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Military Stories of Conversion

Hear the stories of Catholic Converts who served in the military and discover what led them home to the Catholic Church.

Like many young men in the late 1980s, after watching ‘Top Gun,’ I rushed to the local Navy recruitment office… I visited my parents on the 4th of July, asked my mom to shave my head, and then asked her and my dad to come to church the next morning to watch me get baptized. They agreed. I was baptized in water, and the following morning, I flew to San Diego. By evening, I was finishing my first day of boot camp.

Kenny Burchard

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 A FEW GREAT VIDEOS

Nathan Crankfield 56:09

Nathan Crankfield’s parents wanted him to have the best education possible, so they sent him to Catholic school. The stability he found there led him to ask to be received into the Church at age 13. As he grew older, his own struggle with sin forced him to take seriously his commitments, and when he joined the Army, it helped him develop the necessary discipline to apply the principles of his faith to everyday life.

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Everett Franklin 6:15

When Everett Franklin was serving in Iraq as a Church of God Army chaplain, he had an encounter with a Catholic soldier that caused him to question how seriously he had been taking the Lord’s Supper. He shares how he continued to wrestle with what Jesus commanded his apostles to do in remembrance of Him, and why he chose to enter the Catholic Church on the feast of Corpus Christi.

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Chris Moellering 56:01

Chris Moellering was an ordained military chaplain in the Anglican Church of North America, who began to wonder if the questions of history, liturgy, and the sacraments that had drawn him to Anglicanism were stepping stones to a much larger recognition of their reality in the Catholic Church. He shares how that decision was affected by the fact that he was serving as a military chaplain for his denomination when all these questions came to a head.

Watch Chris’s episode.

 A FEW GREAT WRITTEN STORIES

More Inspiration for the Journey

Explore the full archive of conversion stories from members of the armed forces who have embraced the Catholic Church.

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