How I Became Catholic Part One: The Beautiful
I do not remember when I had my first run in with Roman Catholicism. When I thought about Catholics growing up — which was rare — I just assumed they were one of the many denominations that had churches in my hometown. I had no idea that I was a Protestant, and I could not have defined the word for you. I was just a Christian, albeit one with views that others around me found strange.
For one, we did not celebrate Christmas, Easter, nor Pentecost in my church. When we finally started celebrating Christmas when I was 12, my mother made it clear that Jesus was not actually born on December 25th, but sometime in the fall. Passover was our highest (and only) holy day, and was the sole instance where we would take Communion, which consisted of grape juice in plastic cups and stale Matzo pieces.1
We also followed the food laws of the Old Testament — church members did not eat shellfish, pork, and the like. Since we were, as I learned much later, an offshoot of the Baptist tradition, believer baptism was the norm and was disputably necessary for salvation — there were differing views on that and predestination in our congregation. A suspicion of alcohol was the icing on the cake that was our tiny, homey country church.
I had a wonderful experience growing up in this church. The Bible stories really came to life through pre-service studies and historical deep dives led by adults. Vacation Bible School in the summer was a joy and there were many kids around that were my age. Plus, the church members were almost entirely related either through blood or marriage, save my interloping family, so going to church felt like coming home.
I only knew that my church wasn’t normal through dialoguing with my neighbors. “You go to church on Saturday? Why?” “You celebrate Passover? So you’re kind of Jewish — a Jew-stian.” At nine, I had no idea how to respond to most of the probing questions I received, but I knew for a fact that Saturday was the Sabbath and hallowed by God. According to my church, every other Christian going to church on Sunday was wrong.
Even with all of this confusion, God was with me. I was baptized when I was nine after a mystical experience in prayer revealed to me that God was real. I had never doubted. After my baptism, however, my interaction with my faith was fairly dormant. My family had started going to a new church — one of those non-denominational megachurch ones — and the only time I felt my heart “burning within me” was when the author Lee Strobel came through town. Lee wrote the famous book The Case for Christ, an apologetic defense of the historical Jesus that I read cover to cover.
I had not realized how thirsty I was for a defense of my faith, something I had not received up to that point. Sure, I knew my Bible stories and verses, but I did not know if the Gospel was true. Lee Strobel convinced me of at least one thing that I could not shake, even in later periods of profound doubt and agnosticism: Jesus of Nazareth was a real guy.
Junior high slipped by without much event, save a lot of sin, a complete lack of prayer, and the incoming tornado that was my parent’s divorce. However, I did audition and successfully qualify for my district’s region choir, which pooled all of the best voices from around the county. One of the pieces we sang was In Monte Oliveti, a classic Latin a capella piece by Giovanni Battista Martini, a Franciscan friar and mentor to Mozart.
I was completely struck by the song’s beauty. I did not know what the words meant, but I knew that God was close at hand when our choir sang it. More than a decade later, I realized that I was singing Christ’s agonized words in the Garden of Gethsemane: Pater, si fieri potest transeat a me calix iste. Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
The cup of suffering was indeed on the menu for my high school years. My home life was falling apart. In those first two years, I started puberty, my parents divorced, and my mom had to sell my childhood home to make ends meet. You know, the works. I was overwhelmed with schoolwork, extracurriculars, and an undiagnosed medical condition that would take me years to discover. And God? Nowhere to be found.
My faith, what little of it there was, was sorely tested at this time. Eventually, toward the end of high school, I refused to go to church. My mother, completely dismayed by my obstinance, would attempt to hold little Bible studies on Saturday mornings, but neither my brothers nor I paid her any heed. It all just felt so false. Why should I love my neighbor when my parents so obviously loathed each other? Why bother talking about Jesus when He clearly didn’t love me?
At this point, I was agnostic in all but name. When I left for college, that fact was made manifestly clear — I was a nihilist, and thus borderline suicidal. Predictably, I was openly hostile to Christians on campus that were advertising evangelical bible studies and events. “What are they all so happy about?” I would think to myself as I ignored their starry eyes and outstretched pamphlets. I hated the world and everyone in it, especially those who I perceived as more beautiful or virtuous than myself.
The closest run-in I had with God that first year was in my introductory biology classes where we discussed the theory of evolution. I was absolutely fascinated by how well-designed and beautiful our bodies and the environment appeared. For example, the structure of a bacteriophage was perfectly tailored for its function and I could not shake the feeling that it did not seem like the result of random chance.
My freshman year also happened to be when I attended my very first Catholic mass. Not out of desire, mind you. I had just met some exchange students from South Korea who wanted to see what church in the United States was like. I did not really know where to go, but I knew there was a Catholic church across the street from the campus. It couldn’t be that different from the services I had gone to growing up, I thought, so I got dressed in my Sunday Mediocre and took my two friends to a service.
It was awful. All the standing, sitting, kneeling, singing, and chanting had no rhyme nor reason. I had no idea what was happening and why, which made me more and more irate as the charade elapsed. When my Korean counterparts searched my face, questioning with their eyes about what to do next, all I could do was shrug apologetically — I didn’t know either. The only parts of the mass I understood were the hymns and the sermon, and the “sermon” was barely 15 minutes!
Thankfully, I had the good sense (Holy Spirit?) to not go up and receive the Eucharist despite not understanding what or Who it was. Instead, I chose to sit and silently seethe in my pew as seas of stupid, happy Christian college students got up and stepped over me to get in their stupid, happy Communion line. I was alone and embarrassed, but proud that I was not being a sheep, unlike them.
After the torture was over, I had a fleeting positive thought: at least the church’s interior was beautiful. Still, I made a mental note to never step foot into a Catholic mass again.
I still love Matzos to this day, so don’t think I’m knocking them.
It is always absorbing to read about other people's experience of conversion. I was a cradle Catholic; that is, my parents were Catholic, my entire schooling was in convents, my friends were all Catholic.
The trouble was that my parents had a deeply unhappy marriage, despite being Catholics, and actually separated after 25 years of domestic hell.
I did not abandon belief in my Faith - for example, the Latin motets we sang in the chapel choir at school were beautiful; and beauty carries its own inner coherence and conviction - but I did not see 'Love one another as I have loved you' around me, so I ceased to practise for many years. Marriage, and then having many children brought me back after a fashion: I wanted my children to have the Faith simply because I knew it to be true. So I took them to Mass regularly. But I remained conflicted and wounded within - until I happened to go to Confession 40 years ago (in order to try to set an example to my oldest daughter who was about to be Confirmed.) That experience changed my life: somehow the reality of a lived Faith in Christ, and the truths that I had learned by heart from the Catechism in childhood came together finally and for good. It did not only make intellectual sense or aesthetic sense; it made moral and behavioural sense.
At present I am preparing a young man in my parish for Confirmation. He got the top grade in his Catholic school's RE exam. But as I have been explaining to him, knowing the teachings of the Faith is not enough; we have to learn to live them and we can only do this through the grace of the Sacraments and their regular reception, and through prayer.