Why I am a Catholic

I have had a somewhat long and winding path to Catholicism. My family is Methodist, and I attended Methodist churches until the end of high school. My first experience with God occurred after the death of my grandmother when I was nine years old. We had moved to Indonesia, and one day I just decided to start praying. This is a perfect example of that part of us that through no conscious decision of our own, but because of how we are made, longs to reach out to God. The next time that I had a significant experience with God was at the age of 14. I was on a mission trip to Mexico with my church youth group, and I had an experience where I felt that in my head, I had a vision of a radiant Jesus. This experience brought Jesus into my understanding of God, and fostered a deep-seated faith. That seed of faith did not really bear fruit until I went to college. I was baptized and confirmed in the Methodist church, but my life remained fundamentally unchanged.

After moving to Austin, Texas for college, I decided that I should join some sort of Christian organization. I can't tell you where that idea came from or what prompted it. For the past couple of years, I really hadn't been much involved in church or my faith. I ended up joining a Christian sorority named Sigma Phi Lambda, and attended several churches until I settled at Hope Chapel, which later planted the congregation of Hope in the City. I realized very quickly at Phi Lamb that there was so much more to relationship with God than I had ever experienced. These people, I remember thinking, were really into this at a deep level, and I knew that I wanted to experience God like that. I read the entire Bible my first semester of college and I just couldn't get enough. Over Christmas break, I went on a mission trip to Waco, TX, and spent the week playing with underpriviliged children and learning for the first time about the poor. I had seen a great deal of poverty in Indonesia as a child, but this was my first experience with the poor in America. Praying with the girls on the trip was a great experience.

After school ended in May, I went with the woman we had worked with in Waco, Janet Dorrell, to India and Nepal for nearly a month. We went to Delhi first, talking to the Gujars, a people group with no written language and low social status, that was being persecuted by the prodominately Hindu government. After a week, we went to Nepal, meeting facscinating people in the hills around Kathmandu. The last week or so was spent in Calcutta with the Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity. It was a life changing experience, and I was really fascinated by India and God's compassion for people that was unfathomable. After I returned home, I spent the summer volunteering with the youth at a church near my parents' house.

The next year, I volunteered to be the Missions Chair for my sorority, and ended up planning a trip for 20 girls to Philadelphia, again to work with the poor. We spent the week talking to drug addicts, helping out with after-school programs, and praying for Philadelphia. I had no idea that I would learn so much about heroin addiction! Truly though, it was again a tearful experience of learning about God and trying to have a "kingdom perspective."

Throughout the rest of college, I was very involved with my church, went on several more mission trips, and generally continued to grow in my relationship with God. After graduating, I joined the Navy, and earned my commission as an Officer. For the next three years I went to various churches as I moved around, but I struggled a little with experiencing God the way that I did in college.

In the spring of 2005, I met my husband, Sean. He is a practicing Catholic, and after we started dating, we began to attend two church services every Sunday: Methodist or non-denominational, and Catholic. This naturally prompted a great deal of discussion about the sermons and our faith in general. I began to realize that I didn't know much about the doctrinal beliefs of either the Methodist or non-denominational churches. The focus had always been on personal relationship with Jesus, and I didn't know the reasoning behind some of the doctrines. That said, I certainly did not expect to become Catholic. I only knew a few Catholics growing up, and it seemed that they all had strange beliefs about unbaptized babies not going to heaven.

I began to research church history, the founding of the Methodist church, and the Reformation. Basically, I began to wonder- why John Wesley, what makes his interpretation special? Similarly with non-denominational churches (where doctrine is not explicitly taught, but exists nonetheless), what makes one individual's interpretation of the Bible correct? This led me to more historical research, and eventually I came to believe that the fundamental tenents of the Reformation, sola fide and sola scriptura (faith alone and scripture alone), were incorrect. Surprisingly, the more I read of the positions of the Catholic church, the more I began to believe that I was actually Catholic. It made more sense to me to believe in sacred tradition as a correction to individual Biblical interpretation. It made sense to me to believe in a universal Church, not lots of different churches based on the views of different people. It made sense to believe (in the words of St. Paul) that we work out our faith everyday with fear and trembling. Salvation is not a one-time experience, but a daily struggle. I came to believe, and experienced during my first communion, that the eucharist is more than a symbolic meal, but a genuine experience of God. Going to Mass, and participating in Communion, seems to be the "piece" if you will, of God that will get me through the next week. I love the peacefulness of Mass, a sanctuary from the craziness of the rest of the week. I'm thankful for the experiences that I have had, and what I learned during my Protestant upbringing about passion, worship, community, and the words of the Bible. All of that enriches my faith, and my experience in the Catholic Church. I'm a Catholic Christian, and I have found my home.