Why I Joined the Catholic Church This Easter

By Albert Little on ChurchPop

After a radical conversion to Christ at the age of about fifteen years old, I lived as a genuinely devout Protestant, earnestly seeking after Christ in my life as best I could. Sometimes, of course, doing a miserable job.

This Easter, after a long journey, I became a Catholic.

My journey began when a Protestant pastor—himself on a journey towards a more ancient faith—asked me the question, “What’s more important the Bible or tradition?” When I answered, like the good Protestant, that it was, “Of course, the Bible.” He followed up by asking, “But who put the Bible together?”

That was the tradition of the Church, of course.

I was subsequently set on a path that lasted nearly a decade. A journey which introduced me to a podcasting priest, some Catholic friends, and even saw me attending Mass a couple of times. But Catholicism held no great appeal to me, at least not until I began to read.

I began to read about Catholicism from authors who were actual Catholics, instead of reading about what Protestant authors knew, or thought they knew, about Catholicism. I found out, in a hurry, that much of what I knew about Catholicism (from the Protestant sources I’ve read, and from the few Catholics I’d met) was inaccurate, to say the least.

If I’d known what Catholics really believed, I would’ve become Catholic a lot sooner.

But I’m a Catholic now.

I read my way into the Church through authors like Louis Bouyer, Pope Benedict XVI, Scott Hahn, Stephen Ray, and G.K. Chesterton. Then I began to live like a Catholic by going to Mass and praying the Rosary and the Liturgy of the Hours.

If I were to distill my journey into only a few words I would say this: I’ve become a Catholic because I’ve found the Catholic faith to be historically, intellectually, spiritually, and aesthetically satisfying (although, “satisfying” is hardly the right word, I’ve struggled to find a better one).

Here’s what I mean:

The Catholic Church is Historically Satisfying

I don’t say this to be facetious but I have a hard time understanding a reading of the Early Church Fathers that doesn’t result in the conclusion that the Catholic Church must’ve been what Jesus had in mind.

I say this because, I believe, the Catholic Church makes the most historical sense.

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