Journeys Home (33 page)

That month, You moved me to borrow
Humanae Vitae
from the Princeton
library. (I was only the second person to check it out -- the
first since 1968.) I read it, and it made sense to me.

On Wednesday evening, October 21, You led Father McCloskey to
invite me to his office and give me a copy of
Spiritual Journeys
(edited by Robert Baram and published by the Daughters of St.
Paul) and a catechism written by, among others, then-Father Donald
Wuerl. Like many Evangelicals, I thought that the Church taught
that all non-Catholics would go to hell. Preoccupied with this
issue of salvation and convinced that C. S. Lewis was the epitome
of both intellect and sanctity, I asked Father McCloskey, "How
could a C. S. Lewis be in hell?" Father McCloskey patiently explained
the Church's understanding of
extra ecclesiam nulla salus
("no
salvation outside the Church").

Fall break approached, and I stayed on campus to study. I often
prayed in the Princeton University Chapel, a lovely neo-Gothic
structure with stained-glass windows that portrayed figures as
disparate as the archangels, St. Sebastian, Plato, John Calvin,
and St. Thomas Aquinas. Only an Anglican could have designed it.

On Friday evening, October 23, You gave me the courage to pray
in the Marquandt Transept of the University Chapel, where the
Catholics had their daily Mass. It was the only part of the chapel
with kneelers. Though I often knelt when I prayed in my room,
I found it hard to kneel in a public place -- like the sign of
the cross, to me the practice reeked of Catholic tradition, ritualism,
and salvation by works.

As I sat alone in the chapel that Friday evening, part of me wanted
to kneel to pray, and part of me did not. Then the kneeler in
front of me came crashing to the floor. I looked around to see
if any disapproving Evangelical might be in the chapel. I saw
none, and then I knelt to pray.

During that fall break, I spent much time each day studying material
for my four classes: classical Greek, Latin, linear algebra, and
ancient Greek literature. I was also able to spend more time in
prayer and spiritual reading. I read much of Father Wuerl's question-and-answer
catechism, and most of the Catholic doctrines made sense to me.

I started to read or reread the works from that Eerdmans list,
beginning with the letters of St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius
of Antioch. I was shocked to find that these two Apostolic Fathers
not only mentioned but emphasized the Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist and the necessity of submission to the hierarchy
of bishops, priests, and deacons in order to maintain the unity
of the Church.

I was shocked because I thought these were post-Constantinian
additions to the original Christian faith. Now I saw that they
were there at the close of the first century. And as I looked
at the Greek text of St. Ignatius's letters, I saw that the bishops,
priests (presbyters), and deacons of the Catholic hierarchy were
nothing more than the development of the New Testament
episkopoi,
presbyteroi,
and
diakonoi.

During that break, I also began to consider what a wonderful thing
it would be if all the Christians at Princeton could worship together
in one church. For the first time, the divisions in Christianity
disturbed me. Then a thought occurred to me that perhaps it might
be God's will that all Christians worship together as Catholics.
But I dismissed that thought, which I believe also caused me physical
revulsion.

At the conclusion of the break, on Saturday evening, October 31,
I did my laundry in the basement of Lourie-Love Hall, and You
led me to pick up
Spiritual Journeys
. I became engrossed in the
book, and story after story began to make a deep impression on
me. Person after person converted to the Catholic Church after
renouncing the private interpretation of Scripture and submitting
his intellect to the Church's Magisterium.

For the first time, I realized that when I read the Bible, I was
interpreting it. Previously, I had believed that I was merely
absorbing its obvious meaning.

The clock of the tower of Nassau Hall tolled midnight, and I took
a walk from my dorm room to St. Paul's Church on Nassau Street
to the Aquinas Institute and back to Butler College. As I walked,
You gave me the grace to think something like this: "Here I am,
Jeff Ziegler, seventeen years old, with my own propensities to
sins X and Y, and breathing this Marxist, materialist, secularist
air, conceiving that I can interpret Scripture. And there is the
Catholic Church, with twenty centuries of never-changing but ever-developing
interpretation of Scripture. Who am I to go against the Magisterium
of the Catholic Church?"

At that instant, You gave me the grace to know the truth of the
Catholic faith. I also knew that I could choose to accept or reject
this grace. By Your grace, I chose to seek reception in the Catholic
Church. I returned to campus as the clock struck one o'clock.

When I awoke the next morning, I did not go to the PCA service
but instead attended Mass at the Aquinas Institute. I continued
attending daily Mass and my instructions with Father McCloskey.
On December 8, 1987, I made my first Confession, was confirmed,
and received my first Communion at the 7:30 p.m. Mass in the Princeton
University Chapel.

"And from His fullness have we all received, grace upon grace"
(Jn 1:16). Grace upon grace, a Blessed Trinity, grace upon grace!
If any one of the events described above had not occurred, would
I be a Catholic today?

You know, O Lord Christ, how utterly impoverished I would be without
frequent encounters with You in Confession and Communion; how
blind my intellect would be without the teaching of Your vicar
on earth, the pope; and how tepid my heart would be without the
graces granted through Eucharistic adoration and devotion to Our
Lady.

"What shall I render to the Lord for all His bounty to me? I will
lift up the chalice of salvation and call on the name of the Lord"
(Ps 116:12 - 13).

Jeff Ziegler, who holds degrees from Princeton University and
the International Theological Institute, lives in North Carolina.

former ex-Catholic, anti-Catholic Protestant

SOMETHING TRULY MIRACULOUS

SOLA SCRIPTURA: HUNT OR LUTHER?

MATTHEW 18: OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTION

LIVING OUT THE IMPLICATIONS

"I was born and raised in a Catholic home." This sentence, repeated
in all too many conversion stories, must be included in mine.
It seems so much more tragic to preface a testimony with this
sentence than to relay a happy conversion story that starts, "I
was born and raised a staunch Calvinist, but then ..."

Why? Because when the story concerns a cradle Catholic, it signals
that something was missing from what should have been the most
wonderful, grace-filled Christian experience available on earth.

Yes, the good news is that many of these Catholics are coming
home! The disturbing news, however, is that these people once
felt the need to leave the Church of their youth in order to recognize
God's love.

Often, in an attempt to assuage the guilt of having left the Church
over such issues as clerical abuse, lack of spiritual formation,
or coldness in a local parish, an ex-Catholic will turn against
the Church and become viciously anti-Catholic. This happened with
me. I was not anti-Catholic when I left the Church, nor did I
leave for any heavy doctrinal reason. I left for emotional ones.
At the time of my departure, I was very pro-Catholic and longed
for the Church to meet my spiritual needs, but I was angry that
it wasn't doing so.

I left the Church in 1992 to join a small, loving Protestant congregation.
Eventually I would become an elder of this church, lead men's
Bible studies, and host weekly prayer meetings. Independent of
anything taught from the pulpit of this congregation, I grew even
angrier and proceeded to build a doctrinal "case" against Rome.

Every evening, my grudge against the Church was moving toward
full-blown hatred as I reveled in the writings of professional
anti-Catholics such as Dave Hunt and James G. McCarthy. Many a
dark night slipped by as I continually "let the sun go down on
my anger." Woe to the unprepared Catholic who crossed my path
at this time! Woe to my Catholic family members!

McCarthy and Hunt's books allowed me to build what I thought was
an airtight case against the Church. But I never considered that
if air could not get in or out, neither could the Light. And so
in the darkness of my prejudice, I grew as a misshapen plant.
I bore bitter fruit on twisted branches.

I wrote anti-Catholic tracts and opened a post office box with
the intent of distributing them. I spent long hours in the library
researching local Catholic history in order to compile a "spiritual
map" of my community. On a large street map, I marked the location
of each Catholic church with an "X" (eight Xs in all).

This mapping was done in order to target these Catholic churches
for intense intercessory prayer campaigns. I was not praying for
anything as noble as an increase in faith or vocations. I simply
was praying for all the Catholic churches in my community to be
emptied. I went to many of these churches, anointed the buildings
with oil, and prayed for the salvation of the members there.

In the midst of all this, something truly miraculous happened.
I heard a sermon by a Fundamentalist pastor who seemed to hate
the Church as much as I did. In a pivotal moment of my spiritual
life, I listened to him and comprehended fully what I had become.
Suddenly, as when Nathan the prophet confronted the murderous
King David, I could almost hear God say, "You are that man, Mark!"

It was as if someone had held a mirror up to my face, and I saw
that I had become terribly disfigured. Hate had turned me into
a monster. As I listened to this local anti-Catholic preacher,
I can vividly remember wondering what heaven would be like filled
with only the "righteous" like him and me. I concluded that this
kind of heaven would be a truly miserable and perfectly wretched
place!

Within a month of hearing this sermon, I picked up a book by someone
I thought was an "obscure" Catholic named Mother Teresa.
A Simple
Path
(Ballantine, 1995) challenged my whole conception of Christian
service. Here was an elderly nun selflessly giving her whole life
to Christ, but there was just one problem: She prayed the rosary!

What was I to do? I thought that the rosary was an instrument
used in "idolatrous" prayers to Mary. How could this woman serve
God and Satan, too? For the answer, I turned to a book by Dave
Hunt,
A Woman Rides the Beast
(Harvest House, 1994), where he
reassured me that Mother Teresa's "evangelism leads no one to
Christ" (p. 468).

For some strange (and merciful) reason, I didn't buy Hunt's counsel
this time. I began to wonder:
Am I just gathering around me a
great number of teachers to say what my itching ears want to hear?
(See 2 Tm 4:3.)

I shared Mother Teresa's book with my pastor, a kind and compassionate
man whom I still love deeply, and he was so moved that he preached
a sermon on it. Contrary to Dave Hunt's assertion, people in this
Protestant congregation were brought closer to Christ because
of this nun's witness. Seeing this, I knew I had to alter my opinion
radically of at least one Catholic, a tiny nun from Calcutta.

I was devastated by what I was discovering about my prejudices.
The prospect that some of the very people I had been persecuting
may in fact have been "saved" horrified me. I of course had no
intention of going back to the Catholic Church, but at least I
would be more charitable in my assessment of Catholics.

Not wanting to concede too much, however, I resolved to reread
Dave Hunt's book to see what I could salvage of my case against
the Church.

As I started reading
A Woman Rides the Beast
for a second time,
this time something was different. Whereas in the past this book
made me feel smug about my escape from the "Whore of Babylon,"
it now caused my case to collapse in ruins. This book is so internally
inconsistent and mean-spirited that I could only shake my head
when I read it again.

If Hunt had written in the same manner about the Jewish people,
he would be termed an anti-Semite and featured on
Nightline
. Consider
the following quote from this book: "Those conditioned to believe
that wine had become Christ's blood were able to believe Hitler's
myth of blood as well" (p. 377). How could I have been so blind
to his prejudice?

As I studied this book, something else became apparent. In his
rush to pummel Catholics, Hunt also wounded Martin Luther. With
his assault on Luther's "heretical" belief in the Real Presence,
he shook my trust in
sola scriptura.

Why? Because Luther and Hunt both believe that Scripture alone
should be used to determine doctrine. Yet, while using Scripture,
the two men were at opposite ends of the spectrum on what seemed
to be a key doctrinal question: Is Christ truly present in the
Eucharist?

Hunt said this belief was "a fantasy" and "a foolish heresy" (pp.
383, 387) and cited many Scripture verses to support his belief.
Luther disagreed, however, as he explained in
A Treatise
Concerning
the Blessed Sacrament and Concerning the Brotherhood:

There are those who practice their arts and subtleties to such
an extent that they ask where the bread remains when it is changed
into Christ's flesh, and the wine when it is changed into His
blood; also in what manner the whole Christ, His flesh and blood,
can be comprehended in so small a portion of bread and wine. What
does it matter? It is enough to know that it is a divine sign,
in which Christ's flesh and blood are truly present -- how and
where, we leave to Him. (17)