Robert’s Conversion Story

As a former Southern Baptist and part-time Pentecostal, I know the feeling most Protestants probably get when they hear the words “Roman Catholic Church.” A few expressions come to mind. “Idolatry!” “It’s the Woman on the Beast!” “That’s man-made.” “The Bible is all I need.” “The word Pope doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible.” “Mary’s just a girl.” “Turn or burn!” Etc.

I can think of dozens more.

I used to repeat them myself, in fact: little Protestant mantras to remind me how my version of Christianity was right and the Catholic Church was wrong, as I had learned to do growing up. I went even further than that, to be honest, and on more than one occasion, I even accused Catholics of belonging to a wicked cult. 

Anti-Catholic bigotry was my calling card. 

That’s why my conversion to Roman Catholicism was, and still is, in my mind, pretty incredible when I look back at it. One might even say it was miraculous.

My wife, Christine, had been raised a “cradle Catholic,” as they’re often called. She received an infant baptism, attended Catholic private school until reaching college, and unlike most of her school peers (who were more concerned with partying), Christine kept praying her rosary every single day.

When we married at 30 years old, I made her promise to “follow me” because, as the husband, I was the head of our new household—the typical Protestant lingo for family structure and life. Of course, I took her straight to a Southern Baptist Church in our neighborhood. This went on for about a year. I was pretty proud of myself at the time, bringing a Catholic over to “see the light.” I had even sworn to my wife’s face, pointing a wary finger at her, that I would never convert to the Catholic Church. (Looking back, it would seem that God had quite the sense of humor on that one.)

By this point in her life, Christine had slipped away from her Catholic beliefs to some extent. She was like a “semi-lapsed Catholic”—not fully lapsed or anything, but certainly at odds with some of the Church’s “less hip” teachings, and not too enthusiastic to embrace them. In fact, she flat-out told me once that she didn’t want to marry a “good Catholic boy.” Funny enough, she still prayed that rosary on occasion, even though she had pretty much walked away from the Church with me right into Protestant-Land.

Near the end of our first year together, she felt something tugging on her heart to go back to the Church, so she invited me to a solemn Lenten service known as the Stations of the Cross. At first, my gut instinct was to refuse her. Why venture back into Catholic World, I reasoned? We were doing so well away from all that! But, ironically, my Protestant faith had recently led the two of us to seek marital counseling, and during that counseling—which was quite Protestant—I learned that I needed to honor her background and history, even if it was different from mine. This very thought occurred to me as she quietly asked if I would accompany her to Stations. Her tone, while loving as always, struck me as being tinged with sadness, as if she were expecting me to answer “no.” And for some reason, that really bothered me. Had I been validating her life, her long history before I ever came into the picture? Had I been honoring the values her parents had raised her in? It was her tradition and history—who was I to keep her from that? Was I that selfish? As she waited for my response, these thoughts and more flooded my mind.

And then another thought occurred to me: Christine had left all that she knew behind for me, and all she was asking in return is that I attend a 30-minute service commemorating the death and resurrection of Christ. Couldn’t I at least honor her request just this once?

Surprisingly, I said yes. Her eyes lit up when I said it. I remember that. 

That evening, we went into the enormously beautiful, Romanesque structure of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown Tampa. I stood there mostly in awe at the stunning sight. The Protestant churches that I was used to had never been designed so beautifully like that. It was as if the architect had built the entire structure with the express purpose of drawing the eyes of its beholder towards the magnificence and wonder of God. That alone caught my attention.

And then another peculiar thing happened. Stations began. At the time, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was my favorite movie, the only Hollywood film that made me weep every single time I watched it. But having little exposure to Catholicism growing up, I did not know much about it, and little did I realize that my favorite film was based on Stations of the Cross. As the priest processed around the gorgeous church, the sounds of his footsteps and the chants of the haunting song that the parishioners sang filled me with a quiet reverence that I had only felt a few times before in my life.

But this event—the Stations of the Cross—transcended in every single way anything that I had ever experienced in the past. In the dim candlelight of Sacred Heart, the vast depths of God echoed in my soul, as the Franciscan priest led the adoring parishioners gathered there with his repeated proclamations, “We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.” And we, genuflecting, repeated after his words: “Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.”

The mystical experience of Christ that I had longed for so many years before, that I had longed for as a Baptist, as a Pentecostal, as an immature college kid looking for purpose and meaning in all the wrong places, had truly touched me for the first time.

After that, my view of Catholicism radically shifted. I wasn’t going to convert, by any means, and I still looked at Catholics as being greatly misled in their beliefs and practices, but I no longer viewed the Church as this evil, antichrist-producing machine like I had been taught growing up in the Southern Baptist church. It was just another Christian church that I personally disagreed with when it came to some of their practices. So I consented to allow Christine the occasional treat of attending Mass when she felt moved to do so, under the condition that she still attend Sunday services with me at the local Baptist church.

I even went to Mass a few times, maybe five or six total, but nothing more of note happened—except that I began to enjoy the general reverence and formality that the Church employed during its Mass services. Protestant churches always felt like a celebration to me, and with the hipper “relevant”-style “starter churches” popping up around town, they seemed like concerts with impressive worship bands and amazingly unequaled musical talent, and all that seamlessly attached to these deeply moving “Bible-based” messages from their energetic pastors.

But that was just it, I began to realize: they were concerts, not places of sacred worship. There was something missing. And the more that I went into these Catholic churches, with their strange customs and odd behaviors, the more I found myself able to finally articulate something I had never been able to do when I was younger: I had never really felt comfortable in the Baptist churches that I attended growing up. Deep down, there had always been something wrong with them. But at long last, I could look in the mirror and admit that to myself. It was a hard thing to do.

A few months passed. And then Pope Benedict suddenly and irrevocably stepped down from the Chair of Peter, sending shock waves through the media. I was in grad school at the time, and on the day of Pope Francis’s election, I remember working at my desk in the living room of our Bayshore condo as the news anchors playing in the background discussed the papacy and the long history of the office’s elections. Strangely, my mind kept veering away every few minutes from whatever grad school paper I was working on that day to listen to the history and customs of the Catholic Church.

However, becoming somewhat annoyed by all that “Catholic mumbo-jumbo” on the T.V., I finally stood up, walked over, and changed the channel looking for something else that wouldn’t be such a distraction. And wouldn’t you believe it? There was absolutely nothing on T.V. more interesting than some old guy’s election. Every news station had the exact same camera shot of the Sistine Chapel’s tiny chimney, where, as I learned that same day, the famous white smoke would appear signaling the election of a new Church leader.

I tried to ignore the television, but in the end, I failed. I couldn’t stop turning around and listening to what they were talking about.

Finally, an old thought occurred to me, one that I had ruminated on many, many times before throughout my adolescent years: how can every denomination of Christianity be right, especially when they all so blatantly contradict each other? How could I know which one was the true form of Christ’s teachings? How could I be certain that my own denomination—the Southern Baptists (or the Pentecostal church, which I occasionally flirted with on the side)—was the correct version of that ancient faith founded by Jesus of Nazareth and His loyal fishers-of-men? 

And then, as I kept listening to the educated fellows on-screen discussing how ancient Catholic customs were, another thought occurred to me: Protestantism, in its undivided form, was only about 500 years old. But Christ, and therefore, Christianity, had existed for over 2,000 years—a full 1,500 years before that! Was I so certain that my version of the faith was the right one?

And then, having been bothered enough by these thoughts, I whispered a spontaneous prayer to the Holy Spirit right there in my living room early. I said to Him: “Holy Spirit, I believe that Christianity is the one true religion, but I also don’t believe that every single version of Christianity out there could possibly be right. I love Jesus more than I love any denomination, and I want to make Him happy and worship Him in the way that most pleases Him. Please: show me which denomination is the right one, and I promise you that I will convert to it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

To this day, I am absolutely convinced that, as I whispered that prayer, a presence entered the living room and stood there listening to me. And when I finished speaking, this absolutely calming presence leaned in close, nodded at me (as if to reply, “Very well!”), and then departed a moment later.

Then, having finished praying, and believing this odd sensation to be nothing more than the result of an overactive imagination, I turned back to my work and pushed those odd thoughts out of my mind.

Six weeks later, as Christine was folding laundry in our master bedroom, I shuffled through the door staring at my toes like a little boy who’s gotten in trouble, and said to her, “Honey, I need to talk to you.” Immediately, she looked concerned, as if I was about to tell her that I had gambled away all our money or something equally disastrous, when I blurted out, “I—I think I am going to join the Roman Catholic Church. I want to be Catholic.”

Needless to say, she was shocked.

You see, unlike evangelicals, Christine had never once tried to convert me to Catholicism. The only thing she did was ask me to a few Masses and the Stations of the Cross. That was it. In fact, nobody ever tried to convert me, not even once! Not a single person came knocking at my doorstep like some Jehovah’s Witness or the Catholic version of Billy Graham, trying to save my soul “the Roman way.” Incredibly, in fact, the Franciscan priest who I eventually spoke to about conversion, as well as my father’s first cousin (who was like an uncle to me), both tried to convince me that I was “good” spiritually as a Protestant and that I didn’t need to convert. But oddly, their attempts at discouraging me only made the hunger within me burn stronger and deeper.

Over the course of six weeks, I had somehow become obsessed with Catholicism. To this day, I still don’t understand it. A supernatural desire for all things Catholic had gripped me body and soul, and I ventured night after night, day after day, into the online world of web sites like Catholic Answers and similar theological blogs which discussed the differences between Protestantism and the ancient Catholic Church.

And here is what I discovered: when I finally gave Roman Catholicism a fair hearing, a chance at responding to every Protestant argument I had heard growing up—and when I say I gave it a fair shake, I mean that I really listened—I came to a startling conclusion over those dizzying six weeks, seemingly all on my own: The Catholic Church’s theological views were vastly superior to the Protestant arguments that opposed them.

In fact, the more that I read on the Catholic way of thinking, the more that I rushed back to Protestant-Land for a clever answer. But each time that I did, I found their responses to be spiritually bankrupt, even dishonest. The great multitude of their “Biblical” explanations didn’t hold a candle to the wisely-reasoned, historically supported, and Scripturally authentic answers that the Catholic Church seemed to provide. And every well-rehearsed Protestant retort, every hip pastor’s zinging answer and “inspired word” against Catholicism that I heard growing up—every single one of them—just collapsed like a house built on a foundation of sand in the face of this Truth-laden torrent.

Let me just say that, for me to admit this truth, was, in and of itself, extraordinarily miraculous. Honestly, over the course of my life, I had been far too ingrained with Protestant thinking: I just couldn’t have arrived at this startling conclusion myself. It required me rejecting many of the beliefs and values my father had taught me growing up. And I would think that’s a very scary realization for anybody to arrive at, suddenly and surprisingly rejecting the teachings of one’s own parents at a mere 30 years of age. It certainly was for me.

First, it happened like this: Sola Scriptura, the foundational doctrine of Protestantism and of Martin Luther’s “heroic” arguments (as they had been likened to me during childhood) was exposed as a lie and summarily shot down by the Catholic theologians. Here’s the short answer how: Sola Scriptura posits that the Bible itself is the sole infallible authoritative source for Christian faith and practice, but funny enough, this “Bible-based” doctrine doesn’t appear anywhere in Scripture! Literally, it can’t be proven “Biblically” without Protestants performing some impressive interpretive gymnastics. A silver bullet, as it’s called in some circles, that shoots Protestantism dead!

After becoming absolutely convinced that the bedrock of the non-Catholic Christian denominations had truly cracked, I discovered to my surprise that the concept of the Pope, or the papal office, was actually right there in Scripture! It was incredible. The Chair of Moses that had passed from one spiritual successor to the next until the time of Christ, when Caiaphas sat on it as the high priest that same year, was ended when the temple was torn in two. But much like Shebna, the master of the palace, in Isaiah 22:15-25, the King of Kings took the keys of the House of David (i.e. the keys of authority, or the keys of the kingdom) that were once held by the man who sat on the Chair of Moses, and gave them to somebody else. And there is only one person in all of the New Testament who is mentioned receiving any keys of authority: Peter! Hence, this is why the Catholic Church calls the office of the pope the Chair of Peter, for that line of authority was established after the death and resurrection of Christ, when he rebuilt his body: the visible Church.

So, I reasoned next that, if the foundation of Protestantism was clearly wrong, and the Pope actually does appear in the Bible (even if he isn’t directly referred to by that name), then I was clearly on the wrong side of the religious debate: because based on the Chair of Moses’ description in Exodus, which foreshadows the Chair of Peter to come in the New Testament, the Pope has the spiritual authority to “consult God, settle theological disputes, and interpret the laws/statutes/Scripture” (Exodus 18:13-27). That means that everything theological the Pope and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has authoritatively taught in the capacity of those offices over the past 2,000 years must be right, even if I didn’t understand why it was right.

For Christ Himself said pretty forcefully, in reference to Peter and the Apostles in Luke 10:16, “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” If I rejected Christ’s “master of the palace,” the steward who would rule in His place by carrying the “keys of the kingdom” until Jesus returns, then I was rejecting Christ Himself and His Father who sent Him!

Let me put it this way: this was a terrifying revelation. Had I been ignorantly rejecting Christ all this time?

But as I pondered this new knowledge, sweat forming on my brow, something else happened right then and there—I felt that very same presence step into my living room again, that same presence that I had felt when I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the one, true faith. And I felt Him telling me in my head and in my heart: “Do you remember your promise to me?”

I nodded slowly as my hands shook.

“Are you going to keep that promise?” He asked.

This was it. Decision time. Was I going to break my word to God, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, who I had asked to show me the Truth? For crying out loud, over the last six weeks, God had directly “evangelized” me Himself. Was I going to reject the Truth of His deeply personal answer to my prayerful request?

Very slowly, I closed my eyes, seeing the future, seeing the hot disapproval of my parents, my brother, all my friends and Christian acquaintances, and everyone who had known me.

 Yet Christ stood in front of me, beckoning. I knew it without a doubt.

What was my answer?

“How could I say no to you, oh Lord? How could I love my denomination, the Southern Baptist Church, over the Truth you have shown me this day? If this is how you desire that I worship you, oh Lord, I will do it. I will convert as you have asked. I pray only that you would bless me and save me from the fires of hell, that I might never perish there forever.”

I have now been Catholic since the Easter of 2014. My parents accused me of apostasy when they found out what I had done, and that relationship suffered because of my decision. But I have been comforted by God, knowing that He did not come to bring peace, but a sword—for in some cases, He turns a father against his son and sons against their father. But this is for the benefit of them all, I believe.

Astonishingly, after I made it known about my conversion to those who knew me, my younger brother stood back silent, saying nothing to me at all, as did all of my Protestant friends. Not one of them tried to stop me from this path. It was almost like my Catholic conversion was contagious, and if any of them mentioned it aloud around me, they would catch the same cold and suddenly die! So, they just kind of ignored my conversion as if nothing had happened and kept talking to me like I was still a Protestant.

In fact, only one friend at that time said anything to me about it at all. He said, “Rob, the faith of every person I have known who converted to Roman Catholicism declined within a few years.” But it is nine years later now. Has my faith decreased? Have I become less of a Christian because of my conversion? My wife, who knows me better than anyone on this Earth, will tell you flatly, “No!” In so many ways, I have actually transformed since embracing our original Faith, as Christ intended it. With God’s grace, I have overcome habitual sins that I thought impossible to conquer. I have had incredible experiences that have pointed me towards a God who is far beyond what I ever imagined Him to be like as a young man. And I have matured far beyond who I was when I first stepped into Sacred Heart parish.

Ironically, at the end of all this, I became the “good Catholic boy” my wife never wanted to marry, and after that happened, to top it off, God used my conversion to draw her back into the patiently waiting arms of the Catholic Church: the very same Church which I had swore aloud to her face that I would never convert to! As a result, I have witnessed my wife become transformed into the most loving and beautiful woman a man could ever hope for, putting her love of Christ first before all things. Isn’t it incredible how God uses each spouse in a holy matrimony to sharpen each other, to work out their imperfections and draw them both closer to Him?

Speaking of holy matrimony, after my conversion, we had our marriage convalidated by our local priest, Father Len, over at Christ the King Catholic Church, on the second anniversary of our “legal” marriage: December 7th, 2014. This occurred just as my annulment wrapped up that very same week! In fact, when we reached out to contact Father Len about it, we figured he wouldn’t be able to accommodate our request so quickly. But God is generous and loving. And His hand guides everything. Incredibly, the priest had an opening after the evening Mass that very same night of the 7th, and with two of our elderly, devout, Catholic neighbors as witnesses, we attended Mass and were married right there in our parish.

I still think back to it all and shake my head at how beautifully it was all orchestrated!

Now here I am. And I write to you to say this: there is only One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church in this world, and I believe in it. “I came to establish my Church,” declared the Lord to His apostles. And God has compelled me to say these words to you, that his Church has never perished, nor has it ever been conquered by the Devil and his wicked angels. Christ has preserved and uplifted the Church that He promised to sanctify and protect, and it still exists to this day—with the Successor of Peter at its head! And this man, Pope Francis, whom God has elected to this station, still bears the keys to the Kingdom of God. Whatever he binds on Earth shall be honored in Heaven, and whatever he looses on Earth shall be honored in Heaven. This has never changed, and it will not change until Christ comes again at the end of all things. Amen!