Well-Trained Bible Study

drexel · Member

Introduce Yourself!

drexel · Member

I'll start!

I was raised nominally Protestant and attended a Methodist church with my father. He wasn't particularly religious, he was a southern man and probably just went out of habit and tradition. My mother is extremely liberal both politically and socially and has never been religious. I attended an evangelical Christian private school one year in high school and that seriously damaged my views on Christianity in general and I abandoned religion for a solid decade until my late 20s.

After I had my first child I felt the rumblings internally that I should do something about my spiritual life and began searching for answers. I spent two years intensely studying Bahaism and participating in their Ruhi studies but I could never quite commit and convert. I spent awhile studying Buddhism after I decided I was never going to become Baha'i.

I stumbled onto Jennifer Fulwiler's blog Conversion Diary (then Et Tu?) years ago and my interest was peaked. Atheist to Catholic conversion is a pretty dramatic one! I have to admit that I didn't follow her blog regularly for quite a while but I decided to learn more about Catholic Christianity because I didn't know anything about it. I began reading lots of books, found lots of blogs on the internet written by Catholics and began spending a lot of free time reading over at Catholic Answers. I began RCIA simply to get more information, I had no real intention of converting! biggrin I knew no observant Catholics in my real life aside from my SIL who lives very far away from me and Jennifer ended up being a great source of information and support for me and became my RCIA sponsor and she and her husband are godparents to two of my children.

I entered the Church in 2009. My husband is still not religious but is supportive of our children being raised Catholic. I pray for his conversion and salvation daily. I have 3 young children ages 6, 3 and 1.

Asenik · Member

I am Shelly. I got pulled into the church by a state university and a reformer saint. ;) I was Pentecostal, then Baptist, then nothing. Then I bounced around a bit more. ;). I was a history major during college and was introduced, really for the first time with an unbiased lens, to the Catholic Church in one of my history classes. I also met Teresa of Avila, via Bernini. But because of my background, I did not consider becoming Catholic then. A few years after college and during a period of bouncing from church to church, I was flipping through the channels and stumbled on a biography of St. Teresa on EWTN. I was hooked. I read her, the church fathers and the whole catechism before I realized what it was really going to mean. My DH was a lapsed Methodist and agreed to come with me to RCIA, just to check things out. We have been happily Catholic ever since. DH's background was a lot more mainstream and a lot less anti-Catholic than mine was, and the conversion was a lot simpler for him. Even with all that, I think I have learned more about my faith on the six years I have been homeschooling than I did in the years before. :)

-- Edited by Asenik on Monday 4th of July 2011 01:12:47 PM

Denise · Member

Great idea. Here goes.

I was raised Methodist, though we only went to church when we were at my grandparents house. My dad was a lapsed Catholic and my mom a lapsed Methodist. They sent us to church with the neighbors who, given that we were military, tended to be Baptist. We did do a short stint in a Pentacostal church too.

Starting in high school, several of my friends were Catholic. When I went to church with them I resented not being allowed to take communion. I also refused to say the part of the Creed - "one holy, Catholic and apostolic church." But, I was very drawn to the Church. I saw something in my friends and their families that I didn't see in others. They just seemed to have this freedom and happiness. They weren't afraid to live life but they didn't go off the deep end either.

In college, my Methodist roommate and I tried the local church but didn't like it. I then became involved in a Campus Crusade for Christ Bible Study. Woa! That's where I learned that the Catholic Church was a cult. disbelief When I asked my grandparents about it, they said that wasn't true and began to probe me about the Bible study group. That was their signal to get out of it.

After college, my boss invited me to church. Since I hadn't gone to church in years, I agreed to go. She said it was a Christian church. It wasn't. It was New Age. Oh boy, was that an experience.

After ranting to my grandmother about this New Age church I was attending, I went with a friend to a Basilica and heard Gregorian Chants. It was so beautiful that I called the next day to ask how to sign up as a new member.

At the end of the RCIA program there were still many things I didn't understand about Church teachings. Still, I thought that the Church had things at least mostly right and of all the churches I was familiar with, they seemed to be trying the hardest to get things right. So, I signed on the dotted line. A year later I met and then married my devoutly Catholic dh. I've never looked back. Without the Church, I don't know how we could have endured some of the things we've gone through. I continue to learn and grow in ways I never thought possible. The Eucharist really does change you.

That's my long story. I'm still learning about this beautiful faith. I'm glad to be here.

Denise

-- Edited by Denise on Tuesday 5th of July 2011 02:41:24 AM

Robyn · Member

My mom's side of the family is devout Irish Catholic, but my mom left the church when she married my dad. I was baptised and brought up in the Episcopal chruch. I spent most weekends with my grandparents, however, and often attended Mass with my nana.

When I was in my teens, my mom and step-dad started attending a non-denominational Protestant church. It was very, very different from the type of worship I was accustomed to. I was born a doubter, asking my parents qustions like, "If God created the earth in 6 days, where do dinosaurs fit in?" NO ONE ever gave me satisfactory answers and once I heard the terms young-earth, I lost my faith altogether.

I explored paganism for awhile in my late teens and again a few years later, after I had met my husband. He only told me much later that he had prayed every night for me to find my way back to God.

Dhs mother is ex- and strongly anti-Catholic. She attends a KJV-only Baptist church and is not too happy about our choice. Ironically, I find that when she voices her objections to the Church, and I in turn research and read to find the answers, I am finding answers to questions that I have had all of my life.

Though I started reading Bible stories and using Protestant religious materials at home with my children back when my oldest began K(he is now rising 7th), we only began attending church about 3 years ago. While we loved the people from the American Baptist church, I knew all along that it wasn't a good fit for me spiritually.

I first started looking into the Catholic Church a couple of years ago. As Lent came closer this year, I felt a strong pull back to liturgical worship and I took my children to recieve ashes at the Episcopal church. I continued to go to services both there and at the Baptist church throughout Lent, feeling slightly guilty the whole time. I met an amazing priest at the Episcopal church and we spent hours hashing through my questions and talking about my spiritual direction. Eventually I realized that if we joined the Episcopal church, it would only be a stop along the way. I knew we would only complete our journey at either the Eastern Orthodox or Catholic Church.

We moved out of state and it was the perfect opportunity to make a fresh start. I had planned to meet with the priest at the EO church about a half hour from here, when suddenly my husband stepped in with his opinion, that we should go to the Catholic Church in our new neighborhood. Throughout the seeking, he had been shrugging and agreeing with most of what I said and his feeling had been that God didn't care where we went to church. And throughout the seeking, I had been praying that he step forward and lead our family to where God wills us.

And so, we have been attending Mass every week and will be joining RCIA classes as soon as they start up this fall. Though I am stll struggling with a few things (I was raised a liberal Episcopalian after all), I have faith that their is much more wisdom contained in the Church than in my own limited experience.

And now I must stop rambling and clean up the disastrous mess that I have allowed my toddler to make with a box of plastic spoons so that I could have time to type this out. ;)

Angela · Member

Both sides of my family are Catholic, but my parents both left the church as young adults. I went to Mass with my grandmother as a child, and always felt like "home" in the church.

My best friend from college found our local RCIA class when we were in our mid-20s. Before that, I had no idea such a thing existed... I'm not sure why, but it honestly never occurred to me that there was a route to join the Church as an adult. Anyway, she and I went together and joined the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1997. My oldest daughter then followed with RE the next year.

Later that year, I met my future husband. He also comes from a Catholic family, with parents who left the Church. For whatever reason - not because of disapproval from him - I started drifting away.

Over the past couple of years, I have felt called to return. Over the past couple of months, that call has become more difficult to set aside. The many Catholic-themed threads on TWTM boards recently have really spoken to me, and challenged me to look more deeply into my own faith journey and education, which has really been lacking.

And, so, I am here to fill in those gaps, deepen my understanding of the Bible and, hopefully, grow in my faith.

Clairelise · Member

My mom had me baptized when I was about four or five in a Methodist church. My dad is non-practicing Catholic, as is most of his and my mom's family. But my maternal grandparents were Methodists.

I stopped going to church before being confirmed. Then, my only church experiences up until my twenties were at the Methodist and Catholic churches for weddings and funerals. I always was drawn to Catholicism, but then I went to a non-denominational Baptist (non-Protestant) church and "got saved" when my a friend asked me if I wanted to go hear the gospel. Someone took out their Bible, went through the "Romans Road" and told me that if I prayed and asked forgiveness, I'd be certain to go to heaven if I got hit by a car after I left. I prayed, somewhat uncomfortable as they watched me but was rather relieved to hear about a way to deal with my sins. The people seemed very kind so I agreed to keep going back to that church and take new Christian classes. I was told my former baptism was invalid and "taught" how to read the Bible (which had long been a mystery to me) and since it was the church that my soon-to-be fiance grew up in, I joined.

We stayed in the church for several years and I was mostly happy but kept coming up with questions. Our pastors always seemed to have a Bible answer, and I accepted them (along with our friends at the large church -- who was I to disagree with people who had doctorate degrees and prominence in the community?) at first. We were very involved and our best friends were, too.

Despite the anti-Catholic teachings at the church, I still had the St. Elizabeth Seton medal from my mom and a beautiful glass figure of Mary that I inherited. The Catholic Church's idea of coming home kept coming up in my life and I couldn't ignore it, even though I wasn't baptized Catholic (I'd almost joined in my late teens.) As my husband felt ready to leave our church, I started thinking more about Catholicism. My husband is relieved to have left our church, unhappy about the strain it put on friends that take it personally, and willing to look at the Catholic Church. It goes against all he was taught growing up but he's been realizing it answers a lot of questions he always had. He said he thought this study is a good idea, too.

Penny_P · Member

My name is Joyce. I was raised by my mom who was Baha'i and my father who was nothing, but now claims to be an atheist. As he is in his late 80's this makes me very sad. He has been rather negative and bitter the last 20 or so years. My parents divorced when I was in high school, but I was actively involved in Baha'i youth activities. This probably kept me out of trouble since we lived with my father and his parenting style was very ... uninvolved. My mom was depressed and didn't feel like she could take care of us.

After high school I went on a "year of service" in Central America. I was never comfortable prosteletyzing for the Baha'is and by the end of the year I was burnt out and having serious doubts. In my early 20's I claimed to be an agnostic. DH was my hs sweetheart and had been raised pretty much without religion. He had a massive conversion to Christianity before we were married. It deeply changed him. I found it shocking that an intellectual and logical guy could undergo such a transformation. We attended a vineyard church together and the pastor did pre-marital counseling with us before we were married. My conversion was slow and never earth-shattering. I was finally baptised with my first two kids in a Lutheran church.

DH is a history fanatic, so we eventually attended several EO churches. Frankly, I was never comfortable. The Greek Orthodox church was just so... Greek. The little Antiochan mission church full of converts was so intense- it was confusing to keep up with the fasting laws and I could never get over kissing icons. We also stood for almost the entire service.

For many years we were without a church. I kept wanting DH to lead us as a family, but it took him a long time after our crash and burn at the EO church. He refused to attend a Bible church. I felt like we needed to get our children involved in some sort of religious training. We had attended Catholic services infrequently, but one day during a service I just felt so comfortable and at peace. We came in at the same time my ds1 was baptised. My bff, a firm Bible Christian, has silently grieved our conversion, I think. Her in-laws are Catholic and I don't think she fully believes we can all get to heaven.

There is so much to learn and our little parish doesn't seem to offer a lot of activities. DH refuses to go to the larger parishes with band music although I will be looking into them for mom activities in the fall. Churches just die here in Arizona in the summer.

Brianamouse · Veteran Member

Hullo, all.

How I got here. Huh.

I was baptized and made my first communion in the RCC, my Mom having been 'saved' in the Catholic Charismatic movement. I even attended a Parochial school for a while. But then she left it. I don't know why, though it had something to do with the very old Protestant beliefs about Catholics. So we spent years of my youth bouncing around to wild and wolly churches that taught a lot of very strange stuff.

When I left the house at 19 all I knew was that I believed in God. Then, at 22 I met my Dh, and even though he had been a cradle Catholic, he had some ... things happen in hs life that befriend a Reverend and he ended up coming to church with me, a 'non denom' church where we stayed for about 9 years. Then we started poking holes though their beliefs and asking the serious questions that we never got decent answers to (not in our opinion, anyway). One being why didn't we take communion every Sunday? So we left.

From there I looked into the organic house church movement-ever searching for that 1st century church experience. I kept seeking for about 8 years, and though Catholicism kept knocking, I was still too entrenched in Protestantism to see but my single minded focus on communion still stuck and even became MORE important.

Then I found the church fathers. Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Clement and as I researched more and more, came to the realization that the first century church worship service sounded like a Mass from my youth. But I still believed that the Pope was the AntiChrist, so I looked into EO.

We found an EO church not too far away, and I attended during Lent with all the kids. I loved it. The candles, the inscence the singing-all amazing. But it a SO ethnic I KNEW my husband would never go. I even had trouble seeing past the deep ethnicity, but opened the door for me to look at RCC. So I started really delving into my beliefs about the Pope, and I asked a RCC member on TWTM for a RCC POV book on the reformation and after I read that, I was sold (THE CLEAVING OF CHRISTIANDOM). I had never really looked at the Reformation through the eyes of a Catholic and what I found was wretched. Every lie that I had believed had come out of the mouth of Luther himself. They were old, old lies. And once I saw the truth of the history of the church-well, from then on I was responsible for what I knew.

And here we are. All of my kids are being brought in this coming Vigil, and for the first time in years, Dh and I are *thrilled* with church. We love going to Mass.

And, he, the brat, said, "I always knew we'd come back."

-- Edited by Brianamouse on Wednesday 6th of July 2011 07:27:12 PM

-- Edited by Brianamouse on Wednesday 6th of July 2011 07:28:51 PM

kimnc · Member

Hi everyone! It is so cool to see all these conversion stories! aww

I am a "cradle" Catholic. I was born and raised in NC, although mostly we attended a military parish (dad was in the Air Force.) Mom converted after she and dad were married, and she took us to Mass and CCD every Sunday.

In college I sort of "drifted away' and quit going to Mass, but I never truly left the Church. I became a Christmas/Easter Mass goer, occasionally going a few times in-between. I was married in the Church, but DH is not Catholic.

Around 2004 or '05 I had a deep conversion experience, and returned to being a practicing Catholic. It actually took a couple of years before I was going to Mass EVERY Sunday; sloth is a hard thing to overcome sometimes. Long story short, we moved to a different city, and after church-hopping for a while we have settled on a parish about 25 mins. away. So far it has been fine, but sometimes I feel like I am an outsider because almost everyone here is from somewhere else (especially the Northeast). In addition, most of our friends are Baptist, which is a hard thing for my kids. I just signed them up for middle and high school CCD this year. Our parish is starting with the LifeTeen program for high school and Edge program for middle school, so I hope that will help them see that there is more to "church" than just Sunday Mass (which they consider boring). Having heard Mark Hart on the Catholic Channel radio station a few times, I love the way he presents the Bible to young people.

Sorry to ramble on. Great to meet everyone here.

Clairelise · Member

Penny_P wrote:
My name is Joyce. I was raised by my mom who was Baha'i and my father who was nothing, but now claims to be an atheist. As he is in his late 80's this makes me very sad. He has been rather negative and bitter the last 20 or so years. My parents divorced when I was in high school, but I was actively involved in Baha'i youth activities. This probably kept me out of trouble since we lived with my father and his parenting style was very ... uninvolved. My mom was depressed and didn't feel like she could take care of us.
After high school I went on a "year of service" in Central America. I was never comfortable prosteletyzing for the Baha'is and by the end of the year I was burnt out and having serious doubts. In my early 20's I claimed to be an agnostic. DH was my hs sweetheart and had been raised pretty much without religion. He had a massive conversion to Christianity before we were married. It deeply changed him. I found it shocking that an intellectual and logical guy could undergo such a transformation. We attended a vineyard church together and the pastor did pre-marital counseling with us before we were married. My conversion was slow and never earth-shattering. I was finally baptised with my first two kids in a Lutheran church.
DH is a history fanatic, so we eventually attended several EO churches. Frankly, I was never comfortable. The Greek Orthodox church was just so... Greek. The little Antiochan mission church full of converts was so intense- it was confusing to keep up with the fasting laws and I could never get over kissing icons. We also stood for almost the entire service.
For many years we were without a church. I kept wanting DH to lead us as a family, but it took him a long time after our crash and burn at the EO church. He refused to attend a Bible church. I felt like we needed to get our children involved in some sort of religious training. We had attended Catholic services infrequently, but one day during a service I just felt so comfortable and at peace. We came in at the same time my ds1 was baptised. My bff, a firm Bible Christian, has silently grieved our conversion, I think. Her in-laws are Catholic and I don't think she fully believes we can all get to heaven.
There is so much to learn and our little parish doesn't seem to offer a lot of activities. DH refuses to go to the larger parishes with band music although I will be looking into them for mom activities in the fall. Churches just die here in Arizona in the summer.

I don't know if it's at all the same but I know people who go to "Bible" churches. some of whom assume that Catholic equals unsaved and non-Christian. My best friend, though, does go to a "Bible" church and admitted she doesn't know much about Catholicism and thinks it isn't right to exclude them from being called "Christian."