Journeys Home (34 page)
Authors: Marcus Grodi
Tags: #Catholics -- Biography; Coming Home Network International; Conversion, #Catholics -- Biography, #Coming Home Network International, #Conversion
Hunt claimed that Luther had been unable to jettison this belief
from his Catholic upbringing. But Luther's writings clearly show
that he used Scripture to support this belief, as is shown in
the following quote from his
Small Catechism:
What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
Answer: Instituted by Christ Himself, it is the true body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, given
to us Christians to eat and drink.
Where is this written?
The holy Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and also St. Paul,
write thus: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed,
took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and gave
it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body which
is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. (Theodore G. Tappan,
trans. and ed.,
The Book of Concord,
Fortress, 1959, p. 351)
Hunt had a problem, and so did I. Using "Scripture alone," we
had come to an impasse.
Sola scriptura
did not seem to be a valid
method for solving this important doctrinal dispute. Either Hunt
was right or Martin Luther was right, or both were wrong.
In any event,
sola scriptura
had failed to weed out an error in
doctrine. One or both were teaching a lie, but who? What Luther
(using Scripture) saw as the body and blood of our Lord, Hunt
(using Scripture) saw as a fantasy and heresy.
I saw that it ultimately came down to a standoff between Dave
Hunt and Martin Luther's interpretations of Scripture. I started
to wonder:
Am I just following the "traditions of men" by trusting
Hunt, or am I following the intentions of Christ?
This question
started to burn inside of me. How would I resolve it?
I was dismayed to discover that I could not even bring this disagreement
to "the church" as instructed by Jesus in Matthew chapter 18.
In this discourse to His disciples, Jesus had outlined a three-step
procedure to use if we have something against a brother, including
what to do if the brother will not submit to correction. I reasoned
that Hunt's charge of heresy would qualify as having "ought against
a brother."
Jesus' solution was
not
to take this problem to the Scriptures.
(Remember, that's how we arrived at this impasse). Instead we
are to take it to "the Church." It suddenly became clear that
I couldn't do this. Why not?
Well, quite frankly: To which Protestant "church" should I bring
it? Dave Hunt's congregation? One of the Lutheran denominations,
which he had implicitly charged with heresy? Or perhaps a "neutral"
Protestant denomination like one of the Baptist groups?
If the Baptists, then which Baptist denomination? The Regular
Baptists? The Southern Baptists? The American Baptists? To which
one of the more than twenty-five thousand Protestant denominations
should I bring it?
Which Protestant denomination would be given the final authority
to cast one or both of these men out as "a Gentile and a tax collector"
(see Mt 18:17)? And if they were cast out, what would stop them
from simply starting up a new church, a church custom-tailored
to their own particular teachings? The result could be denomination
number 25,001 and denomination number 25,002 -- and thus a direct
repudiation of Christ's statement that this excommunication would
be binding "heaven" and on "earth" (v. 18).
I began to see that in spite of the Protestant insistence on the
Bible as the "court of last appeal,"
sola scriptura
was an unworkable
doctrine. Without an authoritative Church with the authority to
bind and loose (in heaven and on earth), Jesus' solution for conflict
resolution in the Church was ludicrous. I reasoned that Jesus
loves us too much to give us worthless solutions; therefore, this
authoritative Church must exist today, just as it must have existed
from the time He issued the command. This Church also must have
been exercising this authority throughout Christian history, definitively
judging heresies such as Gnosticism and Pelagianism to be contrary
to the truth.
I read the Church Fathers and saw that the belief in the Real
Presence could be traced back to the early martyrs. The early
Church consistently held that Jesus was really present in the
Eucharist. From this discovery, I developed an intense hunger
for the Eucharist that would not dissipate. I wanted to belong
to a living Church tradition with a sense of being joined to a
family that had its beginnings in the Upper Room and had continued
to defend the Faith until this day.
During this time, I discovered that I didn't have to search for
a church to weigh the merits of Luther's doctrine. Jesus Christ
had already established a Church that had done just that. (We
should note here that the Church affirms the notion of Christ's
Real Presence, but not in the way Luther came to teach it: While
Luther eventually came to believe that Christ's Body and Blood
are present
alongside
the bread and wine, which themselves are
still present -- the doctrine of
consubstantiation
-- the Catholic
Church teaches that the bread and wine cease to exist because
their substance is actually changed into the substance of Christ's
Body and Blood -- the dogma of
transubstantiation
.)
In the end, Dave Hunt had done what the Catholic Church had failed
to do: He had destroyed my trust in
sola scriptura.
With these revelations came a necessary pruning. As branch after
twisted branch of prejudice was lopped off, I experienced great
pain and turmoil. I know that were it not for the love of my wife
and the grace of God, I would not have survived the process. I
did not want to leave the wonderful people at my church. And as
sad as it might sound, I did not want to leave the comfort of
the dark little box into which I had tried to squeeze the richness
of Christianity. On another level, I did not want to commit my
life to a Church with which I was still angry.
To be even more honest, I did not want to eat the wheelbarrows
full of "crow" that people would be lining up for me to eat. Not
surprisingly, this thinly veiled pride was the last obstacle to
be overcome.
But I learned to lay my pride and anger aside as I prayed about
Jesus' challenge in Luke 6:46: "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,'
and do not do what I tell you?" I slowly came to the following
conclusion: Those who are serious about obeying Christ, if they
make an honest and careful study of both Scripture and Church
history, will ultimately feel compelled to come into the bosom
of the Catholic Church -- or suffer the utter misery of living
a life of compromise.
My return to the Church happened on a quiet evening at the local
monastery. There was no fanfare, no grand ceremony. I sincerely
stated my intention to obey the teachings of the Church by making
a profession of faith, and then I went to confession with my family.
Together with our fellow Catholics, we received our Lord in the
Blessed Sacrament during a public Mass. After a four-year rejection
of the Eucharist, I could only weep. The sublime nature of the
moment was heightened by the realization that this church was
one of those marked by an "X" on my map.
On the edge of the woods near the monastery stands a statue of
Jesus with arms outstretched. A detail of this statue had caught
my attention while I was compiling my map two years earlier: The
statue had no right hand.
Such was my suspicion of the Church that this missing hand was
proof to me of Rome's diabolical nature. The Bible had much to
say about the importance of God's mighty right hand, and here
was a symbol of the Catholic Church's negation of God's power.
So "X" marked the spot.
I pointed to the statue during one of my first meetings with the
priest who brought me home. "See," I challenged, "Christ has no
right hand!"
Father Gabriel turned calmly toward me and said, "Mark, you are
His right hand." My thoughts turned to Mother Teresa and my own
stumbling journey to this place, and conviction followed.
I had been so intent upon making God do my will that I hadn't
even considered following Christ's insistent call to humble service.
The sheer arrogance of my approach to "healing" the spiritual
wounds of my community became brutally apparent. Now, whenever
I leave Mass at this monastery, I see this statue that still challenges
me to continue this lifelong process of dying to self.
Floating high above the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the
symphony of bells calls the Catholics of this small Midwestern
town to worship on this February morning. Far below the bell tower,
the sanctuary slowly fills with people as I let my prayers ride
upon the sound. It is a miracle that my wife and I are here today.
A short year ago, I had told my Protestant pastor that I was going
to pray for the Catholic people during Lent, that they would come
to know the Lord. Now, here I am in this Church, eyes clouding
with tears, heart filled with peace and wonder -- a Catholic once
again.
I have become graciously undone. All the things I thought I knew,
all of my clever reasons for ridiculing these people, lie mercifully
in ruins behind me. Heaped there also is my self-righteous facade,
the victim of the truth. This morning, with nothing else to give
God but my ragged self, I will offer that to Him again.
In a short time, He will give Himself to my wife and me in a very
real way. The priest will say, "The body of Christ," and we will
say, "Amen!" We will proclaim what the Church has proclaimed for
two thousand years: that Jesus is really and truly present in
the Eucharist. Sitting here now, with the sounds and the sights
of the Catholic faith above and around me, and with the expectation
of the Eucharist before me, I am filled with awe. What a year.
What a tumultuous and glorious journey.
As I write, I am preparing for Ash Wednesday. Soon, the priest
will place ashes upon my forehead as a symbol of repentance, death,
and resurrection. As he inscribes a cross upon my forehead with
an ash-blackened thumb, he will say something like this: "Repent
and believe the Good News!"
I will gladly bear upon my brow the symbol of our precious Savior's
life-giving death. This will be the first time I will have participated
in this solemn ceremony in five years. It will be nearly one year
to the day since I voiced my commitment to pray for the Catholic
people during Lent, that they might come to know the Lord.
Isn't it amazing how God answers prayer?
Mark Connell owns a business that sells technical rescue equipment
in Utica, Illinois, where he lives with his wife, Beth Ann.
former Evangelical Protestant
Honest, I never meant to love the Catholic Church. I didn't even
realize I had been reading Catholic books, until it was too late.
I think I was tricked by the One who has the most jovial disregard
for human preference -- the One who delights in surprising us,
opening our eyes to bigger views of Himself, and taking us out
of our comfort zones.
How on earth did I get this way -- relieved and grateful to be
received into the Catholic Church?
Evangelicals expect Catholics to become Protestants, but not vice
versa. They tend to look bewildered when they discover that, while
I'm actively involved in an Evangelical congregation with my family,
I've become a Catholic. They seem to feel awkward about further
conversation. I've written this essay trying to imagine what questions
my Evangelical friends might like to ask, if they felt comfortable
asking.
My aim isn't necessarily to persuade anybody else, but simply
to describe what persuaded me -- how my attitude and thinking
changed. My conversion didn't come from reading a few pages, so
it's also difficult to summarize in a few pages. I've tried to
keep this account shorter, nonetheless, by avoiding long explanations
of what Catholics believe and why, and sticking to my own story.
The trek began quietly around 1987, when I accidentally recognized
that Catholics knew some good stuff. In many years as a committed
Evangelical, I had read the right books, listened to leading pastors,
and even had taken graduate-level classes in theology while my
husband, David, was in seminary. I taught inductive Bible studies,
college-age Sunday school, and spent several years as a missionary.
It was while we were missionaries in Egypt that I happened to
read some older-than-Evangelical books that reached deeper into
me than anything I had read before. I wanted to read more of those
great old books. And then it dawned on me that those authors were
all Catholic.
It surprised me to realize I had been learning from Catholics.
Years ago, when I had gone to the Catholic Church with friends,
I had been struck by the beauty of the liturgy and surprised by
both the clarity of the Gospel and the apparent disinterest of
most of the people around me. I hadn't meant to be arrogant, but
I had assumed the Catholic Church was spiritually wasted; otherwise,
why had God let the Reformation happen? Yet these Catholics, whose
books I had been reading, knew some stuff!
I realized I was ignorant about Catholics. In some ways, it seemed
as if Catholics and Protestants were all descendants from a generations-old
family feud in which both sides of the family had gotten used
to excluding each other and most didn't even know much about the
original dispute.