November 14, 2007 7:18 PM
Evangelical to Catholic: my journey #2
[Note: this is part of a continuing series chronicling my journey from evangelicalism to Catholicism. This series is not meant to cause division, but to reveal division already there - and to spark honest discussion. As an evangelical I've heard and continue to hear lots of criticism of the Catholic church but little self-examination on the Protestant side. So if my comments seem more directed towards questioning nonCatholic believers, that is why. Please, if you are new to this discussion, realize that a lot of ground has already been covered in the comments and read through those on previous entries before rehashing old news. I am receiving a lot of feedback that this has been an eye-opening and thought-provoking series for many believers on either side. If that is the case, then I consider my call as a writer fulfilled. I can only hope that each of us is examining his/her conscience for areas of stubbornness, presumption and pride.]
Again, this is long – those of you who’ve read my stuff in books or articles before may already know some of this story, which I didn’t set out to tell but which kind of pured itself out. It may be more than some people want to know. You do have the option of skimming – or skipping to the end, which is where I draw some important conclusions about leaps of faith. And I do think that my personal history supports those conclusions – at least in my life.
Future pieces in this series will be shorter – at least I think they will.
I so appreciate everyone’s concern and caring about me. I appreciate the welcomes from my sisters in the Catholic Church, and I appreciate the worries of my sisters in the Evangelical/Protestant faith. I really, really appreciate those who are worried and yet know my character and know that this is not a step away from God.
I am so sorry that the Catholic Church has such a bad rap with so many Evangelicals. So much of what we are led to believe is just plain false. I hope that those of you who read here and have never been to a Catholic Mass but are judging the church solely on what you have heard or read from other Protestants will keep a more open mind. My next post will be on my impressions attending Mass last Sunday for the first time in – well, I’m trying to remember – maybe 39 years. I suggest that a starting point for anyone who wants to discredit Catholicism might be going to Mass and seeing what it’s really all about. You might be surprised.
I’m not into converting anyone along with me. But those of you who know me well know that part of my character is to break down prejudice and barriers to understanding and compassion. Anyone who has read Reaching the Left from the Right knows I spend the whole first chapter on that subject where it pertains to believers vs. nonbelievers. I truly believe that God loves us and has a plan for each of our lives. I will be forever grateful for the day that I finally heard that good news – from an evangelical organization.
In WIBAWIB Part 1 I spent some time talking about my journey since I became a Christian 20 years ago. Now I’d like to go further back.
I was baptized Catholic and named after St. Barbara’s Church, the church where my parents – my mom from and Irish Catholic family of 12 (McDermott) and my dad from a Dutch/Italian family (mom’s maiden name was Pierucci) were married.
To my knowledge, that is the last time I was in a church for many, many years as neither of my parents practiced their faith.
After hop scotching us from Kansas City, Kansas to Fort Smith, Arkansas to Atlanta, Georgia to Rockford, Illinois to Fairbanks, Alaska to Long Beach, California – and after producing two sons with my mom, my dad left her for another woman. I was six years old. For a year we lived with an aunt, also divorced with two children and I went to Catholic school. Except for a bus that used to pick me up on Sunday mornings in Fairbanks to take me to the Salvation Army Sunday School (my parents didn’t go – I guess it gave them some time off), this was the only religion I’d been exposed to.
A year or so later, my mom took us to Washington, DC where she found herself a little apartment and got to work earning money and trying to find another man. She sent us kids to live in a foster home in Maryland where we were sexually abused. Going into public school I skipped a grade because of my superior Catholic education.
Eventually we came back to live with my mom and I attended an inner-city school in DC where I was one of two white kids in my class. We were dirt poor. My mom wasn’t around much as she worked two jobs and partied heavily, forming and breaking relationships with unsuitable and unsavory men.
When I was ten I went to live with my dad, my 20-year-old stepmother and a new baby brother in Oklahoma City. Fifteen months later, a sheriff appeared at our door and put me on a plane back to my mom. By then I’d been taught to hate her, but no one had a choice as she had legal custody and the arrangement she’d made with my father – to let me live with him if he agreed not to see my brothers (there was never any child support) so she could start a new life with her second husband – was no longer what she wanted. That marriage had turned out to be abusive as both partners were active alcoholics and pretty mixed up people. In the meantime, shortly after my mom divorced him, she had his baby, put him up for adoption, then changed her mind and retrieved him. She also decided she wanted me home.
Try to imagine a 12 year old who’s been through all that. Add to it that there was no love in my home, we were excruciatingly poor – no car, not enough food. But the poverty would have been okay if there had been love or faith.
By then we had moved to Falls Church, Virginia. I started walking every Sunday – I don’t remember why – to The Falls Church, a very old Episcopal church about two miles from where I lived. I loved the hymns and the prayers and the feeling I had there. But without a family and being a poor and shabby girl, it was a little like looking from the outside in at something I wanted but would never be a part of. I had my fist Holy Communion and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church.
In the meantime, my mom had remarried - an absolutely creepy guy, also alcoholic and abusive, but then so was she.
I may not have known God then, but one thing I know with absolute certainty now: God knew me and he had a wonderful plan for my life. It’s just that how could he implement it when there was no human being around to help? A lot of who I am and how things changed for me came from the inside out. That is, the big changes in my life were not caused by an outside agent, but by my own ideas and actions. But prompted by "God (James 1:17)
As a freshman in public high school I somehow realized – I say somehow, but I know God instigated this thought – that my only ticket out of the seedy lifestyle I’d been born into was through education. I knew I wanted to rise above my circumstances and I knew I was smart. I’d skipped a grade, remember?
I decided I had to go to Catholic high school. The closest one was Bishop Denis J. O’Connell High in Arlington – also about two miles away. When I found out what was required, I begged my mother to go see the parish priest on my behalf. Somehow I was given a scholarship which enabled me to go there until I graduated. I had an absolutely incredible education including four years of Latin (and two years of French) and three years of religious studies. While what I remember of religion was church history, I don’t remember ever being told about having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and while for many years as an Evangelical I had a lot of contempt for the Catholic Church because I assumed they didn’t teach it and that’s why I didn’t hear it, I now know that that might not have been the case at all – that there is the possibility that they did tell me and I just couldn’t hear it.
I was a very wounded person with a very guarded heart.
I was not popular in school. I was over a year younger than most of my classmates, too poor for nice clothes and lacking self-confidence. I walked to and from school. From the time I had come back to live with my mom, I had full responsibility for the house – grocery lists and shopping (walking to the store and taking a cab home with the groceries), cleaning house, laundry, keeping tabs on my brothers (one of whom was a juvenile delinquent and eventually sentenced to a youth facility of some kind. Today he is a convicted pedophile). In my junior year I got a part time job so I could buy clothes, but I had to give my mother most of what I made for “room and board.” My mother and I had no relationship. I remember knocking on her bedroom door – always locked – and begging her to talk to me. She didn’t want to.
I guess my teachers were always the only sane part of my life. I had nuns in high school, and we caricatured them like crazy, but looking back I know they cared deeply for us. One in particular seemed to understand where I was coming from without ever talking about it. She told me that one day I would be a writer – funny, since I didn’t become one until 30 years later.
I credit God with everything positive in my life. He not only gave me the desire to rise above my circumstances, but he gave me a way out. I was a National Merit Scholar – which got me a free ride to Carnegie-Mellon University.
For many reasons, I left after one semester though. I was too young and not ready to be so far from home, regardless of how horrible home was. And I missed the boyfriend I’d glommed onto in my senior year of high school. He was from New Jersey and went to Mount Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland – which was a long way from Pittsburgh but not so far from DC. I decided to come home and work until he finished school. We got married two weeks after he graduated – in the Catholic Church as we were both nominal Catholics.
It was the only Mass we went to – except maybe a few when we were visiting his parents. We did have both our daughters – Samantha Sunshine born in DC in 1969 and Jasmine Moondance born in San Francisco in 1975 – baptized in the Catholic Church. But neither of us took it very seriously – it was just what you were supposed to do.
Everything else about our lives was totally countercultural. We dropped acid and mescaline, drank ourselves silly, went to rock and roll concerts, tie-dyed T-shirts. I became an antiwar organizer and Jeff would get high and go to the marches with me. He was a really kind and loving person who deserved better than the crazy woman he married. He put me through college and Montessori training and put up with my feminist rants and abortion rights activism. As a college student with one child, I became a poster girl for abortion rights in Virginia, where I was part of a class action suit against George Mason University for refusing to carry ads for abortion clinics in the student newspaper – I mean, what if I got pregnant and couldn’t find information on abortion – it would wreck my life!
I was never faithful – being married wasn’t going to stop me from being in the vanguard of the Sexual Revolution. And while I abstained from drugs while I was pregnant with Jasmine in San Francisco, shortly after her birth I became addicted to cocaine. When Jasmine was a year old, I took her and left Samantha with Jeff to find more “freedom.”
For five years I lived the life of freedom I desired – partying like crazy, neglecting my kids (sound like anyone from my past?), using and dealing drugs, living with gay men in San Francisco’s Castro District. I was addicted to a succession of different drugs, and finally after giving up each in misery, settled on alcohol.
In 1980 I decided my life wasn’t working (duh) and that I needed to move to Marin to fix it (recovered alcoholics call this a geographic). By some miracle I found a cute little two-bedroom house on a safe, quiet street in San Rafael (in contrast to the second story flat we were living in in the Mission District) and a landlord who miraculously agreed to let a crazy floozy rent it.
God was in this move. Three weeks later after going to sleep in yet another blackout (in San Francisco, I often didn’t know where my car was parked the next morning after driving home in a blackout), I woke up and rolled out of my waterbed straight to my hands and knees, crying out, “Oh, God! Please help me! I’m an alcoholic!”
I had never cried out to God before and never considered myself anything other than a hip woman who was trying to have a little fun. Now for the first time I knew how miserable I was and I knew I couldn’t help myself.
But I was prejudiced – like most leftists – against Christians so I would never have sought help in a church. And in Marin only 4% of people were going to church in those days (that probably hasn’t changed) so I was in the company of a lot of people like me.
I ended up going to Alcoholics Anonymous, which is where I learned to face reality, to get honest about myself and my character flaws, to stop thinking about how others had hurt me and admit how I had hurt others, and to apologize for my those hurts. It’s also where I learned that there was a “Higher Power” I could surrender my life to and depend on to keep me from drinking and using drugs.
I was 32. Half my life had been lived anesthetized with drugs and alcohol. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it was to admit that I – who always wanted to be a better mother than my own – had turned into a carbon copy, minus the abusive men.
But another thing God gifted me with was resilience. Regardless of my shame about the past, I was optimistic about the future and ready to do whatever I had to do to change. I remember going to the park to watch mothers and their children. The thing is, when you didn’t have adequate mothering, mothering does not come naturally and instinctively. I knew that. But I had hope that I could learn to become the mother my daughters – in all their innocence – deserved.
God was gracious and kind. Getting sober was the hardest work I ever did. But with his help, I learned how to live one day at a time. And the icing on the cake – I still had that spark that wanted to transcend, to grow and change and do better. I went back to teaching. I never took the AA crowd’s dictums about going to meetings every day because after years of neglect it didn’t seem right to neglect my kids for meetings. But God kept me sober and kept our little family together.
And then I started wanting to know more about this “God as you understand him” they talked about in AA. But since I was prejudiced against Christianity, I looked to the East for answers. I followed gurus and read the sacred texts.
And God brought Tripp into my life. Tripp was a fellow seeker and together we meditated and had visions of our past lives, did affirmations and created our won reality.
Three months later, I was pregnant – a miracle because a previous Chlamydia infection had put me in the hospital for three weeks on IVs after the doctors opened me up and found a cyst the size of a grapefruit. They said they’d almost taken out my organs, but had decided to use the more conservative approach – but that I’d be sterile the rest of my life. Yipppeee!! I’d thought. Still I used birth control – just in case.
It was the day after Christmas when I took the pregnancy test (back in the days when they drew blood and you had to call the clinic at 5 for results). When I told Tripp I was pregnant, he said simply – and miraculously – “Well, then we’ll get married.” I say miraculously because we were both still counter-culture types. I’d had an abortion which I didn’t regret and he’d been through two with a previous girlfriend. Why didn’t the idea of abortion enter his mind or mine? Why didn’t we just live together?
We were married one week later at Jenner-by-the-Sea at sunset on a deck overlooking the ocean. We used some New Age formula wedding we found in the innkeeper’s office – the innkeeper who married us and served us dinner afterwards.
Joshua Raphael was six months old when we found out we were pregnant again – despite birth control. That baby’s name was Matthew Raphael. As people who still considered ourselves spiritual, we were always seeking to do the right thing. We felt like we were supposed to trust “God as We Understood Him (GAWUH)” (some sort of cosmic force, not a personal God or one with whom one could have a relationship) with our family size and trust GAWUH to provide for them. We were thinking material of course. And we were into prosperity thinking and creating our own reality, so it seemed doable. Benjamin Michael was born three years after Joshua – three boys in three years.
Then things took a dive as I became very unhappy with our marriage. As recovered alcoholics, Tripp and I came into our marriage with a lot of baggage. Our New Age stuff – where he thought he was god and I thought I was god – just wasn’t conducive to two people with strong wills and few emotional skills creating a harmonious relationship. I was really ready to abandon our marriage.
But I used to listen to Dr. Dobson for parenting advice. He didn’t talk much about politics in those days – that would have turned of this hardened leftist. And he had a sweet fatherly voice which soothed my soul. As soon as he was finished and some evangelical preacher would come on, I’d turn off the radio in disgust. What were these stupid Christians thinking?
One day I turned him on and Barbara and Dennis Rainey were on talking about their marriage conference, A Weekend to Remember. They said they had saved many marriages, that couples found healing. One was coming up in San Francisco that weekend.
As a last ditch effort, I signed us up. If this didn’t work, I knew I would kick Tripp out and raise the five kids on my own. I was that tired of butting heads.
That Friday night, as usual, we fought all the way to the conference. The next day, as part of the program, they went through the Four Spiritual Laws. It was the first time I heard that Jesus Christ – whose picture was on our meditation altar with all our other gurus – was more than a spiritual teacher, that he was God’s son and that I needed to make a decision whether to accept God’s provision. (I’m saying it was the first time I heard it – I understand now that that doesn’t necessarily mean that no one ever told me
Yes! I wanted this! As they said the words to a prayer of surrender and I absorbed them into my heart, I burst into tears. Tripp was crying too. We knew something had happened but we didn’t know what.
Without a Christian context we didn’t realize for three weeks what had happened. Everything that occurred during that time occurred because the Holy Spirit began directing our lives – as we threw away all our New Age and Eastern books, tapes, statues and began to read the Bible. That’s how we found out we were born again – we stumbled on the verse “Unless ye be born again. .” and realized – to our utter dismay – that we were now born-again Christians, just like those we’d hated all these years.
From the day I surrendered to God – March 21, 1987, I have never every doubted God, His love for me or my love for Him. When He has asked me to do things, I’ve done them promptly. Have I been perfect? No. Not at all. I’ve had to deal with sin in my life – overeating, overspending, and a fling with alcohol that lasted a number of years before I realized that while some Christians can drink and it’s okay, for a person like me, it’s not. But no one has ever intervened from the outside to tell me I’m wrong. Because of this close connection I have with God, and because He has called me to do some hard things and strengthened me to do them, because He has convicted me of my sin through no outside means, I trust Him completely.
I trust His voice far more than any outside voices I hear. I hope people can understand this.
While I didn’t sit down to write this lengthy history, perhaps it’s something that needs to be written as I’m sure many people are questioning the authenticity of my decision to become a Catholic.
Can’t you see that even if you don’t understand it, my whole life is a reflection of how God works to carry a person from one place to another until they are finally home?
Do you expect that someone who hated Christianity and yet in a leap of faith surrendered to the simple truth of Jesus Christ – and who has done many things God asked that common sense would have argued against – would put much stock in the theological squabbles and denominational misunderstandings if God were calling her to come home?
When I accepted Jesus in faith, no one could have talked me out of it. It was time. God was calling me. My number was up :)
I’m in a similar place now.
I know this may seem sudden to some people, but as I pointed out in WIBAWIB 1 God has been calling me in this direction for at least six years. The past several months it seems He’s orchestrated the events in my life – speaking at two pro-life events and covering the Aurora Planned Parenthood situation (which I’ll write more specifically about soon) – to create a crisis.
But it’s not really a crisis.
One thing my evangelical friends need to understand is that I’m not rejecting anything at all. I love the evangelical church. I love the worship and the fellowship and the Bible study. For twenty years I have been nurtured and cared for and loved by evangelicals. How could I feel anything but love and gratitude? I have always been exactly where God wanted me to be. It’s not as though God wanted me to become a Catholic from the get-go and I missed it. Everything unfolded according to His plan.
Even now, I feel that God wanted me to write this much detail to help people inclined to misjudge Catholics to stop their misjudgment.
While it may be His plan for you to be where you are, you need to accept that people who convert from Evangelicalism to Catholicism are not rejecting anything and have not lost anything. Our experience and histories are real. Our obedience and sacrifice – sacrifice to the point of facing man’s judgment – is real. We love Jesus as much as ever, we are still dependent on the Holy Spirit, and we still worship and serve our Heavenly Father.
Those of you who know me and know my character may have to shift paradigms in order to accept this, I know. If you've been accustomed to thinking of Catholics as heretics or unsaved, I'm sure this is difficult. But God is always calling us to rethink where we've been too harsh and judgmental. Any time we think we know it all, He's sure to intervene. He loves us too much to let us go.
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Comments
Thank-you Barbara for all you wrote. Your story is amazing and you are so right in seeing God's hand in every part. As you delve even deeper into the Catholic Church you may choose to read the lives of some of the saints, many who have had struggles during their lives and overcame them.
Reading your story reminds me of how blessed I am to be a cradle Catholic with two loving parents who taught and lived the true faith.
I am looking forward to reading more of your story. You remain in my prayers.
Posted by: carolyn | November 14, 2007 9:17 PM
Thank you for sharing your story, Barbara. I feel honored to read it.
I am glad that you are finding a home in the Catholic Church. I'm not a Catholic but I have some dear friends who are members of the Church and they have a wonderful relationship with Christ and with other parishioners. I believe that God leads us to where we need to be. I also think that focusing on the differences between Evangelicals and Catholics drives a wedge between denominations and that wedge allows Satan to do his work.
I look forward to reading more of your story!
Posted by: DIana | November 14, 2007 9:19 PM
If you've been accustomed to thinking of Catholics as heretics or unsaved, I'm sure this is difficult. But God is always calling us to rethink where we've been too harsh and judgmental.
I can think an idea is wrong and not feel the least bit harsh or judgmental about a person who adheres to the idea. We all have free will, and if you feel you are being guided to the Catholic Church that is between you and God and none of my business.
You have a very inspiring story, by the way. It is obvious you've got a very strong and determined will and yet are very teachable. I hope that in your position, I would also be at once teachable enough to be led as well as gutsy enough to power through.
I tried giving you a couple links before, but it appears your combox does not accept hyperlinks. You're probably already aware of her, but since you don't have your blogroll done yet, I'm not sure, so here's the story of Dawn Eden who I mentioned in the previous WIBAWIB post:
Posted by: Amy K. | November 15, 2007 1:43 AM
Barbara:
As you learn more about the Catholic Church, I hope you will keep us updated on what you learn about the questions that so many of us have. I know I will be interested in reading that.
Posted by: young christian woman | November 15, 2007 6:58 AM
How GOOD is the good God! Every conversion is a love story, a love story of God's tender love for each of us. Thank you for sharing yours!
God bless you, and God bless all of us wherever we are on the journey!
Posted by: Betty | November 15, 2007 8:34 AM
Barbara, you said that much of your strength came from within. In your heart of hearts, you are open to the grace of God, and that stems from your humility, as evidenced in this heartfelt testimony of your reversion.
Humility may be hard-won, as in my life, but true holiness is impossible without it.
That's why God has been able to use you so powerfully in your writing, and why He has led you to the Catholic Church, despite having had such a horrible example from your Catholic parents.
Keep your heart as beautifully humble as it is now, and watch the wonders which Our Lord will perform with you!
Posted by: Leticia Velasquez | November 15, 2007 9:34 AM
Barbara, you said that much of your strength came from within. In your heart of hearts, you are open to the grace of God, and that stems from your humility, as evidenced in this heartfelt testimony of your reversion.
Humility may be hard-won, as in my life, but true holiness is impossible without it.
That's why God has been able to use you so powerfully in your writing, and why He has led you to the Catholic Church, despite having had such a horrible example from your Catholic parents.
Keep your heart as beautifully humble as it is now, and watch the wonders which Our Lord will perform with you!
Posted by: Leticia Velasquez | November 15, 2007 9:34 AM
Barbara, you said that much of your strength came from within. In your heart of hearts, you are open to the grace of God, and that stems from your humility, as evidenced in this heartfelt testimony of your reversion.
Humility may be hard-won, as in my life, but true holiness is impossible without it.
That's why God has been able to use you so powerfully in your writing, and why He has led you to the Catholic Church, despite having had such a horrible example from your Catholic parents.
Keep your heart as beautifully humble as it is now, and watch the wonders which Our Lord will perform with you!
Posted by: Leticia Velasquez | November 15, 2007 9:34 AM
"I trust His voice far more than any outside voices I hear." Me too. That is why I can't understand this decision. It seems contradictory in many ways to His voice (Scripture).
When I ask about some (what I see as) unBiblical doctrines and practices (purgatory, limbo, idolatry, rosary, confession, transubstantiation, atoning for our own sins, etc.), most responses I've been getting by other commenters here are in the vein of: we don't have to embrace those things to be Catholic. With the exception of purgatory, which seems to be accepted as a reasonable belief (which astounds me. To me, it's like an anti-gospel).
One could ask a Mormon, for instance, what about Jesus and Satan being spirit brothers, what about the belief that you get your own planet and get to be God when you die, what about permanent ceremonial marriage? And they could say, we don't have to embrace those things to be Mormon. My response would be, you know, you aren't really Mormon, then.
I don't understand how the Spirit could lead you to a church where some of the official doctrines and practices contradict the very Bible He wrote. I am most interested, as I read this series, to see how you reconcile some of the well-known RC doctrines and practices with Scripture.
Posted by: Marie | November 15, 2007 4:40 PM
I am always fascinated and inspired by the way God leads you, Barbara.......I'm going to pose an honest question, though: Do you believe that catholism may differ from parish to parish, or perhaps region to region? I have heard that there are many catholics who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I believe it......Please know that I'm trying to be open minded when I say that none of the catholics I know personally profess to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, nor do they act like it. Could it be the state that I live in? I live in California, are there more true believers in other states?
Keep writing, Barbara.....I'm " listening" :)
Posted by: Lisa | November 15, 2007 7:54 PM
Marie, you give the impression that most of the Catholics who commented were dismissive of your concerns. Yet, some of many issues which you lump together ARE Church teaching, and some are NOT. The Catholic Church does not practice idolatry, as far as we are concerned, the rosary is a common practice, but not required, and limbo was never what you might call ratified teaching.
Many people, myself included, gave suggestions for various websites and books where you or other people with questions about Catholic doctrine could find answers.
For example, www.scripturecatholic.com gives very exhaustive scripture references for Catholic practices, including purgatory, confession, and the papacy.
You can use the searchable online Catholic Catechism at http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm to clear up many aspects of church doctrine. Entering "idolatry" will give you a clear condemnation of the practice, and entering "scripture" inform you that the Catholic Church teaches that scripture is inspired and inerrant. Try "mediator" to find that the Church affirms that Jesus is the ONE Mediator.
I think many of us Catholics are hesitant to take over Barbara's comments with apologetics. Often there is not a short easy answer to give on theological issues. I wrote a long blog entry on purgatory, for example, here at http://mdcalexatestblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-purgatory-biblical.html
Perhaps we can clear up more of these issues as Barbara writes more of her story.
Posted by: Kelly | November 15, 2007 10:27 PM
Thank you for your story. As I read it I almost felt despair, but there was always a hint that the Holy Spirit was calling you from a young age. My son attended Bishop O'Connell High School for the one year we lived in the D.C. area, and we concur that the education to be gained there is top notch. They do teach Christ there, but the Catholic vocabulary is just not the same as that of Evangelicals in regard to how a relationship with Christ is revealed and lived.
May God continue to bless you in your journey, which will not end until you rest in His arms.
Posted by: Fran | November 16, 2007 11:12 AM
Welcome home, Barbara. Your story is profoundly moving. I, too, am a "revert." In my case, I became an agnostic at the age of 18, received a conversion experience at age 38, came back to the Church at age 43, entered the seminary at age 48, was ordained as a priest at age 54. God works in mysterious ways.
Posted by: Fr. Larry Gearhart | November 16, 2007 1:34 PM
Barbara, your story is fascinating! I think I also commented before about my parents finding 'home' in the Catholic Church after a long and circuitous journey much like yours. So interesting
Posted by: Margaret | November 16, 2007 8:01 PM
Barbara, I am so deeply touched by your story. I have been thinking about you a lot ever since you first posted this Part 2 last weekend. God has truly given you eyes to see how He has worked in you all these years of your life. Your life is a shining witness to the power of God and to your willingness to be open to saying "yes Lord."
Julie C.M.
Posted by: Julie C.M. | November 17, 2007 1:50 AM
Kelly, I understand that you don't want to take up Barbara's comments with apologetics. Many books have been written on this subject, and we don't need to re-hash them here. Also, this being Barbara's blog, no one wants to "speak" for her. I am hoping to hear, over time as her story unfolds, her understanding of how some of the doctrines/practices of the RC church submit to Scripture. Not counting the Apocrypha! Which is a whole 'nother topic.
Posted by: Marie | November 17, 2007 1:22 PM
Marie,you say you agree that we shouldn't be taking up Barbara's blog with apologetics, yet you are quick to jab about things that RC would want to respond to. If you truly don't want to discuss apologetics perhaps these little pokes should be left out.
In terms of the Apocrypha are you referring to the 7 books of the Bible that were accepted until Luther decided to remove them in the 1500's? Remember, these books were TAKEN OUT of the Bible by him (and other portions would have been removed too had Luther had his way but cooler/reasoned heads prevailed and decided he couldn't remove absolutely everything that didn't go along with his new-found religion) Catholics did NOT ADD them to the Bible. The full, complete Bible existed before Protestantism.
Posted by: Regina | November 18, 2007 2:38 PM
Barbara,
I'm enjoying reading your story. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it all down when clearly you've got your hands full.
I grew up Evangelical and very anti-Catholic. I know all the arguments and have read all the books against the Church, so how surprised I was to become a Catholic this past Easter. I know it seemed sudden to my family, but it actually was a long 10 year process. I still can't believe I'm here!
God bless you!
Jaybird
Posted by: Jaybird | November 18, 2007 3:19 PM
Hi Barbara,
Wow! How exciting to find you on this journey. I had just stopped by to check out your coverage of the March for Life (I saw your coverage last year as well) and stumbled upon this series. I had seen another blogger mention this, but I didn't realize how current it was. It sounds like you are still in the process? I just read #1 and will not be able to finish reading this one tonight, but I wanted to just say "Welcome Home".
I am a convert to the Catholic Church. I went from a nominal Christian upbringing (attending church on major holidays only)-->saved at a Baptist revival in my youth (I attended with a Catholic friend) 1984-->made my home in a United Methodist Church with a conservative, evangelical and charismatic influence-->In 1988 I converted to the Episcopal Church because of my awe for the profound beauty of the liturgy. But my private prayer life took a down turn and so did my moral life-->floundered for several years, vulnerable to every temptation as a heathen, I'm ashamed to say-->moved to a new city and continued to flounder, but began seeking God and inviting Him back into my life, and particularly, I sought Truth. Finally, He led me to the Catholic Church in 1999 and I was received into the Church on Easter Vigil in 2000.
That is the condensed version.
Anyway, I look forward to reading the rest of your story. And you've inspired me to reconsider writing mine too (the more complete version). I need to give it some more thought. But thanks for what you're doing. I think your sharing will help others, just to answer questions and concerns people have about the Catholic Church. It is always good to get another perspective when we're seeking the Truth, that is Jesus Christ.
Posted by: Michelle | January 26, 2008 3:05 AM
Hi Barbara
I am evangelical and not about to convert, but am nevertheless very interested in Catholic spirituality. I think there's so rich a tradition that evangelicals can learn from the Catholics.
I believe there are saved and unsaved people in the Catholic church, just as there are saved and unsaved people in the protestant churches.
Posted by: kud0s | September 23, 2008 8:31 PM
