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It was summer vacation, and I was again at my Grandmother's
house, in her
bedroom, staring at black beads in a green glass dish. Those mysterious
beads! I was drawn to them but didn't dare touch them. Every night
Grandma
took those beads from their resting place. Her eyes closed and her
lips
whispered as the circle of beads slowly moved through her fingers
to the
swish-swish rhythm of her rocking chair. What did it mean? What
was she
doing? I watched, transfixed. I was sure she was doing something
"Catholic."
I always knew that Grandma was Catholic and my
family was Baptist, but she
never said a word to me about the Catholic Church. Except once,
when I
blurted out, "Why are you Catholic?" she replied, "The
Catholic Church was
the first church, why isn't it the right church?" I would forever
remember
those thirteen words, spoken when I was seven or eight years old.
I grew up in Arizona, and my Catholic Grandmother
lived eleven hundred miles
away in the mid-west. I rarely thought of her and was unaware of
the
influence she and her beads would have on my life until many years
later.
My paternal grandparents were Southern Baptist.
Only five miles separated
them from my Catholic grandparents, but religious differences created
a
chasm between them the depth of the Grand Canyon. The undercurrents
of
religious conflict ran strong beneath the surface of our family
relationships; there was a constant tug-of-war going on. The Catholic
side
prayed silently, but the Baptist side tried to inoculate me against
what
they regarded as the plague of Catholicism by making sure I read
such
literature as, "Why I'm a Preacher and Not a Priest."
As I grew older, I
realized that my once-Catholic Mother was at the center of this
vortex.
But distance put this conflict out of mind, and
I grew up as a member of the
Calvary Baptist Church, Southern, serenely confident that I was
"saved," and
that I possessed the "truth." Secure in the knowledge
that I belonged to
the invisible church of true believers, I was grateful that my mother
had
become aware of the errors of the "Whore of Babylon,"
as the Catholic Church
was called, and had escaped its evil influence. That meant that
I, too, was
safe. The shocking "truths" about the Catholic Church
were taught from the
pulpit and in Sunday School, and I believed them all.
I grew up thinking that the world was divided into
Baptists, who were right,
and Catholics, who were wrong. But as I became older, it disturbed
my
spiritual peace to realize that my friends were Presbyterian,
Congregationalist, Lutheran, Methodist, or even some other denomination
of
Baptist, and our beliefs were different. "Don't you believe
the Bible?" I
asked. The answer was always, "Yes."
This finally became such a burning question that, as a teen-ager,
I took it
to my pastor: "Why are there so many different churches, all
based on the
same Bible? How can I be sure which one has the *truth*?" He
assured me
that if I asked the Holy Spirit for guidance, with a sincere heart,
that the
Spirit would lead me to the correct interpretation of the Scriptures.
"But
if the Holy Spirit is leading everyone, why do people reach different
conclusions? We are all sincerely seeking the truth." His answer
was to
suggest that I be baptized again. So I went under the waters a second
time.
But the question continued to haunt me. I studied
the doctrines of various
Protestant churches in comparison to the Scriptures. I began to
see that
words on a page are open to many interpretations and to believe
that God had
played a cruel joke on humanity. He gave us a Book as our sole rule
of
faith and practice -- then expected us to figure out for ourselves
what we
should believe and how we should conduct our lives. He had left
us desolate,
after all (Jn 14:18 RSV). With young adulthood came the awareness
that
Christian truth, if it existed at all, could not be known with certainty.
Christianity is a revealed religion. What, then,
had God revealed? I grew
into the realization that this was a multiple choice question, and
that all
answers were correct. I had my *opinion* about what the Bible said,
which
conflicted with the *opinions* sincerely held by other Bible-believing
Christians. After many troubled years, I jumped off the Southern
Baptist
ship. It was the only logical thing to do. Since every denomination
is
based on the same Bible, but no two of them agree; and since there
is no way
anyone can know with certainty which of them is "true,"
then "truth" has no
objective meaning in religion. Relative truth didn't interest me;
I wasn't
willing to stake my life on it. I reasoned that if we couldn't know
with
certainty what God had revealed, how could we be sure that there
is a God at
all? And what difference would it make if He did exist, since I
could not
*know* with certainty what He wanted me to believe? So I became
an agnostic
and eventually drifted into atheism.
I had such an aversion to the Catholic Church,
I had never even considered
looking into it. And then, Father Emmett McLoughlin left the Catholic
Church and the news was splashed across the front page of my hometown
newspaper. He began speaking about the evils of Catholicism at local
Baptist churches and introduced his book, *People's Padre,* at the
public
library. I was enthralled by his words and reminded of how grateful
I had
been all my life that my mother had left the Catholic Church before
I was
born. I purchased the book as a "thank you" gift for her.
And, of course, I read it. Something about the
book troubled me, but I
couldn't identify what it was. This prompted me to go back to the
religion
section of the library many times. There, on the library shelves,
I found a
different form of Christianity than I had known as a Protestant.
I found
the history of a visible, teaching Church founded by Christ, a Church
which
predated the New Testament, wrote it, and was its rightful interpreter.
At first, my reading was the result of intellectual
interest, as I had once
been interested in knowing about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and
all the
religions of the world. But when I began to disagree with such
anti-Catholic writers as Paul Blanshard, whose books occupied the
same
library shelf, I realized that I was on dangerous ground. I had
stepped
into the magnetic field of Catholic Truth, and was being drawn toward
the
Church. My reaction was an emphatic, "No!" I was a professed
atheist, and
being Catholic was out of the question. But I continued reading,
supplementing the library's books with others found in a Catholic
book
store. I assured myself that it was just intellectual curiosity.
But this
was a Christian Church that didn't leave it up to the individual
to decide
what he would believe. This Church was an authoritative teacher
who claimed
to be the repository of authentic Christian Revelation -- of "the
faith
which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) --
and had the
pedigree to prove it!
The first jolt was my discovery of Bible history.
It had never occurred to
me as a Protestant to ask how we got the Bible! To learn that the
early
Church had existed for centuries before the New Testament canon
was defined
was a shock. All those Christian martyrs of the first four Christian
centuries had gone to their deaths without knowing the NT as I knew
it. If
the Bible was the sole rule of faith, how could they have known
what to
believe?
I learned that many writings about Jesus were circulated
among the local
churches in the early centuries, hand carried by travelers, and
that no
church possessed a complete "Bible" all at once, as it
is known today -- in
fact, one didn't exist. No one knew which of these many, many writings
were
"Scripture," and which were not, until the canon was set
by Catholic Church
at the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397). And
there are
no originals of the Scriptures. The Bible has come down to us through
copies, and copies of copies -- no one knows how many generations
of copies
-- all made by Catholic hands. I felt betrayed. I thought my "Bible
only"
teachers either knew this or should have known it, and should have
told me.
I began to wonder whether I would have become an agnostic/atheist
if I had
known these basic historical facts. It was the first crack in my
atheist
shell.
As I continued to read, I discovered early Christian
literature. The
*Didache,* for example, is a first-century document that is older
than some
of the New Testament writings. Its full title is *The Teaching of
the
Twelve Apostles,* and it was used to instruct adult pagan converts.
The
*Didache* says, "On the Lord's own day, assemble in common
to break bread
and offer thanks [Eucharist]; but first confess your sins, so that
your
sacrifice may be pure . . . your sacrifice must not be defiled."
Sacrifice?
No Protestant church offers sacrifice! This had to refer to the
Sacrifice
of the Mass! And the Baptist position on 'immersion only' crumbled
when I
read: "Baptize as follows . . . pour water on the head three
times in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
Both immersion
and infusion (pouring) were taught by the Apostles! I read the other
Church
Fathers and discovered that the early Church was distinctively Catholic.
It
was all there, from Confession to the Sign of the Cross. When St.
Ignatius
of Antioch (d. 110 A.D.), student of St. John the Evangelist, referred
to
the Eucharist as the "...Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ"
I knew it wasn't
just a symbol, and that the sixth chapter of John meant exactly
what it
said.
I met John Henry Cardinal Newman through his *Apologia
Pro Vita Sua* and
*Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.* Newman said, "To
be deep
in history is to cease to be Protestant." How right he was!
Not only was I
shucking Protestant prejudices from my past, but God was revealing
Himself
through history. One day I did not believe God existed, and the
next day I
was absolutely sure He did and that He could be found in the Church
He had
established for my salvation and that of the whole world -- the
Catholic
Church! I read Gibbons' *Faith of Our Fathers,* and knew in my bones
that it
was true. Karl Adam's, *The Spirit of Catholicism* remains to this
day my
favorite book.
In l983, David Barrett's study (*The Oxford World
Christian Encyclopedia*)
identified 20,800 Christian denominations, "with a projected
22,190 by l985.
. . The present net increase is 270 denominations each year, or
5 new ones a
week." The United Nations released a figure of 23,000 Protestant
"competing
and often contradictory denominations" (*World Census of Religious
Activities,* U.N. Information Center, NY, 1989). If Barrett's projection
rate has continued since l985 (and the rate has held for several
years),
this would amount to over 26,000 Protestant denominations in the
world
today, all based on the same Bible. So I have no doubt that if I
had not
read that anti-Catholic book written by an apostate priest, I would
still be
convinced that the truth could not be known through the Bible only
-- Sola
Scriptura -- and I would never have found my way home.
Fr. McLoughlin eventually came back to the Catholic
Church, without fanfare;
no book or newspaper documented his return. I was privileged to
be present
when a venerable, old Franciscan priest, Fr. Albert Braun, told
a group one
night that he had heard Fr. Emmett's Confession before he died.
I had long since identified what had troubled me
about Fr. Emmett's book.
He had either been in seminary or in active service as a priest
for about 25
years. Why had it taken him a quarter of a century to discover the
evils of
the Catholic Church? He could have left and written his exposé
at any time.
Instead, his criticism of the Church and rejection of its doctrines
*followed* his refusal to obey transfer orders from his superior.
He was a
popular priest, well known and very influential in the community,
and he
didn't want to leave. He justified breaking his vow of obedience
by
launching an attack upon the Church. But, like the good Mother that
she is,
the Church forgave him and quietly welcomed her prodigal son home.
And what does my Grandmother have to do with this?
God has given me the
grace to know that it was through Granny's Rosary, tens of thousands
of
prayers offered for her daughter -- my mother and her family --
for years
and years, that my unbelieving heart was changed. Those prayers
converted
me, my anti-Catholic father and mother, my sister-in-law and brother
-- in
Grandma's words -- "to the first Church, the right Church."
Never
underestimate the power of the Rosary! And please say a prayer for
my
brother and his family who are not Catholic (yet).
Jay Damien
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