Conversion Stories
Tim Enloe posts a critique of Catholic conversion stories. All of them. He starts by insisting that these stories are somehow suspect. Almost begging protestants not to accept Catholic converts to be what they seem to be. He, on the other hand, is to be assumed to be totally honest and have completely pure motives. No, protestants never let their agenda of keeping somebody away from the Catholic church effect their objectivity. You can trust them with your life.
Tim then goes on to summarize every conversion story. Now there are some common themes running through these stories so it might be possible to list some. But Tim’s themes don’t ring true with the hundreds of conversion stories I have read. Dave Armstrong commented on how close Tim got in his case. I thought I would do the same.
(1) the person was raised in a way that (s)he describes as “Fundamentalist” – primary beliefs here were the absolute sufficiency of the Bible to answer all important questions, the absolute primacy of “literal interpretation” of the Bible, a pronounced emphasis on personal spiritual experiences and intuitions as the criteria of truth, and, frequently, a hostility towards Catholicism based on uncritically absorbed caricatures
This is not that close. I was raised evangelical. We didn’t think highly of fundamentalists. In fact, I would say fundamentalists were more frequently criticized than Catholics in my home. We believed the bible but not overly literally. For example, evolution was seen as being possible to reconcile with scripture.
(2) the person was never exposed to much Church history growing up, but lived in a sort of ecclesiastical bubble-universe full of extremely low estimations of the merits of other groups and a contrastingly extremely high estimation of the merits of their own group
Sort of. We were in a bubble for a long time. My dad is a pastor and we went to Christian schools so we did hang out pretty much totally with Christian Reformed people. That became less true later when I went to interdenominational groups and even attended a Pentecostal church for a while. Church history was not ignored but it centered on the reformation. We studied many of the heresies and councils. I just never really asked the hard questions about when the good church that held the councils became the bad church that taught the heresies.
(3) the person’s whole understanding of the Christian Faith was basically an unexamined tradition that thought that “tradition” was a problem that only other people had – their own group “just believed what the Bible plainly says,” and it mystified them why other people couldn’t simply do the same
We knew we had tradition. We did feel the tradition flowed from scripture. But we spoke of the reformed tradition as a good thing. I do remember meeting my first Armenian. I was surprised there were such creatures still walking around. After all, hadn’t Calvin proved Arminius was all wrong?
(4) in early adulthood (often in undergraduate college years), the person began to encounter intellectual issues that Fundamentalism offered no resources to analyze, and this generated a profound spiritual, emotional, and intellectual crisis point in their lives that caused them to begin to cast around for answers
No. I didn’t wrestle with these issues until I was 35. I had had some difficulties but never dreamed I would reject Calvinism as basically right. I was comfortable living with these issues. I didn’t expect to have all the answers.
(5) the person providentially encountered Catholics who were very warm, friendly, and seemingly godly people who seemed actually to know a lot about the Bible and exhibited great compassion for the crisis the young Protestant was enduring. These warm, caring, very knowledgeable Catholics put the young Protestant onto helpful literature that soon turned into a surprisingly earnest (and further destabilizing) quest to “find out the truth” about Catholicism
No. I encountered warm, friendly Catholics but there were not that biblically literate. They was a charismatic group that I liked but overall the church didn’t impress me that much. Youth programs, worship, preaching, etc. In many ways there were way behind where most protestant churches were at.
For years nobody made any attempt to help me find the truth of Catholicism. The subject never came up. Eventually my wife bought me one book but we had been married for 6 or 7 years by that point. Most of the protestant/catholic stuff I found on the internet on my own. My local parish played almost no role in my conversion even though I was there a lot.
(6) subsequent to beginning to study Catholicism, the person encountered apparently educated Protestants, sometimes even ones possessing advanced degrees in theology, philosophy, or history, whom (s)he was, astonishingly, able to confound with simpl(istic) questions like “How do you know that Matthew wrote Matthew?” or “Where does the Bible teach sola Scriptura?” or “Isn’t it important that Martin Luther added the word “alone” to his German translation of Romans 3:28?”, or “Ignatius said stick close to the bishop – where are Protestants bishops so I can stick close to them?”, and so forth
Wrong again. None of these arguments were important. Except for the last one I knew about them all as a protestant. Ignatius did bother me. But it was not one issue. It was a series of biblical arguments that the Catholic side was shockingly strong with. I did not see protestants confounded. I lost respect for some protestant apologists because they seemed less than honest and less than charitable. But I assumed there were better defenders and better defenses out there. I was just having touble finding them.
(7) Over time (often about 6 months, occasionally as long as a year, and infrequently a period longer than a year), the person became fully convinced that (s)he needed to become Catholic, because only Catholicism could deal with the numerous issues that Fundamentalism could not deal with.
I was slower. It took me over 2 years. I came to see that all forms of Protestantism were effected by the same issues. Their historical tie with the early church was broken. They were not, in fact, more biblical than Catholicism. They could not show how their brand of protestantism was more true than the many other alternatives. They lacked the true Eucharist.
(8) Consequently, the person at last joyfully “came home,” and now runs about like any good Baptist missionary trying to convince everyone else to repeat his or her own ever so illuminating experiences.
Can’t say I am a good missionary. I do like to reflect on what I have learned. If that leads others to greater faith I would be happy to hear it. Yes, there is great joy in finding a closer relationship with God than you dreamt possible before. To finding your roots, your family. To embrace an amazingly beautiful arguments for many things you have always known and some things you are just now coming to know.
So overall I would say Tim has worse than random accuracy with my story. I wish there were more stories like Tim’s. Particularly with people coming to the faith very young and doing so because of the ministry of knowledgeable Catholics. I have to say that is the exception. Most of us have to do a lot of the work on our own because too few Catholics have the teaching or the boldness to confront a protestant with the Catholic faith.
The fundamentalist assumption is strange too. Many flavors of protestants have converted. I would say the most common is Anglican or Episcopalian. I guess fundamentalists might get more play in some circles. I have read a lot of reformed stories. I wonder if Tim makes this connection because he does not respect fundamentalism. He can see how people could give up such a theology for Catholicism. But the truth is these conversion stories cannot be made sense of by protestant thinking. There are just to many of them and they are as a group too rational and too honest to write off. But people will try. I know I tried.
In fact, I cannot recall encountering the arguments offered by Mr. Enloe until after I had already begun RCIA. I didn’t encounter most of them until I started to actively seek them out after my Confirmation. My own history smacks more of atheism than Fundamentalism or even Protestantism or Evangelicalism. It is true that both of my grandfathers were Protestant preachers. One was (I believe) mainline; the other non-denominational. This influenced my early upbringing but its influence was relegated to the background once my mom died. I was thirteen at the time, and my mom was the one who would occasionally take us to church. After that, I rarely went to church. I certainly never went to church in college except as a tourist to a few Catholic parishes and cathedrals while visiting Mexico and Guatemala.
I felt uncomfortable with the idea of religion and even more uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus Christ. Never mind the person of Jesus – I would fidget disconcertedly with the mere thought that people even recognized Him. I never completely abandoned the idea of God; indeed I can remember praying on several occasions at the end of high school basketball practice that God might help me get through all of the wind sprints. But that was about it. To this day, I am uncomfortable with the idea of public prayer, though I am more likely to see that discomfort as a sign of its goodness. I’ll often shift back and forth when saying grace before meals in a restaurant, but I’ll say grace anyway.
The only thing that smacks of a dramatic earth-shattering shift was what my wife and I learned about contraception. We learned almost all of this through web sites and books, studying on our own. We did find an NFP class through our parish bulletin and attended, but until that class, I didn’t know any Catholics who openly taught about Natural Family Planning or the Church’s prohibitions on contraception until well after I started RCIA. To this day, most Catholics I know are either indifferent to the teaching or else they oppose it. One of our RCIA teachers even said out loud that birth control was an optional teaching – and then didn’t elaborate. Because learning NFP and eliminating contraception from our marriage remains the hinge on which my faith turns for the better or for the worse, you could say that I became Catholic despite the best efforts of most of our Catholic acquaintances to persuade me otherwise.
There are a few items of note in my conversion, however. I am married to a Catholic woman. However, she had little fervor for Catholicism prior to my own conversion. It was often enough for her to show up at Mass, cross herself, and leave – though my own pressures against going to Mass no doubt influenced her in this. The pastor at our parish did explicitly ask me to start going to RCIA. And a good friend of ours is a Roman Catholic deacon. But that’s about it. There is nothing here that is so terribly different from the typical Protestant or Evangelical witnessing endeavor, except for the fact that most of the competent witnesses were ordained (and therefore rather convinced) and all of the other witnesses were either silent about or ignorant of what I learned later to be several of the most important claims of the Catholic Faith.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Thanks for sharing Chris. I love these stories. It is one of the common elements that we tend to run into Catholics who are ignorant of or opposed to the truth we are struggling to accept. Yet it is the teaching of the church. I can’t imagine that in a protestant church. When you join a protestant church you join a local community. So members of that community dissenting makes dissent OK. But Catholics are joining the body of Christ that is in every society and every age. A few locals dissenting just makes it harder to obey. But obedience is still required. If you are the only one in the parish who obeys. So what? It is not about one parish. It is about belonging to the body of Christ.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:49 pmStill, it was odd to find myself on the outside looking in only to remain on the outside in some respects even as I learn more and more about the Church.
My experience in studying conversion stories is that the NFP/open-to-life angle is common. However, that itself is no more than anecdotal evidence, which itself is colored by my search for such stories. Perhaps that is what Mr. Enloe has done in preparing his initial article. Maybe he has encountered so many conversion stories that follow the line he describes in his article precisely because those are the conversion stories he has been looking for.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:36 pmDavid Waltz pretty much admits that the ECF beleived in Sola Scriptura. He says it is “Scripture + the regula fide” and yet the “regula fide” is just a pre-Nicean creed doctrinal statement, all compatible with Protestant theology. So the early church was closer to Evangelicalism in that sense.
“Rule of Faith” (or “the faith”, “the preaching”, “the tradition”, etc.) lists that D. H. Williams lists, on page 16 of The Free Church and the Early Church . Eerdman’s, 2002.
1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies. 1:10:1 – 1:11:1;
1:22:1;
3:4:2
2. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics.
13:1-6
Against Praxeas 2:1-2
3. Origen, On First Principles
1. preface.2-8
Irenaeus and Tertullian’s are all Biblical doctrinal statements. (I have not looked at Origen’s, so don’t hold me to that. I am trusting Williams at this point; little time.) there is nothing in them that allows for some kind of method of then centuries later adding false doctrines like the Marian dogmas and practices, indulgences, treasury of merit, Papal dogmas, etc.
Athanasius, Concerning the Holy Spirit (To Serapion), [four books), book 1, last part of verse 27, all of 28, and the beginning of 29.
Usually, Roman Catholic apologists do not quote the whole quote, trying to show that Athanasius means something else by “tradition”, something the way the Roman Catholic Church at Trent or beyond defined what tradition is.
This shows that the regula fide or tradition, from 180 AD (Irenaeus) to 200 AD (Tertullian) to 250 AD (Origen) to 373 AD (Athanasius) was basically the same; all Scriptural, “proto-Protestant” in spirit; and evangelical; the Early church was closer to Evangelical Protestantism than modern Roman Catholicism.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:24 pmI am not sure who David Waltz is. But if he thinks the ECF’s believed in Sola Scriptura he does not know much. One reason is that Sola Scriptura is impossible. Even when you actually have a bible which they didn’t. Then as now every church relies massively on tradition. In worship, in morals, in discerning doctrine there are just so many question woth no direct answer in scripture. So Sola Scriptura is unworkable and really only invoked when somebody wants to throw out a tradition. Did the ECF’s ever use scripture against the church to promote dissent and schism? No. So they were no where near Evangelicalism in that sense.
The rest of you post does not make much sense either. I know you are limited for space. But quite frankly your readings of the ECF’s are often quite strange. The only thing certain is the last sentence. The journey of illogical and mischaracterizations is different every time. I don’t have the time or the expertise to properly rebutt it all.
June 5th, 2009 at 7:49 amMy experience with NFP was very similar. My wife and I had decided to use NFP when we got married. Catholicism was not even a remote possibility at that time. So it was not really part of my conversion story. Really a separate conversion. Those conversion stories, often from contracepting Catholic to Humanae Vitae Catholic, are also wonderful to read. God is doing a lot of great things in people’s lives.
I was encouraged one time when my wife and I tried to name all the families with 5 or more kids in our parish. There were about 15-20. It surprised me because I would not have thought NFP was so common. I know it is possible for people with small families to be practicing NFP as well. We has 2 children and at one point decided to stop after 3 miscarriages. If we had not reconsidered we would have been a 2-child NFP couple. So I am sure there are many out there.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:11 amRandy,
You did not read his web-site or his explanations or arguments with me and others contributing. He is Catholic.
David Waltz is very deep and a Roman Catholic. You should check out his web-site. (above)
The view of SS in the ECF is “scripture + regula fidei”, which, I guess is the material sufficiency view.
Our disagreement is over what exaclty the “regula fidei” was in the EC. Was it a doctrinal statement of basic content? or was a method to use to interpret Scripture? (that would lead to expanding the doctrinal outline as the centuries passed.)
Anyway, he is very fair and thoughtful.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:00 amThe view of SS in the ECF is “scripture + regula fidei”, which, I guess is the material sufficiency view.
This is not SS. It is scripture plus something else. That makes it an explicit denial of SS. The church fathers had a high view of scripture. They never used it to attack the church. They never used it to reject the faith as it was widely held at the time. That is what the reformation concept of Sola Scriptura did. It was foreign to the early church and it is foreign to scripture.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:45 amA remark worthy of Chesterton.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:58 pmI ran into Ken over on David Waltz’ blog. He seems to be quite busy there. David is well able for him.
June 24th, 2009 at 7:58 am