Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Conversion - the 95% Rule

Recently, we heard the reading where Jesus says:

. . . "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 . . ." (John 6:53)

Then a few verses (and lectionary weeks) later:
"After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, 'Will you also go away?' Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.'" (John 6:66-69)

It reminded me of the point in my own conversion from the Protestant faith where I had searched and pondered for a long time on my own and come up with a set of answers that made sense to me and gave me something that would bring me peace and guide me well. I was pretty surprised to find that my answers lined up about 95% with what the Catholic Church had been saying for 2000 years. (Hmmm. Seems like I could have saved myself some time here, but, oh well.) Anyway, there was one point, the no-women-priests thing, that didn't make sense to me in the Catholic Church teachings. I remember deciding, like Simon Peter, to give the church the benefit of the doubt on the other 5%. Later I read a beautiful document on the subject, I believe it was by Pope John Paul II, that made me accept that church teaching joyfully.

Also, I recently listened to The Conversion of Scott Hahn, in which he, also, came to believe 95% of everything the church taught . . . except the Mary business. He gave the Church the benefit of the doubt on the 5% and now is deeply in love with The Blessed Mother and a great spokesperson for the Church.

I wonder if other readers have had similar experiences in their own conversion. Let me know if you have.

(By the way, you can get a free CD of Scott Hahn's very interesting conversion story from the Mary Foundation . You pay a dollar for postage for each CD and donations are encouraged, but other than that, it's free. They have other great stuff too, like the rosary on CD.)


1 comment:

  1. That's funny....the same thing happened with my conversion. I was 95% in agreement with the teachings of the church, but I just couldn't get my head wrapped around their "anti-choice" and anti-birth control positions. Ha! Now I'm on the other extreme on the those two issues!

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