Part 2: A Reformed Thesis—My Catholic Reversion Story
(Excerpt from Chapter Eleven of my book Confession All)
From infancy to twenty-three years old, I was Catholic; from twenty-three to twenty-seven, I was a runaway still claiming a belief in God (under my breath); and from twenty-seven to thirty-six, I was a non-denominational Protestant. Through most of it, I was unsettled, ignorant, and proud. Instead of being an obedient, faithful Christian, I was a rebellious child with a malformed thesis.
On Friday, February 8, the flu gripped me. Miserable and quarantined for half the day, I officially “went to bed” around 8:30 p.m. and found myself still awake at 9:30 p.m., 10:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m., 12:30 a.m.—every passing hour reviving traumas of the past year and a half. I just wanted to sleep. Desperate, I counted sheep. Alternating from small to large, cartoon to real, they were helping—kind of. However, at 1:30 a.m., I was wide awake. By then, I was overcome with emotion, praying in intervals of ten to twenty seconds, then losing focus and getting thrown back into wretched torment.
God intervened just after 2 a.m. It wasn’t peaceful; like His confrontation at Alston Park, it was a takeover that left me uneasy. He wasn’t saying, “confess to your wife”; “rest”; or “stay where you are”—instead, I felt called to continue researching Christian history, specifically Catholicism. The impression was a log rammed into my already stick-laden bicycle spoke.
Still, I fought these overpowering feelings for at least a half hour before I got out of bed to use the restroom. I closed the door and began sobbing, asking God what He wanted from me. My nose and eyes were streaming as I leaned over the toilet. Father, I will do whatever you need me to do. Please help me. I don’t know what’s going on. You want me to explore Christianity further? I thought I was doing that. Why is everything so confusing?
For the better part of three months, I had been studying various Protestant denominations, prompted by some of Ashley’s keen doctrinal questions. Sadly, up to that point, most of my life had consisted of going through the motions—first Catholicism, then Protestantism. Consequently, I was clueless about Christian history.
Finally, as I sought to answer Ashley’s questions and a new set of my own, I traced many non-denominational churches to Pentecostal and Charismatic movements; then traced Ashley’s Seventh Day Adventist upbringing to Baptist movements; then explored Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian teachings; then found myself comparing Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism. I followed what I thought was a logical progression from one fork—and one splinter—to another.
However, through it all, there was a blockade, making 1517 seem light-years from 1516. It seemed Christ had been crucified in the sixteenth century, so once I arrived at the early Reformer years, I felt I had gone as far as I needed, yet I didn’t know what to do next. Only a day before I got sick, I had watched a fascinating John MacArthur sermon series titled: Saved or Self-Deceived. Still, as much as I nodded my head in agreement, I wasn’t fully convinced of anything. Strangely, no matter how upstream I swam, Catholicism was out of the picture.
Until that February night, when another blindfold fell and dozens of light bulbs flashed, I could not push past this Reformation Wall. It was massive and fortified with centuries of stacked offenses, games of telephone, deliberate propaganda and omission, proof-texting, rejection of authority, confused laity, and darkness cleverly and purposefully weaved into pictures, words, and traditions. Church scandal, coupled with one man’s decisive renouncement of specific actions, meant the baby, the bath water, and the house itself needed to be thrown out—if not immediately, then over time.
Rebellion won. It always won, even if incrementally.
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With my pride pulverized and cognitive dissonance exposed, I studied early Christianity to the 1521 Diet of Worms without an angry bias and fear of man. I began to see piecemeal information for what it was—and one by one, each issue I had with the Church was proven misunderstood or misrepresented.
While using a lens five hundred years removed from cataclysmic schism, certain dogmas and practices appeared alien and created apprehension. However, I soon theorized each subsequent Protestant division—combined with popular movie depictions—made vestments, crucifixes, relics, and various doctrines appear all the more sinister and unclear, certainly compared to a modern church service reflecting current culture, style, and concessions. As with Ashley and me, it had become an exponential detachment. Depending on what side one is standing on, and through which lens they’re looking, the other seems unrecognizable and increasingly wrong.
Despite it all, I was finally willing to look at Christ and His Body as a whole—no longer obsessed with Judases, Pharisees, and other forms of yeast who love infecting the Church from inside and outside. After that, I studied martyrdom, sainthood, and writings from the early Church Fathers (especially regarding the Holy Eucharist). Then I reviewed my life: what I believed at various times, why I believed it, how I acted as a “Christian,” how I used convenience as a crutch, and how a return to Catholicism seemed too challenging, whereas remaining Protestant seemed too easy.
As I learned the hard way, there is a potential problem on both sides of the Tiber River, subject to the Christian pendulum of overcorrection. When I stripped the law of its power, I endorsed subjectivity under the guise of grace; when I stripped grace of its power, I endorsed human effort under the guise of law. In either instance, pride and flesh prevailed.
Additionally, cowardice and hypocrisy exist on both sides. I’m sure I secretly waited to read about any priest or pastor stumbling in sin, only to use the resulting disappointment to catch their tailwind and perpetuate my favorite sins, as if I would not answer to the Judge overseeing it all. It seems any loss of credibility excused my sin, whether I stayed or fled. In either instance, victimhood prevailed.
If I’m led by the Spirit and therefore not under law (Galatians 5:18), yet separated from the Church, such victimhood could necessitate the Church of Eddie. If led by the Spirit, yet separated from the Church, what is objective? My subjective “Holy-Spirit-led” conclusions?
Should I endeavor to create a denomination that perfectly suits me and my findings? Or find someone else’s denomination built on their spiritual promptings or doctoral research? Or seek a singular Church, in all her brilliance and crises, appointed by Christ to prevent and contain such potential wildfire autonomy and fragmentation?
Would I then deem such a Church a shepherd or a dictator? Like in a parent-teen relationship, would the Church become a dictator the moment I disagreed with her house rules? Would I then seek to discredit the rest of her teachings? Would I expect such an institution to only house saints? “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (except Catholics?). What if some of the Church’s clergy and laity were horribly sinful or superstitious, dismissing many of Christ’s teachings? Did their free will cease when they became members of His Church? Does an outlier or standard deviation equal an entire data set or the graph itself? Is the sum of select parts greater than its whole?
When its members acted out and behaved contrary to their callings, would I seek to disparage the Church? Then, for good measure, render it the Whore of Babylon based on a “clear” understanding of the Book of Revelation?
If the Bride of Christ has torn ligaments, broken limbs, and punctured lungs, does the Body need to heal, or should it be tossed into a furnace? Likewise, with such a standard, as any subsequent body of believers matures, it too must be discarded as soon as it is injured.
Excuses for rebellion grow on trees.
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What if the Church experienced a separation? How would I act then? Is any fracture a license to rule myself? Would I abandon ship when judged by others? Or when duplicity surfaced? If that was the case, where would I go? Why would I dare attend any church? While at it, why would I definitively declare anything? At such a point, I could only trust myself, all while using the “Holy Spirit” as my ego’s yes-man. My own private, sliding-scale authority.
Additionally, while essentially acting as a pseudo-god, I’m sure mysteries would frustrate me. I bet I’d think, I must have an explanation for everything on earth. In the meantime, I’ll continue calling out falsehoods while remaining free of error.
But since this was an impossibility, I was left with faith and trust.
Much like Jesus Christ of Nazareth—the One with the often bold, hated, hard-to-accept claims—His Church would be secure in her sacraments and other mysteries. This—added to an unbroken, 2,000-year-long chain of apostolic succession and a pedigree of heresy condemnation—left me leaning toward Catholicism, despite its members’ historical and continued failures.
Still, I mock debated in my head, a last-ditch effort to somehow prove Protestantism was right (certainly right enough not to leave it), but I soon recognized I was only left with red-herring fallacies—those which focused on sinful clergy and laity and did nothing to address actual Catholic doctrinal and theological teaching; the saints and their heroic virtues; or the futility of self-governance and rampant personal revelations under the guise of Bible Alone.
I then considered other questions: did the Twelve Apostles and early Church Fathers foretell or live out Lutheranism? Anabaptism? Calvinism? Did they practice rituals and traditions that couldn’t be comprehended until the sixteenth century? Where would you find a second, seventh, or eleventh-century Lutheran teaching? Did Catholic indulgence abuse miraculously unearth a 1,500-year-old underground church? If so, which post-Reformation church did it best resemble? Who had the best return-to-form? Was “faith alone” sitting on the sidelines, awaiting the limelight? Did an impossible “pre-Reformation Protestant” secretly meet with Luther to show him the real church and its Biblical beliefs? Since monumental reform commenced with a Catholic priest and his issues with the Church—and was further ignited by many other former Catholics—what could the reformers be returning to? And how would they know when they’ve reached satisfactory reform? Where is such a hidden church prophesied in the Bible? If most Christians were getting much of sacred Scripture and Tradition wrong from the first to the sixteenth century, what is left to believe?
In such context, Luther was the ultimate Biblical translator—the Bishop of Tome—with self-given authority to dilute the most significant message ever delivered to mankind: the terms of salvation.
Why did the Catholic Church receive and recognize epistles that so “clearly” contradict her core teachings, especially in the universally accepted New Testament books? That seems rather self-defeating and one of the dumbest moves in history. At what point was canon deemed comprehensive? Is the Bible’s table of contents inspired? Which translation is most inspired? Why isn’t the Epistle of Barnabas included in canon? How about the First Epistle of Clement? Was it sacred Scripture or Tradition that led to the Bible in the first place? Did the Bible beget itself? If so, which version?
And who closed sacred canon? Before it was closed, under the new covenant, what did the Christian Church follow? Did early followers look over Paul’s shoulder to ensure he didn’t teach anything that wasn’t reflected in his writing, lest he be guilty of spreading inconsistent Tradition? Or is there Scripture indicating that early Christians are to do their best until an official “Bible” is compiled and formalized, after which the REAL church can begin (assuming it follows the correct interpretation)?
Why was canon reopened? By what authority? Did the Gutenberg press usher in divine understanding—and developmental and copy editing—with first dibs going to Luther? And where does sola scriptura defend its own position in the Bible? Was that part taken out? Or is something so seismic simply self-evident? Therefore, is all scholarly exegesis definitive? When does something become scholarly? Who becomes his own Magisterium? His own Chair of Peter? Chair of Luther? Chair of Calvin? Chair of Joe? Chair of Jane?
What on earth is or is not infallible?
2 Timothy 3:16 doesn’t read “All Scripture alone...” In fact, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 1 Timothy 3:15 refute such a notion.
Reject sacred Tradition by creating a new tradition? “All Scripture is inspired by God!”...as long as it aligns with ______’s perspective?
“It is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
At what point would someone cross the line from sola scriptura to subtle generational, ever-modern translation—from sola scriptura to “Well, it’s obviously implied” or “How can it mean anything else?” or the ever-subjective “If it doesn’t contradict the Bible, it must be okay.” According to who? How would personal struggles not foster new, ever-lenient theories backed by “iron-clad” verses? Or new translations to lessen human responsibility and further separate from Catholic, “obviously-heretical” teaching? Or to push agendas or alleviate some personal salvation burden? What about softer and softer directives and language? Mutable absolutes?
The path of least resistance.
The Bible is your oyster.
Who would stop anyone from inventing their own denomination? Is it not appealing, and perhaps even irresistible, to found a church and its doctrines in the name of correcting someone else’s error or improving upon some “archaic” teaching? And if a standalone verse doesn’t provide enough evidence, how about if jumbled with one or two more? There is an infinite number of “logical” combinations. Honestly, such errors can be created out of thin air, through any narrative’s lens. From covenant to contract; from contract to conjured.
A self-interest necessity disguised as virtue.
Including Luther and Calvin, how could I trust anyone or anything that sprouted from such an erroneous institution? Since seventy percent of the Catholic Church’s sacraments are dismissed by most Protestant churches, why wouldn’t I proceed to question everything else and ditch Jesus Christ in the process?
If the majority is wrong, which minority is right?
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If Scripture is inspired, yet the understanding of such Scripture and resulting doctrines are wildly broad, then either:
no interpretations are inspired, or
only certain interpretations are inspired.
If A), the Bible and Christianity are pointless. If B), how would one determine who is right? Who would one trust? Who wins the crown of “inspired” interpreter? After all, at the top of every Christian denomination is a host of scholars, all making concrete claims and all believing the gravity of the Bible, that the “Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard” (to quote John Calvin).
As Reformed theologian Cornelius Van Til stated, “It is true that the best apologetics can be given only when the system of truth is well known. But it is also true that the system of truth is not well known except it be seen in its opposition to error.”
But for anything to be deemed error, it must be measured against an absolute. If Holy Scripture is the ultimate system of truth, whose version of such truth is absolute? Without tradition, how would one know when a verse is finally, properly interpreted? Without tradition, does ancient writing perpetually and accurately capture a culture, a context, and a sentiment? If not, whose tradition and theology is best, and who or what is their source? After all, mankind can force the Bible to reflect—and submit to—any theology it desires.
Since errors are being reported as I write this very sentence, it seems reasonable to conclude we have never been closer to absolute truth. I’m sure we’ll get there when enough scholars have had a chance to point out every inaccuracy in reason, soteriology, hermeneutics, exegesis, theology, and philosophy. Then, and only then, will we reach a “perfect” denomination of truth—one that every Christian can agree upon. Which, of course, would be followed by a newly discovered error. Another dog chasing its tail.
The further we get from the time of Christ and His direct commands to His apostles, the better we understand Him? The further we get from Christ, the wiser a select few become? A select few who would have to acknowledge their church’s own tradition of determining what is acceptable interpretation and what is not, what is indisputable and what is merely good practice. A tradition with hierarchy, scandal, and sinful leaders and followers like every other establishment in human history.
From the onset of Reformation, it only took Andreas Karlstadt four years before he performed an abridged church service and seven years before he called Luther and his followers “new papists,” as if to say, The pioneers are not reformed enough! They should be aligned with my thoughts! And who are they to carry authority?!
A year later, Huldrych Zwingli replaced Catholic Mass with his new Communion service.
That same year, Anabaptist Konrad Grebel rejected infant baptism and performed adult baptism.
In 1534, by declaring the Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII became the head of a new church: the Church of England.
In 1541, only twenty-four years removed from Reformation, John Calvin introduced an entirely new church order, included in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances.
Confessions, creeds, or catechisms were then developed, all professing core tenets of each “true” church—each as binding as their founders decreed.
From whistleblowers to lawmakers.
Since every new Christian denomination or movement claims to pinpoint some type of error and/or new revelation, “truth” and “proper authority” are aggressively multiplying. Maybe wildfires shouldn’t be contained. Maybe heresy should be left to cytokinesis.
While continuing research, I found this question: Who founded your church?
Then I found a Martin Luther quote from his letter to the Christians of Antwerp. Even though the devil, not sola scriptura, is portrayed as the culprit, the letter gives pause to the danger of reform turned revolt—a revolt based and continued upon the most complex, confounding, and supernatural writing in human history. A revolt that has produced incessant, unmanageable correction.
Luther said:
“The devil...has devised a new [disturbance]; and begins to rage in his members, I mean in the ungodly, through whom he makes his way in all sorts of chimerical follies and extravagant doctrines. This won’t have baptism, that denies the efficacy of the Lord’s supper; a third, puts a world between this and the last judgment; others teach that Jesus Christ is not God; some say this, others that; and there are almost as many sects and beliefs as there are heads .
I must cite one instance, by way of exemplification, for I have plenty to do with these sort of spirits . There is not one of them that does think himself more learned than Luther; they all try to win their spurs against me; and would to heaven that they were all such as they think themselves, and that I were nothing!”
Whether Luther directly blamed Karlstadt, Zwingli, Grebel, Calvin, or demonic spirits doesn’t matter. Catastrophe was off to the races. With pride acting as an authority, the new, most dominant traditions marking the Reformation were:
by faith alone
by Scripture alone
by individual interpretation alone
Even if his initial focus was not to form a new church and doctrines, Luther remained akin to a fanatic prying doors open at an electronic store at 11:55 p.m. on Black Friday Eve, not foreseeing the tidal wave of zeal behind him. Once the 95-Theses crowbar was in place, crowds stampeded. Waldo, Wycliffe, and Hus were there in spirit, I’m sure. I can picture an employee getting trampled, shakily yelling, “One at a time, please!”
“Abuse of power!” and “Incorrect interpretation!” were now evermoving thresholds through which new and improved rebellion and sacrilege could pass—first by an inch, then a foot, then a yard, then a mile. Is the answer to travesties and missteps an exponential growth of the same?
An endless divorce: 9,500 theses and counting.
All is vanity and a striving after wind.
The Pieces Fit
Humbled by God, I reached an undeniable conclusion. In the process of reviewing all mainline Protestant denominations, I had considered joining either the Reformed church, the Baptist church, or the Churches of Christ, eventually realizing I would’ve kept bouncing from one to another until I found a porridge that was “just right” enough.
But, once again, I couldn’t dodge the Holy Spirit. My vincible ignorance had nowhere to hide. Even as a practicing Protestant, what I had learned since my confession to Ashley, aligned perfectly with Catholic teaching. The most fitting paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2338, 2339, and 2342, state:
“[The integrity of a chaste person] tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.”
“Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.”
“Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life.”
On March 30, I returned to Mass. I made the sign of the cross, entered the nave, knelt in the third pew from the back, and proceeded to stare at the crucifix.
At peace.
I wept as I read the Nicene Creed: “...one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church...” A few weeks later, the Easter Sunday homily was about the Notre-Dame de Paris fire and Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa. The story of heartbreak and revival, grief and beauty, was among the most transcendent moments in my life. I sobbed, as did the presiding monsignor and many parishioners.
Leaving the Catholic Church had been like physically stepping over a creek; returning was like mentally crossing an ocean. I was home, but needed time to settle.
Now, when do I break the news to family and friends? For my parents, this would be a wonderful return. But for everyone else, would it seem like I was repurchasing that one-way ticket to hell?