A Presbyterian Asks Me Why I Converted to Catholicism

That's a long story, [Name redacted]. But let me first say that it is far from my intention to question the genuineness or sincerity of your own Christian Faith. I myself was educated by Presbyterians at the Geneva School in Winter Park, FL from middle through High School, and I have always respected the intellectual rigor of Calvinism, even if I had to part ways with many of its distinctives even before becoming Catholic. 

For me, the more apt question became "Why am I *not* Catholic?" Today there are 2.2 billion Christians on the planet. 1.2 billion of them are Catholic. 0.3 billion of them are some kind of Eastern Orthodox. So that's about three-quarters of all the Christians breathing who are in almost total agreement doctrinally except for who gets to be head honcho. For a thousand years, the only Christians we have any record of were either what we would all define as heretics, or Catholics who worshipped through the Mass and settled their differences through Ecumenical Councils until the Great Schism between East and West in AD 1054. Since that time, the East has been unwilling or unable to call an eighth Ecumenical Council.

Now if I stopped there, I'd be guilty of an *ad populum* fallacy. Just because Presbyterian theology is rare and appears to be a historical aberration doesn't mean it's false. But the burden of proof (in my own mind, as I studied and considered) lay on Protestants to demonstrate why Catholicism was lacking, since the majority of Christians who are and who have ever been are Catholic, or appear to resemble Catholics far more than modern Protestants. And the real division came down to four doctrines: Transubstantiation, Papal infallibility, Marian sinlessness, and Marian perpetual virginity. 

The Faith vs. Works thing was important to Luther, but it is a misunderstanding borne mostly of semantics, rather than substance. What is rarely said that solves this problem is that Catholics believe in *Sola Gratia*, or that we are initially saved through God's grace alone, through no merit of ours. It is this supernatural grace that once applied revives us spiritually to make a choice whether to use this divine life that Adam threw away to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you," and ultimately go to Heaven or to throw it away and die again spiritually, like Adam did "the day he ate of it," and ultimately go to Hell. (We deny the I of Calvin's TULIP. God's not going to drag you to heaven or override your free will.) Faith and Works are the dual expressions of this divine Grace being allowed to work within us. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Transubstantiation is really the only way I can interpret John 6, where Jesus refuses to budge and basically says, "No, seriously. You have to eat me, chew on me, *gnaw my flesh*, or you have no Life in you. What, you're leaving? Fine. This is an important truth anyone who wants to be my disciple need to accept. Are you Twelve going to leave me over this too?"

Something like papal infallibility is necessary because no matter how good your interpretation of Scripture, you will never be able merely from the text to differentiate what was intended only for the original audience, like not wearing cloth of two colors, women keeping silence in church, women keeping their heads covered in church, etc., priests being husbands of one wife and needing to be the fathers of adult sons in good standing, and what is intended for all people of all time: you cannot be a practicing homosexual, you cannot get drunk, you should obey your boss if you're a servant, etc. You cannot demonstrate logically what goes into what category, because the text simply does not say. Once you admit this, you have abandoned *Sola Scriptura*, and the basis of the Reformation. Only the Catholic Church makes the claim to speak on behalf of the Holy Ghost to the Whole Church, authoritatively interpreting God's word and its application for our times.

John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther all assented to Mary's perpetual virginity, so that's a non-issue. "Brother" and "sister" meant different things in the culture of the Ancient Near East, and the term was not so restrictive as our common usage. 

Marian sinlessness was the last roadblock for me. Catholics will argue that the Greek term translated alternately as "Highly favored" or "Full of Grace" by Protestants and Catholics implies this, but again that's an interpretation issue. Ultimately all Christians who reach Heaven will be sinless, so if God wanted to make her sinless at her conception by anticipating the merits of Christ, not because she needed to be, but because He wanted to give his Son the Best Mom Ever, He certainly could do that if He wanted to.

Ultimately, I need to be able to point to an abortionist Christian and say, "This person is departing from the Faith as expressed by St. Paul when he forbid φαρμακεια which covered abortifacients, and as shown in the Gospel of Luke when St. John Baptist kicked in St. Elizabeth's womb for Jesus in Mary's womb," without them turning around on me and saying "well you let women speak in church, so you don't follow the Bible to the letter either." Any valid response must be a denial that the Holy Spirit speaks with equal authority to all Christians and a denial that the meaning of the Scriptures is clear to all. The existence of well-meaning prayerful Baptists, Presbyterians and Catholics shows the lie of *Sola Scriptura*, as does the fact that Sola Scriptura itself is nowhere found in Scripture. "*All* scripture is God-breathed," not "*Only* scripture is God-breathed". 

So that was long and now it's super late, but I became Catholic because I could not do otherwise while being true to the Faith that was given to me through my baptism.

UPDATE: I did miswrite when I spoke of the Holy Spirit speaking with "equal authority" to everyone. Of course the Holy Spirit always speaks with supreme Authority. He's God. Rather, what I meant was that not everyone has equal authority to enunciate His Message.