Our third son was 10 days old on “Reformation Sunday” 1998. The preacher that Sunday at the local Lutheran church we attended was a retired Lutheran school principal, a man in his 70s with a great shock of white hair. He ascended the pulpit and held up a book, a book he proclaimed “the work of the devil!” The book was by a Catholic author on justification. The preacher offered this book as evidence that “the Reformation must go on!” To me, he came across as so angry and fearful, so unreasonably opposed to the Catholic author, that I leaned over and whispered to my husband, Joe, and said “Sounds like a book we ought to read.”
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After 40 years as an Episcopal priest, Jurgen Liias became a Catholic in August 2012. In April 2013 he was ordained a Catholic priest through the Anglican Ordinariate. A community of about 25 other former Anglicans have joined him in forming the parish of St. Gregory the Great of the US Anglican Ordinariate in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
by Paul McCusker. Frankly, I doubt I would be much of a Catholic now without the benefit of all I’d been taught by Protestants as I travelled this way. I know that had I followed my father’s lead as a Catholic I wouldn’t be Catholic at all. (For him, it was a cultural identity, something handed down to him like an old coat he didn’t really want – if even that.) Any spark of faith in my life was fanned by my very-Protestant mother, faithful relatives and, in my formative years, the good people at Grace Baptist Church in my hometown.
Cheryl Ann, who dreamed of being a missionary and mother of many children, has felt the hand of God throughout her whole life. Facing the crisis of scandal in the Catholic Church, she left to become an Evangelical Christian. An unexpected turn of events awakened a longing desire for Jesus in the Eucharist, which brought her home to the Church of her youth.
Intellectually, I had a strong “faith” in the tenets of Protestantism, particularly as they were expressed in the Calvinist tradition. Yet Calvinism excused my sin as something God Himself did not see, since, so I believed, the righteousness of Christ had been imputed to me because of my genuine faith, covering over my sins so that He was blind to them, at least insofar as my salvation was concerned.
After forty years as an active Christian, Beverly Lebold began praying for a Catholic teenager she had met on a foreign prison ministry mission. Little did she know that by helping this Nicaraguan teammate, she would find the True Presence of Christ.
It was my study of the Church Fathers that ignited within me the dormant flame of Catholicism. As many others who have gone before me found, one cannot study the history of the early Church without realizing that many Protestant doctrines — sola Scriptura, for example — were an invention of the Protestant reformation and do not actually reflect the understanding of the Church Fathers, let alone the Apostles. I also realized that the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is consistent with the way the sacrament has been understood from the beginning.
I continued to pray, to lead Bible studies, prayer groups, and Life in the Spirit seminars, became a Stephen Ministries leader, prepared for ordination, and became a Methodist pastor — all in just three years! While I was living in the church parsonage, I was watching TV one day and I happened upon a Catholic nun (Mother Angelica) who was teaching from the Bible on her own network, EWTN! This station was all our family watched from that day on. We began praying the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Liturgy of the Hours — as Protestants!
Caroline Burt was born in England into an atheist family and, later in life, delved deep into the New Age Movement. One day, she was unexpectedly drawn into a Catholic church as she was passing by and her life has never been the same.
I was raised in a small-town, Southern Baptist church in Virginia where I, along with my sister, my two brothers, and our parents, attended Sunday School and church nearly every Sunday that I can remember. In my early teen years, I responded to a preacher’s invitation to accept Christ as my Lord and Savior and was baptized. The experience of the waters of baptism seemed to be one of re-birth. I felt as though my sins were washed away and there was a new beginning and opportunity for me ahead. However, I did not experience much growth in grace during my later high school years and I went away to college in 1970 very disappointed with my hometown and the Christians that I knew.
Growing up a cradle Catholic in Argentina, Ercy Joy Ghiringhelli had a powerful experience with Jesus in the Eucharist. However, over the course of life, she became attracted by revival in Protestant churches. She eventually became an ordained Nazarene pastor and worked with the sick and suffering, until flipping channels one day, she came across an episode of The Journey Home.
Ron Moffat, a former Scots Calvinist recalls his journey into the Catholic Church. “Peter said simply, ‘Lord to whom shall we go?’ I knew in my heart, there was nowhere else I could go if I wanted a faith that wasn’t subject to change depending on the latest intellectual fads. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, but if I wasn’t, I knew there was no better alternative.”