CONVERSION FOR CATHOLICS

I was raised Catholic in the '90s and early 2000s. By the time I entered college in 2008, I wasn't convinced there was any good reason to stay Catholic. By the time I graduated four years later, I had given myself over completely to unrepentant sin. 

There are millions like me! Recent polls show that roughly 80% of my generation who were raised Catholic are no longer practicing our faith. A fair number of us don't even believe in God.

Millennials also suffer from some of the highest rates of depression, anxiety, dissatisfaction, and loneliness. As Father Robert Spitzer explains, these trends are no accident: evil is at work, trying desperately to separate us from God.

Our secular culture is a wilderness. Dominant voices tempt and lie to us, telling us that natural law is now a backwards understanding, a thing of the past. Create your own reality, they cheer. There is no ultimate truth or meaning to our lives here on earth, so whatever you say goes. You do you-- no rules, no boundaries. 

The you-are-your-own-god rhetoric sounds good; it sounds a lot like freedom. But it is not. Sooner or later, it becomes a prison. I am here reporting back from that lawless ideology that claps each of us on the back as we transgress the latest boundary in the name of progress. I believed all of this smooth-talking, and I lived it out.  

Around the time I graduated from college, the 'progress' that saturated the news was same-sex marriage. Not immune to the social discourse of equality, I allowed myself to believe that sin wasn't sin. And at the age of 22, I legally married a woman. This led me deeply astray, as living in unrepentant mortal sin is wont to do. 

I turned my back on my Catholic faith definitively, on the grounds that the Church 'doesn't accept me.' It never occurred to me to question if I was the one failing to accept. Accept God's love and His laws. 

Fundamentally, I was unwilling to accept reality as it is and preferred instead to create my own, á la Ernest Holmes, Eckhart Tolle, Louise Hay-- the new age, manifestation kind of spirituality. This brand of new age deception readily ensnares those of us who can't suppress our natural spiritual awareness but who are unwilling to give up our illusions of autonomy. Spirituality cut off from the source quickly becomes self-indulgent, and dangerous.

How many of us who were raised Catholic now pronounce ourselves 'spiritual, not religious'? I met dozens in my circles of LGBT-identifying friends, new age friends, activist friends. I seemed always to find people who shared the same predisposition toward supernatural reality fostered by our Catholic upbringing, but who rejected the terms by which it was revealed. 

This rejection of Divine Revelation sent each of us searching, tumbling through a vast landscape of alternate philosophies, spiritual practices, and attempts at understanding self and other.

My same-sex marriage lasted 3 years. When I turned 25, I began to receive what in hindsight I recognize as the call to a vocation in holy marriage. At the time I only understood it as a strong, persistent desire to have children, and the sobering realization that I could not do that with another woman. It took me a little over a year to come to terms with natural law, to face the choices I had made, and to gather the courage to make new ones.

If you are a refugee from neomarxist ideologies that cast aside the dignity and reality of each unrepeatable human person in favor of politically expedient, well-groomed identity groups, you are not alone. If you have followed the false promises to their end and come up wanting more, I invite you to re-encounter the promises of Christ revealed through our Catholic faith. 

For me, there is a compelling answer to every question. More than that, there is meaning and purpose. There is love. There is redemption.

Religion is the science of being in right relationship with God. It took a few more years for me to shake the animus I had cultivated against Christianity, and so I took the anything-but-Jesus approach to my quest for meaning. I found fleeting moments of peace and glimpses of understanding in other spiritual traditions (and a few innovations), but nothing lasted. 

I was always searching for what was really true. Though I had freed myself from the false promise of fulfillment and happiness if only I gave into my sexual sin, I still held onto other sins of pride and lust and anger that kept me from turning toward God with a contrite and repentant heart.

It wasn't until several years later, when my husband and I moved to the mountains of western North Carolina and found ourselves adrift that I became open to hearing what God had to say. Not from the latest 'download from the universe' shared by my friends online, but from Divine Revelation in the person of Christ Jesus. 

Despite having landed exactly where we wanted, quite alone in the wilderness, our move wasn't easy. I was suffering from intense anxiety despite daily meditation, yoga, and the occasional pagan spiritual practice I had encountered in the new age, all of which were touted as ideal ways to cultivate peace and 'thrive'. 

Visiting my parents one weekend in January, I heard my dad getting ready for 8:30 Mass like he had every Sunday, without fail. He had stopped asking me if I wanted to join several years back. This time, he didn't have to. His consistency was its own invitation. 

I showed up as he was heading down the stairs to leave, and said quite casually, "I thought I'd come to Mass with you." Inside, I was scared and curious and motivated primarily by the opportunity to cross myself with holy water if I went. He probably choked back tears of disbelief but said only, "That would be wonderful. Let's go."

When I sat with my dad before the same stained glass window I had stared at every Sunday for 17 years of Masses, an unmistakable feeling of peace came over me. I saw many of the same families I remembered growing up with, and was moved that a few of my now-adult CCD classmates still attended our parish and were active in ministry. 

What really surprised me, though, was how much the rhythm of the Mass was alive in my body. I hadn't been to Mass in years, not even for Christmas or Easter, yet I found myself kneeling, standing, and making the sign of the cross without hesitation. I remembered most of the Mass responses, including the Nicene Creed, minus the refinements in wording that happened after I had stopped attending. I sang the hymns I had sung as a child.

During Communion I was moved to tears that all of these people had continued to pray and worship without interruption, while I had been living life according to my own designs, completely devoid of this sacred space. I had been living as if God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit was optional, where here in this holy container, He was everything. The profound peace, the sense of continuity, and the realization that this was a place where, undoubtedly, I belonged, were the beginning of my return to the Catholic Church. 

If you are curious about finding peace in our rich, God-given Catholic faith, I encourage you to go to the nearest Mass the moment you get the inclination! Bless yourself with holy water and sit in the presence of God. As everyone else approaches the altar to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord, listen to what God is saying to you. When you are ready to rejoin the Church, as a baptized Catholic, a good confession is all you need. 

I made my first confession after 13 years away from the Church. I was afraid to ‘out’ myself to our parish priest, to shock him with the godless life I had been living. But I had no need to be afraid. God was there and He forgave me with boundless mercy. I pray that you would experience that divine love-- true freedom--when the weight of sin is lifted from you in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Since returning to the Catholic Church, my husband and I have experienced such incredible graces. The anxiety we both suffered from fled at the name of Jesus. Truly, Christ is the best medicine we've ever taken. Certain habits we had both tried for years to break fell away with little to no effort. We have been blessed with a community of wonderful friends who desire holiness. Most importantly, we both have a growing relationship with God nurtured by the grace of the Sacraments. 

Keeping our eyes heavenward keeps all things in perspective. As St. Therese of Lisieux reminds us, "The world's thy ship, and not thy home."

I want everyone to seek out the treasure waiting within the Church we were commended to as babes. I want you to know that nothing you have done is beyond redemption. I want us all to finally find rest, to do as Psalm 46 exhorts: "Be still and know that I am God."