I have been meaning to
write my conversion story for quite awhile, but every time I get started I end
up getting distracted part way through, and finding that what I’ve written
doesn’t really capture what I’m trying to say. How does one even begin to describe
such an event?
I became a confirmed
member of the Roman Catholic Church in 2003, at the Easter Vigil. I have always
been grateful that I converted and joined the Church before I met David. People
already struggled to figure out why I would become Catholic, and if he had been
on the scene I do not doubt that he would have been mentioned by some as one of
the reasons. People have often said it was no surprise, given my love of “old
things” and “tradition/ritual” that I converted, and find this irksome enough –
to also have a boy chucked into the mix would be too much! Not that I can fault
people for not really understanding my conversion. For a long time it was
difficult to articulate, and in many ways it still is, because conversion meant
breaking with the denominations & religious history of most of my family
and many of my friends. It is hard to know just what to say. If “old things”
and “tradition” were the motivations behind my faith I would have joined the
Mennonite church or perhaps the Orthodox. Those are my family’s historical
churches. Joining the Catholic Church felt like a betrayal of the sufferings my
ancestors had undergone for their faith. It was not a step I took lightly.
The first, and major,
push towards my conversion was the ecumenical movement. Instead of churches
relating to each other as “us and them”, they were suddenly co-operating in
various events and programs. This gave me the opportunity to attend various
Christian events with Catholics, form friendships, and learn about the Church
from actual Catholics instead of from people who more often than not were
speaking the same misinformation that had been circulating since the
Reformation.
The reason that
ecumenicism was such a major factor in my conversion, however, isn’t just
because it let me get to know the Catholic Church for what she is. Instead,
it’s because in seeking to break down barriers between Christians, it called
into question aspects of the theology I had grown up believing. Although I
couldn’t articulate it at the time, it was at this point that I began to
realise that sola scriptura couldn’t
work. Sola scriptura made perfect
sense when it was “us & them”, because “us” obviously had it right and
“them” obviously had it wrong. Now that we were all getting along, I couldn’t
understand why the theological differences that had once been a barrier to
Christian unity could seemingly cease to matter. If Christianity was fragmented
into numerous denominations because of people’s differing interpretations of
scripture, than surely to get it wrong was to place our immortal souls in
danger of hell. To suddenly make light of these differences, to attempt to
reunify the body of Christ without establishing whose Truth we were going to
follow, struck me as impossibility. And if there was no such thing as absolute
truth, if scripture interpretation depended solely on what the individual
thought, then why did anything matter? For example, some churches believe that
Baptism is necessary for salvation, and others do not. How do you reconcile
that? One side has got to give in and admit that they are wrong. At this point
it became obvious to me that crying Sola
Scriptura! wasn’t justification enough. I found myself becoming
dissatisfied with my experience of evangelical Christianity. It seemed really
out of touch with the day-to-day reality I was living in. My faith was drying
up and I felt that what I was supposed to believe had no real foundation.
Various circumstances
came together to convince me that spending a year at a Mennonite Bible College
would be the best thing for me (and it was). I was given a wonderful year in
which to work through my conflicting feelings about Christianity. I was taking
classes that were letting me explore my faith, but at the same time I was
meeting people who had the same feelings that I did about how fake the practice
of our faith seemed. I hardly went to church that year because I just couldn’t
handle how empty it seemed, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready to give up on
Christianity. It was now a matter of searching for a denomination whose beliefs
I could accept.
That school-year
ended, and I decided to direct my studies down a more academic path by
attending university and studying medieval history. The only Christians friends
I had in my new city were Catholic, and they invited me to Mass at the university
chaplaincy. It was there that I noticed one could sign up for RCIA (catechism)
classes and I decided to give it a shot. I didn’t think that I could be
Catholic, but I knew that I couldn’t reject that denomination without learning
about its basic beliefs.
RCIA classes started
breaking down many of the myths I’d grown up believing about Catholicism, but
they hadn’t yet solved my dilemma. Like Pilate, my question over those years
was really “what is truth?” I knew that Catholics would have a Catholic bias,
so RCIA wasn’t going to be enough to convince me that they had any more claim
to truth than anyone else. Then came a university course that surveyed medieval
history. It just so happened that the prof (not Catholic) happened to believe
that medieval history involved a heavy, heavy dose of church history. And it
was this secular course that convinced me once and for all that I could not be
a Protestant. I would have to hold true to a church that had a long historical
claim to Christianity, a church that could trace its theology back to the
apostles without ignoring everything between “the dark ages” and the
Reformation. I was left with a very limited selection (for practical reasons as
much as anything else) – the main two being Catholic or Orthodox, and from
there it was an easy decision. I knew about Catholicism, Catholic churches were
accessible (there are less Orthodox churches than Catholic where I’m from), and
I was already enrolled in RCIA classes. Provided my RCIA classes didn’t expose
any deep, dark Catholic secrets I knew what I would have to do.
To even reach the
point of this decision took several years, as you can see. To commit to the
decision gave me many sleepless nights. I felt immense guilt & worry over
leaving the faith of my family. To change from an Anabaptist to a papist was not
a simple shift. Fortunately my parents took the news well (some people were
really put-out that they associated with me after my conversion).
I’ll have been
Catholic for ten years this coming Easter. I used to wonder if I could really
be Catholic for such a long period of time. If I were only drawn to the Church
for liturgy & ritual, the answer would be a resounding NO. Were the Christ
not in the Church, the liturgy would be empty and the sameness of each Mass
would quickly become boring and stifling. It is the very presence of the Holy
Trinity in my life as a Catholic that keeps my faith alive and growing. I
experience God through His divine grace in the sacraments. I visit Jesus each
week at Mass. I witness the working of the Holy Spirit through the ages when I
read/discuss Catechism (Tradition!). I have found the answer to my question of
what is truth.
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| The year I converted -- after a Mass that formed part of the confirmation process |
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