Douglas grew up in Canada. He said, “Yes” to Christ in a Baptist church at age eleven. He attended a Baptist seminary which was unfriendly to Catholicism, so while there he took courses from the Knights of Columbus to learn the other side. He switched to Knox College in Toronto, then was ordained a Presbyterian minister. Douglas and his wife went to Nigeria as missionaries. After his return to Canada he was made Clerk of the General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Because of his work on FindIt computerized Bibles, he had a meeting with St. John Paul II in the Vatican in 1990. On his return he wrote an article, which stimulated quite a reaction … from “good ecumenism”, to a call for a heresy trial for him, to a suggestion: “Why doesn’t Dr. Lowry just become Catholic?” The lack of unity among Protestants and the faithfulness of Catholics drew him to the unity of the Catholic Church, he and his wife came into the Church in February 1993.