On Easter Sunday of this year, it became clear to me I could no longer delay what I had been delaying for quite some time: I knew it was time for me to become Catholic.
Of course, like most dramatic changes in life, my journey into Catholicism didn’t happen overnight. Instead, it happened in the way that one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters from The Sun Also Rises described the process of going bankrupt, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Thus, my conversion was the long, gradual process of all the misconceptions I previously had about the Catholic Church I had been raised to believe slowly crumbling one by one until the point of everything “suddenly” changing that Easter Sunday.
Since I’ve made my decision public with my community, several friends and family members have asked me why I’m becoming Catholic. The first thought that always comes to mind is “Well, how much time do you have?” The second thought is G.K. Chesterton’s words echoing in my ears: “The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.”
One can see why it’d be so difficult to answer a question like “Why Catholicism?” when you have 10,000 reasons to choose from. I’ve found it easier simply to ask others their reasons for not believing and then starting from there. Not all are wont to go down that road I’ve realized though. A question is a quest, after all, and you never know where a quest might take you. That’s why a genuine question actually involves a measure of faith, because the truth we need and are searching for is most often where we least desire to look, and the dangers and discomforts are plenty.
I do share with others (as well as remind myself), however, that the reasons for my believing Catholicism being true did not only come to me packaged in polemics, robust syllogisms, philosophical and historical arguments, and propositional logic (though they did come in that), but that the reasons also came to me in the form of beauty and goodness, and that’s no small thing to dismiss. God speaks to us through art as much as He does through arguments.
After all, we are not just brains on a stick. We are creatures consisting of an intellect and a will. We are creatures not just of thought, but of desire. That means we are not constructed to make decisions solely on the basis of pure analysis, empirical observation, calculation, or cold rationality, but also in the light of our longings, intuitions, our sense of wonder, and our moral sensibilities.
And long before I thought Catholicism was true, there came a point where I wanted it to be true. Of course, I knew that wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true. That’s partly what held me back for a time. But, then again, just because you want something to be true also doesn’t make it not true. Our weaker, impulsive desires may undoubtedly lead us off course, given the deceitfulness of our hearts and the passions of our flesh. But there are other deeper desires within us all that rage like a burning bush and that, if we’re willing to pay close attention to them just as Moses did, God can lead us home.
That being said, my journey was not only intellectual. It couldn’t be. Rather, it consisted in encounters both with the intellectual rigor and truth of the Church, as well as its great beauty and goodness, at different points along the way.
For instance, my first inroad into the church wasn’t weighing a scholarly debate between intellectual heavyweights or reading the early church fathers, but rather the goodness I witnessed in the Church’s position on the value and dignity of human life, as expressed in Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. When I stumbled into it, I couldn’t help but think, “There may be a litany of things I disagree with in the Catholic Church, but this is undeniably one piece of pure light that they possess that all the world is lacking, Protestants included.”
And while the Protestant world largely disregarded the issue of contraception (and still does) and/or divided amongst itself on the issue, I saw the Catholic Church standing in contrast as a bulwark of justice; as a city on a hill, as a light in the midst of darkness; as a unified voice, safeguarding the future by remaining unswayed by what was presently fashionable. Consequently, this first piece of light shone through and aroused my curiosity. If I was wrong about the Church in this way, what else could I be wrong about?
Then later, and only later, I began to see the immense intellectual depth of the Church and the rigor of its arguments. Ironically, it was at my evangelical seminary where I was first introduced to the works of Thomas Aquinas. I was quickly amazed by the depth and veracity of Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God. His Five Ways, as well as other selections from the Summa, genuinely enriched my faith. His insights were truly profound. That being said, over time, I started to find it a bit peculiar to give so much credibility to someone like Aquinas in almost every area of his thought except for his Catholicism. Surely that was something I could not dismiss out of hand as insignificant.
The same went for St. Augustine–a church father I’ve since learned is far too often cited by Protestants only when he sounds remotely proto-Protestant but is disregarded when it comes to the prevailing amount of time he sounds Catholic. Moreover, it also troubled me to know that Tolkien and Chesterton were Catholic as well.
However, there was, of course, my last and final hope: C.S. Lewis. But, then again, Lewis, in being Anglican, was as close to Catholicism as one can get to as a Protestant. Moreover, he was notorious for publicly avoiding the Catholic question, which is something I suspect is owed, in no small part, to his Northern Irish background. Nonetheless, taking into account these giants and their great influence on me and millions of others, my suspicions were further aroused. I wondered: how is it that these artists and intellects that I so deeply admire, that have said and done so much to enrich my faith, and are right and good and true when it comes to so many things of the faith, could be so wrong when it comes to their Catholicism?
These suspicions being aroused, I was compelled to inquire from contemporary Catholic apologists that were more prominent online. Namely, figures like Trent Horn, Jimmy Akin, Joe Heschmeyer, Brant Pitre, and more. I spent a good deal of time listening and watching their debates with Protestants on issues such as Sola Scriptura, the papacy, confession to priests, the Eucharist, Mary, etc. Needless to say, as I listened intently, I was amazed at how quickly many of the intellectual objections and arguments I had towards Catholicism completely collapsed. I soon realized I was out of my league on these matters, and that my classic Protestant objections amounted to straw.
Time would not permit me to address all those objections here, nor is that my aim with this. Let it suffice to say that the undeniable reality has been that the more I have listened to Catholic teachers, theologians, and apologists describe and explain the doctrines I once found “unbiblical” or troubling, the more I’ve come to see just how many of my Protestant brothers and sisters who helped shape me early on as a believer simply don’t understand the best arguments for Catholicism, and that they are often tearing down a straw man they’ve created when it comes to Catholic faith and teaching. Worse yet, I’ve realized they are missing out on the fullness of the faith that our Lord intended for us to experience as His body.
Much more could be said, if time were to permit me to tell of the 9,999 other reasons I’m becoming Catholic. Certainly, it would not permit me to speak of the heavenly grandeur one encounters in the walls and ceilings of the cathedral of St. Francis of Assissi, or in the square at St. Peter’s Basilica, or in the stain-glassed windows of the hospital chapel a few rooms over from where my firstborn son entered the world. Nor would time permit me to express the immense longing and joy in the reverence and mystery of the Mass that has been performed by Christians all over the world dating back to the apostolic age and the glory of the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist.
Time would not permit me to speak of the oneness that our Lord prayed for over His Church and the unity one experiences with the body of saints, both dead and alive, that our Lord promised the gates of hell would not prevail against. Neither would it permit me to properly convey the peace and reassurance one feels when being connected to that sacred and ancient tradition of faith passed down from the apostles and preserved in the Church; that unity of faith which has stood the test of time and which the Church has defended in every age against the schisms, divisions, and heresies which arose to threaten it.
Needless to say, over time, I eventually came to the simple conclusion that my Protestantism, while possessing many good and honorable things in common with Catholicism, was insufficient and inadequate. I was settling for scraps when the Lord intended for me a feast. As I searched and sought, I came to realize my Protestantism was out of step with what the church has always believed, tracing all the way back to the apostles. As Cardinal Newman famously put it, “To be deep into church history is to cease to be Protestant.”
Above everything else, however, I discovered that my Protestantism was not what our Lord wanted for His one body, the Church. Ultimately, I just wanted what He wanted; to please Him. As such, my conversion gradually took place until I realized everything was suddenly different. I was changed.
To bring this to a conclusion, I remember reading how Dr. Scott Hahn in his book Rome Sweet Home described his conversion: that it started out as a detective story until it eventually evolved into and culminated in a romance story. Well, that has undoubtedly been the case for me. And, in many ways, I feel my real story is only just beginning.
Of course, the reasons abound for my becoming Catholic, and time is too limited for an essay such as this to properly put forth all those reasons. This is more of a love letter than it is a polemic anyway. Let it suffice for now to say that, in the end, all the reasons for which I am becoming Catholic ultimately amount to one reason: that it is true.
I pray this is the beginning of your romance story also.
Colton Banks 