Shortly after the infant baptism discussion my mother started to get the idea that we were really looking into the doctrines of the Catholic Church. She had never been one to press too hard but when we started asking questions she would give us the answers we needed. Finally she decided to head all of our questions off at the pass by handing us a 2 VHS tape series that she had seen on EWTN called "Household of Faith". This series was hosted by Kristine Franklin and Rosalind Moss. Moss is a convert from Judaism to Evangelical Protestantism and then finally into the Catholic Church. Kristine Franklin is a convert from Evangelical Protestantism. Each episode used personal stories regarding their conversions to Catholicism focused around a particular topic. The series was broken down into 16 parts.

After the first video my wife and I both, for the first time on our journey towards the Catholic faith expressed a great deal of excitement. We thought "maybe this IS the Church founded by Jesus Christ". What impressed me most about the series is that these two women were the people we were used to going to church with, just Catholic. They could talk the Evangelical talk. They loved the Bible. They were missionaries and active members of their former churches. Over the 16 episodes they skewered many common misconceptions about the Catholic faith which fell right in line with the atrocious treatment we had noticed of others towards the Catholic faith. Every episode was similar to one that had played out in my life at the very churches I had gone to. The women were emotional and they loved the Catholic Church. You could see real JOY. This wasn't the works based, sour faced scrooge religion I had been told about. This was everything I had but more complete. The excitement built and built over every episode. We liked it even more because they explained doctrines in a way that glorified the One who gave them to us. A perfect example was Rosalind Moss in explaining how our sufferings add to those of Christ.

"If Christ's sacrifice was sufficient, then how was it that we added to it? Because to offer ourselves with Christ is to say that His sacrifice is not sufficient. And everyone I had asked said we didn't add to it because they wanted me to understand that the Catholic Church believed that Christ's sacrifice was sufficient. But Msgr. O'Connor said to me, 'Yes, we add to the sacrifice of Christ; and yes, His sacrifice was sufficient. No, He doesn't need us; but He receives us. We legitimately add.'

"I thought, 'Aha! The truth is out at last. This is heresy. You believe that we add to the sacrifice of Christ and now it's out in the open. I <knew> I couldn't trust the Catholic Church.'

"And in the next moment what he had said penetrated my mind, or my heart, and became the most beautiful thought I'd ever heard. I thought immediately of a mother baking a cake, and her little child in the kitchen with her. The mother has everything there sufficient for the cake; but here comes the daughter and says, 'Mommy, I want to help.' So the mother receives the daughter because that love receives. She lets the daughter put the eggs in. Is the mother sufficient? Yes. Does she need the daughter? No. Does she allow the daughter to add? Yes. The daughter's addition is not needed, but it's received and it's a true addition. And I thought, 'That's love.'

"The human mind, and certainly the Protestant mind, could never conceive of it. Two weeks later, driving home from Mass, I realized for the first time, 'I don't think I want to be outside of this too much longer.'"

Long after the fact I realized that watching this series marked an important point in my conversion. I was moving into another phase of my conversion in a manner that is common to many converts. The first phase is, as G. K. Chesterton identifies in "The Catholic Church and Conversion"

... when he imagines himself to be entirely detached, or even to be entirely indifferent, but in the old sense of the term, as when the Prayer Book talks of judges who will truly and indifferently administer justice. Some flippant modern person would probably agree that our judges administer justice very indifferently. But the older meaning was legitimate and even logical and it is that which is applicable here. The first phase is that of the young philosopher who feels that he ought to be fair to the Church of Rome. He wishes to do it justice; but chiefly because he sees that it suffers injustice. From The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton - Chapter III: The Real Obstacles

Check. I had been there. The next phase was upon me. To further quote Chesterton

The second stage is that in which the convert begins to be conscious not only of the falsehood but the truth and is enormously excited to find that there is far more of it than he would ever have expected. This is not so much a stage as a progress; and it goes on pretty rapidly but often for a long time. It consists in discovering what a very large number of lively and interesting ideas there are in the Catholic philosophy, that a great many of them commend themselves at once to his sympathies, and that even those which he would not accept have something to be said for them justifying their acceptance. This process, which may be called discovering the Catholic Church, is perhaps the most pleasant and straightforward part of the business, easier than joining the Catholic Church and much easier than trying to live the Catholic life. It is like discovering a new continent full of strange flowers and fantastic animals, which is at once wild and hospitable.

The next several months were ones of excitement where I learned much about the Catholic faith and began to really take ownership of the concept that I was in the presence of the truth. Thats the real gist of it. Any and everyone who has been through this process can tell you when asked "Why did you convert?" --- "Why simply, because its true."

NOTE: Fiath is spelled incorrectly in the title because in the introduction to every "Household of Faith" series episode they spell the word FAITH one letter at a time. Only, they spell it FIATH. It took us six or so episodes to notice this. From that point, my wife and I began to refer to the series as the Household of FEE-ATH series.

When I first became a Protestant the young lady that I was attending Church with knew I was raised Catholic. She also rejected outright my baptism as an infant. She asked me to review baptism in the Book of Acts in order to be baptized at her church. I never did that while in school but the general idea of reviewing Acts stayed with me. After graduating from college and beginning to attend a non-denominational church, I started to think more about it. Upon looking at the concordance in the back of my brand spanking new NIV, I noticed that the Book of Acts contained scores of refrences to baptism. At that point I read the references in the Book of Acts.

A sampling of references stack up like this:

Acts 2:38 ... Repent and be baptized ...

Acts 2:41 Those who accepted his message were baptized ...

Acts 8:12 But when they believed ... they were baptized, both men and women.

Acts 8:13 Simon himself believed and was baptized.

Acts 18:8 ... and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized

Acts 19:5 On hearing this, they were baptized ...

This caused me to doubt the baptism of my youth. I came to a simple conclusion. You had to believe in order to be baptized. Thus, in my mid-twenties, I was "baptized" again by full immersion.

A few years passed. In that time, I left the non-denominational church and joined the Episcopal church. I got married and my wife and I had two children. We had our first son baptized even though in my mind it was more of a baby dedication like we had at my old non-denominational church. I wasn't torn over the idea. I figured Espicopalians had to have good reasons to baptize infants but I didn't believe at the time that was what was going on. I figured it couldn't hurt. When our second child was due up for baptism we had a long discussion in our family about infant baptism.

The same verses in Acts were presented in support of belief coming before baptism. The contrary case was also made. "All of these people were converted adults. Even today, the Church baptizes those who convert to the faith after belief." I had never thought about it that way before. The Book of Acts occurred in a unique time in history. There were lots of non-Christians around thus there were lots of conversions going on. Of course they were not born into the faith. This normitive case today was unusual then. The discussion veered in the direction of baptism by immersion only. After all, we (Episcopalians) didn't typically immerse infants as that was practically problematic. Certainly a requirement to immerse would lend sufficient cause to reject infant baptism. This case, however, was not very convincing to me. The immersion only case insists the Greek meaning of "baptizo" means immersion in every case. I find this assertion weak, especially due to the fact that there two instances in the New Testament of "baptizo" explicitly being translated as wash (Luke 11:38, Mark 7:3–4).

A few more verses rose to the surface. While there are no instances of infant baptism in the Bible, there are multiple instances of entire households being baptized (Acts 16:13-15, 1 Corinthians 1:16). Also nowhere in Scripture do we read of children reaching the age of reason before being baptized. The whole households were. It certainly stands to reason that there were young children in those families. Furthermore Catholics refer to baptism as the new cicrcumcision (Colossians 2:11–12). If circumcision was done to infants in the Old Covenant then certainly the New Testament fulfilment of circumcision would also be performed on infants.

Finally, during the discussion I thought the zinger that laid to rest all doubt about infant baptism came to light.

1 Peter 3:21 (NIV): and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge(1) of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 1. Or response

Here it seemed to me that a pledge on the part of the believer was requried for baptism. I left the discussion less assured that infant baptism was wrong but not entirely convinced that it was right. Upon reading that verse over and over that night I realized that it did not refer to the promise of the Christian. It refered to the response by God of a "clean conscience". This fit in nicely with a regenerative understanding of baptism. This verse is often used by apologists to show as much. This is a doctrine that I had no qualms with. The verse in no way undermined infant baptism as I had originally thought.

We followed through with the baptism of our son retaining the justification that it couldn't hurt.

What started to change my mind on the matter was Martin Luther who stated

But if God did not accept the baptism of infants, He would not give the Holy Ghost nor any of His gifts to any of them; in short, during this long time unto this day no man upon earth could have been a Christian.-- XIII A.
Part Fourth: Of Infant Baptism. in Martin Luthers Large Catechsim

Here Luther appealed to history. It certainly made sense to me as few had questioned the doctrine of infant baptism prior to this point. So what of history on baptism?

In the first century we see in the Didache the early use of pouring thus supporting the case of the Catholic Church and more mainline Protestant denominations against "immersion only" opponents:

And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

We further see support in the second century for a regenerative understanding of baptism, of which Luthers assertion assumes a belief in:

As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, "Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." -- St. Justin Martyr First Apology, 61

Finally we see in the second century a direct support for infant baptism:

For He came to save all through means of Himself -- all, I say, who through Him are born again to God -- infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. -- St. Irenaeus Against Heresies 2:22:4

My post discussion research also introduced me to the Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. During the discussion the Summa was directly appealed to on behalf of Catholics. The pertinent passage is whether children should be baptized?. Here Aquinas defends against common objections on requiring intent and faith. He places the burden of each of these on the Church for

like carnal birth, in this respect, that as the child while in the mother's womb receives nourishment not independently, but through the nourishment of its mother, so also children before the use of reason, being as it were in the womb of their mother the Church, receive salvation not by their own act, but by the act of the Church.

Once again, I found the biblical case sound and the historical case nearly irrefutable.

The doctrine of sola scriptura is not one that I thought much about in my Protestant days. It was a given. It was never expounded or explained. Usually it was just expected to be held. I simply adopted the mindset that what was in the Bible was good enough for generations of people to surround themselves with. They could have good fellowship and learn from our love letter from God. I never questioned this doctrine nor did I understand the implications of it. That changed upon reading an essay by Jimmy Akin that challenged not the biblical basis of it but the practical problems associated with it. Without reprinting the whole of the text (available online here), I will summarize the points that most resonated with me:

1. Private interpretation is a necessary corollary of sola scriptura.
2. Most people do not have the time required to become Scripture scholars.
3. History shows that most people were illiterate thus if Bible reading were THAT important, Christians historically would have placed a high priority on literacy.
4. But that wasn't necessary because the printing press was not invented until the 15th century, thus access to books was very limited not because the Church kept the scriptures from the people but because it costs several years wages to get your hands on a Bible.

Thus, historically speaking, heading to church with a Bible in tow to hear a preacher expound upon the Word is a recent historical innovation. It simply was not possible until mass production processes made books affordable and available to the masses. Beyond that the typical arguments against the Church regarding the Bible were almost easily explainable as I soon learned by reading Catholic/Protestant debates on the matter.

Charge: The Church prohibited translations and kept the Scriptures from the people.
Response:: In some cases, this is true but the reason was to safeguard the accurate meaning of the Scriptures. This phenomenon was largely limited to England.

Charge: The Church chained down Bibles because they didn't want people to have them.
Response:: Bibles were valuable. They were typically available for people to read but the reality is that most people could not read.

Charge: The Church added books to the Bible. You can see this by their affirming the Canon containing these books after the time of Luther.
Response:: The Gutenberg Bible, a Catholic Bible, contained the Deuterocanon (see Reminder that the Deuterocanon is in the Gutenberg Bible). Numerous references the deuterocanonical books can be found throughout the historical documents of the Church (Early Church Fathers: Old Testament Canon). Earlier local councils (Council of Rome in 382 and the Council of Hippo in 393) affirmed the Deuterocanon which was not in dispute until the time of the reformation.

Charge: Catholics were ignorant of the Scriptures until the reformation
Response: It is historically verifiable that Catholics were taught about the Bible before the reformation. The documents of the early church fathers are strewn with Bible verses and commentary which rivals that of the best preachers today. Books written by the saints further underscore this point. You can find excellent Bible commentary from just about every century of the Church. Furthermore, one only needs to look at the stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle in France to realize that pre-reformation Christians were not ignorant of Scripture. The entire collection of images in the building is a history of the Church (with some French embellishment towards the end) ... Most of your Bible stories are contained. A cursory review of art history, especially western art in the time frame just prior to the reformation includes numerous examples of Bible events, especially those in the New Testament.

Another key point that really hit home with me is that none of the defenses that Catholics use against Protestant attacks on their understanding of the Bible are new. From St. Thomas Aquinas back to the time of St. Clement of Rome, writings can be found that defend certain Catholic doctrines in the same manner they are defended today by Jimmy Akin, Dave Armstrong, Mark Shea and others. St. Francis de Sales was not treading much new ground when he wrote his defenses of the Church against the reformers.

Finally, the doctrine of sola scriptura is foreign to Scripture. That would make it, as is often charged of Catholics, a tradition of men.

The passage most commonly brought up by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists is 2 Timothy 3:16–17. In the King James Version, the verse reads this way: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- ness; That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

Many claim that 2 Timothy 3:16–17 claims Scripture is sufficient as a rule of faith. But an examination of the verse in context shows that it doesn’t claim that at all; it only claims Scripture is "profitable" (Greek: ophelimos) that is, helpful. Many things can be profitable for moving one toward a goal, without being sufficient in getting one to the goal. Notice that the passage nowhere even hints that Scripture is "sufficient"—which is, of course, exactly what Protestants think the passage means.

Point out that the context of 2 Timothy 3:16–17 is Paul laying down a guideline for Timothy to make use of Scripture and tradition in his ministry as a bishop. Paul says, "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (Greek: theopneustos = "God-breathed"), and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3:14–17). In verse 14, Timothy is initially exhorted to hold to the oral teachings—the traditions—that he received from the apostle Paul. This echoes Paul’s reminder of the value of oral tradition in 1:13–14, "Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us" (RSV), and ". . . what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2:2). Here Paul refers exclusively to oral teaching and reminds Timothy to follow that as the "pattern" for his own teaching (1:13). Only after this is Scripture mentioned as "profitable" for Timothy’s ministry.

The few other verses that might be brought up to "prove" the sufficiency of Scripture can be handled the same way. Not one uses the word "sufficient"—each one implies profitability or usefulness, and many are given at the same time as an exhortation to hold fast to the oral teaching of our Lord and the apostles. The thing to keep in mind is that nowhere does the Bible say, "Scripture alone is sufficient," and nowhere does the Bible imply it. Catholic Answers: What's Your Authority?

A crisis of faith

This caused a radical shattering of some presumptions I had. Without an authority, the Scriptures alone were not sufficient to logically support themselves. After all, why would I trust them over any other book that someone hands me and says "THIS is the inspired Word of God". One of two solutions seemed possible and they were both uncomfortable. The first was to find myself outside the Christian faith. I could not understand how God would have allowed his faith to wander aimlessly for 3-4 centuries without something so critical as the Bible itself. The Canon of the New Testament is first documented by St. Athanasius (who further believed in the Primacy of the Roman Church, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Apostolic Tradition). I thought long and hard about this. Over time I came to the conclusion that I had seen too much of what God had done in my life to ignore it. The other solution was to review the path of the apostolic churches, the ones that had continuity with history and championed some role of having guarded the deposit of the faith since the time of Christ.

So what of the role of of the Church, in other words, tradition? St. Basil the Great (c. 330-c. 379) puts it best

The Church preserves many beliefs and practices that generally are accepted or publicly commanded. Some are taken from written teaching; others have been passed on to us “in a mystery” by the tradition of the apostles. In relation to true religion, both of these have the same force.

I had to find out more.

OK, this is a big work in progress but I am posting the gist of it now anyway

On June 17, 2000 my wife and I were married in a small Episcopal Church. We did a lot of things pretty traditionally. Other standard American marriage traditions we didn't mind so much. One was the way we dealt with taking pictures. We did so before the ceremony. My wife showed up a few minutes after we did but a few hours before our early bird 9:30 am wedding. I still to this day can see her joyous smile peering from the back seat of her mothers car. Her smile was aimed only at me, as if I was the only thing in the world that existed. Another thing we decided to do was make it very clear that our marriage was focused on our relationship with Christ. He was going to be the center of our relationship. We took the opportunity to create a long program for our wedding knowing that many people would be coming from different backgrounds. The Catholics in our family would be familiar with the liturgical order of the service. The Protestants in our family would be familiar with some of the more contemporary Christian musical choices that we made. We also decided to print all of the scripture readings we selected and the responses that were expected from the attendees.

Our song choices were:
Classical tunes: "Clair de Lune" - Claude Debussy, "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" - J.S. Bach, "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" Ludwig von Beethoven, "Brother James Air" - Bain
Contemporary tunes: "Lord I Life Your Name on High", "You Are My All In All", and "Shout to the Lord"

Our Scripture readings were:
Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 8:6-7
Psalm 127
1 John 4:7-16
John 15:9-12

From that point on, time flew. Before I knew it I was standing face to face with her and all I could see was gold illuminating her face. This woman was soon to be my wife and God was making it very apparent to me that this was a special moment in my life. The grace abound was astounding -- so thick nearly that I felt I could physically see what was happening in a way I knew no other person in the room could see. My wife told me afterwards that she saw the same thing. We both knew that something extraordinary had happened that morning. It was more than a social contract appeasing our parents. It was blessed by God to be something special.

A few years later, our lives brought us to consideration of Catholicism. What was different between it and the Anglican communion of which the Episcopal church was a part? I found in the back of the Book of Common prayer some "historical documents" of which a declaration called the 39 Articles was included.

XXV. Of the Sacraments.
Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God's good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him.

There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.

Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord's Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.

This bothered me, partly from my experience at our wedding and further from my experience as a married man. I had already encountered more Catholic understandings of marriage through reading on birth control. I found it wholly repugnant to ignore that Christ's first miracle occurred at the wedding at Cana and further to ignore St. Paul's having compared it, in a very real way to the Church itself. The actual grace that comes from trying to be a faithful Christian husband to your wife is readily apparent to any and all who partake in marriage. How could the obvious fruits of marriage, including children be anything less than a sign of God's love and grace to all of us? The actual grace was undeniable. I have heard it said by some that the ordinary means of salvation for the majority is through the faithful service of ones spouse and the right upbringing of children in the faith. Of all the arrangements in my life, the most clear arrangement resulting in closeness with God is my marriage. To say it is not a sacrament was tantamount to insulting all that I held dear about marriage and to further relegate it to a mere social contract as if God had no intent in the right ordering of spouses towards sacrifice and sheer dependence on grace to even make it work. I decided to share my dismay with other Episcopalians. Upon this inquiry I found that whether or not we believed the contents of the "39 Articles" was really up to us. I could hold a sacramental belief about marriage. I further found this difference in belief also included our beliefs on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist which we found differed in the church from actual belief in the Catholic doctrine all the way to those who believed it no more than bread and wine.

To me this was even more bothersome. The Eucharist either IS or it IS NOT Christ. Marriage either IS or it IS NOT a sacrament. Those are pretty fundamental things to disagree on and here I was going to church with every manner of person believing as they wish. The relativistic aspect I was encountering on matters of doctrine was giving me strong cause to reconsider my affiliation with the church I was going to. The lack of real support for young married couples was even more pressing at that time in our lives. Our church was simply lacking in young families. We desired Christian friends with young children even if only for fellowship reasons. This collection of reasons gave us what we needed to justify church shopping.

It was a difficult path though. We loved the people we went to church with. What about those relationships?

A few years before we converted my to be brother-in-law was spending time with my mother. You see, my mom is the neighborhood matronly figure that many of my friends adopted as their second mom. It was not unusual to me to hear of my friends talking to my mom and breaking down in tears over some personal struggle in their lives. Its different talking to someone else's mom. There are times when you are not really quite sure you want your own mother to know about something in your life -- not yet -- but you still want sage advice from those who have been through the fire already. Other friends parents often fit the bill quite nicely. Over the course of normal discussions my mom simply handed him a copy of popular Catholic apologetics book. The thought of converting to Catholicism was quite far from his mind at the time.

The time following this is somewhat of a mystery to us. Eventually he announced to his family that he intended to convert to Catholicism. We had no idea what was going on. He was pretty much dismissed by my wife and I as being an angst ridden and defiant -- so typical of men his age. At the time the concept of returning to the Church was so foreign to me that I fell prey to one of the most common anti-Catholic assumptions about conversion. I thought "He just didn't KNOW what he was giving up." Today I read people, especially Presbyterians, say this about Scott Hahn quite a lot. The thought of someone converting for a REASON is just poppycock to them. So it was with me and my brother-in-law. When you are in that mindset there HAS to be another, more irrational reason. What sane person would so such a thing as to give up the freedom of grace based Protestantism for works based, archaic, and heavily rule-laden faith such as Catholicism? Time passed, and it became something of a novelty when we would mention it to our Protestant friends. The response was almost always "Why I've never heard of such!" "Me either", I would retort. We all fell blind to that assumption. Everyone knows that faithful Christians only leave the Catholic Church. My poor deceived brother-in-law, turned over into a religion of bondage. Still, I had sympathy for him. I had never thought too poorly of the Catholic Church. I at least gave them the title Christian, just an odd sort of faith with lots of useless rubrics added to it.

Eventually my wife had a discussion with him about it. "Why on earth?" -- His response was quite simple. "If the Catholic Church is who it claims to be, then I had to be part of it." I was thinking when I heard of this -- 'Oh, do tell, what is it that the Church claims to be?" He told my wife that the Catholic Church claimed to be THE Church founded by Jesus Christ. Over time he had come to the conclusion that it was and furthermore that it was disobedience to Christ to remain apart from it. The thought was interesting but as far as I was concerned it was preposterous to think that any Christian Church had all of the truth. The reason people changed churches is because, just like the Catholic Church did during reformation times, they tend to become corrupt under the influence of the traditions of men running them. Eventually we all have to judge them against Scripture and when they err we simply find some other group more in line with what the good book says. (Little did I know this would play out in our lives in the near future) ... Further discussion with him also led him to pointing out that the real kicker for him was a chapter in the book "Catholicism vs. Fundamentalism" on the canon of the New Testament and history of the Bible.

All in all it was intriguing to understand why someone would do so. It seemed sensible but we had our own experience to show us otherwise. In reality, it was another seed. The occasions to discuss it became occasions to demonstrate the irrational understanding of others about what the Catholic faith was really about.

After determining that the biblical case for Catholicism was at least as favorable as any other, I turned to the case from history by consulting with the early church fathers. At first this case was one I totally ignored. I did not see any reason to consult them because they certainly did not supersede Scripture. I knew even Catholics believed that. In the discussion on infant baptism I saw many citations of the early fathers used to show that the Church in early centuries did in fact practice baptism of infants. It was an interesting piece of information but I figured that surely one doctrine could have been corrupted in a high percentage of churches and it just caught on.

The basic path prior to this point was
1. Sola scriptura fails its own test as it is not clearly discernable from Scripture alone, nor does it explain how the Canon itself must have been determined -- external to Scripture.
2. If this is the case, then Christianity itself rests on someone having the authority to decide what scripture IS.
3. The historical case for most other Churches is lacking.

It was this final point that was the most compelling to me. From the introduction to EarlyChurchFathers.com

Most of these theories refer to small churches that remained persecuted, hidden or unseen throughout the course of documented Church history. However, the lack of documentation on these small churches would seem to be indicative of their actual lack of existence.

Another theory -- the idea that the Church went wrong around the time of Luther or went past the point of maintaining its place as "The Church" at exactly the point of the Reformation is suspect because the majority of teachings that the Reformers had problems could easily be shown to have been taught by the Church since the earliest times. The Church would have gone off the mainline Protestant path VERY early. This brings us the rapid apostasy theory. This is immediately called into question by Matthew 16:18 which indicates that the "gates of hell will not prevail". If they had prevailed then Christ was a liar or Scripture is not inerrant on an important matter of faith. Finally the theories about the Church, being the historical "winner" in matters of faith, and thus having covered up documentation and artifacts of the genuine Church prove to be almost astronomically unlikely. Some physical evidence would have remained long enough for someone to find it. Also, given the number of heresies that were documented, it seems unlikely that some would have been left out. Churches attempting to trace their lineage through these known heresies demonstrate significant ignorance of the teachings of those groups because while they may have had a single belief or two in common with a particular church, their core teachings were often in conflict with core Christian beliefs that all Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics take for granted today. The absence of useful evidence to the contrary of the apostolic churches being THE historic Christian Church is compelling.

Furthermore, the PRESENCE of the evidence for the core beliefs of the Catholic and Orthodox churches in contrast to those of your typical Protestant denomination is overwhelming -- even from the earliest times.

As I mentioned earlier, I never looked at the early fathers in my review of the biblical case. I didn't see the point. What started me looking at this was knowing that I kept hearing a few wild dates about when Catholics "invented" certain doctrines and nothing irritated me more than quick one liners with virtually no factual support. Infant baptism was claimed to have been invented anywhere from the 4th century on. Transubstantiation or even the Real Presence was in the 13th century and on and on. I knew these were bogus from the little reading I had done from the early fathers. My goal was to present a quick list that could be used at least to counter those common claims. The chart would show the doctrine and the earliest known instance of the doctrine being demonstrated or taught. In some cases, the documentation falls outside of simply the documented early fathers. For example, evidence for a post death cleansing (what Catholics call purgatory) is implied and documented by prayers for the dead which can be found in the catacombs in Rome, as well as in documents we have from the early Church. Judaism also historically contains a doctrine similar to purgatory and thus also has prayers for the dead.

The effort of collecting this evidence across the web resulted in many late nights creating files containing these quotes and keeping track of links where they could be read, preferably in context, as to allow the reader to come to his own conclusions given the information. The result is what is now EarlyChurchFathers.com.

At this point the question of why Catholicism over Orthodoxy often arises. To me the matter was settled over two points. I find it difficult to reconcile the seemingly clear eastern affirmation for the place of Rome as the primary see with their separation from Rome. This is best demonstrated by Ellliot Bougis' blog post in November of 2004, which I read after my conversion, titled And you can quote me! The second point is summarized by looking at the major sees in the early church and noting which ones taught which heresy at which time. Rome never taught one of the early major heresies like Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism etc. This is excellently documented in "Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic" by David Currie. The same chart is also documented online at Heresies of the Patriarchs.

In conclusion, I can only leave one with the best, most often cited statement about this evidence that exists and it is from John Henry Cardinal Newman:

And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.

And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not mean that every writer on the Protestant side has felt it; for it was the fashion at first, at least as a rhetorical argument against Rome, to appeal to past ages, or to some of them; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has felt it. This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical history in England, which prevails even in the English Church. {8} Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

--An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Cardinal Newman

The gross ignorance about Catholicism and the inability or desire to modify said ignorances was one of the most shocking things I encountered in my years as a Protestant. Many Protestant churches I attended did not display outward ignorance but some did, and on a level that was mind boggling.

Let me give a few examples

Catholics worship statues (1162, 2132), Mary (971) and the saints.
Catholics believe that Christ is re-sacrificed at each mass. (1545)
Catholics don't believe the bible. (105+) -- by recent example, this ignorance is even further hampered when mainstream press issues articles like this (via Catholic and Enjoying It!) further cementing ignorance and bias in the minds of the masses.

In each of these cases the teachings of the Church demonstrate that they are frequently misunderstood and often grossly misrepresented. The problem is, simply repeating the same falsehoods over and over about the Church wasn't going to miraculously make the assertions true. One must demonstrate that Catholics believe these things. According to the teachings of the Church, Catholics simply don't believe them. The explanation of these teachings is often met with violent opposition as if being wrong on this ONE point will somehow verify that the Catholic Church is right about everything. That logic, of course, doesn't follow, so why the violent opposition?

Is it really that hard to take a man or a religion, especially one with clear official teachings, at its own word? I found the answer in some settings to be overwhelmingly NO.

Another perplexing phenomenon I witnessed was objection to the Catholic Church over and above Episcopalianism. I couldn't understand the hatred towards the Catholic position but not towards Protestants who held similar positions. Everyone I knew was fine with C.S. Lewis holding to a doctrinal purgatory, or to the Orthodox for a post-life cleansing state but the Catholic doctrine was somehow wrong where the others were not. The feeling was; "At worst those folks were just wrong on one or two points" or "its not the same as purgatory". Catholics, however, were out in left field on everything for holding to the SAME DOCTRINES and, worse, giving them unbiblical names, which brings me to my final point. I cannot tell you how many times I read that because the word "papas" (pope) did not exist prior to the 4th century that Catholics didn't believe in the primacy of the bishop of Rome until AT LEAST that time. The problem is that there is historical evidence of actions demonstrating such authority prior to then. The same is true with the word "transubstantiation". The word came into use in the 12th or 13th century, but the historical doctrine of the Church has been in line with it since Christ uttered the words "This is my body". A better way I have seen this clarified is to point out that just because the word "car" did not come into regular use until the 1930's doesn't mean that there were not cars prior to 1930.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - William Shakespeare

What I saw were many bad arguments against the Catholic Church. If anything, these arguments drove me TOWARDS Rome. Catholic apologists always seemed more credible in defense of these doctrines because the hatred clearly seemed lacking on their side of the fence (this is not always the case). These were simple objections with rational yet frequently more verbose refutations.

The goal with opponents seemed to be collecting as much as possible to deal with the one error of Catholicism. Sadly, not the greatest level of discernment seems to have been employed. It seemed more to me that anything that could be piled on to make your book about the evils of Catholicism 700 pages instead of 80 pages was worth getting in on. After all, a larger book meant a BIGGER and BETTER case, right? It didn't really. It greatly undermined the case AGAINST the Church. I knew that in order to give the Catholic Church a fair shake I was going to have to sift through a sea of arguments based solely on hatred for the Church vs. those based on the actual teachings themselves. My own objections were based somewhat on many of these superfluous and lacking arguments but I knew there were some solid and more intellectually stimulating objections out there. Those were the ones I intended to either find explained or find sufficiently damaging to prevent my continued conversion to Catholicism.

This "straw man" aspect demonstrated itself over and over and was most obvious in the Protestant understanding of indulgences at the church I initially attended out of college. [next post]

I blogged some of this earlier, but I re-post it here with some additions and minor changes since it essentially completes one of the segments of the conversion story I started this blog to document :).

My wife and I were travelling full steam towards an entrance into Holy Mother Church when our train was violently derailed by learning of incorrupt saints. At first we were horrified to think that people actually kept deceased saints on display for centuries. The fact that they were incorrupt seemed almost a sign that something was wrong ... really wrong. Research of this led us into the realm of relics. This seemed even worse. Martyrs were divided up into pieces and sent around to the various churches for the purpose of veneration. Why was this? Why did it seem so foreign and wrong to this Protestant American?

First, I should explain my reservation. Dead people creep me out. There is something seemingly dirty about death that I really think is at the root of what bothers us about this. Most people rather avoid passing by a casket at a wake. We prefer to distance ourselves as far as possible from the deceasesd seemingly for fear that we too might catch whatever it is that killed the person lying in the casket. Second, the flesh seems so much lesser than the spirit that the idea of degrading it to the point of it being worthless is a very common idea amongst particularly Protestants. Essentially, it is a corrupt mindset about the body and more significantly, about the physical.

What careened this hurdle into the recesses of my past?

First off relics and veneration of such was a historically observable fact of early Christianity. From the time of Polycarp we can see that the Church has kept remains and other items owned by or used by martyrs and Holy men and women of the Church. An excerpt from the Martyrdom of Polycarp (156 AD) best illustrates this principle:

Accordingly, we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.(Source)

Since the historical continuity of doctrine was one of the primary reasons that I felt I must become Catholic, this early indication of such carried great weight with me.

Second was the fact that there were clear indications in scripture of God using items, like bones, garments and even shadows to affect persons in a very real way. (1)

2 Kings 13:20-21: “So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. 21 And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet.”

Acts 5:15-16: “. . . they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. 16 The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.”

Acts 19:11-12: “And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.” (cf. Mt 9:20-22)

Third, I came to recognize the false dichotomy that I had maintained between spirit and matter. This was even more intriguing from my standpoint because I had managed to conquer this objection in my study on the sacraments. Earlier, I posted about my lifelong affirmation of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To me this naturally follows from the Incarnation. The same holds with baptism. What I wanted to do with relics was say that God couldn't do what Catholics claimed He could do with relics, especially in the case of the incorrputables. What this required of me was a total conversion to the idea of sacrament. I had to get over the idea that there is some kind of division between matter and spirit. I think this is a problem that exists in Americans as a whole. Europeans are not so squeamish about the dead, I think, because they have deeper Catholic roots. The division of matter and spirit is not a new idea though. It seems every major heresy from the dawn of time made the basic assumption that matter was evil and that the spirit was good and that none shall the two meet. The Incarnation is the single biggest indication that there is fault with that idea. To further find fault, from a Christian perspective, one only need look at Genesis. To summarize:

God created and it was GOOD.

Further understanding of what evil is, as taught by the Church, reveals even more clearly this truth. "Evil is the privation (or absence) of good." (paraphrase from Augustine) Nothing created by God is in and of itself evil. Few Protestants would disagree, yet the dichotomy exists in the minds of so many ... It did with me.

What the Protestant convert has to struggle through is understanding the purpose of these "things" Catholics have. Statues, rosaries, relics, stained glass. All of them are things we can use as aids to piety. We do not worship them because they can do nothing for us and they themselves have no power.

But God can work through them. That is the lesson I had to learn ...

The final realization about the incorruptables was that this falls perfectly in line with the idea of the resurrection of the body which is something we recite in the Nicene Creed every Sunday. Death was defeated by Christ and in that it took that we can rest assured that this is a power that Satan does not have. That is why it is most assuredly of God that these things happen. Why did God choose to give us these type miracles? That is beyond the scope of this little brain of mine ... but there they are.

One of the last and strongest oppositions that I maintained against the Catholic Church had to do with the fruits of people that I saw all my life that called themsleves Catholic. I knew that the Catholic Church taught a high standard of morals but it did not seem that it translated very well into changed lives. Consider the following example from our Engaged Encounter weekend, which we attended prior to our marriage as Episcopalians:

(from the previous blog entry) there was a time when all of the couples sat in the round and a couple of questions were asked. The questions were about cohabitation and sex before marriage. The responses included

"I'll call you a liar if you say that you are not sleeping together before you get married"
"After all, you wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, I don't see why getting married is any different"
"We would be living together but my future father-in-law threatened to kill me if that happened"
"The everyday difficulties of life require us to live in sin"
and the gem of the evening.
"We are all sinning and know it but we know Jesus is going to forgive us anyway so what is the point"

Add to this my wife knowing a Catholic girl in college that maintained that "Mary would be at her wedding and that it didn't matter whether or not Jesus showed up" and intending on getting a divorce because "love doesn't last but about 7-10 years anyway" and we had seen a wide array of bad examples in our own lives. To add further damage to the matter we had numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians both in Louisiana and around the nation. The case for bad Catholics was overwhelming.

Three things changed my mind:

First, meeting and reading about solid Catholics: At first this was limited mostly to online since the majority of my contact with Catholics willing to talk about their faith was through message boards, blogs and web sites dedicated to defending the faith. There I met folks who were intelligent, lived their faith and who presented logical arguments in favor of the Catholic position rather than wilting under the fire of Bible zingers. I was so excited to see this. It let me know that solid Catholics existed. Also, I couldn't discount the lives of the saints and fantastic modern examples of pious Catholic living. How could I not see at a minimum Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II?

Second, reading a solid biblical defense of sinners being in the Church: On Sinners in the Church Some select quotes

The parable of the wheat and weeds (cf. Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43) and wheat and chaff (cf. Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17)
Matthew 7:21–23 implies that there are many counterfeit believers
‘Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able’" (Luke 13:23–24).
Jesus himself rebukes six of the seven churches of Asia he addresses. Most scholars think that the book of Revelation was written no later than A.D. 100. Yet look at all the serious problems we already observe in these apostolic churches even before the last apostle (John) died

The Church then, as now, was riddled with problems: hypocrisy, lukewarmness, heterodoxy, fornication, idolatry

Third, a dynamic unique to Catholicism: The dynamic I am referring to is best described by pointing out the WAY dispute is handled in the Church. If Catholics disagree with the Church, schism is simply not an option. Christ prayed, "that they may all be one" (John 17:20-23). Catholics understand and believe this very strongly. There are ways to handle dispute in the Church and it might take hundreds of years for a matter to be settled. Both the faithful and the dissident know this history. Meanwhile, I have to sit next to someone who disagrees with me, even on things I know have been settled for centuries. In the Catholic Church you have VOTF, Catholics for a Free Choice, The Rainbow Sash movement and a host of other groups that disagree with fundamental teachings in the Catholic Church. They typically remain in the Church despite their gross disagreements with Rome. Protestantism, on the other hand, contains a heritage of schism. "Here I stand" is the battle cry for one group of members in a church who have decided that a doctrine held by others in the church is unacceptable. When the matter reaches a certain boiling point, a new church is formed and doctrinally like-minded folks group together while leaving the remnants holding to the less favorable doctrine behind. The result is that the people in the pew next to you hold very similar doctrinal beliefs and tend to have similar standards of morality. It makes it appear as if where you went to church contained a minimum standard of folks that should call themselves Christian. Reality, paints a different picture, even in Protestantism. If you were to combine all Protestants, from the morally liberal all the way to the most pious of puritans, you would have something quite similar to what I see at mass every Sunday.

As I mentioned earlier, in the Catholic Church, I might be sitting next to a rainbow sasher. What that reminds me most is that I TOO am a sinner and that pride is my weakest link. Who am I, a lowly sinner, to judge one who is there presumably seeking the Truth. The Catholic Church is for the sick, the dying, the grossly sinful and the Holy too. Jesus came for ALL of them and while I may not like sitting next to a bored teenager defiantly clad in tight Abercrombie and Fitch clothes, there she is and Sunday after Sunday she hears Sacred Scripture and she participates in the Holy Sacrifice of the mass. Every day, that grace calls you to decision. My prayer should be that each day we all (my self included) accept that grace and follow Him, and never turn away from the Lord, our strength.

There is a reason you see a lot of little old ladies scooting around the parish every day, serving with every last ounce of life they have in them. They used to be that defiant young girl.

[NOTE: It needs to be known that these posts are short starters for longer overviews that I eventually intend to complete in a more thorough manner. There are few actual references to information (ie lengthy scripture quotations etc) because my time to blog is limited. Anyway, I have decided to be more candid with these and clean them up when I organize them in the future. The initial goal is just to get down the basic story.]

Shortly before and just after my wife and I were married the topic of birth control came up regularly. We had decided prior to marriage to use the pill just like all of our friends and relatives. The wedding day and the honeymoon came and went. We were together. Life was beautiful. Despite those facts, my wife was extremely depressed. This was a shock to both of us because we had just been through the most beautiful wedding that God could have blessed a couple with and the start of our marriage was wonderful. Once again, we were together. Life was beautiful. Why the sorrow?

Shortly afterwards my wife noticed that the times in her when she was depressed and significant hormone changes tended to coincide. This caused her to suspect the birth control pill of affecting her in a negative way. Prior to our wedding my wife received an unsolicited email from a friend with several bits of information about known side effects of the pill. We had neglected to read the email thoroughly when we received it but these recent developments begged us to pull it up and really delve into what the email contained. What it claimed left us horrified. The email noted that side effects of the pill included depression, stroke and even in rare cases death. Not only that, the email alluded to the fact that it was an abortaficient, which meant that it would expel an egg AFTER fertilization. My wife and I are staunchly against abortion and we firmly believe that life begins at conception so the idea that we could be terminating a pregnancy after conception weighed very heavily on us. During the time following the reception of that email my wife and I looked into the matter further. We specifically looked into what doctors had to say and what various Christian leaders had to say about the use of the pill and other birth control methods. In our reading, we happened upon a stunning fact. Prior to 1930 EVERY Protestant denomination was unified in teaching with the Catholic Church that contraception in any form was immoral. It was the Lambeth Conference in 1930 that was the first declaration by a major Protestant denomination (Anglican) to allow for the use of contraceptives and then only in difficult circumstances. The questions raised by this were obvious: Why did the whole of Protestantism modify their teaching on this matter and even more curiously, why DIDN'T the Catholic Church modify its teaching on the matter? These side questions distracted us from a settling answer on the matter of other birth control. We had to press on.

We decided to consult other friends to ask how they arrived at their conclusions. The more that I asked the question the more I realized that it just wasn’t asked any more. When presented with the information we had found some even responded, "God is bigger than the pill. If He wants to bless you with a child then He will” and the issue was promptly dropped. We found this to be akin to testing God. Why would this be any different than expecting God to stop us from stealing chocolate from the candy store by performing some extraordinary miracle? Why were we trusting God to undo our decision to not have children? That rationale simply did not sit well with us. Some concluded that it is wrong to bring many children into the world if you cannot provide a prosperous life for them and that any method was just as good as the other. To me this was motivated by material wealth and implied that those who cannot afford to exist shouldn’t. This also didn’t sit well with us because scripture stated in Psalm 127 that children are a blessing from God. Still, the avoidance of the issue was what stood out. Thinking back, without the depression that came about in the life of my wife I am not sure we ever would have asked any questions about birth control itself. I firmly believe that it is by the grace of God that this issue was raised in our lives.

Meanwhile my wife and I struggled with birth control questions for a brief period before finally determining that NFP was a good method if properly utilized. It must be noted that during this time our thought process had not come in line with what the Church teaches about NFP. We were purposefully avoiding pregnancy by using NFP. We had not entirely embraced the idea of openness to life and we had not discerned the difference between NFP and other forms of contraception. The difference is quite clear. On one hand we have the conscious decision to have sex given available information and on the other we have the deliberate interruption of fertility during sex. My favorite response about this not so subtle difference from a rather brash apologist I read online was “What? You don’t know the difference between having sex and not having sex?” Still, within 5 months of our marriage, my wife was pregnant with our first child.

Our future research on this matter will lead us closer to the teaching of the Church, not because we sought what the Church had to say about it but because we became increasingly aware of good reasons not to practice birth control. A prime example is my own existence. I am the fifth of six children. If my parents had chosen to stop at two or three like the majority of couples today, I would not exist. I have five siblings and at current count they have fourteen children. The legacy my parents will leave is impressive indeed and each and every life that resulted during the course of their adherence to Church teaching is a blessing in my life and for certain the lives of others.

Even though we had come to a better conclusion than the pill on the matter, the questions about our decision lingered … especially the troubling ones that raised real issues about teaching authority in the church we were attending.

[in final affirmations add story about contraception coming up before V2, being tabled til theologians could recommend FOR its use and Humane Vitae coming out opposed to it anyway]

To learn more about the next step in my conversion you have to know a little bit more about me. I come from a background of musicians. My mother taught piano. Also, my brother is a professional bass player for a fairly well known blues band. Finally, I spent a significant amount of my summers writing songs despite my thorough lack of training. For my mother and brother it was a vocation. For me, it was the sheer beauty of it that uplifted me. My own songwriting experience allowed me to experience musicianship and thus music at a level that is a little beyond that of your average pop music fan. My taste in music at one time was an obsession. I had found a small niche of music, or genre rather, that spoke to the depths of my person at the age of 14. You couldn't hear much of it on the radio so I began to seek friendships with those that had similar tastes. I met a couple of friends in school, one with some musical training and one with just good taste in music. Our friendship developed into a band, which for me was a hobby and to this day represents some of the fondest memories that I have as a youth. The love I have for music remains to this day. As my tastes matured I longed for something deeper. That something I found in classical music and jazz so both are very much a part of my music collection and a significant amount of time late in college was spent listening to everything I could get my hands on. To me, experiencing music was the way I got to know God before I had the foggiest idea what His place in my life was. I was wandering in wonder. That was my knowledge of God.

Upon my zealous reversion back to Christianity my attendance at non-denominational Protestant services exposed me very much to contemporary Christian music, which I fought very much against despite the will of my friends to convince me that the message was what was important. Over my years as a Protestant I slowly was able to sing along and find a value in the words themselves, but the music left me wanting for something that I got in secular music and most prominently in classical music. The choir in Neptune of Holsts' The Planets never failed to give me chills. It always touched me in a very deep way and that was something that I could not get from the praise music I was singing, no matter the venue. Where was the awe that I was brought to when I was listening to the finest musical talent in the world? Where was the mystery? Where was the sacred? I must stop for a moment to highlight a lesson that I took from this that I wish many folks in Catholic churches would learn. There is spiritual value in singing along in church. The actual participation in every aspect of the mass brings you to a deeper realization of what is going on. It is an opportunity to praise God and in the mass is far deeper than that. You can participate in ways that Protestants cannot. Much of Protestant worship is very much geared towards praise. Catholic worship is geared towards the Most Blessed Sacrament. In it we touch God in a very real way. We join our sufferings with His and He gives us Himself fully in the Eucharist. The music should be beyond that of pop songs that happen to mention scripture, or God or something Jesus did. The music should be the best mankind has to offer; that which is created by the greatest gifts He gave to man. It is what we should expect, but we should also do what we can to participate ourselves. Every action we make towards Him is a good one and singing is such an easy way to do something simple that grows like an oak tree from the smallest seed.

My thoughts on music further extended into art and architecture but at a later date. My first flirtation with that was when I became engaged to my wife. We started attending a local Episcopal church downtown known for its beauty and architecture. I have no qualms admitting that reason. We were tired of going to church in warehouses. We only attended the church downtown for a few weeks before we started attending the church of her youth, which was also a beautiful little chapel on the campus of a local high school. What was common with both was the artistry. The colorful stained glass windows and adornments were a constant reminder of the greatness of God. The detail given to the flowers on a weekly basis were a reminder to life and the regular renewal of that life. All in all things were simply beautiful and it enhanced my ability to focus on worship. After months of attending church in both places I realized something was happening to me. I was beginning to enjoy art. I was beginning the journey I had in my youth with art, and more importantly with God. Beauty drew me in and it enhanced my relationship with Him far beyond that which I could have ever achieved on my own or by only reading or singing praises.

Man is created in the image of God, and we are endowed with attributes that are similar to certain awe-inspiring aspects of God. He is the Creator. All He creates is good. Man is creative. We do not create in the sense God does because we are incapable of creating something from nothing. We can however take what is created and craft it into a work of art, or a piece of music or poetry. It is in this sense that we have a similarity which in itself inspires us to contemplation of the great He who Is. In every imperfect painting of a waterfall that we create, we can further strive to realize the perfection of God's creation in the flowing thunder of Niagara Falls. Art itself is a catalyst that assists our getting closer to God by understanding the attributes that we are endowed with that are mere types of what He actually is capable of. Our imperfect understanding of the mystery that is the chasm we cannot bridge keeps the well of desire in our hearts for Him overflowing. The beauty we see is a grace that keeps us coming back.

These aspects are not limited to just art and music but also flow into the liturgy itself. The first time I attended an Episcopal church I thought to myself that I was getting back to something that was more real. I was getting back to something that was beautiful and that was ordered towards thinking about God at a very high level. That is where I wanted to be. God wooed me towards Him with beauty. After all, it only makes sense. He is the one who invented the passion for it.

"Art is beauty made a sacrament" - V. McNabb: Thoughts Twice-dyed.

I was not convinced that this was the end of the road but I had quickly come to the conclusion that the Episcopal Church was really no different than the Catholic Church. The only difference was that folks wouldn't get on my case about it. And they didn't ...

The first real indications that the Catholic Church was who they say they were occurred to me when I was attending a non-denominational church just out of college. At the time I was travelling out of town 5 days a week. My life consisted of travelling, sleeping and going to this church on Sunday. I had recently gotten involved in their Ministry 101 course which was geared towards getting you active in a particular ministry in their church. During that time the church, which had been around for 25 years, had gone through a great deal of growing pains about "doctrine". Nobody could seem to agree on what the church stood for as far as core doctrine went and a movement had come about to at least specify a small statement of what was considered required beliefs by the members of the church. The reason for this is because some dissent was arising amongst the members of the church. Some of the elders wanted to clarify which particular beliefs were in line with what the church was teaching and what beliefs were not. Now this is what Catholics, Orthodox and mainline Protestants call a creed. Creeds are very tradition based and many, particularly in the Evangelical movement of Protestantism are so opposed to tradition that the idea of a creed is itself creepy and "unbiblical". Still this church discovered from its own growth that it was necessary to minimze dissent and to foster unity within the church. The Apostles creed has verbage that can be traced back to at least Tertullian in the early 3rd century with some evidence to support the idea that the creed traces back to the 12 apostles themselves. This seed would uproot my holding of the doctrine of sola scriptura and it was planted here. While it was a slight doubt at this point, it would eventually grow into the single issue that caused me most to question Protestantism.

But this is just the beginning of my journey. The issue that really set me off on the path towards Rome was different but it came up right around the same time period. Usually at this church, every so often, a missionary would come in and give a talk about their ministry and then an offering would be taken up for them. One week an offering was being taken up for a new ministry that the church was going to fund. This ministry was going to send people to Rome in order to convert Catholics at the Millenium Jubilee who were going to walk through a gate "to have their sins forgiven" through an indulgence. Naturally, it was apparently well known at this church that Catholics do not hold to the true biblical doctrine of the blood of Christ being the sole source of redemption of sins. Catholics had ways to buy and earn redemption through works and indulgences. The problem I had with this was two-fold. 1) I knew through discussions with my parents that the doctrine of salvation by works alone (Pelagianism) was a historical heresy in the Church. 2) I knew that Catholics did not believe that sins could be forgiven by some approved actions other than our repentance, confession and penance. To me the problem here was clearly one of misinformation. All throughout the presentation there was an underlying air of hatred for this unbiblical Church that has misled many and something needed to be done about it. Countless many had been rescued from Catholicism and this was their way of advancing the cause. The problem is, as was clear to me early in my conversion process, was that they were attacking a Church that did not exist. As Bishop Fulton Sheen once said:

There are not 100 people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are however, millions who hate what they think is the Catholic Church.

I was foruntate in my conversion process that I did not have to get over bias founded on thick layers of lies about what Catholicism actually is. I could see clearly that lies were being propogated as truth by good, honest and sincere people. If lies about the Catholic Church could inflitrate the church I was CHOOSING to attend, how bad could it be elsewhere where virulent Catholic hatred had been apparent from my youth?

I cannot finish this story without pointing out something very valuable that I took from this time in my life. The zeal for the scriptures that I saw in this church allowed me to develop a deep desire to want Christ and to seek him fervently within the scriptures. The doctrine of sola scriptura had been mentioned to me by my brother and my parents (each with opposing viewpoints) and it seemed logical on the surface and it was all I had to go with. Grace got me closer through another wonderous avenue in my life but clearly the problems I was seeing with this church were readily apparent and I had to leave.

Since I was a young child preparing for my first communion, I knew there was something special about the Eucharist. In my many years away from the Church, this is the one Catholic doctrine that I carried with me that I had absolutely no doubt about. I BELIEVE that Christ is substantially present in the Eucharist. The amazing thing that I found was the number of Protestants who also hold this belief, especially high-Anglicans. I assumed this was a belief that was accepted across the deonominational divide. That is, until I started service as a lay Eucharistic minister in the Episcopal church. What I saw was a distinct contrast to what I saw when I was a child. I expected deep reverence for the sacred Body and Blood. What I saw was treatment more on the level of it being mere bread and wine. This caused me to look into what the Espicopal church taught about the Eucharist. I came to find out that the range of beliefs went from a mere memorial supper to it being completely the Body and Blood of Our Lord.

I was amazed at the range of beliefs on the matter. Shocked even. To me, the accounts of the Last Supper seemed as clear as a bell. "This IS my body." From a biblical perspective John 6 is really the focal point of contention about the Eucharist. The language is quite graphic and shocking to those present. This would certainly be the case if Christ did mean as Catholics say He did. People left. Christ had a moral responsiblity to clear the matter up and HE DID NOT. I find it difficult to conclude anything other than He meant real flesh. The primary rebuttal of this by non-believers in the Real Presence is John 6:63 which says "the flesh has nothing to offer". To me this fails to deliver the desired blow to the doctrine because even if it was referring to the same flesh of Christ that was mentioned in the previous several verses it never DENIES that it IS His flesh. It just says that it profits nothing. It would still BE flesh. Beyond that bickering tended to focus on the further clarification of Real Presence to specifically mean transubstantiation.

To me, the dividing line between what was correct and what was not correct had to do with the level with which I felt God was capable of bestowing the gift of His Body and Blood to us. The question simply became: Is God capable of doing it as Catholics say that it is done and if so would He give us any less than Himself totally? Transubstantiation defines the Eucharist as being substantially the "Body, Blood, Soul and Divnity" of our Lord. Somehow, someway what we receive that appears to us as bread and wine IS Christ and it certainly is an act of faith to accept that.

This doctrine was a primary point of contention between where I was and where He wanted me to be. Before that though, there were a great many other hints that led me to at least give the Catholic Church a fair shake. The remainder of these posts will be my story, somewhat sequentially, as to how, by Gods grace, He led me back into His Holy Catholic Church.