Tag: conversion
“I remember thinking to myself, these Catholics believe so many strange things that I’ll never figure them all out, even if I have a lifetime, because they say it took the church thousands of years to figure them out. But I’ve reduced it to one question now: what was the early church like? Did Jesus found a Protestant church that went bad, that is, Catholic, in the Middle Ages, or did he found a Catholic church that went bad, that is, Protestant, at the Reformation? And I can find that out just by reading the Church Fathers, the earliest Christians. So I’ll read the earliest documents of church history, prove to myself how Protestant they were, and justify my staying a Protestant, and that’ll overcome my temptation to become a Catholic. Well, you know the rest of the story, especially if you’ve read Cardinal Newman’s conversion story; that was basically his point. It was really one basic point: is it a historical fact that Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church, or not? Is there continuity between the Catholic Church today and the thing the Gospels tell us that Jesus founded? If yes, be a Catholic; if no, don’t. And you don’t have to be a theologian to figure that out — just read the books.”