I found the Catholic teaching to be extremely compelling, and I trace my conversion to the Catholic Church back to that electrifying jolt.Īs with everything in Catholic belief, the Church’s teaching about its authority has its beginnings in God’s great love for men. Try as I might, I could not escape the conviction that as an evangelical Protestant, I had only a passive, descriptive notion of “the church” as “the body of believers” and that my background and experience had somehow blurred the distinction between the authority of the Church and my authority as a believer.
I had never been exposed to what the Catholic Church teaches about its nature, its mission, and, most especially, its authority…and the jolt came when I discovered that as I followed its thread of biblical teaching on its authority, which was so reasonably and beautifully laid out, I could not match or refute it from anything I knew about the Church. Yet when I got to the section of the Catechism that began with that quote, I was in for quite a surprise. In my years as a member of various churches, I had confidently stated that “I believe in the holy, catholic Church” whenever we recited the Apostles’ Creed. I spoke regularly and devotedly about “the church,” and I thought I had a solid notion of what it meant. I had been an active evangelical for 28 years, of which included seminary training, professional work on the staff of a church for several years, countless hours of Sunday School teaching and church committee meetings. It was in reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the topic of its authority that I first realized something that gave me a jolt. Resources for Non-Catholic Clergy and Ministers.Bible and the Catechism in a Year Reading Plan.Supporting Members of the Coming Home Network.
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