Finding the Truth in its Fullness: by Andrew Salvia

 

"Why did you become Catholic? It doesn't make sense why you would change!" was the common statement I heard after I had officially entered the Catholic Church in April of 2007. The purpose of this "conversion story" is to answer those questions, and more. What would an 18 year old boy want to do with the Catholic Church? First, I'll have to backtrack and start the story from scratch.

 

I was born in 1989 in Princeton, NJ. My father was Italian, and my mother was of English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. Both of my parents were very godly people, raising me and my younger sister the best way they knew how. We were brought up in the World Wide Church of God, which was considered by many to be a cult. The reason they were classified so was because of some heretical doctrines, which included denying the Trinity at one point and claiming that those who were from Britain were descendents of the lost tribes of Israel, otherwise known as Branch Davidianism. My father heard the preaching of Herbert Armstrong and Joseph Tkach and left the Catholic faith, of which his family was fairly devout. It was through the WWCG that my parents met each other and married. My parents and my sister and I went to church on Saturdays and not on Sundays. It was for this reason that many believe the WWCG stemmed from the Adventist movement, which considered Sunday worship to be the work of the Devil. The WWCG had very manipulative-like qualities that my parents began to dislike. They controlled what had to be worn to the Saturday service, what food could be eaten during the week, no make-up could be worn, and members could not celebrate their birthdays, Christmas, Easter or even Halloween.

 

In 1997, my family left this group, even though the WWCG started to conformed many of their doctrines to mirror traditional Protestant Christianity. We started to attend the local United Methodist church in the area. This is where my sister and I learned the basics of Christianity. My sister and I attended Sunday School there and learned Bible verses, the Lord's Prayer, erc. I was, however, too young to understand doctrines and reason what was truth and what was not. Living in New Jersey began to be too expensive and my father's job as an aircraft mechanic was not working out. He transferred himself, before his job went under, to Roanoke, Virginia in 1999. This was a very hard time in my life. I had never moved before and I had to leave all the friends I had ever known. I grew very resentful towards my parents for the first few years.

 

In the late fall of 1999, we started to attend the local Methodist church in Salem, where we lived. I made a few friends there, but still to some degree did not fit in. The town where we lived was big into sports, and I was never a huge fan. Regardless, in my first year at the elementary school in Virginia, I made a new friend named Zach. He and I shared some of the same interests and one night he invited me to his church for AWANAS, which was a program similar to the Boy Scouts in some regards, but was focused on getting kids "saved" and teaching them about the Bible. So I went with him, and was immediately engrossed in it. I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever been to, and for a kid my age that lived a fairly average life, this was drastically different. At the time, I knew nothing about differences in Theology between the Methodists and Baptists. I thought they were just all Christians, but worshiped differently.

 

I started to rise through the ranks of AWANAS, learning different Bible passages, and learning how to share Christ with others. They also pressured us with "accepting Christ as our personal Lord and Savior." From what I remember, it was very rigid and fundamentalist. At the time, we were only 11 and 12. The people at the Baptist church also preached the Rapture and that at any moment, Christ could come back and take us all away, and those who didn't trust Christ "as their personal Lord and Savior" would be forced to stay on Earth and endure the Tribulation. I bought into this hook, line and sinker. I spent every moment in constant fear and panic wondering if the Rapture was going to occur, regardless of the fact that I thought of myself as being "saved." It actually had me traumatized for a few years afterwards, because whenever I would hear even an ambulance siren, I thought the Rapture had occured. That was how indoctrinated it was. My friends there even got me to start reading the Left Behind series. I couldn't get enough of this eschatalogical (fancy word for End Times) stuff.

 

I asked my dad about this, and he did not seem to have an opinion one way or the other. It could have been because the Methodists did not speak on this particular area of faith with the same "certainty" as the Baptists or other Evangelicals. By the time I reached sixth grade, I stopped going to AWANAS. They were very judgmental and adamant with their fundamentalist Bible onlyisms. I started to get involved more with my Methodist church and I even joined the youth group. The pastor of the church at that time was also the youth pastor, and a very reverent man. He was fairly young, too. I really admired him and looked up to him a lot. In his sermons he would talk about current things in Christianity, and also how to conform our life to Christ's Gospel. Sometimes he would mention St. Francis of Assisi and St. Augustine. The first time I was ever exposed to a Catholic Saint was in a Methodist church. This particular pastor mentioned the famous quote of this Italian friar: "Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary, use words." That really struck a chord with me. I desired for my Christian life to have purpose.

 

In May of 2003, my youth group went to the Franklin Graham Crusade. We listened for two days about Jesus, but the way the man preached was enlightening. When he made that Altar call, I walked as fast as I could down there. I noticed it was a lot of emotionalism and some of it seemed too good to be true. The idea of "accepting Christ and having ever-lasting life" was something I was familiar with from AWANAS. I went down with the thought of being changed forever in an instant, even though I had done the same thing at AWANAS several times AND after watching the 700 Club on occasion. However, when I got down there they had me pray a prayer saying that I believed in Jesus, which I already did. I didn't feel like anything changed about me after that, and I went on living a relatively normal life, but not focusing too much on Christianity after that. I had assumed that I was saved and there was nothing that could be done at all about it.

 

I still went to the youth group at my Methodist church, and prayed on a daily basis, just going through the motions, because we were never told a different way. We were also led to believe that Catholics were not Christians and part of a cult that was Satanic to the core. No one tried to teach us otherwise. Although Christ told us to love each other, we were told basically to only love each other if the other person was a Christian, and you were not obligated to love a non-Christian. No one ever came out clear and said it, but that was the big elephant in the room. People would share their testimonies of how they were recovering Catholics. Apparently this was not taught by the Methodist church at large, but at this particular church everyone in the congregation believed it, and walked around with unfounded arrogance and never taught others it was not alright to do the same. These things began to worry me.

 

Two years later, the pastor of that church had to leave because the church could not afford to keep him and his family there. He was replaced with a man, who I still to this day admire, but his Theology was very Evangelical, and some of it almost like what I encountered at the Baptist church. So at this point in my life 15 years old, I have a mix of Methodist, Baptist and contemporary Evangelical Theology, and all of it didn't entirely add up either. I began to reason that Sola Scriptura was unfounded and unbiblical. How could the Bible say that it is the only authority to be used in regards to faith and morals, when the Bible did not explicitly say that? Or the fact that each "church" believed they were being guided by the Holy Spirit, but why would the Holy Spirit bring each denomination or even each church within a denomination to a different conclusion? I started to question other doctrines as well in Protestantism. At age 15 I objected to the notion that Christianity was in error for the first 1500 years and Martin Luther had to come fix it. In fact it was through my ninth grade history class that this thinking started to occur to me. We were learning about the Reformation and I did not understand why someone would have to fix the Church if Christ said "the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." I also started to think that if the Church prior to Luther's Reforms venerated the Saints, and if it was true then, why was it not true now? My parents began to grow nervous...

 

When I entered the 10^th grade at the high school, I started to really research my Italian roots as I wanted to be an exchange student in Italy. I was already speaking the language for about a year, so I decided to investigate further into the culture. Upon realizing that their religion was Roman Catholic, I grew very skeptical. I was taught that Catholics worshipped idols and believed that they had to work their way to Heaven. This is the time in my life when God began to pour more Graces into my life than I had ever deserved or dreamed of. I had been searching for a few months to an alternative to Protestantism and also a search for the True Church that Christ left his Apostles. Through my research into the Catholic faith, I began to question every prejudice against the Church I had ever had. I started to pray more than I ever had in my life, until one day when I dropped to the floor and said "God wherever your True Church is, show me the way and make me humble enough to accept it."

 

As I studied the early Church, I did not agree with women sharing in the role as pastor. This concept was completely foreign to the Early Church, as it was the Bishops who were in the role of Christ. It was Christ that was married to the Church, and the Bishops were to imitate Christ in their devotion to Her. In Methodism, men and women could hold the office of pastor, which was a recent innovation. I started to learn how Methodists viewed Communion. What I learned surprised me, because at first it did sound Catholic, but that was only on the surface. Methodists do not have a set belief on Communion. Some will say it is symbolic of Christ's body and blood, while others will use the term "real presence" to describe what takes place. By virtue of being in this particular Methodist community, I knew for a fact that they did not believe it was the true body and blood of Christ as Catholics did. When they use the term "real presence" it means that Christ is present when Communion takes place. Catholics on the otherhand believe that it truly is Jesus Christ and the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine. This was so profound!

 

I also did not understand why John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, while not an ordained bishop took it upon himself to ordain men for his new denomination. In Wesley's fairness, he did not intend to form a new denomination, but he certainly did not have the ability to ordain men. He was an Anglican priest and it is only the bishop who can ordain men. Around this time, Anglicans had a very good possibility of having Apostolic Succession. However, since Wesley was not a Bishop, he never passed on Apostolic Succession to his ministers. There are some desperate claims from Methodists that Wesley was secretely ordained by a rogue Greek Orthodox Bishop, but this does not stand up to history and has never been accepted as truth by the Methodists. Since Methodists have no possible way of having Apostolic Succession, they cannot have a valid Communion. I was so confused by now. I did not understand my own denomination anymore. It's logic was barely tenable, and it's social teachings were sorry. Every Christian denomination until the 1930s taught that contraception was a grave, moral evil. When the Anglicans allowed for some lee way in this area, it didn't take long for other Protestants to follow suit. The Methodist stance on abortion was also horrible. They basically said "use your own judgement" or "if the life of the mother is in danger." I found Methodism to be completely incompatible with the teachings of the Early Church, except the teachings that it received from the Early Church.

From that moment on, I worked almost tirelessly to find Christ's Church. When I read St. Ignatius of Antioch and other Church Fathers (Christians of the first 500-600 years of Christianity), then I realized that the Catholic Church was the True Church. The one verse, however, that changed everything was Matthew 16:18-20. I could not believe my eyes. All Christians from AD 33 until 1517 were Catholics under the care of the Apostle's successors, the Bishops who were guarded by the Holy Spirit. I started reading more conversion stories, listening to Catholic podcasts, and watching EWTN. I delved deeply into hearing Apologetics for the Catholic faith. I bought a Catholic Bible, and through further reading understood that it was the Church that compiled the Bible, not the other way around. Through the great Catholic witness of some apologists and evangelists like Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, John Martignoni, Fr. Mitch Pacwa and many others, I finally decided to come home to the Church. I began attended Liturgy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in 2006.

 

I entered RCIA at 17 years old after attending the local Latin Catholic parish for 6 months or so. What I expected, was not what I experienced. There was little reverence in the liturgy, which was what I was looking for, little respect for the entire 2000 year history of Christ's Church, and the Mass at that parish in particular resembled Protestant worship services to the untrained eye. Still though, I treaded onward still praying to this day for their return at that parish to orthodox, Catholic credence and praxis. Through God's grace, much prayer, studying and discussing with other Catholics online, I entered the Church in April of 2007. I have never been happier as a person since becoming Catholic. Due to God's continuing grace, I found St. Elias, a Maronite Catholic Church that does the liturgy in Syriac, a language Christ spoke. The Liturgy brought me to life and fit the description as "Heaven on Earth." This was the beauty of the Catholic Church that I had discoverd. It was not just the Latin Church, but it is made up of 22 self-governing Churches all in communion with each other, with the Pope of Rome as head of unity and orthodoxy.

 

The Sacraments are the greatest and help us to grow closer to God. I fully understood the "great cloud of witnesses" AKA the Communion of Saints and how they pray for us constantly as stated in the Apocalypse (Revelation). I embraced every doctrine that an anti-Catholic would be ready to dismiss and hate due to God's amazing and profound Grace. The Eucharist, Baptism, Confession, Holy Orders, Mary, Scripture and Tradition, Papal Primacy, everything! I embraced it all because I trusted God to leave us a Church to guide us until he returns again. Once a militant anti-Catholic, but now I am a devout Catholic Christian willing to share Christ's plan of Salvation with everyone. It is my goal to not only share the Holy Catholic Church with my Protestant brothers and sisters, but to all men, women and children everywhere. 

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Andrew Salvia currently lives in Salem, VA and attends the St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church. He is the founder of the St. Pio Society of Evangelists.