My Conversion Story

     Sometimes you just don't appreciate all you have and all that has been given to you. Sometimes it takes another to challenge your thoughts, beliefs and preconceived notions, in order to make you see that which has been sitting right under your nose all along. God sometimes uses others, and even their own errors and misconceptions, to wake us up to His presence and the Truth He has preserved for us in His Roman Catholic Church.

     Throughout college, in all my pre-med courses, I was constantly taught the Darwinian dogma, that we are all the products of the blind forces of evolution, and that there was no purpose, rhyme nor reason to evolution. The orthodoxy that reigned then was that man was simply a physical being, the result of nothing more than chance. I ate it up. If they had offered a minor in evolution, I would have received it, for I took every evolution, anthropology, and archeology course my "liberal arts" college offered. I teetered precariously on the edge of the despairing atheism that is the home of those who embrace this philosophy, this hypothesis. At that time, I simply was not mature enough or well read enough to realize that this "objective scientific" position, of humanistic atheism, was neither scientific nor objective. The ego and rebellion of young adulthood is ripe for the stroking of the intellect that these errors of humanistic philosophy produce. "Man's mind is the highest power on Earth" and "Scientific knowledge is our God," could well have been the banner over the science building where I spent so many hours studying.

     Many of my classmates did indeed imbibe these heady notions, and unfortunately, some never came down from the "high" that scientific pursuit engenders, until it was too late. When the promise of science fails to fulfill ones life and bring the happiness that the grasp of pure knowledge promises, an abyss of despair, depression and even suicide often awaits. I saw it in a friend who took the road of atheism and never looked back.

     Twelve years of Catholic school, and the watered down, post Vatican II catechesis that accompanied it, had failed to prepare me for the trials and temptations of the world of college. I had given up the sacrament of Confession even during high school, and college saw my days full of study and my weekends full of debauchery. I'm glad my parents knew little of my time there. With my understanding now of the spiritual life, I realize and regret that my Lord saw all of it. Even then He was kind, merciful and loving of His lost sheep.

     All through college I simply could not shake a recurrent nightmare. It always occurred immediately before awakening. I was sitting on a mountain or a large plain, enjoying nature, when missiles suddenly whistled overhead and mushroom clouds burst over the horizon. At that instant, in this recurring dream, I knew that at any moment I too would die in a nuclear annihilation. And every time, in my dream, I died weeping for Jesus to forgive my sins, but knowing that to die in them brought Eternal Damnation. Even as my intellect struggled with God's existence, my soul was crying out for Him. During those years my intellect won, and the struggling of my soul had to step aside to my intellect that countered, "Not now, Lord, someday when I'm older I'll investigate this religious stuff seriously." Maybe that in itself was a prayer or a promise. It surely was the grave sin of presumption, that I would live long enough to reform my life and live as if I believed. But apparently God heard that prayer, and was Faithful, and waited.

     Throughout med school the dream persisted, but was not as intense. I became engaged at the end of college, and was married after my second year of med school. The rebellious years of young adulthood gave way to the hope of marriage and family, and my wife's Lutheran faith had never faltered, a challenge to my lukewarm, at best, Catholicism.

     Then, in searching for a residency-training program in my specialty, foot surgery, I visited a doctor that shook my world and all my preconceived notions. During my first visit to his residency program, I was immediately made aware that he was a former Catholic, and a "born again" Christian. He was on fire with a love of Jesus and knowledge of scripture that I had never before encountered. He talked about his Savior with anyone who would listen, as well as some who didn't care to. He challenged me to defend my faith, a faith that, in his opinion, had failed him.

     All my fears, embodied in the existential angst of that dream of nuclear annihilation, came flooding back to me. The thought of dying then, having never taken my faith seriously, having been shown by a recurring dream the damnation I could face, and recalling my unconfessed sins of many years, brought his challenge to the immediate present and the front of my intellect. I could not tell God to wait any longer. I could not suppress the commitment I knew I must make now, or risk never making again.

     We were having Bible study in that doctor's office one Tuesday morning in June of 1991, when it all hit me. I walked out the back door of his office in tears, and right then, I did as the doctor recommended. I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I told Him I would go wherever He wanted me to go, do whatever He wanted me to do, say whatever He wanted me to say, and be whatever He wanted me to be. I felt certain that at that moment He no longer wanted me to be a Catholic, in a church that withheld this vital message to its ignorant adherents, who likely would fail to achieve Heaven because they thought they would get there by works and attending mass, not by accepting Him as Savior.

     But this also meant abandoning the Faith of my youth, my family, and my friends. My tears were just as much from relief at finally deciding to take Him seriously, as they were of thinking that this meant searching for a real Christian Church and breaking the news to all those I loved. But I truly intended to search. If anything, I wanted to know the Truth. If it had been withheld from me during 25 years of Catholicism, then my first mission was to find that Truth. I was not going to look for a popular church or a comfortable church, or just any "Bible believing" church. I wanted to find Truth.

     The rest is not that ground shaking, really. Using both protestant and Catholic guides, I started reading the writings of early Christians, so that I could better judge the teachings of all the different "Bible believing" churches that I suddenly started noticing dotting the landscape. They all had their own beliefs about baptism, salvation ("once saved, always saved" versus the belief that salvation can be lost), works, sin, etc. Mostly it was not so much differences of opinion about the Bible, but differences in how to interpret scripture. Each church claimed personal interpretation of scripture under the individual guidance of the Holy Spirit. But there were so many opposing interpretations that I thought it best to see how the early Christians interpreted it. The writings of Catholics such as Scott Hahn and Karl Keating solidified my rapidly growing conviction that all these "Bible believing" churches just weren't very biblical at all.

     More importantly, I learned that I had not been taught a faith that misinterpreted scripture and added things to scripture. Frankly, I simply HAD NOT been taught much Catholicism at all. The watered down Catechesis I had received in a liberal Catholic parish, during the chaos of the post Vatican II crisis, was actually more mainstream protestant than authentically Catholic. Once I seriously started studying scripture, and the writings of early Christians, the "scales fell from my eyes," in a certain sense. It was abundantly clear that God wanted me right where I had been supposed to be all along, in His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. More than anything, it was my own laziness and failure to build on the skeleton of faith I had received as a youth that left me open to both the errors of humanistic atheism and "Bible" Christianity.

     Finally, the most important thing I've found, after the initial necessity to make an adult decision to follow Christ and His Roman Catholic Church, is the necessity of rooting out personal sin that true conversion of the heart demands. After learning the basics of the Faith and apologetics, the greatest area of interest for me has been moral theology. Learning how to walk in the ways of the Lord, in a world immersed in vice and corruption, is the second great hurdle of the Christian life that is presented after that first hurdle of an adult commitment to Christ is passed.

     This second great hurdle is also where I parted company from the "Bible Christians." Although they teach the basic necessity of conversion of the heart to Christ, it seems they have failed, to a degree, in being faithful in calling their members to conversion of their lives from sin. Much of this is due to a residual anti-Catholicism, left over from the Protestant Revolt, and the perverted notion that if one believes, sin is no longer an issue, for salvation cannot be lost by sin. Since only the Catholic Church maintains a strong cohesive teaching on life issues such as contraception, masturbation, chastity, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality, it seems these issues are sometimes disregarded as simply "Catholic" issues that are not very important to many "Bible Christians."

     In this regard it is time for us to start reaching out to help convert those "Bible Christians" who once sought so eagerly to convert us. I owe much to a fearless fallen away Catholic "Bible Christian," and I will never forget that God used some of the errors of his biblical interpretation to point out to me True biblical interpretation, found only in its entirety in the Roman Catholic Church. Many of these brothers in Christ live in ignorance of lifestyles that are objectively mortally sinful, such as divorce and remarriage and contraception. But if these Bible Christians too are sincerely searching for the Truth, then the time is ripe for us to return the favors that, like the doctor in my conversion, they once granted to us. Its time to bring home the Lord's sheep.