I was raised by wonderful parents who taught me from an early age to follow the teaching of the Bible, and that the meaning of life was found in the context of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The shortest way of describing the Brethren, the denomination I was raised in, is that the Brethren maintain a very nearly Anglican insistence on having a celebration of the Lord's Supper weekly, but that they are in fact doing their level best to get farther away from Catholicism than any other protestant denomination. They have no ordained ministers whatsoever, no priests, not even one man in charge, no one pastor or minister.

I remember at the age of about five, I asked my mother to help me to pray some words to Jesus, so that I could be a Christian. I “asked Jesus into my heart”, with an entirely sincere and childlike faith.

I was taught that one ought to always have an “assurance of salvation”, that is to say, one ought to believe by faith, that we believe salvation can not be lost, and that if one is once saved, one is always saved. We sang about this in hymns: “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of Glory Divine.”. However naturally faith in Jesus came to me, the idea of eternal assurance of salvation seemed either (i) a dangerous idea (what if someone believes himself to be eternally saved, and by so doing stops listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and by mistaking the prompting of the Holy Spirit as if it were the voice of doubt, he is then lost eternally, for his assurance was founded on a delusion which ultimately sends him to hell), or (ii) an unworkable idea, since the more I tried to believe in this idea, the more trouble I ultimately had with it. I remember dozens of times where I was sure I was lost and going to hell, and the pastor or Elder at a tent-meeting or a church service would have an “altar call”, where those who wanted to be saved should come forward to pray with someone. I remember thinking, “if you don’t go forward now, you’ll never go”. If you go forward, that means admitting you never were a Christian thus far, and won’t you feel like an idiot. One day I had all the assurance in the world, and the next day I didn't. And so it goes.

Sometimes I wondered if I was a "vessel of wrath", created only to be destroyed in the flames of hell. This interior doubting was not continual, for there were years at a stretch in which these doubts did not rear their ugly head, and during that time, I had a wonderful experience with very Godly and devout bible-believing Christians around me.

The ideal to which I aspired was to become a missionary, or an elder. Brethren even had some notion of saints (heros), most notably the brethren missionary martyr, Jim Elliot. My personal heroes were (and still are) my own dear father, and as well, a wonderful elder, and friend of our family, named Jim Wilson. Next to missionaries and martyrs, the next highest thing one could be was to be an Elder, teaching and leading with the other elders, in the local assembly.

My Dad was a great help in teaching me the Christian faith. Dad was a great one for leading Men’s Bible Studies, and even as young as 8 years old, he let me come along to his Mens’ Bible Studies. Starting at 6 AM on Saturday, Dad made coffee, eggs and bacon, and a group of 6-8 men mostly from whatever church we were attending, would show up, and we would have breakfast and then study the Bible for hours. Behind us, was my Dad's Great Wall of Theology; several bookshelves that stood full from floor to ceiling with theological books. At these breakfast bible studies, the tone was convivial, and the men were there because they were interested in learning more about Scripture.  Picture a ten year old boy discussing the Abomination of Desolation, with men in their thirties and forties.

From an early age, my tendency has been to desire to be entirely Biblical, traditional, conservative, and orthodox, and I have always felt pulled both by my mother’s spiritual reflex towards conservative and docile belief, as well as my father’s spiritual reflex towards robust intellectual discourse and discussion. Thanks to my mom and my dad, I’ve never thought the two ideals to be in any sort of conflict, but that rather both are necessary to any healthy and living Christian faith.

I believed, as a young Christian, that although individual Catholics might be sincere well-meaning good people, perhaps even Christians, that the leadership of the Catholic Church was surely guilty of many instances of ignoring what the Bible taught, and substituting the "doctrines of man". 

One thing bothered me, even as early as 11 or 12 years old: The thing is, the New Testament is written in Koine Greek. I knew this because my dad had a Greek Interlinear New Testament, and we had a Strong’s Concordance, that referenced particular Greek and Hebrew words. But Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is something like Hebrew, and is probably the root language that Arabic developed from, but it is nothing at all like Greek. Jesus spoke in Aramaic. Wouldn’t it have been important to those eye-witnesses, the ones who wrote the scripture, to have written down the words of Jesus exactly as he wrote them? What if the only evidence of the teachings of Mohammed were written in a language Mohammed never spoke in? This would not be accepted in Islam. Why should it be acceptable in Christianity? I was quite sure, from what I had read about the Koran, and what Muslims believe about it, that it was so important to the Muslims to read exactly what he had written, that it bothered me that Christianity, if it had been from the beginning focused on the principle of Sola Scriptura, should have started out with a paraphrase, and no record of the original words of Christ in Aramaic.

And then, add to that, the translation from Greek to English, that the New Testament has undergone. After undergoing two layers of translation, and two separate attempts to paraphrase, translate, or otherwise communicate the teaching of Jesus, how much has it been changed? I was told not to worry, that the Holy Spirit has literally inspired every word of scripture. This view (verbal plenary inspiration) was neither defensible nor questionable, as it would involve pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, an illogical proposition. You had to start with the assumption of Sola Scriptura, and assume Verbal Plenary Inspiration. Then, everything else would proceed out from there, quite nicely. This is, as far as I can see, a sort of argument-from-necessity. It must be so, because it *must* be so. I accepted it, because I knew that rejecting it was unacceptable to me. Ultimately, Evangelicalism is about a relationship with Jesus. I had a real relationship with Jesus, or so I felt, and any attempt to delve too deep into the reasoning behind something like faith, seemed likely to disturb things old and terrible. There were theological Balrogs lying in the depths of my earnest Evangelical faith. Some people encounter them, and end up Liberal Christians, some become Agnostics, and some become Athiests. Some convert to Islam, and some to Judaism, and some convert to Catholicism. Others encounter them, deal with them as best they can, and continue on as evangelicals.

Despite my father’s advice to study the real, and avoid even looking at the counterfeits, I was always fascinated by the other denominations, other sects, and other religions. As a kid, and a teenager, I was aware of the big “mainline” denominations like the Anglican church, the United Church, the Presbyterians, etc. I believed what I was told; that these denominations had not taken the principles of the Reformation enough to heart, they had retained too many vestiges of Catholicism. Nevertheless, because of the book “Mere Christianity”, and because of the Narnia books, I had too much respect (love) for C.S. Lewis, my literary hero, to consign him to Hell, even abstractly. Although I knew he was an Anglican, I had created a special category for him. I even hoped maybe there were lots of “evangelical Anglicans”, who believed in the same Jesus as me, and I do believe the first ecumenical thought in my head as a 12 year old, was that good Christians, even some Anglicans and Presbyterians, would probably make it to Heaven.

I was naturally curious, and spent a lot of time reading about all the world's major religions, and even about many minor cults. Now, of all the other world religions, none were specifically said to contain anything worth of praise or admiration, by my parents, except Judaism. And since we were speaking of the same God, there was no danger to be had from studying Judaism, unlike the other religions of the world, all of which contained false gods. What’s more, our family knew a wonderful Jewish man who had survived a concentration camp, had met a young Jewish christian woman while in that concentration camp, and had converted and become a Christian, and had started an evangelical christian missionary organization. I have always had a very warm affection towards Jewish people and Judaism.

My years in secular High-School were not the "best years of my life". They were not the worst, either, and there were some wonderful things that happened, but I was not a very happy person inside, although few people would have known it. I was very anxious, and intensely lonely, most of the time.

University was everything that I had hoped High School would be, only better. Fewer classes. More time off. A massive potential for making new friends, some of whom may even share an interest in the things I was passionate about, like books, theology, computers, life, the universe, and everything. I meet some people who were part of a group called “Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship” at my university. This group became my social circle, and my Faith community.  A few of the older IVCF members, and the IVCF staff workers, took me under-wing. They gave me books to read. Books and books and books. They re-awakened my passion for theology and spiritual reading. They taught me how to lead a small group. They showed me how cool it is to be a passionate Christian, who does not check his brains at the door when he goes to Church. I had begun to read books and talk to people who were openly critical of, and ambivalent about certain aspects of protestant evangelicalism.

So imagine my joy when an Anglican priest showed up at an IVCF meeting, and delivered a talk that I can’t remember a word of, except that I thought, “here’s a guy who has an amazing knowledge of the Bible, of the history of the Church, and of what’s wrong with Evangelicalism today”. So I started attending his Anglican parish. Thus begins the Anglican phase of my Christian life. This parish was a really wonderful experience. I spent almost 9 years at this parish. I started out as an infrequent attendee. Then I became a devoted parishioner, who was always there, mainly for the preaching, and later on, as I got involved in the small-groups there, the parish also replaced IVCF as the social-center of my life. I became a small-group leader, and later I got involved in what would be called a “parish council” in some places, but which at our parish, was called the “board of elders”. We really had things structured like a baptist church, with our pastor (okay, priest, fine) and our elders (presbyteros, in greek, is translated variously as Elder and Priest, in english) were really a lot more like a congregationalist church than like a conservative or typical Anglican parish. The people at the parish were from all kinds of backgrounds: Baptist, Pentecostal, Catholic, Dutch Reformed, and lots of others. Now, I suppose its only fair to say that I really never was a “mainline” Anglican, nor were most of the parishioners. In our diocese, our parish was known as “that parish” to the Bishop, and we in return, thought and said very little in praise of our Anglican Bishop. We believed in old fashioned Christian stuff, like the Resurrection of Christ, and that Jesus really did do miracles, and all that sort of thing. Our anglican bishop was the sort of guy who would dance around issues, and play games, and never give any answer as to what he really believed, nor to say anything straight about anything at all.

I learned a lot during my time as an Anglican. I read books by Thomas Howard,
like “Evangelical is not Enough”, that opened my mind to the idea that Jesus had established and left behind, before returning to heaven, not a book, but a Church. If being Evangelical, defined as believing in the teaching authority of inerrant Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura), and in being saved via a personal relationship with Christ by Faith Alone (Sola Fide), were the original tenets of the Church, then why did the early church look and act nothing like the modern evangelical church, and why was my theology radically different from that of the Early Church?

During my time attending a very conservative evangelical Anglican parish, I grew gradually more "small-c" catholic in my views. I was influenced in no small way by the teaching I received. This teaching was heady stuff. It had an intellectual depth, a historic link, and made sense like nothing I had experienced before. That thing, where theology makes sense, it fits with history, with all of scripture, with human nature, and everything, was like breathing in an oxygen-enriched atmosphere.

While an Anglican, I went through a Reformation of my own. I went through what I had been taught, and one by one, compared it to the teaching of the Scriptures, and the history of the Church, and one by one, I rejected the mainstream Baptist and Brethren theological systems I had been taught. Ironically, it was the Baptist's most central principle, the authority of scripture (Sola Scriptura) that fueled my desire to re-examine my faith, because being truly biblical, it seemed at last, was more than a matter of opening your bible to a random page, and doing what it says there. In fact, the pattern and message of Scripture was that Scripture pointed time and again to the Church, rather than to itself, as being the repository of Truth, the Truth that leads us to Christ. The Scripture even says that it is the Church, not the Bible, which is the "Pillar and Foundation of Truth". This idea is, and should be, scandalous, to a Sola-scriptura christian, but there it is, in Scripture. For example, when Christ says, "This is my body, this is my blood", it is only conservative high-church Anglicans, the Orthodox, and Roman Catholics who take him at his word.  Most of the protestant groups that would say "if the plain sense of Scripture makes sense, seek no other sense" ignore the plain sense of Scripture, when convenient, especially whenever the Catholic position is clearly being taught in Scripture.

I learned small-c catholic concepts, of formation and catechesis, I began to appreciate catholic style liturgical worship, and to develop a small-c sacramental view of the Christian faith. I began to read the history of the church, particularly around the time of the Anglican reformation, with Thomas Cranmer, and Henry VIII and his divorce, and all of that. I went farther back and began to read the Early Fathers.

A catholic friend loaned me a series of tapes by Dr. Scott Hahn. In these tapes, Dr. Hahn tells his conversion story, coming from a background as a theology teacher, and a pastor of a Presbyterian church, throughout his long journey towards the Catholic church, ending at last in his "Coming home to Rome". The tapes have also been released in book form, under that title.

I found his story fascinating. Here was a guy who poured all his intellect into trying to disprove the Catholic faith, to seriously study it, find its flaws, and expose them. Here was a guy who beleived my least favourite form of Protestant theology (Reformed/Calvinist) and who abandoned it for the Catholic Church. Here was a guy who was just as creeped out as I was about Catholics and their weirdo devotion to Mary, praying those Novenas, and wearing Scapulars, and spraying things with Holy Water, mumbling while fingering Rosary beads,praying for the Souls in Purgatory, and while nobody actually sells indulgences anymore, it remains a point of fact that at one point in time, a guy named Johann Tetzel did sell indulgences, so what, dear Catholics, can you ever say to that? Why it's pretty much case in point, right there. But wait, Scott didn't find anything unbiblical in Catholic teaching. In fact, after reading a complete explanation of Catholic teaching, Scott found that Catholic teaching actually covers the whole of Scripture, every single verse and every single point within that verse, and omits nothing. No other church, especially not a protestant one, even comes close. Even though I did not immediately feel a desire to become Catholic after hearing his tape, I rejoiced for him, listening in the back yard to his tapes on my walkman. Here I could understand, a man was coming alive, for whom Conversion was not merely an intellectual pursuit, but in fact a love story. As Chesterton says, when you stop hating the Catholic Church, you immediately start falling in love with her. I didn't suspect it yet, but it had already happened to me, too. The Catholic church stopped looking ominous and scary, and began to look rather like it might have been rather badly misunderstood by the protestant reformers. That doesn't mean I immediately began to agree with what it taught, but rather that I began to see that many of the things which had been most obviously wrong with the Catholic church, had clearly been at least partly a result of misunderstanding and human frailty. How exactly, if the Catholic church is not infallible, as the Protestants claim, can they claim that Protestantism is infallible? And if neither one was infallible, clearly a lot less hatred, and a lot more love was necessary, to recover the truth about what really happened at the time of the reformation.

My journey started to become serious when I called Catholic Answers and asked them for some advice. I asked someone over the phone what I should do. They put me in touch with a wonderful priest. Father Steve I spent a dozen afternoons talking and praying. I was already mostly convinced. I had a sense that the church had been right 100% of the time when I read all I could read about any subject. I had read enough books, conversion stories, broad surveys of Catholic Theology and specific points of Catholic apologetics, defenses of Catholic positions made entirely from Scripture. I still had lots of questions. What about Indulgences, and Johann Tetzel and the line about "When the coin in the coffer klings, the soul from purgatory springs"? My parents told me all kinds of stories they believed to be true. How was I to ever explain to them the conviction growing inside me that I had been told a lot of earnestly-believed, carefully conceived, yet gravely mistaken things about the Catholic Church.

I realized the most extreme and absurd things my parents thought the Catholic Church guilty of were spurious, and no more credible than any other set of conspiracy theories, however firmly my family believed them to be true. And why would they not believe what had been taught to them by their own parents, friends, family, and pastors? The Catholic church as an instrument of oppression, remorseless persecution and destruction of true (protestant) Christianity, over many centuries, was an unquestioned thing in the circles in which my parents learned their Christian faith. How could I ever help them understand why I was falling in love with what they thought to be a horrible, heartless, monstrosity?

This was the single hardest thing for me, the thing that delayed my journey home by many months. Finally, it was time to decide to join up with RCIA, or not to. I decided to leave the Anglican parish I had been attending, and start going to mass, and only to mass. Once I made that decision, I knew in my heart that I wanted to be Catholic, and that nothing else was The Truth, and that my heart was at home, even before I had become a fully received Catholic.

I went to mass with real joy, and left every time, strengthened and encouraged, and excited. Being Catholic was the most positive, and joyful thing in my life, even though certain tragic things in my personal life were causing me great pain.  I have decided in this version of my story to omit the details, and will only say here that I have come to see my personal struggles, suffering, and grief, as thing which God can use to his greater glory, even though I am still reeling with the grief of it.


The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults is the most common path to follow for converts coming into the Church, but not the only means, of entering the Church as an adult. It was recommended to me by my friend, Father Steve, the priest who had helped me very much in my journey thus far. I said I wanted to go into RCIA, but that I felt I had to tell my parents first. I knew my mother and father would not understand, and could never be convinced. herself.

I knew their theology was so far from mine even when I was an anglican, that I knew I could never explain it to them. I was now two removes from their theology, as even my Christian belief as a conservative evangelical Anglican was far removed from their Baptist/Brethren faith. I felt, and still feel, that anything less than full obedience was disloyal to Christ. Yet obedience required that I be disloyal to what my parents had taught me.  I eventually sent them a letter.  My family and I respect and loves each other, and neither my father nor my mother, to their credit, have ever said one negative thing about me, for all their misgivings about the Catholic church itself. Some of my family members will occasionally send forth an anti-catholic zinger, and I will sometimes pretend to not have heard it, and sometimes I will try to raise a bit of a defence against their anti-catholic statements, but I do not go out of my way to try to convert or convince my family. You see, I believe they are Christians, and that it's up to the Holy Spirit to convince them to become Catholic. I didn't convert because of some person's gradiose logical arguments, although those logical arguments exist, and they are rock solid.  Rather, I converted because God called me, and I said "yes".

Nothing less than the Holy Spirit can ultimately convince someone of the truth of the claims of the Catholic Church. I believe apologetics are important, in crumbling the walls of objections that we place in the way of the working of the Holy Spirit, but I believe that the spiritual heart of conversion is in falling in love with Christ, and with his bride, the Church, and with his Mother Mary. All of this falling in love is neither logical, nor illogical. It transcends, but does not contradict Logic. Love is not irrational. But it is not purely rational either. There is a relationship, which cannot be explained, and cannot be justified in terms of pure logic, however much we may try. The Lord calls to us as the bridegroom calls out to his beloved, he wins our hearts by his very nature. A personal relationship with Christ is the very heart and soul of Evangelical Protestant faith. Now that faith had deepened and grown to the point that I wanted not only to know Christ, but to receive him, to really receive him in the Eucharist.

RCIA was wonderful in several ways. The people leading it were wonderful. My sponsor was an older gentleman with grown children, and a few grandchildren. He loaned me books, and was friendly, but not an intellectual or very talkative person. His faith was gentle, subtle, and friendly, but not bookish. Our leaders were not theologically articulate, not trying to make RCIA into a course in proving the Catholic Church correct, they were really trying to make a journey into Catholic community possible for those who already desired it. There were lots of question and answer nights about topics around the Sacraments, and the teaching of the church, but it was all at a fairly basic level for me. I nevertheless found the opportunity to discuss my faith with others a wonderful thing.

At the end of RCIA, were two key events for me. I had been attending my new Catholic parish for at least eight months. I desired very earnestly to be received into full communion in the Catholic Church, to receive the sacraments, especially Confession, and Eucharist.

Father Steve heard my first confession. It was long, and there were many tears from me, of sorrow, and of joy. I will always remember walking away from it, free and rejoicing. Walking and leaping, and praising God, like those whom God had healed in the Gospels. Isn't it interesting that Jesus always said, "Go! Your sins are forgiven!", and that he had cared more about that, than about healing their physical maladies? How right and good that the Sacrament of Reconciliation continues in the Church, as the church takes Christ's own words, and Christ's own commission to the apostles, and makes that grace present to those of us who really need to hear Christ speak to us, and say "Go in peace, your sins are forgiven".

When the Easter Vigil approached, I was excited and the anticipation was such that I could think of very little else. The Easter vigil service started outside the church, in the failing light of dusk, when a fire was lit outside the church, and the light was then carried into the church. The beauty and power of this symbol has not diminished in the five years since being received into the church. It is still, bar none, the most beautiful service in all the Christian calendar.

The second powerful gift in that vigil service was the Litany of the Saints. I had heard it prayed before, and have heard it since, but never with the beauty and power that it had that night. It was as if my older brothers and sisters in Christ were there to greet me, to welcome me into the Church. When St. Francis was mentioned, my most favourite, most beloved saint, I cried great tears. I was sitting with the other Catechumens, awaiting to receive, most of us, Baptism, Confirmation, and finally, the Eucharist.

Since I was baptised with the Trinitarian formula as a protestant, and because the Church accepts that any baptism "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit", where water is used, is valid, I was not re-baptized. This was a point of some great personal importance for me. I did receive Confirmation. I took St. Justin as my confirmation saint. As an early Christian, as a powerful teacher, and a martyr he is a strong example to me of the kind of Christian I want to be.

The Eucharist was my first as a communicant Catholic. Receiving our Lord was physically the same action as I had been used to for ten years in the Anglican Church. I can't explain it, except that this time, it was real.