I was raised in the Methodist faith in a small town in North Carolina. The only Catholic Church in town was a block away from my house and a large brick home which served as a convent was just around the corner. I would often see the nuns, dressed in their habits, walking to the Catholic school which adjoined the church. Whenever I saw them I felt a great sense of respect. I considered them to be very holy, although, I knew nothing about the Catholic faith.
Country music star Collin Raye grew up in Arkansas near the Texas border, in a Christian family that was predominantly Southern Baptist. From an early age Collin knew Jesus and
Charles Wadlow grew up in Seattle in a blended family of five, with a mother who was Southern Baptist and a Catholic father who was born in England. The result
I left and came back.
That simple 5-word phrase describes a set of life decisions, over an 11-year period, resulting in my departure from and return to the Catholic Faith.
Deacon Patrick Wilson was born in Newark, OH into a protestant family which began as Methodists and then switched to a local Presbyterian church after a period of inactivity. His
I was born in 1971 in Sosnowiec, an industrial mining city in southern Poland, and raised as a devout Catholic. These were harsh times; communism had reared its ugly head, stigmatizing and criticizing the beliefs of those whose faith was precious to them.
My departure from God began in my teen years as I started to have serious doubts about my compatibility with the Baptist church and stopped attending at the age of 16. This rebellion then evolved to me declaring that I was an agnostic in college and later spending years as a workaholic who was too busy for God. A familiar tale, perhaps?
The divorce of his parents at a young age had a significant impact on Chris Padgett growing up in North Dakota. It brought his mother back to church in the
I read more on the histories of various denominations and competing theologies and, in the process, my eyes were opened to the fundamental fallacy of the doctrine of sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible alone is the sole authority for Christian belief. As I later discovered, so many people who end up becoming Catholic realized that the belief that all Christian teachings must be found in the Bible is not itself taught in the Bible!
In the early days of the Pentecostal movement, the grandfather of Dr. George Harne moved from Maryland to Pensacola, Florida to start a new church and to host a radio
Ruth: That Good Friday, I carefully took out white construction paper and the big, thick crayons that normally were reserved for my coloring books. Slowly, and very deliberately, I drew three crosses, the middle one in red. I don’t know how long I sat there, but I remember talking to Jesus in my own child-like way. That is my first memory of prayer or any understanding, however rudimentary, of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world. I was a preschooler, not yet attending kindergarten, but this memory is still so vivid and detailed that it doesn’t seem that almost fifty years have passed.
Someone once pointed out to me that when one commits one’s life to the Lord this journey seems to become “convoluted.” I would tend to agree. My journey back to
Help us share the truth and beauty of the Church.
Help us share the truth and beauty of the Church.
Help us share the truth and beauty of the Church.
