Journeys Home (11 page)

Little did I realize in 1978 that I would someday eat my words.

In 1988, my family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and I began
teaching at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS). I was not even
considering the Catholic Church, though two indicators were already
present: I had always had a love for the Lord's Supper, and I
believed that the Reformed faith was in fact the faith of the
early Church -- two beliefs that eventually led me to leave the
Reformed faith.

Around 1991, I began teaching a course on the Eucharist at RTS
that examined the biblical foundations and history of the doctrine
in the Church. After two years of teaching this course, I became
convinced of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and
realized that the Calvinist view of spiritual communion was deficient.
This spurred me on to study other aspects of Church history, especially
concerning liturgy and the patristic period.

From this reading, I concluded two things: First, Presbyterian
worship and a lot of Protestant worship in general had reduced
the ancient liturgies to their minimal form. In general, a lot
of Protestantism in America represents a kind of reductionism
of the Catholic faith.

Perhaps the most salient point here is that there can be no official
worship in the Church without the Eucharist. Even John Calvin
seemed to recognize this truth, though most of his followers would
not know why he thought this.

The second conclusion involved the "why" part. I have always wanted
to know the reasons
why
I must believe something. I had always
thought that the Reformed faith represented the teaching of the
Scriptures and the ancient Church. When I had to teach the process
of biblical interpretation -- as opposed to teaching what I thought
the Bible taught -- I realized that the only way to agree on a
proper interpretation of a text is to have a living Magisterium
in the Church.

The reason that there are so many Protestants who can't agree
on what the Bible teaches is that they have no authoritative interpretative
body. The analogy in law is, of course, the Supreme Court. The
Constitution lying on the table is of no use to anyone, and in
the hands of each individual, it might be interpreted in a myriad
of ways. So what is needed is clearly an authoritative body of
interpreters who can render judgments on which meanings are permissible
and which are not.

In sum, I realized that the Protestant faith was not the faith
of the ancient Fathers of the Church. The irony of all this is
that John Calvin led me to the Catholic Church. Calvin in the
sixteenth century wanted to bring the Church back to its original
purity from which he and other Reformers believed the Roman Church
had departed. So Calvin said in essence: Go back to the ancient
Church! But when I did, I found that it wasn't Protestant. So
I knew in my conscience that I must leave my Protestant heritage.

My journey during this period was much, much more than intellectual
inquiry. Between 1991 and 1994, I met monthly with Father Francis
Cosgrove, the vicar general of the Diocese of Jackson, for spiritual
direction. It was he who guided me to the Ignatian tradition of
spirituality, a very perceptive decision since so much of Ignatian
spirituality focuses on discerning the will of God for our lives.
In the summer of 1993, I directed my wife in a mini-retreat in
the Ignatian pattern using Father Andre Ravier's
Do-It-Yourself
Spiritual Exercises.
This was the beginning of the end, so to
speak.

Another Catholic friend in California paid for my travel and conference
fees to attend a
Defending the Faith
conference at Franciscan
University of Steubenville in June 1992. Here God had another
divine appointment for me.

One day at lunch, I was discussing with the man next to me the
theological work of Father Bernard Lonergan, whose writings had
helped me understand the doctrines of the Church. A woman in her
sixties from Canada was sitting across the table from us. This
holy and loving woman joined in the conversation with a theological
sophistication that I had not found among Catholic lay people,
and I was intrigued.

This was to be the first of many contacts with the Catholic sister
who has been such an instrument of God in my journey to the Church.
She is a cradle Catholic, and my friendship with her was essential
in understanding the process of conversion. I think this process
can often be distorted if we look at and listen only to recent
converts from Protestantism.

What I needed to see was not a zealous convert, but someone who
had faithfully loved and served Christ her whole life in the Church.
This is what Marie Jutras showed me. It was to be her friendship,
love, gifts, and prayers that would not only draw me to an authentic
Catholic life but also break down some of my wife's misconceptions
of Catholicism. Probably more than any single individual, Marie
has been God's "sacrament" of love to show me the face of the
Savior.

In the summer of 1994, I left my Reformed seminary after six years
of teaching. It was quiet and amicable, but they and I knew that
I couldn't remain there forever because my views had caused too
much of a stir. Theologically, I was probably somewhere between
Rome and the Reformation, although definitely closer to Rome on
many issues (such as the Eucharist).

During this time, I appreciated what had been said in the
CHNetwork
newsletter about using the time we have remaining in a Protestant
setting to clear away misunderstandings and misconceptions about
the Catholic Church. I endeavored to do just that.

The greatest conviction came when one day I realized that I truly
believed it when the priest said, "This is Jesus, the Lamb of
God who takes away the sins of the world." Somehow I knew from
that day on that there was no turning back and that becoming a
Catholic was just a matter of time. What I didn't know was how
much time it would take.

We moved to Bloomington, Indiana, so I could use the excellent
research facilities of Indiana University to write a book on the
history of biblical interpretation. At the same time, I became
good friends with Father Charles Cheesebrough, the pastor of St.
Charles Borromeo Catholic Church near the university. This man's
patience, compassion, and openness won my heart as I struggled
through one of the most difficult years of my life.

I had fully hoped to enter the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1995,
but conversations with my wife and Catholic friends suggested
that it would be better for me to wait to see whether my wife
could join me in that decision.

Then on June 3, 1995, a dramatic event stunned me. An assailant
shot me in the neck with a handgun and almost killed me. God miraculously
saved my life. Because of the prayers of God's people on earth
and the saints in heaven, I was surrounded with angelic hosts
from above and human love from below. I learned, as I never had
before, that in the moment of our deepest need, God's presence
pervades our being.

The people of St. Charles' parish, as well as many other churches
in the city, overwhelmed our family with love. This was only one
of the many events in the last few years that have taught me the
meaning of St. Paul's words: "Always carrying in the body the
death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in
our mortal flesh" (2 Cor 4:10).

I am so thankful that the Catholic spiritual teachings on suffering
are now a part of my heritage as a Christian. Without this understanding
of grace and virtue through suffering, I would not have been able
to endure the pains and hurts of my life. I now can say with the
Apostle, "In our hope of sharing the glory of God ... we rejoice
in our sufferings" (Rom 5:2 - 3).

For a long time, I was Catholic on the inside while still a Protestant
on the outside. For prudential reasons, I was delaying my entrance
into the Church with the hope that my wife and I could resolve
our differences so that we might join together. God's plans, however,
were different.

By God's grace and with my wife's encouragement, I was able to
enter into complete communion with the Catholic Church on my forty-fourth
birthday, June 1, 1996, and received for the first time the Body
and Blood, Soul and Divinity of my Lord. Fourteen years later,
October of 2010, my wife Sharon joined me when she was confirmed
and received into the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.
Praise and honor and glory be to God!

Dr. Kenneth J. Howell is the Senior Fellow of the School of Catholic
Thought of the John Paul II Newman Center at the University of
Illinois, Chicago. He also serves as theological advisor to The
Coming Home Network International.

former Presbyterian minister

EMBRACING CATHOLIC TEACHINGS

ESSENTIAL ISSUES

MY WIFE'S ROLE

DAY OF DECISION

I was a child of the manse. My father was a Presbyterian minister
and my mother the director of Christian education. I had a good
Christian upbringing and after college served as a lay Presbyterian
missionary in Caracas, Venezuela.

When I returned at the age of twenty-six, I was ready to get married.
While studying in an institute in Chicago, I was also actively
chasing four Protestant women, all of whom looked eligible. There
was one fascinating young lady, however, whom I considered safe
to talk with since she was Catholic and therefore obviously not
an option.

I still remember the night we were seated on old chairs in an
old building on the west side of Chicago. As Patricia and I were
carrying on one of our delightful conversations, I realized all
of a sudden that the level of conversation was at a totally different
level from what I had expected. We began evaluating very rigorously
our personalities, our theologies, and particularly the fact that
I was planning to be a Presbyterian minister.

I told her that I could not imagine her wanting to marry a Presbyterian
minister-to-be. But she replied that the Lord had told her this
would happen on the very first night we met. (Later, our spiritual
director concluded that the Lord had sent Pat to get me. The worst
part of this whole process was having to admit to my wife that
she was right, but I have a pretty good wife to admit that to.)

After a brief time of testing our convictions, we were married.
Three days later we were both enrolled in the Master of Divinity
program at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Patricia
completed the whole program -- Greek, Hebrew, and all -- plus
thirty-six hours of her undergraduate residency requirements while
being pregnant the second year.

We raised our first son during the third year. She graduated second
in the class. Since I was not first, I obviously married up.

My wife is very gentle, but when she sees untruth, she goes after
it. She gently began explaining to me the biblical foundations
for the Catholic Church. She even corrected our Protestant professors
in seminary. But we survived and went on into the pastorate. I
very soon got into trouble for all the right reasons. As a good
Protestant, I started preaching from the Bible. Our seminary professors
had encouraged us to use the ecumenical lectionary, which brought
me into contact with all kinds of passages that I might have avoided
otherwise. As a result, I found myself slowly realizing that my
wife's claim that the Catholic Church was the biblical Church
might be true. Emotionally this was very hard to admit, let alone
admit to my wife.

Many Baptists consider Presbyterians to be almost pagan and ignorant
of Scripture. Since our congregation was near to both an Evangelical
Free and a Baptist seminary, we often had seminarians attending
worship and Bible studies. I don't like to lose arguments, so
to stay one step ahead of their biblical challenges, I kept busy
studying Scripture.

I rarely lost a biblical argument to the Baptist seminarians.
But in the process I found myself accepting more and more the
Catholic understanding of Scripture. Let me give you just a couple
of quick examples.

To a Reformed Protestant, the distinctions of
sola fide, sola
gratia,
and
sola scriptura
are almost the equivalent of the Blessed
Virgin to a Catholic. Protestants at times seem almost to worship
these three pillars.

I once attended a conference where these three great distinctives
were posted on an enormous banner in front. When the conference
was over, I wondered where salvation by faith alone was found
in Scripture. So I began searching.

To my dismay I discovered that the origins of this phrase came
from Martin Luther's mistranslation of Romans 3:28. The word "alone"
is not in the Greek text here. Luther added it because, he said,
he felt it was to be presumed -- but more likely because it was
needed to defend his radical reforms.

I also began to study the relationship of faith and works. My
evangelical friends said that if you allow works any role in salvation,
you are becoming Roman Catholic. But I knew a couple of Scripture
passages that seemed to imply that works do indeed play a role.

Consider, for example, Matthew 25:31 - 46, in which the vision
of the Last Judgment includes the separation of the sheep from
the goats. Here Jesus says nothing about faith and everything
about works of love and compassion. I also knew of James 2:14 - 26, which explicitly teaches that faith without works is dead.

I decided to read the entire New Testament looking for such passages.
When I did, I found a plethora of verses emphasizing the importance
of works, including Matthew 7:21 -23 and 16:27; Luke 10:25 - 37 and 12:9; John 3:20 - 21; Romans 2:1 - 16; 1 Corinthians
3:8 and 6:9 - 10; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Galatians 5:19 - 21; Ephesians
6:8; Revelation 2:23; 20:12; 22:12; and many others.