Once, Twice, Three Times a Catholic
By Lynn Nordhagen
Illustration by Bill Gerhold

Some conversions don't happen all at once. Although some, like Saul, get Christ's message instantaneously, others, like Lynn Nordhagen, find themselves only gradually becoming certain of Catholic truth. In her case, it was an on-again, off-again love affair with the Catholic Church that spanned three decades, several denominations, years of hardened anti-Catholicism and a lot of pain. After growing up Catholic, leaving the Church, coming back, and leaving again, she's now back to stay. She took the long way home, and shares with us here the details of her tumultuous journey.

"Lord, You know I can't genuflect to a piece of bread . . . I've stopped believing that it's You. But is it You? Are You there, Lord?" I prayed desperately, remembering the Eucharistic faith of my childhood, but I was unable to grasp it again. In the quiet chapel, the large white host was exposed for the adoration of faithful Catholics. But I, a faithful Presbyterian, stood against the back wall, agonizing over bending my knee — would it be reverence . . . or idolatry?

My crisis had started the day before, when I was supposed to be listening to the preacher's sermon, instead of arguing with myself about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. My mind was engaged in a frantic dialogue between the present Presbyterian me and the former Catholic me:

Today, here in the dim chapel, my childhood Faith flooded my memories. I grew up in the Catholic Church in the '50s and '60s, in a neighborhood saturated in traditional Catholic culture. The spires of the parish church were framed in our kitchen window, and on summer evenings, an orange sunset made them a memorable silhouette. Across the street was the Catholic grade school, a few blocks away, the Catholic girls' high school, and next door to the church, the Jesuit university.

Even as a child, being Catholic was important to me. From wanting to convert my Lutheran cousins, to collecting clothes for the missions in Africa, to loving daily Mass and Communion, I was active in my Faith. When I had questions or problems, I turned to the priests — yes, our parish had five of them! At a Novena of Grace during high school, I felt that God was calling me to become a medical missionary nun. When it came time for college, I enrolled in the pre-med program.

The charismatic renewal came to our campus in 1970. I was at first very reluctant to get involved because the leadership was Protestant. But when I visited, I found the enthusiasm and familiarity with Jesus really attractive; all these people seemed to be on a first name basis with Him. So I divided my worship between going to daily Mass and attending Pentecostal prayer meetings. Eventually, the group split along Protestant/Catholic lines, and about that time I married a Protestant young man.

Still, my Catholic Faith was important to me, so for the first three years of my marriage, I continued faithfully attending Mass, even teaching catechism to the teens in my parish. Meanwhile, the constant preaching in my husband's church was that the Holy Spirit Himself was about to bring all His people together in a renewal that would make all denominations obsolete, including the Catholic Church. While I naively waited for this miraculous unity, I gravitated more and more toward the Pentecostal ardor in my husband's church.

One day at Mass, the yawning indifference of the altar boys was the last straw. When even they passed up Communion, I gave up, went to the pastor of my husband's church, and announced that I was there to stay.

While this particular church practiced neither baptism nor the Lord's Supper, they made up for it in enthusiasm and spiritual experiences like prophecy and singing in the Spirit. During the next ten years of raising a family in their commune-like atmosphere, I was attending five meetings a week, and enjoying every minute of it.

Well, almost every minute. Occasionally, a visiting preacher would come through, spouting anti-Catholic propaganda. And even the pastor, who tried hard to be gracious, couldn't put his Bible Belt prejudices completely behind him. I grew increasingly sensitive to the misrepresentations of history and Catholic doctrine I heard in his sermons and in testimonies of many newly "saved" ex-Catholics.

Then the dreams started. I dreamed of the silhouetted church spires, of my childhood pastors, and of my Jesuit college teachers. Finally, I went to visit one of those teachers. I was quite happy without the Catholic Church, I told him, and I did not miss the sacraments. I was just visiting, that's all. But I made another appointment. And another — just to make it perfectly clear that I did not want to return, of course.

I began to want more than prophecy and tongues. I wanted to be Catholic. My husband was understandably upset; I was breaking the spiritual unity we had enjoyed for many years. We met with our pastor, who admonished me to stay in submission to my husband because that was the only way to be truly in submission to God. I prayed long and hard about my decision, but finally my conscience would not allow me to stay away from the Catholic Church.

For my husband, who had been raised to believe himself spiritually responsible for his wife, my return to the Catholic Church was embarrassing, to say the least. For a while, he insisted that I not tell the kids, and that I not attend Mass on Sundays. So I went to Mass on Saturday nights and to church with the family on Sunday morning. Over the next few years, I grew to be more courageous and open about my Faith, and tried to be a cheerful example to my husband. At the same time, I experienced the loneliness of going to Mass alone. I was looking for spiritual direction and for intellectual interaction within my Faith. I even looked toward Eastern meditation and practiced "Christian Zen," offered through a Catholic counseling center.

Six years after my joyful return to the sacraments, I began conversing with a Calvinist coworker. We soon discovered a mutual interest in theology. Since I had 16 years of Catholic schooling, and had already had my "fling" with Protestantism, I felt secure in my Catholic Faith, and took on the apologetics challenge.

Our lunchroom debate went on for a year and a half. I found I was not really prepared when it came to the strong intellectual side of the Protestant Reformation. Now I was reading Luther and Calvin, both classical and modern Protestant authors, and listening to hundreds of theology tapes by R. C. Sproul and others. I brought to the argument an older Catholic catechism, books from the university library, and my experiential understanding of Catholicism.

But I finally decided that Scripture was, after all, on the Protestant side, and started attending the Presbyterian Church in America. This involved more stress for my family since I now insisted that the PCA would be my only church. Nevertheless, my husband became satisfied that I was at least Protestant again, and we both made good friends in my Presbyterian church.

Even then, I grieved over giving up my belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and I harassed my friend at work about talking me into the Real Absence. Eventually I made peace with myself by telling myself the Real Presence was spiritually communicated to believers by the Holy Spirit in a special way during the Lord's Supper. But there was always that tug in my heart for the Real Thing. Still, if the Catholic belief was idolatrous, I had to reject it.

For five more years I delved into Calvinism. It was very comforting to know that God was absolutely sovereign over human decisions, and to believe that as one of the elect, I was perfectly sure of going to heaven, no matter what I did, since it all depends on God. I believed in predestination by God's decrees before the foundation of the world, and that Christ died only for His chosen ones, because to think otherwise was to admit He was not in control of salvation. I was a deeply convinced Calvinist, and was working on convincing everybody else.

So when a book called Surprised by Truth came around, I was only mildly concerned that it might undermine my thinking. I was wrong. When I had two quiet days alone, I read it straight through, pausing only long enough to pace the floor and argue with God in prayer, "Lord, they can't be right, can they?" After reading it, I wrote to the book's editor, Patrick Madrid, "Sighs, sighs and more sighs. That's my reaction to the contributors in your book. Because I suspect they are right, and there are so many reasons I can't afford them to be right."

Now, standing in the back of a Catholic chapel, wrestling with whether or not I could kneel before a piece of bread, all the other issues whirled before me: eating humble pie, losing my credibility, alarming my family, angering my husband. I knew I would also be dismaying my pastor and elders, leaving my church family in the PCA, and facing a daunting amount of study to resolve all my theological questions. For certainly I couldn't just magically change my mind on positions I had come to by arduous study.

"Lord, I really don't know where You are. You weren't in the Supper yesterday; I don't believe You are here now. I think You will forgive me for not genuflecting. Just help me get through this." In an awkward conflict between the Faith of my past and my present anguished doubt, I skipped the genuflection, and backed out of the chapel into the blinding sunlight.

Patrick's prompt reply included not only a promise of prayers, but a suggestion that I contact Kris Franklin, a convert who had been an evangelical missionary in Guatemala, and whose family had been very opposed to her conversion [Kris' conversion story appeared in the Premiere issue of Envoy]. So I wrote to Kris and we began to correspond regularly. One of my first letters expressed my self-doubt. "I really don't trust myself to make any decision to 'submit to the truth' anymore. I have shown myself to be untrustworthy. 'The heart is deceitful above all things . . .' (Jer. 17:9)."

A few days later I came across a prayer by John Henry Newman, the famous Anglican convert of the last century. It became my theme, reminding me to depend constantly on God's grace. Newman wrote:

"I should like an inquirer to say continually: My God, I Confess that Thou canst enlighten my darkness. I confess that Thou alone canst. I wish my darkness to be enlightened. I do not know whether Thou wilt: but that Thou canst and that I wish, are sufficient reasons for me to ask what Thou at least hast not forbidden my asking. I hereby promise that by Thy grace which I am asking, I will embrace whatever I at length feel certain is the truth, if ever I come to be certain. And by Thy grace I will guard against all self-deceit which may lead me to take what nature would have, rather than what reason approves."

It seemed strange to me how things I had believed for years could suddenly be seen in a new light, a light that turned them topsy-turvy. I wrote to a Reformed friend, "I've been reading a lot, too, and all of a sudden, even Louis Berkhof seems biased. I'm referring specifically to his book, History of Doctrines, in which he states that even the early church looks Roman Catholic because human beings are by nature, ie., fallen nature, good Catholics, so it's not surprising to see apostasy starting so early. I ask, what about the Spirit of Truth who was to guide the Church into all truth? Did He so soon abandon the project?"

I had a similar experience listening to a debate by Patrick Madrid and two other Catholic apologists versus three prominent Protestant ministers, on the topics of sola scriptura (scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone). The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is that only the Bible is to be our final authority in matters of faith. In other words, we as individuals are to read it and form our knowledge of Christ and His teachings by allowing the Holy Spirit, not the Church, to apply the content of Scripture to our hearts and minds. The debate centered on whether this was what Christ intended, or whether He instead gave to His Church authority and divine guidance to teach His people not only the content and meaning of the Bible, but the whole Christian life.

My first step in becoming an Evangelical had been to affirm the Protestant viewpoint, and to begin rejecting the Catholic Church's authority to teach. The Protestant approach to winning me to their side, years earlier, had been to point out case after case where the Catholic Church disagreed with the "obvious" teaching of the Bible. So as I listened to the debate, I had in mind many of the ways Catholic teaching, to my mind, contradicted Scripture. I found it almost impossible to mentally step back from my Protestant assumptions. To me the Catholics simply sounded like they were grasping at straws to get some authority for their blatantly anti-Biblical teachings. Of course they wanted the Church to have the authority! Then they could justify anything Catholic, even things forbidden by the Bible — like calling priests "Father," praying to Mary and the saints, calling the Mass a sacrifice, and the vain repetition of the rosary.

But I made the mistake of listening more than once. The Catholic arguments began to simmer on the back burner of my mind. I looked at the thousands of Protestant denominations, all claiming to properly (and uniquely) interpret the Bible. I thought about the early Church, teaching without a Bible. And I took a hard look at the logic — the Bible itself did not, and indeed could not, teach sola scriptura. It could not get outside itself to affirm its own authority.

I finally wrote to Patrick, "I am surprised at the difference in my reactions. At first, I didn't think through to the rather alarming implications, that I could be rejecting the arguments against sola scriptura because of my own Protestant bias against the Church's authority. It's scary to think the magisterium could be infallible. Think of how many things I would have to change my mind about. And yikes! What about my husband! If I think too seriously about this, there is a very rocky road ahead. Can marital harmony be an excuse for not thinking?" In my wrestling with the question of the Real Presence, I wrote, "Do Catholics have to believe in the actual terminology, 'substance' and 'appearance' as the way to describe the Real Presence? Do they have to believe that the bread and wine no longer remain present after the consecration? Why can one get drunk on the 'appearance' of wine? . . . In the encyclical Mysterium Fidei, does an 'ontological' change mean that you couldn't still have the bread and wine also present after the consecration?"

My Calvinism came into question, of course, and I wrote to a new Catholic online friend, Kenneth Howell, himself a former PCA minister and seminary professor. I wrote, "One of the first Calvinist books I read was Berkouwer's Faith and Perseverance. All those exhortations and warnings in Scripture were explained, while still insisting that Jesus will not lose even one that the Father has given Him! I know the problem is knowing whether you are really one of the elect. I depended on those Scriptures that guaranteed He would never let me go. When I was Catholic, I had in the back of my mind that I might fail to repent before accidentally dying, and then . . . But as a Calvinist, no accidents! And no failing to repent, either."

I posed myself questions and answers in the same breath: "The true Church couldn't have done this particular evil, or taught that particular error. Well, if that's the assumption, there is no visible church on earth, is there? Because every part of the church has done evil, and taught, if only unofficially, some error. The only true Church would be perfect. Is that why the Reformers posited an invisible church? How am I going to make peace with Church history?"

Understanding Catholic teaching on infallibility didn't come easily. At the end of July, I was boggled with questions: "What about the question of papal infallibility at Vatican I? And what about teachings apparently being received by the Church, even for long periods of time, and later being rejected? Are the critics, both Protestants and liberal Catholic theologians, merely misunderstanding the dogmas? What about slavery, or torturing heretics?" Putting aside academic questions once in a while, I would worry about my own subjectivity. Kris listened patiently to my doubts, "I'm afraid I might end up sounding fideistic, irrational, naive, and this will become ultimately a matter of what I subjectively decide to place my trust in. I'm afraid there will always be some as-yet-undiscovered Achilles' heel, some hole in the argument, and I will be floundering again, doubting my integrity or intellectual honesty. I know I can't ask for complete certainty, but . . ."

I read The Shepherd and the Rock, by J. Michael Miller, C.S.B, then wrote to Kenneth, "I've noticed a funny quirk in the order of my issues to study. I think I've come to terms with, or accepted, infallibility, and you'd think that would be the final question, wouldn't you? After all, if infallibility is true, then the teaching of the Church on all these other matters should simply follow, under the umbrella of the teaching authority. So why am I still fussing about justification? To me, it's a strange phenomenon. But being rational about the irrationality of it doesn't change my questions. It's almost embarrassing to recognize my own nonsense." Kenneth told me not to worry about the logical order, but to study what was important to me. "Let the truths of the mind drop down into the heart," he wrote.

By now, my pastor and family were becoming seriously alarmed. I e-mailed Kris, "My pastor said he doesn't really know what to say, because if I reject sola scriptura, he can't make effective scriptural arguments, since I would defer to the Catholic interpretation of anything he uses. He asked me to pray that I would recognize my true motives, and all my motives, which I am willing and eager to do, even though his implication seems to be that my motives are questionable."

During my vacation, I studied constantly, almost to the point of exhaustion, and Kris and Ken heard from me daily. "Justification by faith is the issue of the week . . . going through the Westminster Confession, chapter 1, made me realize that I could actually see through some very old and well-established arguments. I could see the agenda, almost a strategy. The Protestant idea of 'perspicuity,' or clarity, of Scripture is the way out of having to swallow Rome's authority. Why does all this take me so long?" And the next day, "I read through the sixth session of the Council of Trent again this morning. This time it was much more difficult, although I understood it better. The paradox is resolved by noticing that now I am scouring it to see if I can agree with it."

"Reformation Day" was commemorated in my Presbyterian church with a medieval fair. There were booths for sampling the cultural and religious customs of Luther's time, old German foods, and a chapel where costumed "monks" illuminated manuscripts, while Gregorian chant floated from a CD player behind the scenes. A cardboard Wittenberg Door was set up where you could post your own 95 Theses. "Oh, the theses I could post if I were ready," I thought.

In adult Sunday school, the pastor began to get nervous about calling on me, but sometimes he would ask me the Catholic position on a question, or direct comments toward me. A friend asked me, "Why is he picking on you?"

I whispered back, "I think he's worried about me."

"Should he be?"

"Probably," I hedged. Other friends started inviting me over to chat. Their concern grew as I shared my "re-formed" understanding of the Catholic Faith. I felt overwhelmed trying to explain in a few words what had taken me months of intense study. I carried with me these words of Newman:

"I do not know how to do justice to my reasons for becoming a Catholic in ever so many words — but if I attempted to do so in a few . . . I should wantonly expose myself and my cause to the hasty and prejudiced opinions of opponents. This I will not do. People shall not say, 'We have now got his reasons and know their worth.' No, you have not got them, you cannot get them, except at the cost of some portion of the trouble I have been at myself."

I spent more and more time praying, with renewed faith, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, asking for strength to say my goodbyes at church, and to be peaceful and loving at home.

Finally, I told the pastor that I had made my decision. He relayed my intention to the elders, who then wished to meet with me to admonish me from Scripture. I had told the pastor about St. Francis de Sales, who was Bishop of Geneva right after the Reformation. As a young man, before he was made bishop, he was responsible for the conversion of thousands of Calvinists back to the Catholic Church. He won their hearts with his gentleness and persistence in teaching the truth. When they would not listen to his preaching, he wrote leaflets and slid them under their doors. He lived among them at great personal risk, and won them by his love. I told the elders that I had decided to return to the sacraments on the day the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of this apostle to the Calvinists, January 24. I felt that this Saint had reached down personally through space and time, through the communion of saints, to rescue one more little Calvinist.

My meeting with the elders lasted almost two hours. They asked if I pray to Mary, and what exactly is the rosary (they were appalled), and how I could accept the pope, and what about the wicked popes, and the persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Church. They thought that any idea of "infused" righteousness was equivalent to "another gospel." When they realized that I wouldn't agree to sola scriptura, they saw there would be no dissuading me using only the Bible. So they compared Catholicism to other religions that accept private revelation — fringe charismatic groups, Mormonism, etc. "It's dangerous to get away from the Book," they warned.

They questioned "works righteousness." How do you know when you've done enough, if you have to do anything at all? And what about confessing to a man, and praying to saints, as if they have an inside track because of their merit?

But the main focus was on submission. They warned me about being proud and thinking I know more theology than my husband, assuring me that in this matter he is more knowledgeable than I, because he at least knows I should submit to his wish that I remain Protestant, and that is biblical. (Besides, they thought my theology was rapidly departing from being biblical.) They quoted 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 about a woman learning in silence and humility: "Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church."

They also questioned my hidden motives, and when I assured them I had prayerfully examined all my reasons, they were convinced I was deceiving myself. As painful as that meeting was, the personal farewells were more excruciating. I went to each friend and family's home to explain my departure, and to give opportunities for questions. Their questions were similar to those of the elders, and I had the strange sensation of moving back to where I had been before starting this journey. I could see now that the questions all had answers. They were not an impregnable fortress of solid Protestant doctrine, but rather bits and pieces of a man-made system that started out 450 years ago as a way of avoiding the authority of the true Church. I had been taken in by the rebellion, and so had these believers, although with varying degrees of responsibility.

What I see clearly from here is that my Protestant brothers and sisters are just like me, some with more theological education to buttress their errors, some with less. But the errors are still errors.

With loving patience, wise leading and lots of prayer, each Protestant heart is a potentially Catholic heart. To me, it doesn't matter how numerous the questions are, or how seemingly complex. Each Protestant question can be an opportunity for any Catholic to point to the answer. Those who didn't have the answers for me still pointed to those who did, and all were leading me back into the fullness of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

On January 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, I was received back into the arms of the Holy Catholic Church. Since I had made a profession of faith in the Presbyterian church, I now made a renewed profession of faith in all that the Catholic Church teaches. I chose to read the profession of the Council of Trent, since it spoke the truth in regard to specific errors I had embraced. Then I received the sacraments of penance, anointing of the sick, and Holy Eucharist.

As I wrote to my friends, "What can I say? It's all beyond words somehow. I feel plunged anew into sacramental graces. Drenched! Penance, anointing of the sick and Holy Communion — all within the hour, and then a peaceful prayer time alone with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Visible, audible, touchable! 'This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have touched — we speak of the Word of life' (1 John1:1). Amen! Right now I'm melted by love and speechless in the light of His Grace."

In the months since my coming home, I have prayed daily that John Henry Newman's Prayer for a Happy Death may come from the hearts of many more converts:

Oh, my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in the strong arms of Thy sacraments, and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious Saints . . . smile upon me; that in them all, and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die, as I desire to live, in Thy Faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.