Why I am a Catholic

I converted to the Catholic Religion because I had wanted to since I was a small child.  I loved the church’s mystery, liturgy, rituals, sights and smells.  Everything was sacred and special, from genuflecting and bowing before the crucifix to making the sign of the cross to participating in the liturgy to confession to the Eucharist.

I started life out as a Methodist and made the rounds through many of the Protestant denominations, including Episcopal, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Lutheran and others, depending on what phase of Protestantism my parents were aligned with at the time.  Ultimately, though, we stopped going to church altogether and became “nothing.”

I married Protestant men (two of them) and spent over 25 years in nondenominational and Baptist churches.  But, every single church that I attended fell flat.  They all conflicted with each other – even though each organization claimed to hold the absolute truth.   To me – this was disorganized.  Finally, after my second divorce, I gave up on church, Protestantism, and (almost) on God.

Then, after several years, I decided to look into Catholicism and, for more reasons than I could list at one time, ended up converting.  Every day my decision to become a Catholic is confirmed to me all over again.

Here are a few of my reasons:

• The Catholic Church goes all the way back to St. Peter, to whom Jesus handed the Keys to the Kingdom.  This apostolic succession is the link that has connected each generation of Catholics from the very beginning.

 

• The Catholic Church is the oldest Christian church and the biggest.

 

• There is only one Catholic Church.  Though the Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church, they are still considered our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Like Roman Catholics, Orthodox apostolic succession goes back to the early church fathers.  There are no Catholic “denominations” who claim that they alone are the true church.  There has only been one true Christian Church from the beginning up to present day, and it is the Catholic Church.

 

• I am a Catholic because I believe that it is the fullness of the Christian faith.  Everything that the Catholic Church does points directly to Christ, whether it be the liturgy, the authority structure, Mary, the saints, the Bible, tradition, the Blessed Sacrament or a hundred other examples within  Christ’s only church.

 

The Catholic Church truly is the “pillar and foundation of truth,” as is written in I Tim. 3:15.   All other Christian faiths are diluted versions that began in the Reformation and have been watered down and altered since then.  If I’m going to be a follower of Christ, I have to have the whole faith and not a revised or man-made version.  I have found this fullness in the Catholic Church.