My Conversion Story

From Nominally Episcopalian to Catholic; From Catholic to Non-Denominational; Then Finally and Forever From Non-Denominational Back Home to the Catholic Church.

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Nicolas Bernard Lépicié

My most recent Letter was about the Catholic Church and my next Letter is about how Catholics should understand Protestants. In light of this current theme, I think now would be an appropriate time to share a bit of my conversion story.

I’m going to omit a lot of details for the sake of brevity, but if you have any questions please ask in the comments and I will be happy to answer in detail.

Seeds of Faith

Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.

—Mark 4:7

I grew up in a nominally Episcopalian family. When I was little we went to Church every Sunday, I did Sunday school, and read my little Children’s Bible, but as I grew older the cares of the world and desires for other things began to choke the Word. First, we stopped going to church on Sundays. Then my little sister and I would resist and go only begrudgingly even on Easter or Christmas. Finally, even the Christmas service became a “burden” to us, and so, despite my Mother’s earnest pleas to join her at Church on Christmas, we stopped going altogether. It breaks my heart to say that I think she went all by herself that year, while my Father, Sister, and I stayed home simply because we found it too boring and a slight inconvenience. Lord, forgive me for letting her walk out that door alone.

Nevertheless, I still believed in God, and would think about Him. I occasionally, but consistently wondered, “If God is God, how can we not give Him everything?” Our daily lives as Christians didn’t make sense to me given what I knew about God, but I didn’t know anyone who I thought really did live this way, so I would just go back to enjoying my worldly thorns. Now, before you chide me, I would like to acknowledge that the irony of considering that we should give everything to God while at the same time not even being able to muster the strength to give Him an hour on Sundays is not lost on me. Don’t ask me how I reconciled those ideas—I don’t even remember making the connection at the time.

Starting in fifth grade I went to a Catholic school (albeit probably not a very orthodox one in hindsight), so my life was not totally bereft of prayer and catechesis. But what little formation I received didn’t make a noticeable impact in my life until I was a Junior in High School.

Two things happened to me during my Junior year of High School that prepared the soil of my heart for my first conversion: I learned about St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa, and I watched a vocations video in High School called “Fishers of Men.”

St. Francis and Mother Teresa were examples of people who really lived like God is God. Their lives were consistent with their belief. I had desires to imitate them, but the same thing that attracted me to them—their radical lifestyles for God—is also what deterred me. Sure, I could catch a plane to some third world slums, like Mother Teresa, or strip naked in the public square like St. Francis and renounce my patrimony, declaring that, “Hitherto I have called thee my father on earth, but henceforth I can confidently say ‘Our Father, Which art in heaven’.” But… then I wouldn’t really know what to do after that.

First Conversion to Catholicism

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

—Matthew 7:26-27

My Junior year of High School I had, in hindsight, one very devout Catholic Theology teacher name Mr. Anderson (Mr. Anderson, if you’re reading this somewhere, I can’t thank you enough). Mr. Anderson’s class was always interesting and fully of lively discussions because he wasn’t afraid to teach the full teaching of the Church—even the controversial parts. Despite my interest in said lively discussions, I was not a very good student in High School (to say the least) and could probably count the number of homework assignments I turned in on my fingers. But, as Providence would have it, one day I actually did do my homework for that class (I had probably been threatened with failing it that day). I took home and read a printed handout of the first chapter from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. If you haven’t read it, it’s a really great book about how the decisions we make lead us to Heaven or Hell, but told as a gripping fictional narrative. It’s really good.

Anyway, High-School-Stuart agreed that this first chapter was good, and I was so captivated by this excerpt that I went to Barnes & Noble that very day and bought the whole book to find out what happened next. I think I read through the whole thing that night, and at the end (spoiler alert) there is a part that is symbolic of the Second Coming. At this Second Coming, the protagonist finds, to his horror, that he is not yet prepared for it:

‘It comes, it comes!” they sang. “Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.” One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed—not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of my Teacher’s robe. “The morning! The morning!” I cried, “I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.” But it was too late.

In a profound moment of grace, the Holy Spirit strongly convicted me with this one passage. I, too, was still a ghost. How would I fare when Christ came again, whether at the end of time or at the end of my life, neither of which I was privileged to know the day nor the hour?

This deep conviction from the Holy Spirit finally motivated me to get serious about my Faith. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa gave me greater desire to live for God, but the Fishers of Men video gave me an idea of how someone in my state of life could give their life to God: I could become a Catholic Priest! The main problem with this, of course, was that I was not a Catholic. So, if I wanted to be a Catholic Priest, I would need to become Catholic first. Without wasting a moment, or even bothering to tell my parents, I emailed a local parish and asked how to do just that.

I started RCIA and, thanks be to God, I was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil my Senior year of High School in 2007. This time was not without its graces, and it certainly brought me closer to God. Unfortunately, despite my newfound zeal, I did not receive a strong foundation in the faith at my RCIA classes, and I was also still lacking a lot of maturity and actual virtue that would have helped me to do more research on my own. By the time I finished RCIA, I still couldn’t have even articulated to you basic doctrines of the Church and I didn’t know how to pray or live the spiritual life. One example of just how incomplete this particular RCIA class was: I wasn’t even instructed to go to confession before before being received into the Church and receiving the Eucharist. So even after being received into the Church, I had yet to make my first confession or licitly receive Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.

God Alone

So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

—Luke 14:33

Needless to say, my faith did not last very long after I started College. I still considered myself Catholic, but I didn’t even know I had to go mass every Sunday, and so I stopped going in College unless I was back home. It was just too “inconvenient!” The thorns of worldliness were closing in on me again and choking the Word. But the Good God did not give up on me, even though I had turned indifferently from Him. He acted decisively to bring me back into His Fold once and for all.

It was at this time that I met a girl who would become my “first love.” Keep in mind, I was born in 1988, so I was raised on Disney romantic propaganda that had me believe, at least implicitly, that the source and summit of true fulfillment and lasting happiness came from romantic relationships, and I acted and dreamed accordingly. I wasted no time quietly replacing what was left of God’s place on the Throne of my Heart with this girl by both my affections and moral compromises for her sake.

Eventually, the relationship started to fall apart, as do all things not founded on God. I made one last desperate effort to save the relationship, but before I did I knelt down and said a prayer. For the first time in my life, I heard a still, quiet, but distinct voice in my heart that said “You are not going to get what you want, but you will get Something so much better.” I didn’t know what this meant at the time, but in hindsight it is very clear: God was preparing me ahead of time for the suffering that I was about to go through with the promise of giving me Himself.

My effort to save the relationship failed, she broke up with me, and I was absolutely devastated. I had made this girl my whole life, and had truly loved her. Suddenly and mercilessly (or rather, in an act of Severe Mercy), the idol I had fashioned of her was ripped out of my heart and my soul was bleeding. I had put everything into this relationship, so now that it was gone I felt as though I had truly lost everything.

I recount the pivotal moment that happened next in my post To Christians Who Are Very Sad, so I will quote it here to avoid redundancy:

After a short time passed, I went for a walk, still paradoxically numb to the world while also enduring constant internal suffering. As I walked, I spoke to God and said, “God, I know that you’ll never give me anything I can’t handle, but I really can’t handle any more, I’m at the edge of a cliff. You have to do something.” Then, for the second time in my life, I heard that same small, still voice… The sense it left me this time was “Go and visit Matt.” Matt was a friend from my fraternity in college. If I was a little more self-aware, I might have been surprised at this thought, since my fraternity did anything but bring me closer to God. I had left it after a semester because of how bad the “partying” had been on both my physical and moral health. All I knew about Matt’s summer plans were that he was working at some camp somewhere near Tahoe. I went straight home and called him, and asked if I could fly down and visit the very next day. Matt was shocked, but very receptive to the idea.

When I arrived, I found out that Matt was there with a few dozen or so other devout [non-denominational] Christian college students who were on a summer mission trip for “Campus Crusade for Christ.” If you’re not familiar with that group, it’s a non-denominational Christian group that is focused specifically on sharing the Gospel with college students. I was oblivious at the time, but in hindsight the hand of God’s loving providence is obvious, even comical. While I was there, three important things happened to me.

First, I met, for the first time, a group of young Christians who were totally normal, not to mention fun! I genuinely got along with them, and I didn’t have to get drunk or do anything immoral to enjoy time with them. It was one of my first experiences of what true, virtuous friendship could be like.

Second, I understood that I had put this girl on the throne of my heart, where only God belonged. Up to this point in my life, I had never thought about it like that before, but it suddenly made perfect sense to me. And the incongruity of it was eye opening as well. If God is truly God, how could we not put Him at the center? I was glad to resolve this inconsistency and to put Him in His rightful place, on the throne of my heart.

Third, on the theme of incongruity, I realized how foolish it was that I had read so many books in my life, but never the one book that I claimed to believe was authored by God. I resolved to read the New Testament from cover to cover.

Reading the New Testament with a receptive heart, paired with the conviction that God was the rightful King to the Throne of my heart, resulted in the most dramatically life changing time of my life, and what I consider my real, deep conversion. The breakup had knocked me off my horse and blinded me, but now the scales were falling from my eyes, like St. Paul. I was on fire to read more, and I didn’t have anything else to do now, so I spent my days alternating between reading the New Testament, and going for walks to pray. I treasured the Words of Christ in the Gospels, and I could feel their power coming off the page. It was as though Christ was speaking His words directly to me (indeed, He truly was). I did my best to immediately respond to everything Christ asked of me. When He said to leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled to your brother, I stopped reading, made a list of everyone in my life I could think of that I had ever wronged, and called each of them on the phone to apologize (In hindsight, I wonder how many of them thought I was going through a 12-step program?). My heart was still tender from the wounds of removing the Idol, and it would take almost a year for me to fully heal, but I was on fire for God now, and I had committed to following Him and never surrendering His Throne in my heart to anything or anyone, from now until eternity. By His Grace I do believe that I have done so thus far. May He continue to sustain me by His mercy.

Finally Coming Home

…the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

—1 Timothy 3:15

It was now my Junior year of College. I was now fervently non-denominational, leading bible studies, and on the leadership team for the Christian Fellowship group (InterVarsity) on my campus. If you had asked me, I would have still considered myself “Catholic,” but clearly I didn’t know what that meant because I also strongly believed in Sola Scriptura. It may sound weird that I didn’t look into those differences, but I was much more focused on growing in virtue and the love of Christ, and proclaiming the Gospel to others, so theological nuances like that seemed like more of a hobby or a distraction to me at the time. I was a big proponent on focusing on what brought us together, what I felt was essential in the Gospels.

For the first time in my life, I now had a strong group of fervent Christian friends. It’s funny to see how close we came to some of the truths of the Catholic faith without knowing it. We didn’t know anything about Monastic rules of life or vows of celibacy but, after a national Missions conference we attended, we started thinking that perhaps celibacy for the Kingdom would be good as missionaries, since if we went to dangerous places of the world to preach the Gospel that wouldn’t be conducive to family life. Not only that, but we started to draw up what I would today understand as a monastic “Rule of Life” that we all committed to in order to help us better love and serve God in our daily lives and to keep each other accountable. I believe the Holy Spirit was truly moving in our hearts during this time.

One day, an employee from InterVarsity was visiting campus and meeting with the student leaders. He was particularly interested in Catholic and Protestant relationships on campus and asked me my thoughts about it as someone who had been Catholic and was now a non-denominational leader. I shared my view that it was all basically the same, and that there are no major differences, and we should all just focus on Jesus. I was a bit taken aback when he challenged me on this notion and told me that there were, in fact, some very consequential differences. “Deal-breakers,” if you will. I didn’t ask him what differences he had in mind, but I left pondering that question myself.

What could possibly be a “deal-breaker” between Catholics and Protestants? Scripture is the first important difference that my mind landed on. My thought process went something like this: Scripture is the Word of God, but Catholics have seven more books in their Bible. To tamper with the Word of God is certainly a grave offense, and this is pretty clear cut: either Protestants removed books from the Bible and have an incomplete revelation, or Catholics are adding the traditions of men to God’s revelation and are doing something heinous thereby. Solving this should be simple; if we go back to the time of Christ and see which Scriptures Christians originally believed in, then that is the link of continuity and it’s clear who either added books or was lacking the fullness of truth. Mission accepted!

With this test in mind, I set out to find out what the early Church accepted as the Scriptures, initially just planning on looking to see whether or not the earliest Christian writings quoted those seven “extra books” (spoiler alert: they did). As a non-denominational, I had basically formed the idea in my mind that Christians lived and worshipped like I did today. After all, I read the Bible and tried to live it and imitate them as best as I could, so I fully expected my research to confirm my non-denominational beliefs. It is no exaggeration to say that I was shocked by what I found instead.

The first thing I was shocked by was to find out that we had so many extant writings from the Early Church Fathers. Not just the Early Church fathers, but writings from men who literally sat at the feet of, and were ordained by, the first Twelve Apostles! Why were these writings not the pre-eminent reading for us non-denominational Christians, second only to the Bible? We always strove to live like the first Christians, why were we reading modern American popular piety books instead of the writings of the first Christians who learned directly from the Apostles?

I eagerly read as much of the Early Church Fathers as I could, at first primarily looking for references they made to the seven books that were either added or subtracted from scripture. I did indeed find plenty who quoted those seven books as Scripture, but I also found even more glaring issues for my non-denominational theology than that. The Early Church Fathers talked about Apostolic Succession, the Church, the Bishops, the Primacy of Peter, Sacred Tradition, the Eucharist, Baptism. It was all so very Catholic sounding. My notion that the Faith began much more like my non-denominational church, but then had a bunch of changes introduced centuries later, was totally wrong. The truth was that the Early Church was definitively more Catholic than they were non-denominational, starting from the very first disciples of the Apostles.

The die had been cast, I knew I had to become fully Catholic now. This was an easy decision for me insofar as I was convinced it was the truth, and I was fully committed to following Jesus, who is the Truth, no matter where He led. At the same time, I knew that the consequences of this decision would be very hard to bear. All of my community was now non-denominational, and I was worried about how this would effect what had been the deepest friendships of my life up to this point. Additionally, I was now in a similar spot as the first time I decided to become Catholic: I had no spiritual mentor in my community to show me how to truly follow hard after God as a Catholic! The difference this time was that I had the most important ingredient: which was an unwavering commitment to follow Christ no matter the cost or effort.

I had never formally renounced my Catholic Faith, so in order to return to the Church I just had to go to Confession. My first Confession. I scheduled an appointment, and made my first Confession. Providentially, this all lined up so that I returned to my first Mass as a Catholic and licitly received Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for the first time in my life at the 2010 Easter Vigil, three years after I had first been received into the Church. Deo Gratias.

I had more than a few hiccups in figuring out how to be Catholic, since most of how I initially learned to be Catholic came from reading the lives of the Saints, and I didn’t always pick the right ones for the right occassion. This sometimes resulted in me doing silly things, like sleeping in my parent’s backyard in the bushes, even though I had a perfectly good bed inside. Nevertheless, I set my face like flint and kept going, and the Lord was very merciful with me through all of my missteps. St. John Chrysostom in particular took me under his wing. I had, at least temporarily, lost many of my non-denominational friends and was feeling quite alone and friendless. One day, while I was grappling with some particular theological problems and didn’t know where to turn, I providentially stumbled across Chrysostom’s homilies on the Gospel of Matthew. The first lines I read answered exactly what I had been struggling with, and his direct commentary on the Scriptures was a perfect bridge for me, coming as I was from a Sola Scriptura mentality. I would spend hours in the library reading his writings and learning from him how to be Catholic. Thank you, Saint John Chrysostom. Pray for us.

Two last books I would like to acknowledge are Crossing the Tiber by Steve Ray and The Father’s Know Best by Jimmy Akin. These are fantastic books for converts that really sealed the deal for me. Crossing the Tiber, my particular favorite, starts with Scripture and then traces the Doctrines chronologically through time up to the present. In so doing, it shows that the Catholic Doctrine today is the same Doctrine that was prepared for by the Old Testament, Established in the New Testament, and continually taught through the centuries, beginning with the Early Church Fathers.

At the time of writing, I have now been back home in the Church for 14 years, and am very grateful. I was married in the Church to an amazing¹ Catholic woman, and we have four children at present (ages 3-8). I can’t thank God enough for freeing me from the thorns that choked out the Word in my heart, and for bringing me to the fullness of His Truth and Grace in the Holy Catholic Church. May He always do whatever it takes to remove those thorns from my heart, until I am forever free at last with Him in the Kingdom.

If any of you out there are thinking about converting: do it. Now is the favorable time; now is the day of salvation. You will never regret it. If you have idols you need to smash first, it may hurt incredibly, but I promise, you will never doubt that it was worth it. Christ always gives more than He takes. You will find in the end that to follow Christ with your whole heart is to gain all and, in reality, to lose nothing.

A Final Note for “Cradle Catholics”

Wisdom is justified by all her children.

—Luke 7:35

With many new converts coming in to the Church (Deo gratias), I have sometimes seen those who were raised by devout families feel like they have to give their own “conversion stories” of sorts, or feel a little left out that they don’t have any dramatic stories to share. My advice to you is please don’t feel any pressure whatsoever to have your own dramatic story, or feel any sadness at the lack thereof. The fact that you are not a convert does not mean you’re missing out on anything—it’s us converts who were missing out!

Converts have powerful stories of God’s works to tell for His glory and the edification of the faithful, and so too do Catholics who were raised in faithful families and never strayed, just in different ways. God’s grace works dramatically some times, but quietly other times. It seems to me that God’s preferred way is the quiet way. After all, Mary’s soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord more than anyone ever created, and she has no conversion to speak of. By all means, share the stories of how God’s grace has worked in your life, just like St. Therese did with Story of a Soul, but don’t feel like you have to exaggerate a conversion story to join the club—the whole reason those of us even have conversion stories to tell is so that we, and our children, can be more like you!

It is my daily prayer that my children never have a conversion story to tell. I would much rather them be like St. John the Baptist, St. Therese, or Our Lady, who were raised in a state of grace and persevered even unto death. If you don’t have a conversion story, you are in the best of company.

I am sure that it is only through the merits and prayers of your lives in a state of grace that our conversions were secured. So, thank you. It is likely that in Heaven we will see that my conversion story (and many others) really belongs to you more than me. Thank you, and please keep praying for me.

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Other posts you might like:

Letter III: The Eucharist

Letter VI: Foundational Spiritual Books

Letter VII: The Holy Catholic Church

To Christians Who Are Very Sad

1. My Editor (who also happens to be my wife) thinks that I didn’t add quite enough adjectives here. I would also like to add: Smart, Beautiful, Gracious, Funny.