Why I became Catholic

I didn't really care much for religion when I was younger. I always knew God existed but I didn't care. Then I met my boyfriend and his family asked me if I'd like to go to church with them. I said yes just out of curiosity since I had only stepped foot in a church once or twice when I was little. His family is Catholic so I was overwhelmed the first Sunday I went with them. Still didn't care much for religion so I agreed to go off and on for about a year. I just kind of fell into the routine of copying what they were doing and never understood what was really going on. 

Back in September of 2022 I started getting sick (not life threatening) and had no idea what was going on. I barely left my house for roughly eight months. I was always tired and nauseous from antibiotics and barely ate or drank. I refused to go to church with my boyfriend and his family during that time. I remember Saturday nights and Sunday mornings feeling the worst physically. Around April of 2023, I started feeling the urge to go back to church. Sunday morning would come and I wouldn't be able to bring myself to get out of bed. Every Sunday meant arguing over the phone with my boyfriend explaining I was feeling too sick to go. May 21st, I forced myself to get up and go only because I felt guilty for all the arguing for the last few weeks. Everything changed that day.

The first time back to church, there was a substitute priest. He had been retired for years. Once again, going through the motions of Mass like normal. When it was time to receive communion, I had my arms crossed over my chest. When I stepped up and bowed all I expected was the typical blessing. The priest gestured for me to step closer to him and he touched me on the forehead and gave me a blessing. I was hit with a huge wave of emotion and was trying to keep it together. Afterwards, my boyfriend told me I just had this glow to my face and looked like I was going to cry. I knew in that moment God was calling me to become Catholic. The first and only time I've gotten a clear sign that I know of was then. I had decided roughly one month before that I was going to stay non denominational and that my boyfriend would have to live with it. I reached out to our priest and I signed up for RCIA.

I told my grandparents (I was adopted by them) and my grandmother was not thrilled. She didn't believe me when I told her what happened. She had left the catholic church long before I was born. She assumed I was only doing it for my boyfriend and his family. She had decided when she adopted me that I would not be baptized and would allow me to make my own choice when I got old enough. I made my choice and she hasn't been happy since. It created a bigger rift in our already not so great relationship. I've been told by her that I'm crazy and have a few screws loose. My uncle, also a non practicing Catholic, told me immediately not to do it. I've had other Christians try to sway me. My grandfather isn't really religious so he just doesn't really care or understand. Despite all that, I made it through RCIA and was baptized, received first Holy Communion, and was confirmed on Easter Vigil this year, 2024!

I was born a Catholic, baptized into Christ as an infant in May of 2004, some months after I was born the year before. I never received proper catechesis outside of religious education in my Catholic school. Yet it seems whatever I have received developed into an intuitive understanding of the faith, though it continues to develop. Around 2014, a year after my mom died, I begin to doubt God, not the faith, but God directly. I had not an understanding of what love is, and I had a carnal way of understanding it. So I thought because God had not loved me physically, He does not truly love me. At that point I understood not the Incarnation or the Providence of God. While I knew Christ, I knew Him not, He was unknown to me.

Then, in 2015 and 2016 I began to develop an anger toward God out of reason, that God took away my mother and thus He is responsible for all of my problems. After a fateful Confession, I begin to see Him in a different light, that He is the solution to my problems. So I began to pursue Him, yet I knew not the Catholic faith I am in, no matter what propositions exist in my head. I recreated Him in my own image, as a mother, a woman to love. I convinced myself that it is merely a representation and not the direct Being, but perhaps that was folly. 

In 2018 I fell into a demonic deception just as I was getting to know Christ again. The deception was this, that I am Christ Himself. The deception was however, what kept me surviving in my depression. One day, it all collapsed. I sunk deeper into my despair and I attempted to take my own life. I survived. However, my faith was reduced into ashes, until I decided to repent by the grace of God and confessed my sins. Another fateful confession returned me to the Catholic faith. There I received a clear revelation, not private, but a testimony of public revelation by God Himself. The content was this, “Preach the Gospel to the Church and to the whole world.”

Yet the devil seeks to kill me even more by deception. And I fell back into demonic deception, the same one. Then, the despair crashed on me and I committed my second attempt to destroy myself. I again survived. After 3 days, I “resurrected”, yet the deception came again. Until I decided to confess twice, one for the suicide attempt and one for the deception I fell into. There, the real work begins. Bit by bit, my attachments were stripped away from me. And finally, the greatest attachment, my attachment to my image of God, was annihilated by God. After years of pain and suffering, I begin the true life of holiness, and the Dark Night of the Senses began for me. Now, it is only the beginning for me, and there is much work to be done. That is all I can say for now.

 My parents baptized me Catholic but didn’t practice the faith much.  My household was sort of chaotic and oblivious to a lot of faith basics.  Needless to say, I grew up thinking that gossip is normal, and helps to warn people of others’ character.  Or that large businesses got rich by nickel and dining the poor (us), so it is ok to steal from them if you can.  Anyhow, living in such a way feels pretty terrible.  I had my first child out of wedlock and lived with a boyfriend- we eventually married civilly, experienced excruciating poverty and ultimately my significant other wanted nothing to do with having a family, was unhinged and became unsafe.  So, as a single mom, I tried very hard to make sure my daughter grew up “right”.  I went to church, RCIA, and made my confirmation.  My daughter also made hers.  I worked too much in order to cover her Catholic education, and allow her to play travel sports, and instruments, etc.etc.  I figured religious Ed in school was enough, and attending mass sometimes was enough.  I eventually married a Protestant wonderful man, completely unaware that I would need the blessing of the church.  On one hand- we were all living what outwardly looked like Christian lives, but inwardly, I was lacking a lot.  My husband’s church places a lot of importance on knowing the Bible- I had heard a lot of comments about what Catholics do improperly, and I worried that my faith may be “outdated”.  (My husband and I agreed that as long as we both love god and try that we wouldn’t argue with each other about these “nuances”).  So, rather selfishly, I decided that I would also read the Bible cover to cover so that I could keep up with their verse quoting, to prove that I wasn’t wrong.  I have always been pretty good at learning so I figured I would just outsmart these people, but I was still quite worldly and living what appeared to be an outwardly good Christian life.  When my grandmother died, I was looking for some wisdom.  I heard a podcast where philosophers discussed Ecclesiastes, and decided I could find some there.  And then something clicked.  I went through the wisdom books and realized I was doing everything wrong.  I was living for myself and how society would view us.  I went to confession, began attending daily mass, and read the entire Bible cover to cover (the Catholic study Bible with all of the commentary) and now I begin each day with re-reading, or listen to some of the studies from Ascention or Ignatius.  It is so amazing to me that I thought I was Catholic my whole life and only recently realized what I had to do to actually be a Catholic.

I didn't make the decision to become Catholic, my parents did that. My parents barely ever forced us all to go to church except for Christmas and Easter. I was that Catholic for a while, then I was bullied in school and eventually had received death threats. It was decided that I was going to switch schools, and I ended up choosing to go to a Catholic school. I went to catholic school from 6th - 8th grade than back to a different public school. There I actually started learning more than what was taught at weekly CCD classes, although granted I know that was still very little. I also started enjoying to go to mass. So I would go more often, but I was still lukewarm. Not trying to learn much more, kinda going with the flow, the only thing that changed was going to mass more often. Than fast forward a bit and I had started 10th grade and remember making the comment "Thank goodness that I'm going to be done with religious ed."

Now a crucial piece of information is that although I'm not a diagnosed with autism, I  have trouble dealing with emotions and it gets to be emotional overload and I will also often read things wrong. I also am not a person that got in trouble, I'm too much of a people pleaser for that one. I was also very much a loner so I read a lot of book and eventually was secretly books that were 50 shades of spicy. I got in a ton of trouble when my parents figured it out. Now to my naive self, I thought the world was over, but I learned to pray that night. Not pray like the our father but truly have a 1-1 with God. The feeling of relief, I haven't felt it sense. It was so calming and relaxing and I knew that everything was going to be ok. Kinda wish I could feel that all the time. So here I am enjoying mass and now fully understanding prayer. 

After Confirmation, it was time for college to come around and I knew that I wanted to join a christian or catholic organization on campus. My first semester the Catholic organization (a.k.a Newman Club) was during my classes so I couldn't attend that one but I could attend the Non-Denominal one called S.A.L.T. I  quickly became the graphic designer than one of the main team members. Af first I thought it was neat, never to the point of me thinking of converting but I was enjoying it. At the same time, I was taking religious classes and as I started to finally make connections to things, which I had never done before. The more and more sillier these non-denominal meetings started to become. It also got to the point where I realized that they were more concerned about the entertainment and more modern side of things, it became less relevant to the reason we were there in the first place. 

Spring break that year, happened to be during Ash Wed and the first Friday of lent. I had signed up to go on a mission trip to Tennessee. The mission trip itself was great but the fact that once Ash Wednesday and that first friday came around they got real weird because of the whole no meat thing. Which I had gotten permission from 2 different priests that if I needed to eat meat on that trip I could because I was the only Catholic on the trip. The comments these other Christians were saying were very teasing and making fun. There was a trans person on that trip as well who had announced at one of the restaurants to everyone around that he was getting shrimp too because I was catholic and I couldn't be the only one not eating meat. We were in the south, even non-catholics were eating seafood and not thinking twice about it. Now some of you might say he was trying to be nice, but that wasn't the case. So that trip made it set in stone that I didn't like the non-denominal and I was leaving that group and I ended up looking into catholicism more and more and here we are. Someone who veils at NO and over 1/2 my free time with something church related.

Hi, My name is Aidan and i am an adult convert. I was born into a mormon family and we went to church frequently when I was 4 years old. I always hated it but, we kept going for a good four years and i was baptized as a mormon at 8. After we moved to florida our family stopped going entirely as most of my siblings including me were atheist. My mother lost her faith but i considered myself an atheist untill i was 16 and tried going into paganism until i was 18 i didnt like it. Too many vague rituals. Then i was agnostic until one of my friends on VR Chat Told me to look into christianity. I looked at all the relics of the saints and the relics left behind from our lord and i thought “maybe there is a god.”. At that point, I was looking warm in my Faith so I decided to try a prayer method from Iambeggar on youtube. I tried that method and I had a conversation with our Lord himself, which he then told me to devote my life to him, and that set me on my path to being a catholic , and then later being baptized on Easter vigil. I love our Lord so much that I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to support my church.