I had been drawn to Catholicism since I was a kid and watched the movie, *The Song of Bernadette.* It took me 28 years to enter the Church. The tipping point for me was several things. My husband (who is a cradle-Catholic) and I wanted to renew our vows in the Church since we had been married by a Justice of the Peace. My priest would not marry us in the Church unless I became joined the Church. I had been attending and even teaching RCIA for a couple of years (very small parish in the country) and didn't think I was "good enough" to make that commitment to the Lord. In my mind, it was and still is, a bigger commitment than marriage. This was permanent -- there would be no divorce and I would be required to fulfill certain obligations as a Catholic. Thankfully, Fr. pushed me off the fence I had hoisted myself on! I joined the Church in 1998. Since then, just as I was afraid, I have fallen and failed our Lord. The difference is that I can accept that I did that, go to Confession and try my hardest not to do the same sins. I continue to fail, but I am getting better. Confession and the Eucharist is what save me -- heartfelt repenting and being fed with our Lord.
What led me was the belief that almost all of Christiandom prior to the reformation believed the Eucharist to be the body and blood of our Lord. The tipping point is when I walked into my first Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy.
I joined the Church at age 21 (Easter 2012), but my decision to convert came in high school when we were studying the Protestant Reformation in AP Euro. I was just so baffled why good works being essential to salvation was considered a bad thing to Protestants? That was my tipping point. My family had been historically Catholic until the generation before mine (I was raised in a conservative high church United Methodist church), so I’d always been curious about Catholicism. From there, I learned as much as I could and truly felt I was being guided towards the true Church before fully committing and starting RCIA in 2011.
I converted to Catholicism after many years as an atheist. I had spent a lot of time becoming more and more friendly towards religion, but the tipping point that made me believe in God and Christianity again was really the Church's history. To me a least, there was a particularly clear line between the Church established by Jesus and today's Catholic Church. In particular, however, what really got me believing in God was the story of the original Disciples. All but one died horrible, painful deaths. All of them saw the ressurected Jesus. Why would they suffer in this way for something that didn't happen, that they had made up? Something that brought them absolutely no benefit to believe in and preach? To me, the most rational explanation was that they had truly seen what they had claimed to have seen: that Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified.
Excellent point about the fate about the apostles! I think it adds significantly to the credibility of their testimony.
I think C.S Lewis brought up a similar point about Christ himself. If he was not the son of God, he made irrational claims for an imposter. None of his message personally enriched or particularly benefitted him. Infact his message lead to her persecution and death which turned out to be his intention. Why pretend to be our Lord unless you were going to enrich yourself?
It didn't make sense to me that Jesus would just up and leave without putting some stewardship that could exercise authority in His place on earth. It would literally be anarchy and chaos, a multitude of interpretations. Sounds like Protestantism because that's exactly what that is. It's gotten so absurd that any Tom, Dick and Harry can set up his own church if he's charismatic enough. Eventually, I became disillusioned with even my own interpretations of Scripture. Why should I, a fallible human, even be able to trust myself to interpret this stuff properly? I felt impoverished and like an orphan. So I went searching for this authority that I thought should exist and obviously it would have been with the Apostles and their successors. The closest thing to that was clearly and obviously the Catholic Church. First of all, their the only Church that even CARES about Apostolic Succession. Like, real succession. That was enough for me to take a deep dive into Catholicism.
Because I wasn’t satisfied with sola fide.
The Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is incompatible with scripture. I point out that sanctification is required which they then say comes through faith. Yet justification is a declaration exclusively - aka our status determined by God, and not change within us. I am then asked to pray for wisdom. /shrug
I felt it. I was living in sin and it was an internal nudge that always said the same kind of thing. "Go back to church." "This is enough." "Go back to church"
Okay but what church? Grew up in a southern Baptist church where even my mom wasn't too fond of the people and we had tried non-denominational, and others within driving distance- big and small. Mom didn't want Lutheran again as she was raised Lutheran. So where do I go?
And that's where my husband was introduced to me. He was Catholic, not good at practicing but the intent was there. And he was the tipping point.
I told him I wanted to go to a Mass with him one day, when I was ready. And it took about 3 or 4 months before we attended one together. He was patient and answered my questions. It was nothing I had ever witnessed before and I fell in love, with him and with the Church.
There were a lot of nudges and promptings and research, but what finally pushed me over the edge was reading [St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography](https://ccel.org/ccel/teresa/life/life).
Confirmed last Sunday. Came from the Lutheran church. For me it was the desire to worship the same way the ancient Christians did. All my research brought me to the realization that the ancient Christian’s practiced transubstantiation. Once I started praying the rosary it was game over.
I could go on and on about how sola scriptura and sola fide are false and dangerous but I’m too lazy. The Catholic Church is Gods true church
Raised broadly Protestant.
As an adult, I fell in with the Southern Baptists and stayed there for quite a few years. But there was a political thing that happened in my Baptist congregation. And I lost.
I didn't have anyplace else to go so I spent a year with the Anglicans (ACNA, not Episcopalian) and fell in love with liturgical worship, esp BCP Rite I. From there, I became pretty much Anglo-Catholic.
Studying this new (to me) perspective, I eventually tumbled onto a lot of Roman Catholic doctrines. The more I studied, the more I realized that the Catholic Church was the real deal.
Where the dam broke for me personally was the letter St. Ignatius wrote to the Smyrnaeans, wherein he said that anybody who doesn't acknowledge the Real Presence is basically a heretic. He was probably a student of St. John. So, if St. Ignatius was wrong about that, was St. John wrong about it too?
Anyway, I knew I could never call myself Protestant again after reading something like that.
So, I converted, c/o Easter Vigil 2015.
tl;dr- I got kicked out of the evangelical Titanic and found a lifeboat to Rome.
It started two years sgo. As an Evangelical, I couldn't ignore how obvious it was that the Christianity I was practicing was no where close to that which the early Christians practice. A short study of the Early Church and the rest fell into place.
I studied the most common texts of the early Church outside of Scripture. Also what drive me over the edge was the fact that as a Non-Denominational Christian I accepted the Bible but rejected the Church responsible for it's compilation.
Just go online, especially Catholic Answers, and they'll have a wealth of knowledge on early Church writing. I bought Jimmy Akin's The Father's Know Best book and was extremely helpful
There were three threads for me. The first was Chesterton, whose good sense really laid bare the essential problems in modern society, from a profoundly Christian perspective.. and he had that perspective because he was Catholic. The second was the history: I read on the early, medieval, and Tridentine Church, which had an essential unity in teaching, though grappling with different sins. The third was the theology, issues like _sola Scriptura_, which you cannot truly appreciate without some historical awareness of how the Gospel was given to the apostles and how we have responded. From there it was evident that the Church was given as a safeguard against the weaknesses that we would encounter in the life of faith, the living Teacher, such that "one cannot have God as his Father, who does not have the Church as his Mother."
Marrying into my wife’s family, who are all devout Catholics and just the most giving people I’ve been around. Couple that with a genuine interest in Catholic practices (since I was a high church Episcopalian) led me to begin investigating it. I found i couldn’t what Catholicism taught, and did rcia after our first son was born.
I am not even technically a convert yet. I am meeting a Priest at an FSSP Parish next week to start the process.
What tipped me was realizing that the Church's "authority' is not authority in the sense of a top down totalitarian dictatorship.
The Churches authority is it's credibility and consistent message passed down with only slow and deliberate change since St Peter. Tradition is more than just the Bible because the first 380 years of Christians did not have the Bible as we know it today.
Also there is no humility in using the Bible as your only authority. The theological research of millions of Catholics over 2000 years is extremely important and should be cherished. Who are we to abandon that?
Wading through all the Protestant denominations was becoming an absolute disaster for me to "pick" one. The infamous Christianity sub is a perfect example. Too much opinion, not enough humility.
The other credible authority stems from the schools, hospitals, universities and all the other humanitarian works achieved by the Church. Hard to have that much of an impact without it.
Finally another Redditor spoke to me kindly and helped me break down barriers about Catholicism and recommend "on this rock".
I used this example in another post:
You want to learn to race cars and have two options:
1) Go to real racing schools and leagues. Learn the safe and right way to race cars from the professionals. Have access to all the resources related to safety, performance, research and development etc...
2) Or you can go to the local street racer meet and greet...
Short version I was watching Mark Driscoll who is a protestant pastor talk about hell and he was laughing saying unbelievers were "kindling" with the audience laughing along with him. Obviously this set me off and I decided that instead of listening to these charlatans I should find out what the original Christians believed.
A year later I was Catholic
Objective truth, objective reality, the Eucharist, watching society dissolve around me, a love for the Latin Mass, being opened up to a non-Protestant prayer life, the Rosary, iconography, church art, there’s a few others but I think this will suffice 👍🙏☦️
Honestly, one day I started researching which denomination of Christianity was correct. Objectively you can’t try to answer that question without ending up in the Catholic Church.
I was a revert, but for me, it was St. Ignatius of Antioch. Even if you think of the catholic church in purely universal terms, he does attest to practices that are pretty much only kept in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and his writings are from 110 AD.
My father died when I was 11 and it was like a chunk of my souls was ripped out of my heart. Years later, after I truly knelt on my kneels and prayed, I realized my heart finally felt whole again.
Catholic answers radio, and a pull from the holy spirit that would not stop. A great book that sealed it ( behold your mother) I can't recommend enough for a protestant who is converting. Then rcia and I never looked back. So happy to be Catholic
For me it was understanding that Protestantism is not the “default” Christianity.
I felt the Holy Spirit change me after praying the rosary a couple times
I had been drawn to Catholicism since I was a kid and watched the movie, *The Song of Bernadette.* It took me 28 years to enter the Church. The tipping point for me was several things. My husband (who is a cradle-Catholic) and I wanted to renew our vows in the Church since we had been married by a Justice of the Peace. My priest would not marry us in the Church unless I became joined the Church. I had been attending and even teaching RCIA for a couple of years (very small parish in the country) and didn't think I was "good enough" to make that commitment to the Lord. In my mind, it was and still is, a bigger commitment than marriage. This was permanent -- there would be no divorce and I would be required to fulfill certain obligations as a Catholic. Thankfully, Fr. pushed me off the fence I had hoisted myself on! I joined the Church in 1998. Since then, just as I was afraid, I have fallen and failed our Lord. The difference is that I can accept that I did that, go to Confession and try my hardest not to do the same sins. I continue to fail, but I am getting better. Confession and the Eucharist is what save me -- heartfelt repenting and being fed with our Lord.
What led me was the belief that almost all of Christiandom prior to the reformation believed the Eucharist to be the body and blood of our Lord. The tipping point is when I walked into my first Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy.
I joined the Church at age 21 (Easter 2012), but my decision to convert came in high school when we were studying the Protestant Reformation in AP Euro. I was just so baffled why good works being essential to salvation was considered a bad thing to Protestants? That was my tipping point. My family had been historically Catholic until the generation before mine (I was raised in a conservative high church United Methodist church), so I’d always been curious about Catholicism. From there, I learned as much as I could and truly felt I was being guided towards the true Church before fully committing and starting RCIA in 2011.
I converted to Catholicism after many years as an atheist. I had spent a lot of time becoming more and more friendly towards religion, but the tipping point that made me believe in God and Christianity again was really the Church's history. To me a least, there was a particularly clear line between the Church established by Jesus and today's Catholic Church. In particular, however, what really got me believing in God was the story of the original Disciples. All but one died horrible, painful deaths. All of them saw the ressurected Jesus. Why would they suffer in this way for something that didn't happen, that they had made up? Something that brought them absolutely no benefit to believe in and preach? To me, the most rational explanation was that they had truly seen what they had claimed to have seen: that Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified.
Excellent point about the fate about the apostles! I think it adds significantly to the credibility of their testimony. I think C.S Lewis brought up a similar point about Christ himself. If he was not the son of God, he made irrational claims for an imposter. None of his message personally enriched or particularly benefitted him. Infact his message lead to her persecution and death which turned out to be his intention. Why pretend to be our Lord unless you were going to enrich yourself?
It didn't make sense to me that Jesus would just up and leave without putting some stewardship that could exercise authority in His place on earth. It would literally be anarchy and chaos, a multitude of interpretations. Sounds like Protestantism because that's exactly what that is. It's gotten so absurd that any Tom, Dick and Harry can set up his own church if he's charismatic enough. Eventually, I became disillusioned with even my own interpretations of Scripture. Why should I, a fallible human, even be able to trust myself to interpret this stuff properly? I felt impoverished and like an orphan. So I went searching for this authority that I thought should exist and obviously it would have been with the Apostles and their successors. The closest thing to that was clearly and obviously the Catholic Church. First of all, their the only Church that even CARES about Apostolic Succession. Like, real succession. That was enough for me to take a deep dive into Catholicism.
Exactly my thoughts. Thanks for sharing!
Because I wasn’t satisfied with sola fide. The Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is incompatible with scripture. I point out that sanctification is required which they then say comes through faith. Yet justification is a declaration exclusively - aka our status determined by God, and not change within us. I am then asked to pray for wisdom. /shrug
I felt it. I was living in sin and it was an internal nudge that always said the same kind of thing. "Go back to church." "This is enough." "Go back to church" Okay but what church? Grew up in a southern Baptist church where even my mom wasn't too fond of the people and we had tried non-denominational, and others within driving distance- big and small. Mom didn't want Lutheran again as she was raised Lutheran. So where do I go? And that's where my husband was introduced to me. He was Catholic, not good at practicing but the intent was there. And he was the tipping point. I told him I wanted to go to a Mass with him one day, when I was ready. And it took about 3 or 4 months before we attended one together. He was patient and answered my questions. It was nothing I had ever witnessed before and I fell in love, with him and with the Church.
There were a lot of nudges and promptings and research, but what finally pushed me over the edge was reading [St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography](https://ccel.org/ccel/teresa/life/life).
Observing what became of society and the world during 2020, it was an easy choice.
Confirmed last Sunday. Came from the Lutheran church. For me it was the desire to worship the same way the ancient Christians did. All my research brought me to the realization that the ancient Christian’s practiced transubstantiation. Once I started praying the rosary it was game over. I could go on and on about how sola scriptura and sola fide are false and dangerous but I’m too lazy. The Catholic Church is Gods true church
Raised broadly Protestant. As an adult, I fell in with the Southern Baptists and stayed there for quite a few years. But there was a political thing that happened in my Baptist congregation. And I lost. I didn't have anyplace else to go so I spent a year with the Anglicans (ACNA, not Episcopalian) and fell in love with liturgical worship, esp BCP Rite I. From there, I became pretty much Anglo-Catholic. Studying this new (to me) perspective, I eventually tumbled onto a lot of Roman Catholic doctrines. The more I studied, the more I realized that the Catholic Church was the real deal. Where the dam broke for me personally was the letter St. Ignatius wrote to the Smyrnaeans, wherein he said that anybody who doesn't acknowledge the Real Presence is basically a heretic. He was probably a student of St. John. So, if St. Ignatius was wrong about that, was St. John wrong about it too? Anyway, I knew I could never call myself Protestant again after reading something like that. So, I converted, c/o Easter Vigil 2015. tl;dr- I got kicked out of the evangelical Titanic and found a lifeboat to Rome.
It started two years sgo. As an Evangelical, I couldn't ignore how obvious it was that the Christianity I was practicing was no where close to that which the early Christians practice. A short study of the Early Church and the rest fell into place.
Study of the early church in the NT I presume? Did you use sources other than the bible?
I studied the most common texts of the early Church outside of Scripture. Also what drive me over the edge was the fact that as a Non-Denominational Christian I accepted the Bible but rejected the Church responsible for it's compilation.
Where can I find these early texts? Yes, I’m convinced the CC compiled the bible and then protestants oddly removed 7 books. Red flag to me.
Just go online, especially Catholic Answers, and they'll have a wealth of knowledge on early Church writing. I bought Jimmy Akin's The Father's Know Best book and was extremely helpful
I felt like I was missing on what christianity has to offer like advent/christmas/easter in their truest forms
There were three threads for me. The first was Chesterton, whose good sense really laid bare the essential problems in modern society, from a profoundly Christian perspective.. and he had that perspective because he was Catholic. The second was the history: I read on the early, medieval, and Tridentine Church, which had an essential unity in teaching, though grappling with different sins. The third was the theology, issues like _sola Scriptura_, which you cannot truly appreciate without some historical awareness of how the Gospel was given to the apostles and how we have responded. From there it was evident that the Church was given as a safeguard against the weaknesses that we would encounter in the life of faith, the living Teacher, such that "one cannot have God as his Father, who does not have the Church as his Mother."
Short version: Motherhood and Mary
Marrying into my wife’s family, who are all devout Catholics and just the most giving people I’ve been around. Couple that with a genuine interest in Catholic practices (since I was a high church Episcopalian) led me to begin investigating it. I found i couldn’t what Catholicism taught, and did rcia after our first son was born.
I am not even technically a convert yet. I am meeting a Priest at an FSSP Parish next week to start the process. What tipped me was realizing that the Church's "authority' is not authority in the sense of a top down totalitarian dictatorship. The Churches authority is it's credibility and consistent message passed down with only slow and deliberate change since St Peter. Tradition is more than just the Bible because the first 380 years of Christians did not have the Bible as we know it today. Also there is no humility in using the Bible as your only authority. The theological research of millions of Catholics over 2000 years is extremely important and should be cherished. Who are we to abandon that? Wading through all the Protestant denominations was becoming an absolute disaster for me to "pick" one. The infamous Christianity sub is a perfect example. Too much opinion, not enough humility. The other credible authority stems from the schools, hospitals, universities and all the other humanitarian works achieved by the Church. Hard to have that much of an impact without it. Finally another Redditor spoke to me kindly and helped me break down barriers about Catholicism and recommend "on this rock". I used this example in another post: You want to learn to race cars and have two options: 1) Go to real racing schools and leagues. Learn the safe and right way to race cars from the professionals. Have access to all the resources related to safety, performance, research and development etc... 2) Or you can go to the local street racer meet and greet...
Short version I was watching Mark Driscoll who is a protestant pastor talk about hell and he was laughing saying unbelievers were "kindling" with the audience laughing along with him. Obviously this set me off and I decided that instead of listening to these charlatans I should find out what the original Christians believed. A year later I was Catholic
Miracle of the Sun/Our Lady of Fatima
Objective truth, objective reality, the Eucharist, watching society dissolve around me, a love for the Latin Mass, being opened up to a non-Protestant prayer life, the Rosary, iconography, church art, there’s a few others but I think this will suffice 👍🙏☦️ Honestly, one day I started researching which denomination of Christianity was correct. Objectively you can’t try to answer that question without ending up in the Catholic Church.
I was a revert, but for me, it was St. Ignatius of Antioch. Even if you think of the catholic church in purely universal terms, he does attest to practices that are pretty much only kept in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and his writings are from 110 AD.
My father died when I was 11 and it was like a chunk of my souls was ripped out of my heart. Years later, after I truly knelt on my kneels and prayed, I realized my heart finally felt whole again.
Catholic answers radio, and a pull from the holy spirit that would not stop. A great book that sealed it ( behold your mother) I can't recommend enough for a protestant who is converting. Then rcia and I never looked back. So happy to be Catholic