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Although I was raised in a Protestant Christian household, I took an interest in Catholicism late into high school and began the process of converting to the denomination shortly after I came to college. Currently, I do my best to live according to the precepts of the Catholic Church, and I look anticipate that I will be confirmed into the Catholic Church in the summer of 2022. I spent a great deal of time before my proper conversion reading about and studying Catholicism, and I often find that my religiosity seeps into other parts of my life. For instance, my first assignment for this class, which is hosted on WordPress, was a review of the Vatican City's official website. Additionally, my background in linguistics is of great help in understanding the significance of liturgical languages such as Latin and in interpreting the Bible.
As a baby, I was born into and baptized in a Methodist church, which my mother attended before she even met my father. However, before I started kindergarten, my parents had migrated to a Presbyterian church of the Calvinist tradition, and it is here that I was later confirmed. Although I no longer subscribe to many of the same beliefs I held as a Protestant, I nevertheless am thankful to my parents and church community for forming a strong devotion to God and Christian morality within me. Without them, I do not know that I would have ever become Catholic.
In high school, I went through a period where I was practically agnostic although I never vocally renounced my belief in God or my faith—I simply stopped behaving as a Christian ought to. In late high school, I joined a Bible study run by a close friend of mine, and this rekindled my interest in Christianity. From there, I took an interest in the Catholic Church mainly because of the sacrament of confession, which I felt I was in desperate need of. The concept just seemed powerful to me: you confess your sins to a priest cooperating with Christ, and you receive absolution for them in a concrete way as well as counsel on how to amend your life. Initially, I believed this was simply a pragmatic practice of the Catholic Church, but I soon discovered that there was, in fact, what qualified as a biblical basis for confession in my eyes:
John 20:19–23 (RSVCE)
19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you." 20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
After this, most of the typical Protestant stumbling blocks—Mary, the saints, purgatory, the papacy, etc.—all began to melt away because, as I read more, I came to be of the persuasion that all of these things were in the Bible with varying degrees of explicitness. The one obstacle which remained was sola scriptura, the belief that Scripture is the sole authority on matters of Christianity up to and excluding tradition. However, as I read more of the Bible and looked into its history, I came to the conclusion that, since the Church had compiled the Bible, it is properly understood as the greatest testament to the authority of tradition, not as a separate thing altogether. Moreover, I realized that Jesus never wrote anything down…but He did establish a church—the Church—and even crowned Peter pope by giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven at the same time:
Matthew 16:13–20 (RSVCE)
13Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesare′a Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” 14And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Eli′jah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
This verse marked the point at which I felt as though I could no longer justify being outside of the Catholic Church; from here, other passages, such as Jesus giving similar authority to the rest of his disciples in Matthew 18:18-20 to establish a hierarchy within the Church and Paul apparently describing purgatory in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, clicked into place and reinforced my resolution to join the Catholic Church. So I began attending Mass weekly on Sundays at the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in spring 2021. Now, a year later, I am preparing to finish the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), which are essentially the Catholic Church's standardized version of confirmation classes, and to enter the Catholic Church, and I have never felt more Christian than I do now. In terms of rectifying my behavior and keeping me straight-laced, nothing has been more beneficial than my conversion to Catholicism. I look forward eagerly and expectantly to my first confession.
Perhaps the most salient reflection of my transformation from Protestant to Catholic is in my altered view of purgatory. Formerly, I considered it a terrible, unnecessary thing that diminished Christ's sacrifice on the cross; presently, I consider it an intimate encounter with Christ and the natural fruits of His sacrifice, and I view it as a great gift that I am permitted to be wholly sanctified after my death so that I can enter into heaven. Of course, I now also have a much greater appreciation for the Eucharist and for the saints, too.
When I am at college in Raleigh, I attend Mass at the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral (pictured), and, when I am at home in Winston-Salem, NC, I attend Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church in Clemmons. If you go to or work at NC State, it is likely that you have seen (or heard!) the cathedral because it is just off campus, boasts an impressive size, and has a clangorous bell which is rung every hour so.
I appreciate the architecture both churches I attend: the former for its elaborate beauty and the latter for its simplicity. Although I usually go to Mass on Sunday evenings in Raleigh and on Sunday mornings in Winston-Salem, I will occasionally go to Mass on Saturday evening to fulfill my Sunday obligation if I have plans for Sunday. Whatever the case, I am careful to never deliberately miss Sunday Mass.
Just as I spend a great deal of time reading about linguistics, I also spend a great deal of time reading about Catholicism and poring over the writings of the Church fathers. My Latin education—I have taken a class in Latin almost every year since sixth grade—comes in handy here because so many documents from the Catholic Church are composed in Latin, and the fathers' astute analyses of biblical Hebrew and Greek are much easier to understand with such a background in linguistics as mine. Furthermore, my broader English education has afforded me the faculty of literary criticism so that I can better understand the genre and rhetorical goals of the various books of the Bible, which reflects an approach not dissimilar from the one taken by Professor Bill Adler in REL 312: Introduction to the New Testament, a class that I very much enjoyed.