A
Short History of My Life and Preliminary Religious Ideas
I have been
told by several people that they are interested in learning about my conversion
to the Catholic faith. They learned
that I was once Southern Baptist, and had become in the end, Byzantine Catholic.
For me, it is never easy to discuss myself and the reasons for why I do things,
especially since the reason contains many different answers. I plan to deal with
this question by exploring some of the external influences in my life which
brought me to the Catholic Church. The issue of grace itself is already a given,
and needs not to be looked into with great detail. For it is a mystery to me,
why I was one who was given this grace, in the midst of all my sins, and why
others I find to be my betters have not had the same experience. Nonetheless,
that is not something for me to know and understand now. I just know, that for
myself, such grace has been kindly given to me. Instead, in this small piece I
will examine the different stages of my religious life, and the beliefs I had in
each stage, and to what it was that influenced me at those stages. I don't
suggest that this will be interesting to most people. Because some people do
have an interest in my life, and since as I hope that by reading this and having
gained some insight on my life they will also reflect upon their own life and
their own experiences in Christ, I will proceed and explain what has happened in
my life.
I was born
into a Southern Baptist family. My mother was raised Roman Catholic, but had
left the Catholic faith in the 1960's and eventually became Southern Baptist. My
father was, I think, raised Lutheran, but he had an agnostic attitude which
later developed into a deistic and socially conservative faith. He became
Southern Baptist, but I do not think he was deeply influenced by the Southern
Baptist teachings.
My first
important memories of any church affiliation was from when I was around seven
years old, and my family had started going to a Southern Baptist Church in
Indianapolis. The church was really
a small church which did not at that time have its own building, rather it met
every Sunday in a Holiday Inn hotel. I enjoyed the experience quite a bit.
At the time, as can be expected from someone who was young and interested
in his surroundings, I especially liked the location and the novelty of going to
church in a hotel; I liked being
able to explore the hotel before and after church. I also enjoyed eating Sunday
brunch as a family after church at a Denny's across the street from the hotel.
Possibly because of these positive experiences, I had grown quite attracted and
interested in religion. After a year or so, when the church community was
working on constructing a church building for itself, my sister was baptized.
Since at that time we had no church building, baptisms were done at a local
parishioner's house with his pool. The event obviously had some impact on me,
but I had also become quite interested in the Christian faith. A couple months
after my sister's baptism, I told my parents that I desired to be baptized as
well. They were uncertain of my motives, and thought it was out of imitation of
my sister's baptism, and so asked me why I desired to be baptized. Being young,
I answered in a simple way, something which strikes me as quite odd, for a
Baptist to have said: "So I
can be saved." While it is true that baptism is not the end all of
salvation, it is the beginning of the Christian life, and although as a Baptist
I later came to believe that baptism was only a symbol, my early innocence
betrayed the fact that I intuitively knew that there was something important in
baptism.
After my
parents had questioned my interest in baptism, and saw that my desire was more
than just an imitation of my sister's baptism, they had told the pastor of the
church of my interest. He came over one Sunday afternoon and we talked for a
bit, after in which, I was led to pray what is called by evangelicals as the
"sinners prayer" and was led to believe I was saved. Arrangements were
then made for my baptism. At that time, the church (named Heritage Baptist
Church) had just completed making its building, and so I was one of the first to
be baptized in inside its baptismal fonts. Right after this event, I took on a
significant interest in Christianity in general. I had even determined, by the
4th and 5th grade, that I wanted to become a Baptist pastor. I took a strong
interest in reading Scripture, and was known by everyone else to be someone who
always carried a Bible, and to read it all the time-- some sort of Bible nut.
Not long
after I was baptized, my family stopped going to church. This did not stop my
interest in the Christian faith, nor did it stop my interest in becoming a pastor. Even though
I did not step inside a church, except a couple times, between the time I was in
6th grade and the time I went to college, I took a strong interest in personal
study of the Christian faith. In some ways, I think this absence of being in
church was a grace given to me by God. In allowed that small desire in my heart
for Him to grow much bigger in want, and to make me much more desirous of
studying His ways.
In middle
school, I mostly focused my studying, my attention on Scripture. Of course, I
did not stay with an interest in Scripture alone, and I soon became interested
in reading some popular Protestant writers, like Hal Lindsay, and some general
works of Protestant Biblical interpretation, like Halley's Bible Handbook.
I had become quite interested in Halley's Bible Handbook, for it seemed
like a reasonable explanation of Scripture, history, and archeology. I became
quite devoted to reading it. And I am glad I did, because it was through this
book that I first learned of the existence of the writings of the Apostolic
Fathers. Also during this time I had learned about through my close friend Keith
Yox of a sensationalist radio talk show host, Bob Larson. For whatever reason, I
liked to listen to Bob Larson during my early high school years, and it was
probably because of the sensationalistic way he portrayed the faith-- and
sensationalism easily attracts a young and eager mind.
Some of the
biggest changes of my faith started to occur while I was in High School. When I
was a sophomore, I had finally got my first computer modem and had joined the
computer Bulletin Board Service called Prodigy. While I was on Prodigy, I was
mostly interested in communicating with two different groups: one had to deal
with my interest in the Science Fiction television series Doctor Who, and the
other was in Christian Apologetics. Also, it was while still a sophomore that I
had really become interested in the writings of C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis's
approach to the faith, which was much more traditional and high church than what
I was accustomed to by being a Southern Baptist, really started to take fruit
when I entered college. At first, my interest in his writings was from the
standpoint of his fiction. I also liked his general, popular level apologetics
because they were easy for most "Christians" to accept. However, C. S.
Lewis was not the only major theological influence I had during high school. I
had started to read Martin Luther, and in doing so found out that he was
influenced by the writings of St. Augustine. So, while a junior and senior in
high school, I started to read the writings of both Martin Luther and St.
Augustine. Luther at this time kept me a confirmed Protestant, but St. Augustine
helped branch me out further into the Patristic Age. Having grown fond of St.
Augustine, one day I looked back in my Halley's Bible Handbook (I think
it was after I started reading St. Augustine, and not before-- this time period
is a bit blurry). I found a section that talked about "Early Post-Biblical
Christianity" and found out about the Apostolic Fathers. It said that these
writers-- Sts Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Barnabas, Hermas,
and the Didache-- were authentic witnesses to the early Christian faith,
and that they were students of the Apostles. Having learned about them, I
immediately sought out their works, and started to read them many times. What I
first got out of them was to use them as polemical support in defending the
deity of Christ and the Trinity. (At this time, I had started to become quite
interested in debating the Christian faith with pagans and modalists on Prodigy,
but was quite clueless and I would now say, laughable at what I had said). I
grew to have a fondness for the Apostolic Fathers, but I did not delve too deep
into their theology.
The biggest
surprise for many will be the last major influences on I had while in high
school. As a senior, I started to get real interested into Christian philosophy,
and started to read the writings of enlightenment philosophers like Pascal and
Erasmus. However, before I started to read their writings, I had found some lone
volumes of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas at a used book store, and a volume
The Pocket Aquinas t at a Walden’s Bookstore. I had already learned
that St. Thomas Aquinas was a major influence in Catholicism, and at the time I
was quite hostile to Catholic practices, and so it interested me to read one of
the major medieval Catholic Saints. What I found shocked me. I had found St.
Thomas Aquinas to be an interesting-- and a gripping philosopher-- despite his
Catholicism. I liked him, and especially his proofs for God (what does one
expect from someone who thought of himself as an apologist, even a Protestant
one?) but I was saddened by his Catholic beliefs-- things which at that time I
considered grave errors. Yet, despite all his errors, I found I liked St. Thomas
Aquinas... and accepted him as a philosopher, if not as a theologian. At the end
of my senior year, after having read St. Augustine Confessions, I found
an abridged copy of his City of God.
Alas, at the time, although I did not understand the work-- I thought I
did. I remember talking to some of my friends, and telling them, "I wish
the Catholic Church had kept to the teachings of St. Augustine. They would be
all right, then." (This belief, was in part because of the works of Martin
Luther that I had read, but also because I had liked his great faith and the
humility he showed in his Confessions. Needless to say, despite my
liking of Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and the Apostolic Fathers, I was
still quite anti-Catholic. Yet, the Lord had started to work in my life and had
brought me to the start of my search into the Patristic Era.
When I
started college, Indiana University, my idea was to take on a study of religion,
classical Greek, and to prepare myself for entering a Baptist seminary so that I
could eventually become a pastor. The first thing I did when I got on campus was
become involved with the local Baptist Student Union (which was at a point of
reformation at the campus, with a new leader, and it was basically the start of
a new group). I also became active in one of the local Baptist churches,
Bloomington Baptist Church. At my dorm, I became friends with a music major who
was a Methodist, Michael Manger, and with a Lutheran, Vincent Darlage. Of the
two, my friendship with Vincent grew quite close. He was already close to
finishing his degree and was on soon to be married, but nonetheless I found a
kindred spirit-- we both had an interest in history, religion, and
science-fiction. We often discussed a lot of religious issues, and even debated.
I rejected the notion of baptism of infants the first year I knew him, and we
discussed it quite a bit. His fiancée was Catholic, and a student at a
different campus, and so I did not see her much, nor did I have the chance to
talk to her much on religious issues.
My first
semester at Indiana University was more or less one where I learned how to get
around campus, and where I became close friends with Vincent.
I also began studying a little deeper the Apostolic Fathers and the
writings of C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis had become my favorite modern writer, and
as I started to read his not-so-basic works, I started to delve much deeper into
aspects of his faith which were more traditional than I had been used to as a
Baptist. Through his essay "On the Reading of Old Books" I learned of
St. Athanasius. His name I had heard before, but I did not realize his
importance. It would be a year later before I started to read St. Athanasius's
writings, however, the name stuck in my head as someone that I should read. I
started to go to the campus's library, and by the end of the first semester,
found the section where the patristic works were located.
The second
semester of my freshman year became the first major stepping stone to my
conversion to Catholicism. Having found the section of patristic writings, I
picked two writers to read up on, two names that I had heard of before and had
sounded quite important-- St. Justin Martyr (I only read his two Apologies at
the time) and Tertullian. In my religion class of that semester, which was on
the New Testament, I became friends with a group of Catholics. I started to
discuss the Apostolic Fathers, St. Augustine, and the early patristics with them
and I even surprised them when I told them that I had an interest in St. Thomas Aquinas. One of
them, who eventually when on and off to Franciscan University, really liked the
tapes of Scott Hahn, and lent me a couple of them on Mary and the Saints to
listen to. Scott Hahn's statements sounded quite interesting: the idea that
petitions to the Saints were nothing more than asking for their prayers was an
idea which I decided was not anything contrary to the Christian faith. However,
I was still an iconoclast at the time, and saw no exact need for the veneration
of the Saints.
That semester
also saw one major change of my religious outlook. Skimming through the writings of Tertullian,
I learned something which shocked me-- purgatory was a very ancient belief, and
could be found discussed in his writings. I even learned that there was
something quite logical about it. Though I never told my Baptist friends at the
time, this discovery was one which I had told Vincent, and even told him
something else-- I believed it was true. Just the ancient testimony itself was
enough to convince me, but I quickly was pleased with the idea when I understand
the logic behind it as well. Previously, I had very little contact with
purgatory, and I only thought it was some odd Catholic belief without much
merit. At this stage, I had already accepted the idea that the Church Fathers--
all of them- represented the earliest testimony of the Christian faith.
Because it was one which was ancient, it was much more likely a testimony
which represented the faith in a detail and greatness beyond what someone two
thousand years later could do on one's own.
The summer
after my freshman year of college, 1993, I first entered the world of internet
chat, that is, irc. I met some
other interesting and like-minded people, but I was still quite evangelical when
I first joined the internet. But it was not one which would last too much
longer. That summer saw the change of another one of my beliefs. After having
had an exposure to St Justin Martyr and Tertullian, I decided to relook at my
collection of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. When I did so, they opened
up much more of the faith to me. I quickly saw that the practice of infant
baptism, through the testimony of St. Polycarp's martyrdom (he had said he was
with Christ for over 70 years which implied that he was with Christ since being
an infant) and accepted it without question. I also saw that there was to be a
more central authority to the Church than what I had first understood there to
be. Because of this, I had quickly called myself a "Catholic Baptist,"
for I still believed that I could reconcile the Baptist faith with what I had
leaned, and yet I still rejected the notion of the Eucharist (but I was close to
accepting the Eucharist through the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers),
veneration of the Saints, and Mariology.
My sophomore
year of college was the one which saw all the barriers fall down. The first
aspect of my progress was with the notion of infant baptism, which, when I first
told Vincent I had accepted that practice, I had surprised him greatly. He
remembered our debates on the matter the year before, and so it was a matter of
some surprise and interest to him. I had also decided, because of all the
positive comments that I had read about St. Athanasius, to start reading his
works, especially the one which C. S. Lewis said was a classic, On the
Incarnation. After I checked out the volume of St. Athanasius's texts from
the library, I started to take it with me to my classes, to read it between
class.
Providence
was working with this. I took it to my Greek class early on in the semester. And
in the class was the person who was to become my godfather, Rolf Rockliff. He
was surprised to see someone reading the writings of St. Athanasius, and even
more surprised to find out the person was a Southern Baptist. Rolf was himself a
convert to Byzantine Catholicism. Before
he had become Catholic, Rolf was at one time a strict Calvinist. What seemed to
be an even greater work done by providence was that Rolf, who was going back to
school that year in his mid-twenties to finish a linguistics degree, was in the
same dorm area that I was living at. Another person in that class, Sean Brown,
was living in the same dorm building we were at. His room was a couple floors
down from where I lived, and he had met Rolf before I did.
Sean had already started to hang out with Rolf. I had an interest in
getting to know Rolf, because I liked discussing patristics. However, the first
half of that semester, I did not do much with Rolf except talk to him at times
in class and in the cafeteria. Sean Brown, at that time, was an agnostic, a
freshman, and was he working on a degree in Biology, and I also did not get
together with him much that first semester.
During this
time, I was still an active member of the Baptist Student Union, and the people
there in general did not know all that was beginning to occur. Nor did I fully
understand myself, and so I volunteered myself for summer missions works. I did
not know where I would be sent, nor what would happen between then and the
summer. Needless to say, I don't think I handled the situation as well as I
should have, as I will explain.
By the time
the second semester of my sophomore year had started, I had become friends with
Rolf and Sean, and I started to be with them often outside of class. We would
often watch television together, and discuss Greek, philosophy, and theology.
Sean took a keen interest in the discussions between Rolf and I at the time--
and from this, he would eventually no longer be agnostic.
I had introduced Rolf to the internet, and continued to discuss theology
with him. I learned more about Byzantine Catholics, and was interested in the
idea of someone being both Orthodox and Catholic. Early on in the semester, I
quickly found my only real objection to the Catholic Church had come down to one
thing, Mariology. Somehow, I am not sure yet, I realized that Mariological
beliefs were not really a problem. Rolf helped, but I am sure the real source of
inspiration was from God. I realized that in Mariological beliefs there were no
ideas that were foreign to nor contrary to Scripture. I also realized that those
groups which had the closest contact with patristics-- Catholics and Orthodox,
had a long standing tradition Mariological tradition. One day, to my surprise, I
found my contention against "Mariology" was gone, and I thought
instead of it being wrong, it just had to be true. This one major revelation,
which was accepted on the basis of faith, became something which I have later
come to a far greater understanding, but my first acceptance was quite
primitive. I had a strong belief that Mary was the Mother of God, and through
that had come to accept her innocence and her ever-virginity. My real research
into these teachings came through more reading of the Church Fathers, and
learning more of the logic behind these teachings. Having come to accept
"Mariology", there was nothing left holding me against the Catholic
Church. Soon afterwards, Rolf took me for the first time to St. Nicholas
Byzantine Catholic Church.
At St.
Nicholas, I met Msgr. Korba and Rolf told him a little about myself.
Rolf told Msgr. Korba that I was still Baptist, but that I had been
reading the Church Fathers, and my general beliefs were leading me towards Catholicism. Msgr. Korba
that time gave me a couple books to read, one of them being the first new
addition to my search- The Way of a Pilgrim. That book opened up another
aspect of my life. Before then, I was interested in patristic
theologically, but had not learned about the Eastern Spiritual Tradition. The
Way of a Pilgrim is a classic nineteenth century Russian work which focuses
on the life of a lone pilgrim and on his journey towards Jerusalem. On his way,
the pilgrim learned about the Jesus Prayer (a famous Eastern meditation and
prayer which goes, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a
sinner") and a collection of books called the Philokalia. As The
Way of a Pilgrim highly endorsed the Philokalia, I soon found myself
interested in reading the work itself, and picked up volume one from the school
library. Through the Philokalia, I was introduced into a greater spectrum
of Eastern Spirituality, and it opened myself up to a greater understanding of
the East, and the Byzantine tradition.
By Easter of
my sophomore year I had come to the conclusion that I would have to become
Catholic. However, this was something which was known only to my closest
friends, like Rolf, Sean, and Vincent, but not to those whom I associated with
at the Baptist Student Union. I did not know what to tell them, and I still had
an interest in doing the "missions work" that summer. I am not sure if
I did what was proper, for I kept it as a secret hidden from them. I was
assigned to go to Nashville Tennessee to work with some Kurdish children who had
been brought to the US as refugees from Iraq and Turkey. It was something which
looked innocent enough, and something which I thought, despite my not having a
Baptist faith anymore, that I could easily work with the Kurds without any
conflict of interest. Again, I am not sure if I did proper or not, and it still
is one place where I look upon what I did with some suspicion. However, I can
only think of what Cardinal Newman must have felt, while an Anglo-Catholic
priest right before his conversion, and think that such a time is always hard
to deal with, and even harder to explain it to others.
After Easter,
I had ordered my first couple icons-- one of Christ and one of St. John the
Apostle, and I had ordered four books of Patristics (Vols. 1 and 2 an
Ante-Nicene Fathers Series which goes from the Apostolic Fathers to St. Clement
of Alexandria, a copy of the works of St. Athanasius which I had checked out of
the library earlier, and a copy of the Seven Ecumenical Councils). I read that
spring, the complete writings of St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus found within
the volume, and that summer while working in Nashville, I read through the works
of the Shepherd of Hermas, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and St. Clement of
Alexandria. That summer I also studied the
works of Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher-theologian from the first
century. Through reading these works, my Catholic faith was
confirmed, and I was beginning to await the next Easter, when I planned to join
the Catholic Church.
During my junior
year of college, after my work in Nashville, I quickly stopped going to the
Baptist Student Union meetings. I did not at first tell them why... in many
ways, I am shy by nature, and did not want to get into a long debate. However, I
eventually wrote an email to the leader of the Baptist Student Union, explaining
somewhat what had happened. She was a bit disappointed, but was not too harsh
and critical. I had also came back to find that Sean Brown, from talking more
with Rolf, as well as what we all three had talked about before, had come to
believe in the Christian faith, and started to read the Bible. From our
guidance, he started to read more
general books on the Christian faith -- especially easy to read summaries of the
faith from patristic sources. I continued my own studies into patristics, and
into the writings of Eastern Christianity and Spirituality. Especially through
St. Athanasius, and the Desert Fathers, I had grown fond of monasticism and
eventually chose St. Antony the Great to become my patron Saint.
One year after deciding to become Catholic, on Easter of 1995, I was chrismated (confirmed) and entered the Catholic Church at St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church. Of course it was on that day that I had my first communion. It was indeed a great blessing, and one which I never would have foreseen before my college years. What was more, I had become quite absorbed into the East by the time I was chrismated. My friend and godfather, Rolf, had made sure that I understood the Catholic faith properly and relayed that to Msgr. Korba before I was chrismated. Because I had lived a distance from St. Nicholas, I was not able to have many formal talks with Msgr. Korba, but he trusted Rolf to have an accurate understanding of my personal beliefs and faith, and to have directed me properly during the year. Thus ends the initial journey of my life, and I hope this helps explains how and why I became Catholic.