When Jeffry Hendrix first heard the classical music piece Sheherazade at age 5, he was moved to tears. It was his introduction to the truth, beauty and goodness of the
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A former Presbyterian minister, Fr. Slider Steuernol entered into the Catholic Church and became a married, Catholic priest in 1996.
“The Episcopal Church’s endorsement of abortion in 1967 signaled the beginning of my journey towards the Roman Catholic Church. Up until this point, I was quite content as a married Episcopalian clergyman who, since my ordination in 1958.”
Panel discusses the Protestant doctrine of “sola Scriptura”. The participants are Dr. Kenneth Howell, former Presbyterian minister; Bruce Sullivan, former Church of Christ minister, Dr. Paul Thigpen, former Pentecostal minister,
Eben Emerson was raised by his mother in northwest Arkansas. Even though there was a pentecostal church next door, his family had no faith affiliation. Nonetheless, at age 7, seeds
In 1978, I was ordained a Presbyterian minister (Presbyterian Church in America) and served two churches while I also obtained a doctoral degree in biblical linguistics. Shortly after my ordination, I was preaching a homily on the unity of the Church and stated that the only justification for the Reformation was that the Catholic Church had left the Gospel.
Former Orthodox Presbyterian minister Gerald Tritle discusses his journey into the Catholic Church after seeking truth and desiring to be “deep in Scripture, deep in tradition, and deep in history.” Tritle tells the emotional story of his congregation’s reaction to his journey into the Catholic Church.
In many of the Evangelical Protestant or fundamentalist churches of today, more than twenty percent of the members or regular worshipers can say, “I was raised Catholic.” At banquets or meetings, I recall many times sitting around a table, attempting to meet and learn about the other people sitting with me. Inevitably, someone would say those words. Heads would start nodding seemingly everywhere, and the smiles would begin. Additional words weren’t required, because each of us understood.
During our inquiry into the Catholic Church, we were looking for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To our dismay, we discovered that Protestants have lost or purposely discarded several major benefits of the New Covenant. What the Catholic Church had recognized as truth was reevaluated by the protesters, who had to make things fit their new “each one is his own authority” belief system.
Who gave them the authority to overrule the Church Fathers? As I studied these, I could see no valid reasons for discarding these truths. Who should make decisions in the Church? Who can be trusted to do it right? Such questions had plagued me for a long time.
“I am a former Protestant minister.” The words sounded as if someone else had spoken them. I was in the office of the pastor of the local Catholic parish. At that moment, I realized that my whole life was defined in terms of what I used to be. A silent wave washed over me: I used to be employed; I used to be a homeowner; I used to be confident and focused.
From my days at Princeton Theological Seminary, I believed in the authority of the early Church to speak definitively on the content of the Christian faith. I had no doubt that the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon spoke with the authority of the Holy Spirit. What I had not thought about much was what happened to that authority in the centuries since.
I was a child of the manse. My father was a Presbyterian minister and my mother the director of Christian education. I had a good Christian upbringing and after college served as a lay Presbyterian missionary in Caracas, Venezuela.
