Growing up with seven brothers and three sisters in an Italian Catholic family in Akron, OH, Mike D’Andrea received a solid foundation in Catholic Christianity from his parents and through
Once I began to understand what the Catholic Church really taught (as opposed to what I had thought it taught) on issues such as the papacy, the Eucharist, and the relationship of faith and works in regard to justification, it seemed to harmonize better with Scripture and make more coherent sense.
As a child living in the Bible belt of southern Georgia, Randy Hain was the son of devout Southern Baptist parents. Baptized at age nine, he really did not know
Dr. Allen Hunt was born into a Methodist family with a long line of pastors. Despite not intending to go into “the family business”, Dr. Hunt did in fact end
On March 22, 2008, just two months shy of my thirty-sixth birthday I entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. I stood before the altar and, in front of
Growing up in a Conservative Jewish home in suburban Toronto, I was a regular attendee at synagogue on Sabbaths and High Holy Days, and I lived a committed Jewish life. My father is a Polish Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz, and my mother’s family escaped the organized massacres of Jews in Russia.
My sister and I were raised in Canada in a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking environment where all our friends were Jewish, and Israel was our raison d’être. Christianity was the religion of the outsiders, the faith of anti-Semites and Jew-haters, the creed of the Crusaders, Inquisitors, Persecutors, and Nazis. Yet my mother would remind me continually that “Jesus was a Jew.”
Patrick Coffin, born in Nova Scotia, is Catholic apologist, author, speaker and radio show host. He shares with Marcus his journey of faith as a Catholic, then agnostic, who has
Once a minister of the Episcopal Church, I am today a Roman Catholic Priest, serving as pastor of the parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas. As it turns out, becoming a Catholic priest brought me “full circle.” Allow me to share with you how and why.
My friend, Sean, watched his father, Henry, die. Henry had been a WWII hero, a flying Tiger. Henry radiated Yankee independence, frugality, and self-sufficiency. He built his own house in Connecticut. He loved time in the woods. He raised his children well. But now he was gone.
Sean’s mother, Mary, continued to live in their family home for the next few years, until she chose to move to Florida. My friend, Sean, helped her clean out the decades of belongings and collections from the family home so she could sell it and relocate. Fifty years of memories had accumulated in that old house.
John Fraysier grew up as one of three children in an American Baptist family in upstate New York. Active in his church, John affirmed his faith in baptism at age
I have often considered God’s providence in my Baptist upbringing. Throughout my adult life a thankfulness for the gift of a moral Christian upbringing has grown within me. And I
The publication of Aid to Bible Understanding, a Bible dictionary, in 1971, initiated major organizational changes for the Watchtower Society. For many, including me, this opened the door to a reexamination of other teachings. I wondered, “If we have been wrong in our understanding of arrangements we formerly thought to be solidly based on Scripture, why couldn’t we be wrong about doctrines, too?”