Ever since I made my decision to become Catholic I have slowly had to take on all of the things the Catholic Church teaches and try to make myself understand them. Not because these things were too hard to understand, it was just that I had been so brainwashed to believe certain things that had no real basis either in Scripture or in Sacred Tradition. I came into the Church because of a strong conviction that I did not fully understand, and I am still trying to. I had to overcome some pretty big obstacles, such as the doctrines on the Blessed Virgin, the authority of Church Tradition, the Sacrament of Confession, and Transubstantiation just to name a few. To learn all of these things I have had to read the Bible all over again, read book after book by Scott Hahn and Karl Keating, pray constantly for knowledge and understanding, and basically re-teach myself the Christian faith.
Coming from a strong Protestant Bapti-costal background I remember my family being very upset about my conversion, especially my uncle, who is a hardcore Baptist, King James Onlyist, and my grandpa, who is an Assembly of God/Baptist/Pentecostal. My uncle accused me of being an idol worshipper because I prayed the Rosary. My grandfather even bought me a book entitled Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, which contained no real Reasoning at all. I know all of my family had the best intentions for me, but I knew things that they did not. I had come to discover things that would not allow me to be anything other than Roman Catholic. Going against what I had come to understand as Truth would go conflict with my conscience: The history of the Christian religion in all its manifestations, the origin of the Bible, the origin of many of the doctrines and traditions that most Protestants follow, not knowing that they originated in the Catholic Church, and most importantly the nature of the Early Church, which was as I had come to discover, undeniably Catholic.
The falseness of Sola Scriptura is one of the most difficult things to try to teach a good “Bible-believing” Baptist or Pentecostal. Sola Scriptura is the idea that all one needs is a good 1611 King Jimmy and a pair of reading glasses, and all of the mysteries of God and the universe, and the development of all Christian doctrine can be determined by each and every individual person who simply “lets the Holy Spirit teach him”. If this is true then why are there over 33,000 different Protestant denominations in the world that cannot agree on what the Scriptures teach? Are they all listening to different Holy Spirits? Personally, and I mean no offence to anyone reading, I think they are listening to a different “spirit” all together, and I don’t know whether it is Holy or not.
I decided to become Catholic, while not knowing anything about the Most Blessed Sacrament. I had never even heard the term “Eucharist” in my life, which just so happens to be the center of Christian worship and devotion – your average Protestant is probably not aware of this. True Christian worship of the Triune God is only found in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the feast of thanksgiving, which was instituted by Christ at the Last Supper. This is how we are to worship God. Throughout all of the Old Testament worship is identified with the offering up of a sacrifice, even the pagans identified worship this way. In the Old Covenant an animal, such as a lamb, a bull, or even a dove was sacrificed as a blood offering to God. There are many ways to worship God, but all of these other ways, such as, prayer, reading the Bible, and singing songs are all infinitely inferior forms of worship that we can participate in at any place and time that we chose. In fact, most Catholics would only identify these forms of worship as simply devotions. The real worship that is due to God is the Sacrifice of the Mass, and man, what an experience that is! Even after being a Catholic for a year I still get all excited and jittery when the priest begins the second half of the Mass…The Liturgy of the Eucharist! Nothing you can say or do could ever convince me to get off of my knees in presence of this Holy Sacrifice. Jesus giving us His body, blood, soul and divinity under the appearances of bread and wine! It is perfect.
My friend Thomas and I went to the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ruston the other night and we prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I had never really been attracted to these forms of prayer before, such as the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I believed in these prayers but I had never really practiced them until that night in front of the Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Jesus Christ right before my eyes. Then I suddenly became so overjoyed to be praying this prayer literally at the feet of Our Lord, and I felt the Holy Spirit move over me in a very real and powerful way! I expect I will be practicing a lot more Eucharistic Adoration from now on, trust me.
There is so much to talk about when the topic is the Church that I expect all the books in the world could not hold all there is to know.
So I conclude for now and wish all who read this to have a most wonderful and blessed day, in the name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
