Why I Became Catholic 10 years ago or the Gift of Faith

The first life changing decision of my college years was to marry Christelle. Our relationship and our subsequent children have brought unpredictable life changes upon us since we fell in love. One of those completely unpredictable changes was our decision to enter the Catholic Church on Easter of 1999. I’d like to explain, nearly 10 years after the fact, what I remember about why I made that decision. Mostly, I think I was called into the Catholic Church since I wasn’t looking for a change in my beliefs or in our church at the time.

The runup to joining the Catholic Church was our learning natural family planning as a method of birth control for the first years of our marriage. We both abhorred barrier methods. We were repulsed at the idea of actually putting a physical barrier between us during intercourse when that was the very moment we wanted to be closest together, sort of like putting a condom over my head and then kissing each other. Silly, gross, and VERY unromantic.

Instead of a barrier, I thought a chemical method of birth control would be great. Christelle didn’t share my enthusiasm because she didn’t want to chemically alter her body.

Much talking ensued.

So, when you don’t want to use barrier methods or chemical methods, what’s left? Something called natural family planning and all its accompanying stereotypes – unreliable, impossible to practice, time consuming, etc. Be that as it may, we decided to try natural family planning, but how would we learn it? Christelle found an organization called the Couple to Couple League (an organization to which we are eternally indebted!) which exists to teach NFP. We learned by correspondence and were off and running.

An unpredictable outcome of learning NFP from the CCL was that, after Christelle had been convinced first, I became convinced that contraception was sinful. CCL presented biblical, historical, and sociological arguments for the immorality of contraception, and with a bit of prayer and wrestling with God, I was convinced CCL taught the truth. Great. I became a Protestant who knew contraception was immoral, making me a very strange bird indeed.

Once I’d reached that stage (an NFP only Protestant) I thought I’d finished with the major religious changes in my life. I found nothing unsatisfying, unconvincing, boring, untrue, or questionable in the Evangelical Protestant Christianity in which I was raised and was happily practicing. As regards the Catholic Church at this time in my life, I thought it was full of unbiblical, controlled, and dumb barely Christians. I knew no Catholics that I respected for their beliefs or integrity. However, one Catholic snuck up on me and unpredictably changed everything.

His name was Sheldon Vanauken, author of the popular book A Severe Mercy. Christelle and I read A Severe Mercy out loud to each other very early in our marriage and thought Vanauken was the cat’s pajamas. We were thrilled when we found out he wrote a sequel to A Severe Mercy called Under the Mercy. Christelle read Under the Mercy first and dropped some hints that she had something very important to talk to me about after I read it myself. She refused my repeated impatient attempts to get her to tell me what’s up before I read the book. So I read Under the Mercy carefully, wondering what in the world she wanted to talk to me about. I found it in the chapter of the book in which Vanauken, a man who I thought was biblical, independent, and smart (he was educated at Yale and Oxford), explained his conversion to Catholicism. What! Catholicism? I was blindsided by his conversion. I thought only insensible unreasonable people were Catholics. Sheldon, what have you done!

He snuck up on me and showed me the Catholic Church from an angle I’d never even knew existed before – a rational one.

Vanauken argued that historically the Catholic Church is the only modern Church that has preserved unchanged the original teaching of Jesus as passed on by the Apostles. He showed how many other Christian churches have changed their teaching on various moral and theological positions in the 20^th century. His argument was one I was open to since one of the most compelling arguments for the sinfulness of contraception is a historical one (a portion of which is contained at the beginning of this article). His argument was simple: the Catholic Church claims that it contains and preserves the fullness of Christian truth from Jesus and the Apostles – the historical evidence witnesses to the truth of this claim. I finished reading Under the Mercy, closed the book, turned to Christelle (who was reading with me in the living room at the time) and said, “so, do you want to become Catholic?”. Her answer, and mine, was yes.

Now, why in the world did I want to become Catholic after reading one chapter in one book? At that moment of “yes” I still doubted the Catholic Church’s teaching on Mary, the “extra” books in the Bible, the Pope, indulgences, confession, etc. etc. I was very much (and still am) a man who read, studied, prayed, and conversed with others before making decisions. What was going on?

As Mary said “yes” to the angel in a moment of decision without comprehending or understanding the consequences and complete reasons for such a decision, I believe, upon 10 years of reflection, that God granted me the light of faith to believe in His Church as the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim. 3:14-15) while reading Under the Mercy. Thanks be to God I grasped the Church illuminated by His light during that moment and have been deepening my faith and understanding in the Church since then. This process of believing first and then figuring out why I believe was very backward for me, but that’s the way it went.

Rapidly, after this initial “yes”, I began studying the biblical, historical and reasoned arguments for the truth of the Catholic Church’s teachings. I read Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism and many articles on www.Catholic.com. I prayed. I talked over the arguments with friends and family. Through it all I became further convinced that the biblical, historical, and reasoned arguments are in favor of the Catholic Church’s claim that is contains and preserves the fullness of Christian truth. Therefore, Christelle and I entered our local R.C.I.A. program in the fall of 1998 and joined the Catholic Church on Easter the next year.

That’s why I became Catholic.