In retrospect, there is no substitute for the widely close observance of devout Catholics. I had met countless evangelicals who exhibited what I thought was a serious walk with Christ, but rarely with the intensity found in the lives of the Catholics. I began to befriend my Catholic brethren from the Rescues, and sometimes in jail, including priests and nuns. Although still theologically skeptical, my personal admiration for orthodox Catholics took off like a Tomahawk missile.
In January of 1990 I started an ecumenical discussion group that I moderated. Three Catholic friends knowledgeable about the Rescue movement, John McAlpine, Leno Poli, and Don McSween, began to attend. Their claims for the Church, particularly concerning papal and conciliar infallibility, led me to plunge into a massive research project on that matter. I believed that I had found many errors and contradictions throughout history. Afterward I understood, however, that my many “examples” did not even fall into the category of infallible statements, as defined by the Vatican Council of 1870. I was also a bit dishonest because I would overlook historical facts that strongly confirmed the Catholic position, such as the widespread early acceptance of the Real Presence, as well as the authority of the Bishop, and the communion of saints.
Meanwhile, I was reading exclusively Catholic books (and all the short tracts from Catholic Answers (7) ), with an open mind, and my respect and understanding of Catholicism grew greatly. I began (providentially) with The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam, a book too extraordinary to summarize adequately here. It is, I believe, an almost perfect book about Catholicism as a world and a way of life, especially for a person familiar with basic Catholic theology. I read the books of Christopher Dawson, a great cultural historian, Joan Andrews (a heroine of the Rescue movement), and Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk, all of whom impressed me greatly.
My three friends from our discussion group continued to respond serenely to my almost hundreds of questions. I was amazed to realize that Catholicism seemed to have been “well thought out” – it was a wonderful and complex, consistent system of beliefs incomparable with any portion of evangelicalism.
At this time I became tremendously concerned about the Protestant (and my own) free and easy acceptance of contraception. I came to believe, in agreement with the Church, that once one regards sexual pleasure as an end in itself, then the so-called right to “abortion” is not logically far off. My pro-life evangelical friends might easily be the exception, but the less spiritually-disposed would not have been, as has been fully confirmed by the sexual revolution in full swing since the widespread use of the Pill began around 1960.
Once a couple thinks that they can frustrate God’s desire in the matter of a possible conception, then the notion of terminating a pregnancy follows by a certain diabolical logic devoid of the spiritual guidance of the Church. In this, as in other areas such as divorce, the Church is undeniably wise and truly progressive. G.K. Chesterton and Ronald Knox, the great apologists, were already able to see the writing on the wall around the thirties.
I was absolutely alarmed by the fact that no Christian body had accepted contraceptionism until the Anglicans did so in 1930, and by the inevitable progression in nations from contraceptionism to abortion, as had been irrefutably shown by Father Paul Marx. Finally, a book entitled The Teaching of “Humanae Vitae” by John Ford, Germain Grisez, et al., convinced me of the moral distinction between contraceptionism and Natural Family Planning and pushed me to the brink.
I now accepted a very “un-Protestant” belief, but I still did not even dream of becoming Catholic (which is, of course, inconceivable for an evangelical). I was still falling prey to the Chesterton principle of conversion – – that one cannot be fair to Catholicism without beginning to admire it and starting to become convinced of it.
Meanwhile, my wife Judy, who was raised Catholic and became Protestant before we knew each other, had also independently become convinced of the error of contraceptionism. She returned to the Church on the day I was received. How beautiful is unity! So, by July of 1990, I was already convinced that Catholicism had the best moral theology of any other Christian body, and I greatly respected its sense of community, devotion, and contemplation.
The moral theology and the intangible mystical elements began to dance the dance of conversion for me, and more and more they took root deeply within my soul; beyond, but not opposed to, the rational calculations of my mind – – what Cardinal Newman (8) called “the Illative Sense.”
My Catholic friend, John, tired of my constant harping about Catholic errors and additions through the centuries, suggested that I read An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by Cardinal Newman. This book completely demolished the entire scheme of Church history that I had constructed. I thought, typically, that early Christianity was Protestant and that Catholicism was a late corruption (although I placed the collapse in the late Middle Ages instead of the usual time of Constantine in the 4th century).
Martin Luther, I acknowledged, had discovered in Sola Scriptura the means to clean away the Catholic barnacles accumulated on the originally clean and immaculate Christian ship. Newman, in contrast, exploded the notion of a ship without barnacles. Ships always have barnacles. The real question was whether the ship would reach its destination. Tradition, for Newman, was like a rudder and a wheel, and was completely necessary for guidance and direction. Like a navigation chart.
Newman demonstrated the characteristics of true developments brilliantly, as opposed to corruptions, within the visible Church historically instituted by Christ. I found myself unable and unwilling to refute his reasoning, and a crucial piece of the puzzle had fallen into place – – Tradition was now credible and evident to me. Thus began what is sometimes called a “paradigm shift.” While I read the Essay I experienced a peculiar, intense, and inexpressibly mystical feeling of reverence for the idea of a Church “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.” Catholicism was now thinkable and I suddenly fell into an intense crisis. I now believed in the visible Church and suspected that it was also infallible. Once I accepted Catholic ecclesiology, the theology followed its course as a matter of course, and I accepted it without difficulty (even the Marian doctrines).
My Catholic friends had been cultivating the rocky soil of my so stubborn will and mind for almost a year, while planting the “Catholic Seeds,” which now quickly took root and grew, to their great surprise. I had fought hardest just before reading Newman, in a desperate effort to save my Protestantism, much like a drowning man just before he succumbs! I continued the reading, while now actively trying to persuade myself fully of Catholicism, going through Newman’s autobiography, the book by Tom HowardEvangelicalism Is Not Enough, which helped me appreciate the genius of the liturgy for the first time, and two books by Chesterton (9) about Catholicism.
Around this time I had a conversation with an old friend, Al Kresta, who had also been my pastor for a few years and whose theological opinions I held in very high regard. I admitted to him that I was tremendously in trouble with certain elements of Protestantism, and might, perhaps (but it was an improbable notion) be thinking of becoming Catholic. To my astonishment, he told me that he too was going in the same direction, citing, in particular, the problem that the formulation and declaration of the Canon of Scripture pose for Protestants and their premise of “Bible Alone.”
These kinds of strange “confirming” events helped to create a strong feeling that something strange was simply unfolding during the disconcerting period before my full conversion. Al was in such a theological crisis (as was I), that he resigned his pastorate two months after our conversation.
Also at this time I had the great privilege of meeting Father John Hardon, the eminent Jesuit catechist, and I began attending his informal classes on spirituality. This gave me the opportunity to learn personally from an authoritative Catholic priest, who is also a delightful and humble man. After seven weeks of alternately questioning my sanity and reaching new peaks of immense discovery, the final death blow came just in the way I had been suspecting. I knew that if I was to reject Protestantism, then I had to examine its historical roots: the self-styled Protestant Reformation. I had previously read some material about Martin Luther, and considered him one of my greatest heroes. I accepted the standard myth of Luther as the intrepid, virtuous rebel against the darkness of Catholic tyranny and the superstition added to “Early Christianity.”
philosophy was liberal, he ended up being a conservative and founded a newspaper to set forth his views with his friend the writer Hilaire Belloc, also a conservative. Chesterton’s brilliant, vigorous, and sharp style made him very famous. Although he did not convert to Catholicism until 1922, almost all of his works defend it, as well as orthodoxy in general. (Taken from MS Encarta 2003). But when I studied a large portion of the six-volume biographical book about Martin Luther, Luther, by the German Jesuit Hartmann Grisar, my opinion of Luther was turned upside down. Grisar convinced me that the fundamental principles of the Protestant Revolution were on the whole weak. I had always rejected Luther’s notions about absolute predestination and the total depravity of humanity. Now I understood that if man had a free will, he did not have to be declared righteous merely in a judicial, abstract sense, but could actively participate in his redemption and could really become righteous by the Grace of God. This, in some way, is the classic debate about Justification.
I learned many unfavorably disturbing facts about Luther; for example, his highly subjective existential methodology, his disdain for reason and historical precedent, and his dictatorial intolerance toward contrary points of view, including those coming from his fellow Protestants (10). These and other discoveries were stunning me, and convinced me beyond all doubt that he really was not a “reformer” of the “pure” and pre-Nicene Church, but rather a revolutionary who created a new theology in many, though not all, respects. The myth was annihilated.
Now I was “skeptical” of the common Protestant concept of the invisible, “rediscovered” church. In the end, my innate love of history played a crucial part in my abandonment of Protestantism, which tends to pay very little attention to history (as is indeed necessary in order to retain any level of plausible truth against Catholicism).
By this point, it became, in my opinion, a moral and intellectual duty to abandon Protestantism in its evangelical form. It was still not easy. Old habits and perceptions die hard, but I refused to allow feelings and prejudices to interfere with the wonderful process of illumination in which the grace of God predominated. I waited expectantly for the final impetus to surrender totally. The unforeseeable course of conversion reached its culmination on December 6, 1990, while I was reading Cardinal Newman’s meditation on “Hope in God—Creator,” and in a moment I resolutely understood that I should no longer offer any resistance to the Catholic Church. In the end, as in most of the experiences of converts, an icy fear takes its place, similar to the jitters before marriage. In a moment, this final obstacle disappeared, and an emotionally and theologically tangible peace prevailed.
In the following three years since my conversion, some astonishing things have happened in our circle of friends (I claim no credit for myself in these cases, perhaps a small influence, but rather the marvelous way in which God moves the hearts of people). Four people have returned to the Church of their childhood and three, like me, have converted from lifelong Protestantism. These include my former pastor, Al, and his wife, Sally; one of my best friends and frequent companion in the evangelical community and his wife Lori; Dan’s lifelong friend, Joe Polgar, who had been virtually in paganism for some years; another friend, Terri Navarra, and the daughter of a friend, Tom McGlynn, Jennifer. Additionally, another couple that we know had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, a second is seriously thinking about the same thing, and a third couple may convert to Catholicism. Needless to say, many of our Protestant friends view these events with mute trepidation. One of my former pastors, in the most heated encounter I have had since my conversion, called me a “blasphemer” because I believed that there was more to the Christian Tradition than simply what is contained in the Bible! Another good friend who is a Baptist minister says that although I had made a terrible mistake, I am still saved because of his belief in eternal security! After all, thankfully to God, it has been quite a smooth experience among our evangelical Protestant friends. Many ignore our Catholicism altogether. I believe that all Catholics can share these experiences that I experienced that I have been describing, in the sense that each new discovery of some Catholic truth is equally stimulating. As we all grow in our faith, let us rejoice in the abundant springs of delight, as well as in the instructive times of suffering that
God provides for us in His Body, fully manifested in the Catholic Church. I feel very much at home in it, as much as could be expected on this side of heaven.
AD MAIOREM GLORIAM DEI
Author: Dave Armstrong
Notes
1 Very famous North American magician of the early 20th century.
2 A Briton of Israeli origin who bent a spoon without touching it, only with his mind, live on air (how amazing!)
3 “Jesus Freak,” with apologies to the readers and even to Dave himself, is another of the many North American and English inventions to convince people of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ Our Lord in our lives, but falling into a syncretism that borders on the pagan and the vicious. The person of Jesus does not need such spectacles and such showbiz doctrines to be proclaimed. (translator’s note)
4 A Pentecostal sectarian group. It is considered throughout Europe as a dangerous sect and is banned in Russia. John Ashcroft belongs to this sect, and his appointment as Attorney General of the USA caused great commotion in the media (not in the Third World, why?)
5 Just like that. This phenomenon is occurring a great deal in Latin America, since there is no education regarding the Pentecostal sects. They call themselves Christians even to the detriment of the true Universal Faith in Jesus Christ.
6 (??????)
7 John Keating’s Catholic Answers. www.Catholic.com (there should be a Spanish section <translator’s complaint>)
8 The Venerable John Henry Newman, English writer. Champion of Catholicism in England. Cardinal of the Church in 1877. His cardinalatial motto: Ex umbris et Imanigibus ad Veritatem(From the shadows and images to the Light that Truth gives)
9 Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer, born in London. Although at first his
10 Among other things, he ordered the Anabaptists and their leader Thomas Müntzer to be burned and hanged from the capitals of the temples (?!). He wrote a manual on how to carry out a Night of Broken Glass and genocides. 400 years later his spiritual son did it in Germany. He abandoned the peasants and joined the State (Taken from My Beliefs by Hermman Hesse) (Translator’s note, who also considered him a hero).
