Because everybody asks...

     When I tell people that I'm a convert to Catholicism, almost invariably they look puzzled and say something to the effect of :
     "Well, that's strange, most people are leaving Catholicism instead of joining it..."

     This is usually followed by a request to have coffee sometime and have me explain my "strange" and "unconventional" conversion.

     To be honest, I find this exceedingly annoying. It's probably one of the few ways I can get a girl to have coffee with me (A semi-date!), or have a social life in general, but as much as I like talking about myself, speaking about my conversion is so full of potholes. It's part of the nature of giving a testimony. Unless you're willing to write a book, one can only focus on one aspect of conversion in a reasonable coffee conversation. It doesn't account for many of the events in life that lead one to the Church. Trust me, if there were only a few reasons to convert to the Church, I wouldn't have done it. Thankfully, there were COUNTLESS factors that influenced my conversion.

    Maybe part of it was my Lutheran upbringing; Lutherans don't have nearly the same nasty feelings they've historically had toward the Church (though my twin brother still believes I'm under the dominion of the anti-Christ), and the doctrine is similar in many respects.
     
     Maybe it began the time I went to a Catholic wedding as a toddler, and thought the votive candles, the statuary, and the confessional booth were strange, exotic, and exceedingly cool.
   
     Maybe it was my compulsive attachment to the Lord of the Rings audio books. Tolkein gave me a love for tradition and ancient history, and throughout his stories there is an endless sense of longing for past eras of valor and truth. It's possibly the most Catholic book I've ever read.
   
     Maybe it was that devoted Catholic nun I met at a Catholic hospital, or that growing sense that the Catholic Church was the great middle finger to the rest of the world; an institution that stuck to its guns (metaphorically nowadays) on traditionally-held issues like contraception and transubstantiation, even as other denominations changed with the trends of culture.

   Maybe it was the fact that even though the Church stands against practically all of modern Western culture, it cares for more people and provides more help to the World than any other organization.
   
     Maybe it was partially the fact that every single girl I dated before my conversion was Catholic.


I dunno, to be quite honest.

     The biggest reason for my conversion, I guess, was my hunger for the Eucharist. The notion that God comes down to us under the appearance of bread and wine (rather than us ascending to Him) is in line with the whole history of salvation: throughout history, God constantly reaches out to His children, even suffering humiliation and death to have intimate communion with us. This Paschal Lamb, this King of kings, comes in the guise of such common, ordinary objects of bread and wine, in order to dwell fully within us and grant us grace for salvation. That drew me, I think, more than anything else.

But the reason I hate giving a testimony is that it's always focused on how I came to Catholicism, and it de-emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit that brought me across the Tiber. So this post gives some reasoning behind my conversion, for those who wanna read, but really, look to the Holy Spirit, more than anything else, for my conversion. Without the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I never would've made the profession of faith. Thanks be to God then, that he gave me the grace of conversion.

NEXT ON THE "TIE WEARING CATHOLIC":

PHILIP WILL REFLECT ON THE STRUGGLES OF SEXUAL PURITY ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS!!!!!!!!!!!

 WILL HE GIVE AN INSIGHTFUL AND POSSIBLY HUMOROUS TAKE ON ISSUES FACING THE MODERN YOUNG ADULTS OF TODAY???????!!!!!!

OR WILL HE BE A TOTAL FAILURE AT LIFE IN GENERAL AND (FIGURATIVELY) SCREW UP ON THIS SENSITIVE TOPIC???????!!!!!!!

TUNE IN NEXT TIME TO DISCOVER THE FATE OF THIS FANATICALLY NERDY FOLLOWER OF THE FAITH!!!!!!!!!!!