My Journey to become a Catholic
In the
summer of 2023, I came into the communion of the Catholic church. After 73 years of Protestantism, almost 50 of
which was as a Pastor or Professor, one might be asking “Why did you decide to
enter into the Catholic church? The
answer to that is not simple and it involves a lifetime of experiences,
questions, and thinking – oh yes, and the work of the Holy Spirit in my journey
of faith.
In one
sense, nothing except my church involvement is changed. I’m a Christian first and foremost of all.
I’ve been a Christian all of my life. I
began my journey in the home of my parents who were Lutheran. I was baptized and later confirmed in the
church. In my teen years, I fell away, as a Prodigal, I distanced myself from
all things concerning faith. Eventually,
it all began to change after I met my future wife, Linda. The Spirit of God used her to lead me back to
God’s love and I gave my life to Christ all over again – a born-again
experience. Within two years, I
surrendered my life to serve Christ to enter into ministry. I went to a Seminary where I majored in early
Theology, Church History, and Education.
In many ways, the studies in Church History planted the seeds to
question how the church I knew had become what it was today.
After
graduating from Seminary, I took a call to pastor a church in rural Wisconsin. As a
new Pastor, and young, I did the work of ministry, with everything I could give
it. Yet, within a few years, I began to
question what I was doing. I began to feel “thin” – by which I mean, I
was doing the job of pastoring, but lacked the heart and soul to enjoy it. I was “burning out”. A friend invited me to a conference, in part
hoping I’d get perspective, and the speaker (a Protestant leader) introduced me
to two Catholic authors who had helped him in dealing with the stress of
ministry. One of two I had never known -
Henry Nouwen. The other one was
well-known, St. Augustine, the great 5th century Bishop I had studied
in Seminary.
I discovered
a depth of writing in Henri Nouwen that touched me in my heart and soul. I read
Henri Nouwen because his writing challenged me to examine my soul, step out of
fear, humiliation, and depression, and find at the end of my rope a waiting,
loving God. I had a much better
foundation under me and the weight of ministry changed as I learned to be a
Protestant Monastic – contemplative, prayerful, and quiet.
I read St. Augustine because he was a man who
once did not believe, lived a rather pagan licentious life, and then later on,
was converted to Christianity. When he
turned by faith to Jesus Christ, God turned his world upside down. Soon he
answered God’s call to return to his home in North Africa, and there he was
made a Bishop of the Church. I related
well to his pagan lifestyle as a teen, and coming to faith in Christ which then
led to a call to Ministry. Augustine
wrote two monumental works that I loved:
Confessions, where his autobiography details the life of choices
and the struggle for a God-shaped Identity.
City of God made me realize the difference between God’s Kingdom
on earth and Human Kingdoms such as Rome in Augustine’s days. Rome was “falling” as it was overrun by
various warring tribes from the East.
The wealthy Romans fled Italy to North Africa. There, they blamed the collapse of the Empire
on the “Christian new God” which angered the Roman gods. Augustine made the argument that Human governments
come and go, collapsing under their sinful corruption; while the Kingdom of God
lives on eternally – “…the earthly city glorifies itself, the Heavenly city
glories in the Lord…the earthly city has made for herself, according to her
heart’s desire, false gods…the heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a
wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she
herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to
Him.” Augustine saw the Church as the
heirs and stewards of the Kingdom of God upon the earth.
After several
years in my first church pastoral position, I took a call to pastor another church
– a university church in Madison, Wisconsin.
The challenge of ministry in a university setting was both exhilarating
and difficult. I had come from a rural ministry and gone to a much larger city,
where there weren’t just four Protestant churches, but a few dozen Protestant
churches. I soon realized that pastoring
in a Protestant church in the city was rather lonely. Most churches were territorial – working for
more members. It seemed that
transferring members from one church to the other was an acceptable
practice. It also seemed that leaders
and churches didn’t have much in common with other Protestant churches –
especially those outside of the specific denomination a church might belong
to. While Jesus prayed “that they might
be one as we are one”, there wasn’t any oneness among Protestant churches. Each Protestant church had different
government, theology, teaching, and practices.
There were many widely varying Protestant churches: Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational,
UCC churches, Four-square, Mennonite, Pentecostal, and Charismatic. Yet the largest and fastest growing churches
were non-Denominational churches, i.e., Churches that decided their own
doctrinal positions. In fact, among the many types of Protestant
churches, the oneness of the Church didn’t develop, even among churches in the
same denominational system.
Many of the
mainline Protestant churches had a Creedal theology, yet there was a wide
diversity in practices such as Communion (the Lord’s Supper), baptism, church government,
pastoral leadership, and theology. As a
student of Church History, I became a witness to the inherent church
separations that came from five centuries of divisions within
Protestantism. A group chooses a pathway
because “we believe this is the truth of God in terms of the church”, The
pattern is repeated over and over again and we soon understand why there are over
30,000 Protestant “ways” of being church.
Even in the
church I Pastored division occurred over some practices that some embraced from
the area of charismatic gifts. I did not
feel comfortable in that setting, and as the strain of differences kept
growing, I was eventually asked to resign.
The pattern of division within Protestantism, as I saw it in my 47 years
of ministry, happened often.
I left
pastoral ministry to go into education – a Discipleship Training community for
young Adults. Those years of teaching,
training, and discipling young adults were some of the best years of
ministry. Discipling young adults led me
to become a Dean of a newly created Christian college.
Also, it was
during these years, that I (my wife and I) began to work with the Catholic
church in a marriage ministry called Retrouvaille (Ret-tro-Vie). My wife and I discovered Retrouvaille and
their weekend marriage retreats when our marriage was struggling and we were
urged to attend. Retrouvaille gave us
tools for rebuilding our marriage and after our time of healing, we realized we
wanted to join Retrouvaille and serve other couples. We met many Catholic friends and worked
alongside them in loving service to other hurting couples whose marriages were being
threatened. I saw the Catholic church in
a way I had never seen before. During
those weekends, we celebrated the Mass and I participated in the Mass, a
worshipful, and Christ-centered liturgy.
For those eight years working with Retrouvaille, I entered into the
worship of the Mass several times and loved the liturgical confession and the liturgy
of the Eucharist celebration of Christ’s sacrifice.
In 2010, I returned to where I began pastoral
ministry thirty-three years before to once again lead a church. I felt God’s call to return to my past rural
setting to lead a new church, because of many old friends that I felt
compassion for and wanted to help lead in a healing process caused by division.
For a few years, I remained the Dean of the college, teaching Biblical studies
in a college setting, while also doing pastoral duties, while once again
becoming dissatisfied by various things I observed.
Once again,
I began to think seriously about where the faith of the church was going. There were friends in the fellowship of this
church that I loved dearly, but there was also a constant flow of “coming and
going” – people who came to our church for one reason or another, and then left
to attend another Church fellowship when circumstances changed. I began to discern
a Protestant ethos, which looked a lot like a consumer-oriented “spiritual
shopping experience”. I entitled it
“Mall Christianity” because it didn’t look like the unity of Christ’s
community, but a consumer-driven spiritual shopping around for the bigger and
better. Pastoring people for the sake of Christ Jesus, fellowship in Christ and
with each other, and serving Christ’s Kingdom felt tenuous. Evangelicalism – especially the non-Denominational
strain of the “Mega-Church” seemed to be a consumer entertainment show. While the decade of 2010 drew to a close, something
was happening in my soul and I began to feel both restless.
When Covid
hit in 2020, I tried to discern why God would allow this pandemic upon the
world. As I prayerfully contemplated, I came
across the words of the book of Hebrews which speak of God proclaiming, “Once
more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens…the removing of what
can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us
be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God
is a consuming fire.”
I understood
those words as if they were describing the condition of the church at present
in our own culture and realized God was shaking. I had no idea just how much things would
change. I felt that deep desire for
worship that was as the Hebrews writer proclaimed, “acceptable, with
reverence and awe”. I saw the church
in a way that made me aware of how much as a Protestant, it had drifted from
Christ’s design. I longed for the church Jesus prayed for in John 17:20, 21
- “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in
me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in
me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe
that you have sent me.”
I thought, “Where
is the church Jesus spoke about in Matthew 16, “I will build my church, and
the gates of hell would not come against it?” Where is the church Jesus prayed to the
Father in John 17, “I pray that they may be one even as we are one”. I could not help but wonder how, as a
Protestant, I could say the confessional creed, “I believe in one
holy catholic church?”
As the Covid
crisis continued, I had more time to re-read the early Church Fathers. In these
great Fathers of the church, I recognized that they were committed to “one
church”. They didn’t just “mouth” it,
but fought for that oneness in their preaching, writing, and in church
councils. The great gatherings of the
Church in councils came about to correct and clarify Christian theology. The Councils were spread over the first 600
years of the church’s history – Jerusalem, Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon created “Orthodox Christian Theology”, one that most mainline
Protestant churches also confess today.
They were unified in fighting off heresies that tried to change the
divinity or nature of Christ Jesus. The
various heresies: Docetism, Gnosticism,
Arianism, Eutychianism, Nestorianism, and Monothelitism[1]
are all names most people today would not recognize, but they still live on as
heresies today in our modern period in groups like Mormonism, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Christian Science, and various forms of New Age religions. They all borrow from Christianity but ALL
deviate from the true Orthodox Christian theology of the Early Church’s Creeds
– especially concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ and the Trinity.
As I
reflected on these writers of the early church Fathers and subsequent great doctors
of the Middle Ages, I began to rethink what I had learned about the Catholic
Church. Yet I was not ready to make that
leap of faith.
I looked at
the experiences of worship that I had been in and realized I longed for a
sacred liturgy of worship that I had experienced in the Catholic Mass. My wife and I had decided to spend some time
each winter in Florida, and so I began to explore churches that would have a
more liturgical structure. I went to
several Protestant churches over two months of Sunday services, I found it a
less than satisfying experience. I had a
conversation with a Catholic friend, and I mentioned my searching experiences. I asked him questions about the structure of
the Mass. He explained how the Mass has two
main elements: the liturgy of the word of God and the liturgy of the
Eucharist. He described the Mass in ways
that I remembered from my days serving in Retrouvaille, and as I left to return
home, a seed was planted within my heart.
Yet months went passed, and I wasn’t sure what to do.
Then in
December 2022, we returned to Florida, and I knew I wanted to go to a Catholic Mass. The decision to attend that Mass was
life-changing. We went to our first Mass
on Christmas Eve. I experienced
something heavenly – a divine encounter in worship. We celebrated the Incarnation – it was
Christmas Eve – but the worship had a depth of meaning I had not expected. I was caught up in a worship service that was
completely centered on Jesus. In the
liturgy of the Word, the readings from the Old Testament, the Prophets, the
Psalms, and the Gospel readings reminded me of God’s promised fulfillment of
the Messiah’s coming. In the liturgy of
the Eucharist, the reason why Christ came was celebrated. During the Eucharist something began to
happen to me - I wept. I wept because I knew
that Christ Jesus, who we were celebrating, was present. There was a real sense of Christ's presence,
and it seemed as if the worship of heaven was joining our worship on earth, right
then and there. There was an incredible beauty
and joy in worship that I had longed for.
I honestly didn’t want it to end, and I as I walked out, all I could say
to my wife was “Wow”.
I knew I
needed to explore more. Little did I
know it was going to be “suffering” that made that possible. Three days after the Christmas Eve Mass, I
fell and broke a vertebra in my back. I
couldn’t do anything because of unrelenting back pain. I soon realized – from the Doctors - the
healing process was going to take months – thus, my plans for a winter getaway
seemed dashed. As I prayed, a thought
came to me: “Go to daily Mass, worship,
and pray”. I began to attend daily Mass and
once again, I felt the presence of Jesus.
My wife joined me, and each day my focus became worship, not pain. Each time I went I felt the joy of God’s
Spirit in the liturgy of the word of God, and the Eucharist where Christ Jesus was
present. It was common that I would walk
away with a sense of peace and joy that I could not explain. It was one of the many mysteries of the next
few months.
In January,
I bought a Catechism of the Catholic Church because I wanted to understand what
Catholicism teaches. Over the years I had read other Catechisms, but as I began
to read and study the Catholic Catechism, I was amazed by the depth of the
church’s beliefs, dogmas, and doctrines.
They were “layered” in a way in which everything cohesively fit
together. I had gone in thinking “This
is where I’ll find out whether or not I can agree with Catholicism”, but as
I studied the Catechism, I was struck by how familiar the language was. I was reading doctrines and dogmas of the early
church father’s “Orthodoxy”. While there
are differences between Protestant beliefs and Catholic beliefs, they are
almost all in areas that do not define major theological issues: God, Jesus Christ, the Trinity, the Holy
Spirit, and Salvation by grace, are the cornerstone dogmas of Orthodoxy. They were all very similar and eventually, It
made sense because Protestants (think Luther, Calvin) didn’t reject the
Orthodoxy of the church. Even when I hit
differences, I had to pause, think and try to discover how the Church had
gotten to this position. For example,
Having
studied Church History for 50 years, I wondered about the Catholic church’s
stance on Scripture behind it. As a
Protestant, the Reformers had rejected the traditions of the Church as
legitimate for interpreting the Scriptures.
As I thought about the Catholic Church’s position, it became much clearer. Would I trust the accumulated wisdom of 2000
years of Church teachings that had to grapple with issues, or the teachings of
Protestantism that came in the last five hundred years? My struggles came more and more to the light. For example, in my lifetime as a Protestant
pastor and teacher, the Protestant church has continued to change, often
bending itself to culture, to the point that orthodoxy is not a word that would
describe most Protestant churches today.[2]
The Catholic
Church has retained the integrity of the two-millennial Church teachings. I had known there was much wisdom in the
early church fathers. I had often
thought that the problem was in the addition of the church’s “traditions” to
the word of God as the authority of the Church.
To be fair, the word “tradition” is a trigger word that creates a knee-jerk
reaction of negativity among Protestants.
Yet, the Scripture speaks of tradition and it doesn’t deny it as a
source of authoritative teaching, but defends its place in the Church. The Apostle Paul appealed to the church in
Corinth: “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and
maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2). Then
later to the Thessalonian church, he adds, “So then, brothers, stand firm
and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken
word or by our letter” (2 Th. 2:15). Oral Tradition was handed down from the
Apostles to their disciples (i.e., Bishops).
The traditions were either by “spoken word or by letter”. They preserved the oral traditions to
understand God’s revelation to the church from generation to generation – a
continuous line of truth that Jesus promised the disciples. Sacred scripture and sacred tradition are
thus complementary as each one completes the other. Thus the Orthodoxy of which I spoke of in the
early church fathers was not accidental, nor political, but a faithful
transmission of truth from the Apostles.
I discovered
many misunderstandings about what I had believed about Catholicism. Among them, are the Pope, Mary, Prayer, and the
Eucharist of the Mass to name a few. As
I read, I often found myself saying “I didn’t realize that”. I also began to read other literature. Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s book, “Rome
Sweet Home” was a confirming, authentic, sometimes gut-wrenching book as they
bared their souls sharing about leaving their Protestant roots and coming into
the Catholic church. Edward Sri’s series
“A Biblical Walk through the Mass” helped me to see the Mass in its
Biblical framework, and how the Mass mirrors the worship that is occurring in
Heaven. Scott Hahn struck again.
Scott Hahn’s
book, “The Lamb’s Supper” was heart-changing.
I confess as a Protestant pastor I stayed away from teaching the book of
Revelation. I tried as a young pastor, but then again young pastors often
venture into unknown territory just to see what they can learn. The Book of Revelation remained a mystery to
me and the various attempts among the many “Millennialists” did nothing to give
me understanding. I didn’t understand what the Apostle John was witnessing. When Dr. Hahn began to show how John was witnessing
the Worship of Heaven and how our worship on earth in the Mass mirrors what is
occurring in Heaven. The book of Revelation finally “clicked” – a spiritual “Ah
hah” moment. It made sense, as I
realized the Apostle John was being encouraged as persecution broke out on the
early church by knowing all of Heaven was in worship as warfare in Heaven and
on Earth took place. This was the church
of Jesus Christ – “I will build…though the gates of hell fight, they will
not prevail”.
Two months
later, (March 2023) I decided to start taking classes to explore coming into
the Catholic church. I took a series on Catholicism by Bishop Barron – which,
by the way, had once appeared on PBS.
Beautifully done, that series made the big picture of the Catholic
Church come alive for me. One of the
words that I just used has become a byword for much of what I’m learning about
the Catholic church – Beauty. The Mass
is beautiful. Not just the Mass on
weekends, but also the daily Mass. Saying the Rosary is beautiful and my mind
and heart are captured by the images of prayers to heaven. Confession to the Priest is beautiful. My sin is not hidden, but exposed and I am
cleansed – my Spiritual bath of forgiveness.
The Easter
season – specifically the Holy Week of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good
Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday stirred my soul. I had stopped celebrating all of those except
for Easter Sunday years before as a Pastor. Once again, I found myself caught
up in the beauty of the Easter season.
Christ Jesus met with his disciples in the Upper Room on that Maundy
Thursday and gave to them the command to “love one another” and they saw him
express that in the celebration of the Eucharist – the Body and Blood, Soul and
Divinity of Jesus. His death on the Cross
fulfills all of the Old Testament pictures of the Sacrifice – the
Passover. The silence of Saturday is met
with the entrance of New Believers entering into the Church…just in time to
celebrate Easter morning – “He is risen”.
Jesus has conquered death, and his forgiveness is communicated through
his Church, as the Apostles and those that have descended from them through the
laying on of hands keep ministering the Mass for the last 2100 years.
I made a
decision after Easter – I would “come home” to the Catholic Church. I would become a part of the “One, Holy,
Catholic, Apostolic Church” that we confess in the Nicene Creed of 325 a.d.
I asked to be confirmed into the Church and
it was granted. On the Corpus Christi
weekend of June 10/11, 2023, my sponsor and his wife, along with some friends, came
to join me in this celebration. As my
Priest laid his hands on my shoulder and then on my forehead, my sponsor laid
his hand on my other shoulder, and in response of affirmations to his
questions, and with his prayerful blessings, I was confirmed. That day I received communion, the body of
Christ in the Eucharist for the first time.
I experienced a joy and peace that was indicative of my favorite word
for my Catholic faith – beautiful, divinely so.
My journey
of faith in Catholicism is just begun. When I began this journey in Dec. 2022,
I stumbled across (a God stumbling) the words of St. Anselm – “Faith Seeking
Understanding”. I had read them many
times before and believed they were true.
We do not, must not, seek understanding to have faith. Instead, we are
people of faith who are always trying to understand God’s mysteries and
revelation. I remind myself every day
that it’s a new day to exercise the faith of seeking understanding.
One more thing
– I am praying for the Church of Jesus Christ to fulfill the prayer of “Father,
may they be one even as we are one”. May
it be!
Elliott, June
2023
[1] This is not and exhaustive
list of the Heresies of the early centuries of the Church. There were many, many more. Some were localized, but these were more
Empire-wide in scope and effect.
[2] I know that this
evaluation is a broad-stroke one. I will admit that there are churches within
Protestantism that have not compromised their faith with the prevailing
cultural winds. Yet, any reasonable look
at the Protestant churches in the culture today would see a constant trend
towards culturalization.
Comments