“I just can’t be Protestant anymore,” I blurted out one night as my husband and I were driving in the car.
“What?”
“This is just crazy. Every church teaches something different. Every pastor interprets the Bible according to his own personal beliefs. How is anybody supposed to know who’s teaching the truth?”
“Well, all we can do is choose the denomination that’s most faithful to the Bible.”
“So we decide what the Bible means? We decide what’s true? Then the Bible isn’t our final authority—we are.”
Kerry was silent for a moment.
“Well, if you’re not Protestant anymore, then what are you?” he asked.
I didn’t know.
“Lord,” I prayed later that night, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go. Please, just lead me to the truth.”
Raised without a religious faith of any kind, I envisioned God as a stern judge rather than a loving father. Knowing my sinfulness, I didn’t think he would ever forgive someone like me. But in the mid-1980s, I discovered the Trinity Broadcasting Network on TV. The televangelists spoke of a merciful and forgiving God who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). One night, in front of the TV set, I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” and asked Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior.
I began attending a Charismatic church whose pastor frequently appeared on TBN. Amid rock and roll music, swaying bodies, and waving arms, I was baptized. Charismatic worship was an exciting new experience. I had never before seen people speaking in “heavenly languages” or being “slain in the Spirit.” I longed to receive the gifts of the Spirit myself and went forward for the “laying on of hands” each week, but nothing happened.
As time passed, I began to question some of the beliefs of my church. Our pastors promised that we would receive physical as well as spiritual healing if we only had enough faith. And yet each week I watched as the same people went forward time and time again. No one ever got up out of a wheelchair, and the blind did not see. But as I read the Bible, I saw that God has a purpose for suffering in the Christian life (cf. Rom. 5:3–4; 1 Pet. 1:6–7).
I also was troubled deeply by the emphasis on “speaking in tongues.” Hadn’t Paul said that “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19)? Though our pastors appealed to 1 Corinthians to support the practices in our church, I could see that Paul was admonishing them for their excesses. “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking” (1 Cor. 14:20), he told them.
As the Charismatic movement became more and more extreme, I began to distance myself, and I eventually left the church. As the cares of the world crept back into my life, I slowly abandoned the practice of my faith. For the next several years, I drifted further and further away from the Lord.
It was during this time that I met my husband. Kerry had been raised in the Lutheran church but fell away from his faith as a teenager. Together we went about living self-centered, self-indulgent lives apart from the Lord.
Then one day, I got a letter from a woman I had known years earlier in the Charismatic church. She had become a Jehovah’s Witness. I knew that the Witnesses deny that Jesus is the Son of God and teach that he is Michael the Archangel. While I didn’t remember much about my faith by then, there was one thing of which I was certain: Jesus Christ is not a created being; he is God in human flesh, the second Person of the Holy Trinity.
I found my Bible and called her, determined to show her from Scripture the truth about Christ. But it had been so long since I had studied the Bible that I forgot the passages that proved Christ’s divinity. So I began to study Scripture again in earnest, and we continued to talk until, on the advice of her elders, she cut off all contact. I never heard from her again. But like the prodigal son, I had come to my senses and longed to return to my Father’s house. I begged the Lord to forgive me for my years of sin and rebellion, and I re-surrendered my life to Christ.
I started going to church again, attending a Baptist church near my home. How different it was! I had thought all Christians clapped and danced and shouted in church. But worship in the Baptist church was orderly and dignified. I felt so much more comfortable there.
At first Kerry resisted, but by the grace of God, it wasn’t long before he had a conversion experience of his own. Kerry recommitted his life to Christ and we began following the Lord together.
Over the next few months, as he grew in his relationship with the Lord, Kerry became more and more uncomfortable in his job as the manager of a secular bookstore. Books on the occult, adult magazines, and the like were offensive to his new faith in Christ, so he prepared to look for some other kind of work.
One day, I was listening to the Bible Answer Man, a call-in radio talk show hosted by Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute, when he announced that CRI was accepting resumes. Founded in 1960, CRI is the largest Protestant apologetics organization in the world. It publishes The Christian Research Journal, and the Bible Answer Man broadcast is heard on over 100 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.
“Why don’t you send your resume to CRI?” I suggested to Kerry later that night.
We had no idea what kind of position was available. As it turned out, a manager was needed for the on-site bookstore—and Kerry got the job.
In the summer of 1996, we moved north from San Diego to Orange County, where CRI is located. Within a year, Kerry was supervising the warehouse and shipping department in addition to the bookstore. I became a volunteer and eventually started working for him in the warehouse on an as-needed basis. We made wonderful new friends and enjoyed working alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ.
After our move, we set about finding a new church. We wanted to try a different denomination, as we were troubled by the “secret rapture” teaching in our Baptist church for which we could find no biblical support. We were surprised to learn that this teaching is less than 200 years old and that it has never been accepted by the majority of Christian believers.
We eventually settled into a Reformed church. For the next two years, we studied the history of the Protestant Reformation, embracing Reformed theology wholeheartedly. I loved Calvinism—at last I could love the Lord not only with my heart but with my mind as well (cf. Matt. 22:37). Calvin’s doctrines on election, predestination, and the perseverance of the saints were particularly comforting.
We attended Bible studies and conferences, read numerous books, and listened to hundreds of theology tapes. We were learning from the best theologians the Reformed tradition had to offer.
One evening in a Bible study class, we were discussing sola scriptura (Scripture alone) when the topic of conversation switched to the canon of Scripture itself. Our teacher quoted my favorite theologian, R. C. Sproul, as saying that the canon of Scripture is “a fallible collection of infallible books.”
What a strange thing to say, I thought. If the collection of books is fallible, how could anyone be certain that we have infallible books? It didn’t make sense. Still, I put the thought out of my mind.
But it wasn’t long before another crack in my Reformed fortress began to appear. During another Bible study, a question was asked about the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46): How could we explain this passage in light of the doctrine of sola fide (faith alone)? The answer that was given was less than satisfactory. How did this parable fit our theology? The passage began to haunt me.
Here in Matthew 25 was the clearest picture of the final judgment in all of Scripture, and the Lord was rewarding or condemning the people according to what they had done. As I searched Scripture, I found that this was not an isolated text (cf. Matt. 12:36–37; John 5:28–29; Rom. 2:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Pet. 1:17; Rev. 2:23; 20:13).
I knew that we are saved by the free gift of God’s grace; there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation (cf. Eph. 2:8–9). But the simple formula of “faith alone” did not do justice to the totality of Scripture. How could we reconcile Martin Luther’s doctrine of forensic justification and imputed righteousness with the clear teaching of the Bible?
Luther said, “No sin can separate us from him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day” (Let Your Sins Be Strong, 1521). But Paul warned, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Cor. 6:9).
I wondered. Had Martin Luther really “rediscovered” the gospel? Or had he invented something new?
It began to bother me that there were so many theological differences among the CRI staff. The Lutherans disagreed with the Baptists, who disagreed with the Reformed, who disagreed with the Calvary Chapel people and so forth. Though we claimed to be united on essentials, in reality we had serious disagreements on central theological issues.
And what of those Christians who disagreed with CRI positions? We all looked to the Bible, but what made our opinions more correct than those of anyone else? We were sending out “fact sheets” every day, but how could we really be certain that we were telling people the truth? I began to view CRI as a microcosm of Protestantism. At the end of the day, all we could do was “agree to disagree,” because each one had his Bible and was determined to decide for himself what was true.
One evening, Westminster Theological Seminary hosted a debate between the Lutherans and the Reformed on the topic of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. A Lutheran co-worker from CRI attended the debate and told us about it the following day. He said the discussion had become heated quickly, each side hurling Bible verses back and forth, saying things that were “almost blasphemous.”
Oh, this is just ridiculous, I thought. It’s been nearly 500 years since the Reformation, and they still can’t agree on what the Bible means! And then I came to a startling realization: Sola scriptura doesn’t work.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the hopeless state of division and confusion within Protestantism. How could so many sincere men of God, all claiming the Bible as their sole authority, come up with so many different interpretations of Scripture? Whose interpretation were we supposed to trust? How could we look to the Bible alone if nobody could say authoritatively what it means?
The weakening of faith and the collapse of moral values were equally disheartening. Many mainline churches, once stalwart in defense of orthodox Christian doctrine, now watered down fundamental beliefs such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection, and even the divinity of Christ. Rejecting biblical morality, homosexual practice and lifestyle were becoming acceptable. Even traditionally conservative denominations were now permitting abortion. What would have been unthinkable fifty years ago was becoming commonplace today.
Kerry was quickly becoming as disillusioned as I was. We began to think that perhaps the solution could be found in the Anglican-Catholic church. We found St. Matthew’s, a parish about thirty miles from our home, and began attending services each week. The worship was reverent, and the parish priest gave some of the best sermons we had ever heard.
But there was no Anglican-Catholic parish in San Diego, where we hoped to return someday. And I discovered that the Anglican-Catholic church had been established only in 1978, when it separated from the Episcopal church. It was just one more denomination, split off from yet another denomination.
I was terribly frustrated. Paul had warned against divisions (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10) and said that we are to watch out for those who cause them (cf. Rom. 16:17). Surely this disunity and confusion was not the work of the Holy Spirit.
We were visiting a small Episcopal church in our neighborhood one week when the pastor announced that there was going to be a day of prayer for unity and a special ecumenical service held at a nearby Greek Orthodox church. Knowing very little about the Eastern Orthodox, I was intrigued.
“Why don’t we go and see what it’s like?” I suggested to Kerry. “We’ve been everywhere else.”
Though we missed the ecumenical service, we decided to visit the Orthodox church one Sunday morning a few weeks later.
The smell of incense filled the air as we entered St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox church for the divine liturgy. It was the most majestic church we had ever seen. The priest, clad in a lavish golden vestment, censed the altar as he prayed in the sanctuary. Worshipers lit candles and kissed the icons, making the sign of the cross. There was a sense of reverence here that we had never experienced before.
I began reading about the Eastern Orthodox and discovered that theirs was an ancient church with a living, historical connection to the apostles and to Jesus himself. As far as I had been concerned, Church history began in the sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation. I began to wonder about the early centuries of Christianity. What had the early Christians been like? How had they worshiped? Reading Church history, I discovered the writings of the apostolic Fathers. Their writings opened up a whole new world to me that I never knew existed.
I discovered a church that believed in apostolic succession, Sacred Tradition, baptismal regeneration, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist—a visible, authoritative church whose bishops had determined infallibly the canon of Scripture and had defined the great dogmas of the Christian faith.
I learned that worship in the early Church was centered not on music and preaching but on the Eucharist. The early Church Fathers unanimously believed that the bread and the wine truly became the body and blood of Christ.
Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:53–56).
The early Christians knew that the Lord was not speaking of a mere symbol. I discovered that for the first thousand years of Christianity, no one denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
As I continued to study Church history, I learned that “Scripture alone,” “faith alone,” an “invisible” church, and symbolic baptism and Eucharist were all late innovations, teachings of men who came along centuries after Christ established his Church. Not a single Church Father taught sola scriptura or sola fide. The two great pillars of the Protestant Reformation were “traditions of men” (Mark 7:8).
At long last, I discovered the Church that was founded not by Luther or Calvin or any other man but by the Lord Jesus himself, that one, mystical body where there was truly “one Spirit . . . one hope . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:4–5). The Orthodox church still possessed the faith that had been “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The Orthodox had kept the traditions of the Fathers.
Or so I thought.
Fr. Steve took us under his wing as we began to learn about Orthodoxy. He gave us books to read over the summer, and in September we began the Studies in Faith class, a twenty-four-week course covering the content, history, and practice of the Orthodox faith.
The Orthodox church seemed to be the answer to our prayers. We even began to accept the teachings about the Theotokos, the Blessed Virgin Mary. After all, we discovered, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, the fathers of the Reformation, had all honored Mary and affirmed that she is the Mother of God and ever-virgin. How far the contemporary denominations have departed from the beliefs of their founders!
As the months passed, we continued our studies and were welcomed warmly into the life of the parish. The fact that we were going to an Orthodox church didn’t even seem to bother anyone at CRI—Hank’s personal assistant even came to a conference at our parish. We looked forward with eager anticipation to the day when we would formally enter the Church.
As we were nearing the end of our Studies in Faith class, we came to the topic of moral issues. One young couple in the class, converts from Catholicism, said they had not been allowed to marry in the Catholic Church because the woman had been divorced, but they found that this was not a problem in the Orthodox church.
I had never thought about this before. In Protestantism, remarriage after divorce is a non-issue. When I met Kerry, I was divorced. For the first time, I began to think about how this affected our marriage.
After discussing all of the circumstances, Fr. Steve assured me there wasn’t a problem. He would marry Kerry and me in the church and that would be my first, true sacramental marriage. He would bring us into the church at Pascha (Easter) and then marry us on the day of our next anniversary.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I was worried terribly about receiving Communion before we were married in the church. How could we go forward in good conscience to receive the body and blood of Christ if we were not going to be married in the church until the following November? And then something else began to trouble me: Why did the Orthodox church permit its members to marry three times and still receive Communion?
I decided to talk to the instructor of our Studies in Faith class. He promised to send me some information that would help. But what he thought would bring me comfort actually brought me more distress.
I learned that at the time of the emperor Justinian, the Eastern church was pressured into a “situation which she had to accept.” Although “unwillingly and in seeming deviation from the main position of considering marriage indissoluble, yet for the purpose of helping her faithful who were at the same time citizens of the state, the Church decided to follow in the main the legal decision of the state in matters of divorce.
“Some of the reasons which the Church accepts as valid for ecclesiastically dissolving a marriage include imprisonment for life, incurable mental or physical illness, proven and irremediable incompatibility, and others” (A Dictionary of Greek Orthodoxy, 120).
When I read those words, my heart sank. I turned to the Lord’s teaching in Matthew 19—a passage I had read many times before and yet, until now, had never truly seen. Jesus said, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery” (Matt. 19:8–9).
I knew that there was only one Church that taught the indissolubility of marriage. Could the Catholic Church really be what she claimed to be? I didn’t want to believe it, so deep were my prejudices against Catholicism.
I had one Catholic friend. Mary had a deep love for the Lord and a steadfast belief that the Catholic Church was his true Church. The Lord used our friendship to soften my heart, just enough that I was able to buy my first Catholic books: Surprised by Truth, a collection of conversion stories edited by Patrick Madrid, and The Question and Answer Catholic Catechism by Fr. John Hardon, S.J.
About this time, Kerry began listening to Catholic radio in his car. Protestant programming no longer interested him. We were so much closer to the Catholics now; Catholicism and Orthodoxy were virtually the same faith, sharing the same sacraments but divided mainly over the issue of authority. Kerry told me about Catholic Answers Live, a call-in radio talk show similar to the Bible Answer Man, and I began to listen, too.
As I read about the Catholic faith and listened to Catholic Answers Live, I realized that I had serious misconceptions about Catholicism. The Catholic Church did not teach salvation by works, that Christ is “re-sacrificed” in the Mass, that Mary and the saints are to be worshiped, or that purgatory is a second chance at heaven. I realized that all of my perceptions of the Catholic faith had been gleaned from anti-Catholic Protestant sources that had misrepresented official Catholic teachings. I was ashamed to admit that I had never read a single book written by a Catholic author in defense of the Catholic faith. I had to know more, but I didn’t want Kerry to know what I was thinking until I was absolutely certain for myself.
I had been studying cults for years, collecting nearly every book that had been written about them. One day, I casually said to Kerry, “You know, there’s really nothing available by an Orthodox author on cults or apologetics. Do you mind if I order something from the Catholics to get their perspective?”
“Go ahead,” he replied.
And so I began ordering books and tapes by Catholic authors Patrick Madrid, Jimmy Akin, Karl Keating, Scott Hahn, Marcus Grodi, and others. I was studying the Catholic faith intensely—and Kerry didn’t suspect a thing.
One day, I discovered something that shocked me. Up until 1930, all Christian churches taught that contraception was intrinsically evil and gravely sinful. It was the Anglican church, at its Lambeth Conference, that first approved the use of birth control. Since that time, every single Protestant denomination—and sadly even the Orthodox church—has followed suit, departing from 1,900 years of universal Christian belief.
But there was something more. I learned that some contraceptives were also potential abortifacients. The Pill, I discovered, does not always prevent conception but sometimes causes an early chemical abortion after a new life already has been conceived.
I believed that human life is sacred and that we must respect all life—from the very moment of conception until natural death. I thought of all the sincere, pro-life Christians who use birth control because their pastors have told them that it is morally permissible. In allowing the use of contraception, Christian churches had unwittingly caused the deaths of innocent human beings created in the image of God.
With tremendous sorrow, I realized that I could not become Orthodox. There was only one Church that stood firm on all moral issues, only one Church that could be the one Scripture calls the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). I now knew that the Lord was calling me into the Catholic Church.
I wasn’t sure what to do next, and there was still the matter of my marital situation. I decided to call Catholic Answers. I spoke with a staff apologist who suggested that I contact Edward Peters, a canon lawyer and frequent guest on Catholic Answers Live.
Dr. Peters explained that an annulment is not a “Catholic divorce” as some people think. The Catholic Church teaches that a valid marriage is indissoluble. An annulment is granted only when the Church determines that a valid marriage never existed from the beginning. He encouraged me to speak with a parish priest who then could help me to begin the annulment process.
It was nearing the day when Fr. Steve would pray for the catechumens who would be coming into the Orthodox church at Pascha. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I told Kerry that I could not become Orthodox—I had discovered the truth of the Catholic faith.
Kerry stared at me in disbelief. He was devastated. After all of the months of prayer and study, all of our plans now lay in ruins. Our life at St. Paul’s, our future at CRI, everything we had looked forward to—it was all over.
“I hate the Roman Catholic Church,” he said and turned and walked away.
While Kerry couldn’t accept that the Catholic Church could be Christ’s Church, he could not deny that there are serious problems with the Orthodox position on moral issues. We now realized that if I had been married validly in the past, Kerry and I were living in a state of adultery. Rather than risk offending God and eternally endangering each other’s soul, we agreed to live as brother and sister until we could determine our true marital state.
There was one Catholic whom Kerry respected very much: Jimmy Akin, the senior apologist at Catholic Answers. Jimmy had been a guest on the Bible Answer Man years earlier, and Kerry had listened to the tapes over and over again, astonished that there were good, solid Catholic answers to Protestant questions. Reluctantly, Kerry agreed to meet with him at the San Diego–based apostolate.
Jimmy welcomed us to Catholic Answers, gave us a tour, and spent two hours answering all of our questions about the Catholic faith. Karl Keating, the founder and president of Catholic Answers, spent some time with us, too, and gave us all of the back issues of This Rock magazine featuring articles on Eastern Orthodoxy.
On the way home, Kerry broke the silence. “I suppose it’s inevitable that I’m going to be Catholic, but I’m just not ready yet; I need more time. But if you’re ready now, I don’t want to stand in your way. I think you should enter the Church.”
St. Michael’s Abbey of the Norbertine fathers was near our home, and we began going there for Sunday Mass. One of the priests at the abbey, Fr. John Caronan, was on the Orange County marriage tribunal. I made an appointment to meet with him to discuss the annulment and the possibility of my coming into the Church.
The annulment process is lengthy, lasting at least a year. But because Kerry and I had been living as brother and sister, Fr. John said that it was possible that I could enter the Church in full communion at Easter if we agreed to go on living continently.
Fr. John sent us to Fr. Daniel Johnson at St. Mary’s by the Sea. Although Fr. Johnson’s RCIA class was almost over, he allowed us to come into the class. Because of our background, the instruction we had received at St. Paul’s, and our own study of the Catholic faith, he agreed that I was ready.
There remained one final question to be answered: What would we do if my annulment was denied and we could never have our marriage blessed in the Church? It would mean that we could never live as husband and wife again.
Kerry and I were of the same mind. We knew that to reject the Church would be to reject Christ. We would accept the final decision of the Church as that of a mother who protects and cares for her children. We would trust God and rely on his grace to help us live accordingly. We had to follow Christ no matter what the cost.
With that decision made, there was nothing left to stand in my way. At the Easter Vigil in 2000—with Kerry’s blessing and my friend Mary as my sponsor—I was welcomed into the arms of Holy Mother Church, and I received the body and blood of the Lord in Holy Communion.
Two weeks later, Kerry began Fr. Johnson’s new RCIA class. With Kerry’s entrance into the Church imminent, we knew that it was time for us to leave CRI. Though we had respect and admiration for the work that CRI does on cults and aberrant Christian movements, we no longer shared the Protestant beliefs of our Evangelical brothers and sisters. We had found the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church.
We had to decide quickly what to do next. We wanted very much to return to San Diego, but Kerry didn’t want to go back to his old job at the secular bookstore.
“Lord,” I prayed, “You’ve led us this far and we trust in you. Please, open a door for us somewhere.”
I was working in the warehouse at CRI one day, listening to Catholic Answers Live on the radio, when I heard an announcement: Catholic Answers was accepting resumes.
“Thank you, Lord,” I whispered as I turned and looked at Kerry. I just knew we were going home.
Kerry met with the vice president of Catholic Answers and the following week accepted a position as the manager of purchasing and inventory control. There wasn’t time for him to complete the RCIA class before we moved back to San Diego, so Fr. Johnson graciously allowed him to listen to tapes of a previous class.
That June, in a private Mass at St. Mary’s by the Sea, Kerry was received into the Church, and we shared the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion together for the first time.
“Where Peter is, there is the Church,” wrote Ambrose in the fourth century. The visible Church that Kerry and I once had refused to see was there all along. Despite persecutions, scandals, and the sins of her members, the Catholic Church lives on. She has stood invincible throughout 2,000 years of history and will last until the end of time, for Christ himself promised that she would (cf. Matt. 16:18).
In March 2002, we received word that the marriage tribunal had reached a favorable decision in my case. Kerry and I would soon be free to have our marriage blessed in the Church.
The Lord has blessed us in so many ways we scarcely have words to thank him. To God alone be all glory and honor, forever and ever. Amen!