"I have found the glorious gospel...."
How those words still echo in my ears! I will forever carry that
simple tune and catchy verse in my heart. This is the rallying hymn
of the restoration movement, and I sang it from the time I was old
enough to read the words in the hymnal. These words have taken on
a new meaning for me since March 15, 2000, when I knew for certain
that I wanted - no, I needed - to become a member of the Roman Catholic
Church.
It all started innocently enough. I met a pretty girl. She was
a blonde-haired beauty, encased in the greasiest black jeans you
have ever seen in your life. We both worked in a fast-food restaurant
to make ends meet in Manhattan, Kansas while I struggled through
Kansas State University's Landscape Architecture program. Her name
was Amy, and she was from Wichita, Kansas, the product of a long
line of devout Catholics. Let me set the record straight, though;
neither of us were "shining lights" of Christianity. Amy
hadn't been active for over three years, and I used the excuse of
not having a local RLDS congregation to justify my lackadaisical
approach to anything moral. Nevertheless, God still loved us greatly,
and knowing that we would be good for each other, our love (with
a six-month hiatus near the beginning) blossomed through his, and
thoughts and conversations turned to marriage. This is the first
time religion really entered the picture.
I remember distinctly telling Amy that "I'll never convert
- I'll never be a Catholic," even though she never brought
it up. I admit that I was intrigued by the thought of having a church
"home" wherever I went, as opposed to the situation I
found myself in. We had a while to work things out - I was completing
my degree, and we set a date 18 months away for the happy occasion.
We were about to find out that the 18 months were going to be a
lot harder on Amy than it would be for me.
For any wedding, you need a church, and even though Manhattan is
a fairly large town (population 60,000 or so), the choices are pretty
limited. Amy had no desire to have a formal Catholic wedding, and
I had no choice but to get married in another denomination's church,
so we started shopping based on the way things looked. This is when
the first "rumble" came out of Wichita. Amy's mother made
it very apparent to both of us that she did not approve of the marriage
since it was invalid if a priest did not perform it. I was incensed!
To think that her religious views would move her daughter to tears
was the first "personal" insult I had received from the
Catholic church. The second came not long after, when her aunt,
her godmother, confronted Amy, with the conversation eventually
turning into a one-way shouting match, with Amy on the receiving
end. Amy was a sobbing wreck after that. Strike two, I thought.
The final straw was the curt letter Amy received after sending an
invitation to her two older cousins. Both were in the seminary,
but were within driving distance of Manhattan. Their joint reply
stated that they could not attend our wedding, since my grandfather
would perform the ceremony without a priest even assisting. They
considered our marriage "invalid." Strike three! That's
it, I decided. These Catholics are real jerks, and if I needed any
proof beyond what I was taught in my church about them, I had now
had all the proof I needed and my resolve about Catholicism was
rock-solid now.
Before Amy's mother would consent to our marriage, she demanded
that we attend an engaged encounter. Amy and I both had the attitude
of "whatever will get her off our backs," and since she
paid for it, we consented. The program turned out to be much more
about communication and openness than religion, to both our delight.
Amy and I had been so honest with one another that during many of
the exercises we ended up finishing them well in advance of the
time deadline, and spent the rest of the time talking. We both felt
that we had a really solid foundation to start from before the weekend,
and afterwards, we knew we did. Amy's mother requested that I read
"Rome Sweet Home" before we got married, and while I didn't
buy any of Dr. Hahn's arguments, the idea of communion being the
most important sacrament, and the need to celebrate it often, stuck
with me. I was busy enough with finishing my thesis project that
I really didn't give it much thought beyond noting this core difference
between our religions.
We were married in May of l997, and moved back to Kansas City,
where I had a job with an engineering firm, and Amy had two internships
lined up, one with a local TV station, and a second with the Kansas
City Renaissance festival. She had been accepted to Avila college
(a Jesuit college, come to think of it) where she planned to finish
her degree in marketing. Times were bound to be tough, and my parents
live in a very large house. God bless them both, for they installed
a kitchenette, loaned us furniture, and gave up their entire walk-out
basement so we could save money. Weeks blurred into months, and
I began introducing Amy to the RLDS faith as we attended with my
entire extended family every Sunday. She became intrigued enough
to compose a class paper outlining the differences between the LDS
(Mormon) church, and the RLDS. [I plan to provide a future discourse
along the same vein, but interposing the Catholic perspective on
why BOTH churches preach "a different gospel"] I became
hopeful that she might eventually convert, and spent a lot of time
in prayer and fasting for this hope.
Attending church on a regular basis stirred the Holy Spirit within
me, and I began to live my faith in a much better fashion. Amy and
I began participating in the youth group, co-leading with my cousin
and her husband. We built a modest home, I changed jobs to a Landscape
Architecture firm, and Amy's internship with the Renaissance Festival
turned into a full-time position. We settled into a comfortable
life. Then things started to get interesting.
In May of last year, my uncle, who was the pastor at the time,
told me that he had received a priesthood call for me, to the office
of priest. My cousin-in-law (and his son-in-law) also had this same
call. I was elated and excited to think that God was calling me
to participate in his ministry. After receiving the mandated month-long
training from the church (I scoff at this now - to think what a
mockery of the priesthood this is) I was ordained on July 25th of
1999. I was immediately placed in the "rotation" and began
making preparation to give my first sermon in October.
During this time, and even before Amy and I had been married, whenever
my mother-in-law had a chance to talk to Amy privately, religion
was always the topic. Vicki provided Amy with reading material,
and I always felt she was trying to undermine my efforts to convert
Amy. In turn, I provided Vicki with some modest apologetic works,
in hopes of at least convincing her that there were more similarities
than differences between the two churches. The culmination of her
efforts came when she sent a cassette series back with Amy she visited
Wichita in late September. This series was entitled "Mormonism,
Great Apostasy or Apostolic Succession?" The speaker was a
former LDS elder who had converted to Catholicism, and the tapes
were intended to help Catholics witness to Mormons.
I sent an e-mail to Vicki explaining that I was angry at first,
but I now thought that perhaps she would like to begin a dialogue
about our religions, via the internet. She agreed that this would
be fine, although she was not an apologist, and thought that I would
be able to "blow her out of the water." I looked at this
as an opportunity to possibly convert Amy and her entire family.
How little did I know what was about to take place.
I gave my sermon in October. This was a lengthy discourse on faith,
and how faith generates the desire to do good works within the hearts
of the faithful. (Sound familiar to any Catholics out there?) My
faith was at an all-time high, and Amy and I decided to tackle the
tape series together, to prove the inaccuracies of what the speaker
had to say, and to respond to Vicki with a point-by-point rebuttal.
We delved into it with gusto.
The first thing that gave me pause was when the speaker mentioned
a trial wherein Joseph Smith was convicted of being a money-digger
- an old practice of using a "seer stone" to find buried
treasure. The charlatans who trafficked in the practice would inform
a land owner that he had treasure buried on his property, and for
a "finder's fee" and for financing the dig, the money-diggers
would unearth it. When no treasure was found, the "seer"
would often try to convince the land owner that angry spirits kept
"moving the money down," making it hard to find. Evidently,
an irate landowner felt he had been hoodwinked by Smith and his
co-conspirators, and took him to trial three years before Joseph
was lead to the Book of Mormon plates. He was found guilty of being
a public nuisance. I was able to cast "reasonable doubt"
about the trial, but the fact that the method of discerning buried
treasure was the very same method Joseph used to "translate"
the Book of Mormon didn't sit well with me. I felt this was not
something to be overly concerned with, and so I refuted the trial
in an e-mail to Vicki. We then neglected the tapes for some time,
as we filled our time with other pursuits.
Then one night around Christmas, Amy came home from her seasonal
shopping mall job with an interesting story, which I hope someday
I will convince her to put to paper. A co-worker and her husband
were leaving the RLDS church, based on reading a booklet from a
Christian book store there in the mall. Amy thought it might not
hurt to see what it had to say. I welcomed the opportunity to disprove
more Joseph Smith "creative history."
We went together and bought the booklet, took it home, and I casually
began reading it. This casual overview soon turned into a fevered
devouring. I read the entire thing, footnotes and all, in the course
of one Friday evening, and was shaken to my foundations. I was pressed
under a deadline at work, and so I was forced to go into the office
on Saturday. On the way to the office, as my mind twisted and turned
over the things I had read, I began speaking aloud. Soon, I found
myself praying, only this time, I didn't ask God to "show me
the truth," as everyone who reads the Book of Mormon is encouraged
to do. Instead, I asked God if this was his intent - I was so confused!
I couldn't believe that I was seriously doubting the church I grew
up in, and thereby doubting the priesthood call through my uncle,
not to mention the very nature of the Scriptures I had believed
in for years. The response was instant, and powerful. A calm, comforting
presence completely filled me. Love and peace washed through me.
Tears streamed down my face, and by the time I got to the office
I had that weird "crying hitches" breathing. Even though
I had that powerful experience, I was not prepared to go home where
I would have nothing to contemplate except the doubts plaguing me
about my childhood faith. It was far easier to immerse myself in
the project at the office. I worked until two a.m. (I found out
earlier this month that one of Amy's seminarian cousins was on a
retreat that very weekend, and had spent time in prayer on my behalf.)
I had planned for a month to take a vacation, and it now seems
to be no small coincidence that the week I planned to take an "at-home"
vacation began with that experience on Saturday. I slept late on
Sunday, as I had no desire to attend church with so many questions
on my heart, and instead I purchased some more material, including
a new Bible. The projects I had intended to tackle at home during
my vacation fell by the wayside, as I devoured everything I could
find, both in print, and on the internet that was in any way related
to the origins of Mormonism.. By Wednesday (the 15th of March),
I knew what I had to do.
There was never any question in my mind about which church I should
belong to. Authority was the determining factor in deciding which
church was the true church of Christ. Only two options are available
for anyone seeking true authority - it's either the restoration
church, or the Catholic Church. My mind was made up, even though
I had some questions about certain dogmas and practices (Marian
doctrines, infant baptism, etc..) I believed that these were most
likely a result of the anti-Catholicism subtly inserted into the
Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's Inspired Version of the Bible.
The hardest part for me was telling my parents. I knew there was
no choice but to tell them, but it would be the first time I had
ever sat down and told them that I was rejecting something they
had given to me. I chickened out. I wrote a letter describing my
conversion and sent it to my entire family and those I had ministered
with in the congregation. I also sent a letter to the Presidency
of the church, asking that my name be removed, so I could freely
commit to the Catholic faith. Instead of sitting and talking with
my parents, I told them I was leaving the church, and that the letter
I had in my hand would explain why. At the time, my mother was going
through some serious health problems, and my parents were preparing
to leave for Indianapolis to visit a specialist. My father has still
not forgiven me for hurting my mother so deeply, and for choosing
to break the news to her at that time. I can't say I blame him.
I would not recommend this method to anyone faced with the same
decision.
Since this time, I have truly "found the glorious gospel ..."
and my thirst for understanding continues to be quenched in the
well of 2000 years of Christian tradition. I eagerly await September,
when my RCIA classes will begin, and I can't wait until I can partake
of the Eucharist. My faith finally feels whole and complete. No
longer do I need to do "mental gymnastics" to defend the
history or doctrines of Joseph Smith, but I am free to experience
the fullness of the Christian experience afforded to me by the Catholic
church. I have written many "papers" in an effort to find
a way that I can begin to witness to my family, for I truly believe
that they will follow me into the "one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic church".
My heart still sings: "I have found the glorious gospel that
was taught in former years...."
Eric D. Davis Jr.
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