On Saturday evening Vigil on the 15th August 2015 at the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church. A year has elapsed since then, and I thought it might be helpful for the sake of my evangelical friends to give a brief account of the reasons for my conversion to the Catholic faith.
For an evangelical, the crossing of the Tiber is a momentous development, which opens me - along with all other converts - to misunderstanding and criticism. However, the factors which contribute to such opprobrium are for the most part either illusory, mistaken or downright false.
Throughout my life, I'd had a love-hate relationship with the Catholic Church; I loved Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, a local Cistercian monastery which we first visited as a class of 8-year-olds. I was intrigued by the Church's ancient pedigree, with its Latin prayers, its historical roots and its saints, but having been brought up in a Pentecostal environment, I heard about the incense, the prayers to Mary and the saints, the idea of penance and Pope, and - along with the various stories like Father Chiniquy's "Fifty Years In The Church Of Rome", I was put off the idea of Catholicism.
When I was 29 years old I went through a spiritual conversion and for many years became steeped in Bible teaching and evangelical culture. Catholics were regarded as either heretics, misguided Christians or worldly religious types who worshipped images, prayed to Mary and invoked the saints. The Pope was regarded with suspicion as a shrewd political manipulator, working to further the interests of his ecclesiastical empire. One Reformed theologian (Lorraine Boettner, in his book "Roman Catholicism") went as far to conclude that the Catholic church was not a church at all - at least, within his terms of reference as a Bible-believing Presbyterian Protestant.
Having become established in Reformed evangelical doctrine and serving in the office of a church elder, I shared these reservations, and the fundamental issue as far as I could see was the matter of authority. The evangelical Church holds the Bible as the only source of divine authority, whereas the Catholic Church (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church) appeals to the authority of the Church Tradition as well as Holy Writ. I had many lively discussions about this with a good Catholic friend, whose own profession also made a favourable impression upon me.
Following a turbulent time in the life of the church I'd attended and served for 27 years, I resigned my membership and attended an Anglican church. Since I'd been familiar with the liturgy from my early years as a Christian, I soon settled into the tradition, although I had substantial doubts about the direction of the Church of England in its more recent developments in doctrine and practice. Nevertheless, I was happy to enter a wider space. Although I was open to re-evaluate my attitudes to many aspects of the Christian life, my position concerning the Catholic church remained intact.
Despite this, my wife and I often loved to visit Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, and appreciated the peaceful ambience of the place. One day I bought a book from the Abbey which opened up a whole new vista for me in my understanding. The book was "By What Authority?" by Mark Shea (Ignatius Press). Shea is an evangelical Christian who had converted to Catholicism; in the book he sets out the case for the authority of Tradition in the Roman Catholic Church. For me the watershed in his argument was concerning the canon of Scripture; if the Bible is the sole authority, then does the Bible itself set the table of contents for its own canon? The answer has to be no. The canon was established by a body of church leaders and theologians who decided what was to be included or omitted from New Testament Scripture. On what basis did they make their decision? It had to have been through a mutually understood tradition, which already had been in operation since the days of the Early Church.
When I let this conclusion seep into my understanding, I realised that this had to be true. No evangelicals had satisfactorily addressed this question, since the idea of the providential provision of the Bible was as far as their doctrine would take them. The implications of this were shockingly clear to me: if the tradition of the Catholic Church had set out the New Testament canon, it must have existed before Scripture, and it must still be in place. Despite Protestant claims of corruption in the doctrine of the Early Church, there was no evidence of this from the writings of the post-Apostolic Fathers. Furthermore, the classic Protestant doctrine of "sola scriptura", which roots the authority of the church in the Bible alone, couldn't be defended from the Bible itself, so the fundamental premise upon which evangelical doctrine rests is intellectually flawed and inconsistent. From that point I accepted the Catholic Church, and started to attend Sunday Mass. I immediately knew that I had taken the right course.
I also quickly came to realise that in the light of tradition, the Eucharist is not simply the memorial of Christ's death celebrated in the symbols of bread and wine, but is a participation in the actual body and blood of Christ. When Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my my flesh" (John 6:51 ESV), He was stating a literal fact, and not merely speaking metaphorically. I therefore understood the Mass, which has been part of the Church's life since the very beginning. The writings of Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr bore this out.
I realised for the first time the extent of the Communion Of The Saints - a doctrine found in the Nicene and Apostles' creeds. This describes a clear connection between the living members of the Church and those who have already completed their race and gone before. Prayer to the saints is asking for their intercession before the Lord in the heavenly realms.
And what about Mary? The idea of her being honoured as the Theotokos (God-bearer) had seemed outrageous to me in earlier years, although latterly, even as an evangelical I'd started to realise that Mary carried far more significance than I'd previously thought. Reading Revelation chapter 12, I came to the conclusion that she had to be the personification of spiritual Israel, and thus the entire body of redeemed humanity. As a Catholic, I came to recognise her place as the second Eve, whose obedience to the angel's message in the Annunciation enables the effects of the first Eve's disobedience to be reversed by Christ. She embodies the redeemed church, and with the spirits of just men made perfect, is able and willing to pray for the Church on earth.
Although the core message of the Gospel is no different from that preached in evangelicalism - repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ - I now realise that salvation is not an existential once-for-all event, but rather a process that continues all life long. The Israelites were saved when they passed through the Red Sea, but most of them failed to reach the Promised Land, owing to their disobedience and unbelief. Conversion is a God-given grace that is part of that process as He deals with us.
When I came to know Catholics in the church, I was very surprised to find out that many of them were also converts, mainly from Anglicanism. Some were High Church people, for whom the transition to the Roman Catholic faith was relatively easy. After my reception into the Church I started to attend a Scripture and Tradition study group, where my Bible understanding has already been put to use. Coming into the Church from the outside has given me a deep appreciation of the wonders if its deep spirituality and the sublime and heavenly glory of the Eucharist. This sets me at an advantage over most Catholics who have known nothing else, as I have a fresh pair of eyes.
This is by no means a comprehensive explanation of Catholic teaching, but a succinct account of my journey across the Tiber. Soli Deo gratia.
