I promise I haven’t left this series out to dry. In fact, part of the reason I haven’t added to it in months is because I want to treat it seriously, with the respect I believe it deserves. Not a week goes by that I don’t outline in my head what I want to say in my next installment here.

…Which is why I need to let go of the idea that each installment must be a beautifully crafted treatise and logical play-by-play of all my thoughts tied up in a pretty apologetic ribbon. I’ve said so numerous times in each one I’ve written so far, but I still seem to believe this thing really has to be a tightly buttoned ship before I set sail (apologies for the mixed metaphors here, but this is what I mean —I'm just gonna let them slide. ...Look at me: growth!)

This is part of a series:

• Part 1: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi: Swimming the Tiber

• Part 2: Says Who?

• Part 3: Be Our Defense Against the Wickedness

From here on out, I hope to write more in this column with a bit more stream-of-consciousness freedom, trusting that you, the reader, are reading this because you're willing to come along for the ride, as bumpy as it may be. Here we go.

I admittedly felt somewhat suffocated when I first became Catholic. It was in the middle of the pandemic, so we were already bereft of regular Sunday church attendance (which, deep down, I secretly appreciated because I longed for a break from ‘it all’ [gestures broadly at Christian culture]). We were in-between churches, as is often the case with Protestants—we loved the people at our Anglican church but we never quite felt at home there, and it was getting harder by the week to get the kids in the car on time without feeling like a hypocrite who required her children to participate while wondering why I myself needed to participate. The short-term break from ‘it all’ was a welcome relief.

I had already been nerdily deep-diving on all things Catholic by this time: mainlining YouTube channels, podcasts, books, and social media accounts, searching Google with any question I could think of, from “Why do Catholics make such a big deal about Mary?” to “Why do Catholics have more books in their Bibles?” When the pandemic hit, and we as a family were suddenly forced to attend ‘virch’ (our word for virtual church), it almost felt like God had given us a permission slip to truly look into this Catholic thing as the central path in our spiritual journey, and not just as a side quest disguised as a hobby.

I asked Kyle, my husband, if he was interested in joining me on all my Catholic theology deep dives, and he answered, without hesitation, “YES—let's do it.” He was also questioning all sorts of stuff, but his research was taking him down toward certain Eastern philosophies, like Buddhism—not really because he was questioning Christianity, looking back, but because he really did see merit in the maxim that “all truth is God’s truth.” He knew I was nerding out on Catholic stuff and was genuinely interested, but our two different personalities and skill sets meant we were working on ‘all this’ as a team (i.e., I’m a giant nerd and will happily spend weeks with my nose in books on doctrine, history, and philosophy, which Catholicism has in spades).

Back to my feeling suffocated. The pandemic hit, which meant we spent nearly a year in discernment over the idea of becoming Catholic. We started our local parish’s RCIA1 program in September, but that lasted about five weeks; true to many well-intentioned RCIA programs, it wasn't geared toward us—Christians already solid in their faith and ready for deeper answers to the “weird Catholic stuff.” Those first long meetings were entirely focused on basic questions like, “Who is God?” and “Is God real?” Worthwhile for those who needed those topics answered, but those meetings felt like a poor use of our time and energy, considering they were scheduled to last through Easter of next year. Our questions, if they would be answered at all, wouldn't even be on the table until spring.

I’d expressed this to a new-ish internet friend of mine, Andrew Petiprin, a fellow writer and former-Anglican-priest-turned-Catholic (as well as fellow Texan). He suggested I look into the Ordinariate, a new (in the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church sense) diocese2 whose cathedral was located less than 200 miles from us3, created by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and aimed toward Anglicans who wished to come into full communion with the Catholic Church. Skipping important details, let's just say that as soon as we discovered the existence of the Ordinariate, we knew we'd found exactly what we were looking for: fellow converts who would understand our particular path. Andrew introduced us to one of his fellow former Anglican priests, , who was now a Catholic priest within the Ordinariate. I DM'd him on Twitter, and he graciously agreed to chat with me.

We hopped on the phone, then eventually agreed to meet over Zoom. He was in Houston and was not only a high school teacher, but also a husband and father of two special-needs children—in addition to being a priest. To say he was busy is an understatement, yet he willingly agreed to meet with Kyle and me to hear our concerns about our slog in RCIA while still wanting a way to possibly discern a way into the Church. After hearing about our plight—which turns out is a very, very common one for long-standing Protestants who have genuine doctrinal questions that aren’t satisfied by their local RCIA’s ‘answers’—he suggested we create a sort-of jerry-rigged discernment program of our own, seeing as we were still mid-pandemic. Kyle and I would read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and then Fr. Jonathan would meet with us over Zoom a couple times a month, when we could ask him any and all questions we had.

This was a massive answer to prayer and exactly what we needed (in my opinion, this is honestly how it should be for all already-Christians who are searching in good faith: read the Catechism; ask a priest questions). We could read for ourselves what the Church actually taught, directly from the source, then ask as many questions as we wanted from a priest who understood because he, too, was once Protestant. God was good and merciful, and our path was made clearer.

I’ll get to the details of our question-and-answer sessions soon enough, but it was near the end of our series of Zoom meetings when, after yet another deep-dive on a ‘weird Catholic’ topic (I don’t remember specifically which one), when I said to Fr. Jonathan, “It’s kinda wild to me that the Catholic Church has something to say about nearly everything, because it basically means the Church says a lot about the particulars about how I should live.”

“Yep,” he said. “The Church does have a lot to say about how we should live.” I was thinking about all the social issues and cultural mores Catholics are known for: abortion, not using contraception, going to confession, and the like. I’d also discovered that the Church considered it a sin to not to go church on Sundays—and not only on Sundays, but also on certain days of the year they called “holy days of obligation4,” which bothered my Americanized autonomous streak six ways to that Sunday. So much of my personality was wrapped up in individualism, a you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do trait that I nearly wore as a badge of honor (see: homeschooling, growing our own food, taking our kids around the world, working via the internet as a self-employed writer, living in an old small house, etc.). You’re telling me I couldn’t sleep in one Sunday and have a leisurely brunch, just because I felt like it, without then having to high-tail it to the confessional?

I really had to grapple with the idea of submitting to a tradition that wanted its tentacles in the day-to-day of how I lived my life. Our country’s entire foundation was built with the opposite mindset—freedom means getting to do what we want—and I was a byproduct of that worldview5, even if I didn’t want to admit it. Becoming Catholic meant submitting my will to a humble admittance that I didn’t always know what was best for me. As G.K. Chesterton said, “A Catholic is a person who has plucked up enough courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.”

“But here's the thing,” Fr. Jonathan then said, “The Church has a say in how we live our lives not because it’s controlling, but because those ways it says we should live are how we should live. Living this way is what we’re made for.”

He was right. I knew he was right. …But I didn’t want him to be right.

He then helped me unpack my slippery-sloped misunderstanding that the Church also asks people to check in their brains, that it deprives us of creative freedom, or that it wants a bunch of cookie-cuttered automatons. Quite the opposite, actually; assenting to God-ordained authority provides the right kind of freedom, the freedom to do what we ought. Within that boundary awaits all sorts of beautiful, life-giving freedom, which is one reason there are untold various types of saints, from kings to soldiers to mystics to farmers (another topic to unpack soon).

“The Church tells people how to live because it wants us to experience actual freedom in Christ. Like a good parent, the Church guides its children into true obedience,” explained Fr. Jonathan.

“I get that,” I said, “But it still makes me feel suffocated.”

“Yep,” he laughed, “I get that. And it should. Our culture has indoctrinated us into believing true freedom is getting to do whatever we want.”

Kyle and I, as well as our three kids, all eventually entered the Church on February 6, 2021, making our final steps toward this obedience a 357-day journey of asking as many questions as we could think of and praying desperately for guidance. Our confirmation service was a beautifully small rite of passage at the Ordinariate cathedral comprised only of our family of five, Daniel and as our confirmands, and Fr. Jonathan (thanks, pandemic)—and three-plus years later, I still remember the gist of how Fr. Jonathan ended his homily to us:

“Look around this cathedral: there's a lot of ‘stuff’ in Catholicism. There's statues, stained-glass windows, Rosary beads and all sorts of prayers, saints days and corresponding feasts, liturgies that tell us when to stand and kneel, encyclicals and Church councils, cardinals and committees, and even seven ‘extra’ books of the Bible. There’s a lot. ...But these things are all there for the sole purpose of pointing each of us to Jesus. And at the end of your life, that’s all it’s going to be: you and Jesus. On your deathbed, you’ll have to look him square in the face and say, ‘I submitted to your will and followed you.’ The Church feels like it bombards us with ‘extras,’ and in a way, it does. But every one of those things points us to the one thing that matters: Jesus himself.”

We were confirmed, then celebrated with tacos before heading back home a few hours away. And we continued to ask questions. Lots of them. We’d pore over the Catechism for the answers, use the internet for follow-up clarification, and occasionally text Fr. Jonathan for deeper insight. Soon after, Fr. Mike Schmitz released his Catechism in a Year podcast, which we slurped up like we’d found an oasis in the desert. And we continued to learn about the teachings of the Catholic Church, now as Catholic Christians. We still do.

Here’s my ultimate point: the fact that there is a Catechism means that there’s a definitive thing a Catholic can point to as to what he or she definitively believes (it’s one of the reasons I’m not Orthodox, as I briefly explained here). This Catechism explains the Church’s doctrine, definitions of terms, and dogma—and also how we should then live accordingly. Every bit of it is grounded in the Bible as its foundation, and every bit of it is clear as day.

This is why I truly believe that anyone who wonders what makes the Catholic Church distinctive should go to the source itself and read the Catechism. Don't listen to what Protestants say about what it is Catholics believe (which is what I did for the first 38-ish years of my life), but also don’t just hear from Catholics what Catholics believe. Go to the Catechism and read it for yourself.

This is what Fulton Sheen meant when he said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” The vast majority of beliefs from non-Catholics about what Catholicism teaches are either assumptions, hearsay, or misunderstanding: we don’t worship Mary, we don’t believe works get you into heaven, we don’t believe the Pope is sinless (all things I assumed for most of my life about Catholic doctrine).

The fact that there’s a Catechism is also why there’s such a thing as “bad Catholics.” There's no such thing as a bad Protestant, really, because there's no one set of doctrines a Protestant must assent to in order to be a Protestant. One can simply migrate to a new denomination or local church if your beliefs (or your local church’s beliefs) ever change. In 2,000-plus years, the Catholic Church hasn’t ever changed or wavered in its dogma (more later on the idea of development of doctrine). Yes, there are scores of bad Catholics, but at least we can point to why they're ‘bad.’6 There’s a Catechism that clearly spells out how we’re supposed to be Catholic.

And finally, the fact that there’s a Catechism points us toward arguably Jesus’ greatest desire for his followers: that we all be one. When he gave Peter the keys to the kingdom and said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church7,” he didn’t say churches. He meant a singular church. And from St. Peter, and the other original apostles, the one Church was born: the Catholic (meaning ‘universal’) Church, which can only point to Jesus Christ as its founder, not any other namesake who created a new denomination. The Catechism’s existence reveals unity. There is a set of beliefs, clearly spelled out for anyone to read.

As someone plagued for years with the eternal question, “Says who?” about every single issue of Christianity, from doctrine like Sola Scriptura to cultural mores like why church services are structured the way they are, the fact that there was a definitive Catechism was a logical, inevitable nod in the Church’s favor. And the fact that there were definitive answers to the natural follow-up question, “How shall we then live?” was ultimately and admittedly a welcome relief. Even if it meant going to church every single Sunday.

As you’ve read from my first few installments, the two issues of how we worship matters and who’s in charge of all this were primacy for me.8 If these two issues—how we’re supposed to worship and says who—were the ingredients in the foundation upon which the rest of my conversion rested, then I suppose it’s safe to say that the existence of a Catechism I could definitively point to was the first layer of bricks sitting on that foundation.

I was never asked to be my own pope and decide for myself what was true. 2,000-plus years of wisdom said that there were others wiser than me in charge of that job. My job was merely to humbly submit and then live accordingly.

Which I did on February 6, 2021, somewhat kicking and screaming, but with mostly an overwhelming sense of relief and peace. Phew… I’m not my own pope.

Did I still have lingering questions? You betcha. Do I still have questions? Yep. We’re called to submit, but that doesn’t mean checking our brains at the door. The four Marian dogmas, the male-only (and celibate) priesthood, indulgences, confession, praying to saints, the role of the Bible’s inerrancy, and a thousand things besides? I’ll get to how those answers were made clear to me (hopefully soon). But I really can’t overstate just how important it was to understand, first and foremost, that the answers to those questions aren’t up to me in the first place.

1. If we’re made to worship in a particular way,

2. If Jesus established the first apostles as men who would then lay hands on future leaders and continue a line of apostolic succession, all the way to today,

3. And if those men, in their wisdom, were given discernment to know what’s true and how we should live accordingly—all found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

…then I must assent. And still ask all my questions.

More soon and very soon (fingers crossed),

- Tsh

p.s. The main helpful resources in this category for me:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church (here it is digitally)

• Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Catechism in a Year podcast

• Pope Peter: Defending the Church's Most Distinctive Doctrine in a Time of Crisis, by Joe Heschmeyer

I mentioned in my previous installment of Lex Orandi that my next piece would unpack what the Church Fathers (the earliest Christians) said about apostolic succession, the Eucharist, and other essential Catholic doctrines. Well, I lied. That’ll be my next next installment. For this shorter one, I want to be annoyingly seasonal. 🎃

This is part of a series. If you haven’t yet, read the first two installments:

• Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi: Swimming the Tiber, Part 1

• Says Who?: Swimming the Tiber, Part 2

I’m writing this whole series somewhat as the Spirit leads, which means it’s not necessarily in the chronological order of my discernment and ultimate conversion. Apostolic succession really was the hinge-point topic for me, since it all has to do with authority—and I’ll continue to explain and define what that meant for me—especially because I realized that if I found confident reasons to affirm that the Catholic Church was indeed the one Church founded by Jesus himself, all the other “weird Catholic stuff” was extra. I could still find it all weird, I could still question its validity (questions were welcomed, actually!), and I could still wrestle with the idea that those doctrines were, in fact, correct, but if this Church was legitimately THE Church, then hey—I could at least assent to its authority while questioning the finer points.

But to diverge for just a moment on the fundamental issue of authority and instead dip a toe into the “weird waters” in light of this week being All Hallow’s Eve… It was farther along in my discernment journey when I realized that whenever there are accounts of serious a demonic presence, it’s always the Catholic priests who are brought out as the big guns.

Truly. There are stories of Protestants and Orthodox Christians who fight demonic influences, yes, but whenever there’s a serious issue of a real, legit possession or infestation, it’s always the Catholic Church that’s called in. And not just in movies.

It was a simple realization for me, but a pretty important one: If Satan and his demonic powers recognize the Catholic Church as legit, why wouldn’t I?

Side note: I went through a brief stage in my later evangelical years questioning all that “demonic stuff,” toeing the line in the middle of what’s literal and what’s imaginative, figurative language—but it seemed like most of the intelligent Christians throughout history that I admired really recognized the reality of invisible powers of good and evil. Why would I be smarter than them? I eventually assented.

There’s no way I have the authority nor time to unpack all that’s behind the idea of real, legit demonic powers, exorcisms, and other forms of calling out powers of evil in the name of Christ—so I’ll let others do it (ignore any tacky sensational-looking thumbnails):

Some of these interviews and stories are spooky, but they’re legit, and they’re most definitely worth listening to. Don’t shy away. Listen with the simple posture of curiosity, and with a willingness to learn something unexpected. I know I don’t seem like the type to link to or recommend these sorts of things… That should pique your awareness all the more.

I’ll write more again soon unpacking the foundational issues that led me from a lifetime of evangelical Protestantism, to Anglicanism, to finally Catholicism—but in the meantime, as always, here are the key resources that helped me on my years-long journey:

• Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas Beaumont

• Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be, Too), by Brandon Vogt

• Stunned by Scripture: How the Bible Made Me Catholic, by John Bergsma

• When the Church Was Young: Voices of the Early Fathers, by Marcellino D'Ambrosio

• Trent Horn’s Counsel of Trent episodes

• Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Ascension Presents episodes

Super glad a Catholic priest has blessed our house,

Tsh

I’m not writing this ongoing series with the charism of apologetics; I’m first and foremost a woman who’s been given the gift of communication best outputted through writing. As a latecomer, the more I learn about the whole shebang on this side of the universal Church and her storied history, the more I fully acknowledge how much I have to learn. One of my regrets in converting not until my fortieth decade is only five decades left, at most, to feast at the theological and philosophical buffet that is Catholicism. I believe that it probably takes a good five years, minimum, of spiritual formation as a Catholic before one has any gaul resembling authority to speak on matters as rich and complex as her doctrines, history, and tradition. That means my writing anything here is more aligned with the genre of memoir than treatise.

This thought from G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite Catholics, summarizes well my chief reason for swimming the Tiber:

“A Catholic is a person who has plucked up enough courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.”

I am a new Catholic after a lifetime of Protestantism because I fully acknowledge that, like it or not, I am a product of my age by the mere fact that I live in this age, and the chief hallmarks of this age are modernism and chronological snobbery infused with a post-Enlightenment worldview (more on this in a future installment). Old is suspect; new is informed and enlightened.1

Furthermore, here in the United States we Christians automatically put the burden of proof on Catholics, not Protestants—because the dominant form of Christianity over here, by leaps and bounds, is Protestant, we ask Catholics to explain why they’re Catholic instead of ask Protestants why they’re Protestant. I didn’t realize I held this posture, but I did. I automatically held the view that Catholics have added a bunch of stuff to their Christianity, instead of the view that Protestants have taken away a bunch of stuff from their Christianity. Catholics are bombarded with questions about Mary, the Pope, purgatory, saints, and justification, while Protestants rarely stop to ask why they assume those Catholic positions are wrong—and if they are indeed wrong, why is their theology about those issues assumed correct?

This was my posture under the guise of one more admitted truth: for almost all my life, I honestly didn’t think much about Catholicism at all. As a twenty-first-century adult, I wasn’t “protesting” anything. In fact, I never really thought of myself as a Protestant at all. I simply thought of myself as a Christian. It never occurred to me to question why I was a Protestant because, from my point of view, I wasn’t a Protestant. I was just a Christian2. To be frank, Catholics were those kids in high school who knew nothing about what they believed, drank at parties, and occasionally protested abortion; they were the minority sisters in my Christian sorority I didn’t quite know what to do with as the Chaplain. As an evangelical, I was given carte blanche to question whether Catholics even were Christians, acknowledging that every now and then there emerged a few solid Catholics like Chesterton, Tolkien, and Peter Kreeft. At my missions-focused Bible church, Catholics were even an “unreached people group” in quite a few countries. They held on to weird superstitions and syncretisms, they worshipped statues of Mary, and they didn’t even know what it was like to be a “real” Christian free of all that, the poor souls.

I’m throwing myself under the bus first and foremost in saying all this, because I believed every bit of this for a time. I held a mental ranking of Christians until at least my late twenties3: non-denominational evangelicals were the best; then came the evangelical types that subscribed to an extra denominational title, such as Presbyterian or Baptist; followed by those suspicious mainline Protestant denominations like Methodist, Lutheran, or Episcopal; and finally, way down on the list were those Catholics, many of whom may not be saved anyway.

I thought of the Catholic Church as a denomination, as I think many well-meaning Protestants do. I pictured it as different from non-Catholic denominations—a rooted tree separated out of the ground with two trunks; one of which was the big, main tree with all the various Protestant denominations as the branches, and the other, much smaller trunk, was Catholicism as an offshoot by itself.

Today, not quite three years as a Catholic, and I picture the Church very much otherwise. This tree has Jesus as the roots, the Catholic Church as the main trunk, and two smaller offshoots of this trunk: Protestantism and Orthodoxy, where various branches of all sizes represent their many denominational traditions. It’s one tree, and anyone baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are part of its body. But the trunk is the One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church and it is the Church founded by Christ alone.

The Catholic Church can’t point to Luther, or King Henry VIII, or Calvin, or Jim Bob down the street as its founder, because it has no founder besides Christ himself. It wasn’t formed by Constantine during his reign (as some Protestant apologists claim) because it had already existed for hundreds of years. Scores of early Christian documents in the first three centuries display Catholic theology and praxis (the term “Catholic Church” was first used in 107 to describe the community of believers, with “catholic” meaning simply ‘universal’ or ‘whole’). In fact, it all started when Jesus himself told Peter, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19).

The good news is that this means the Catholic Church is for everyone, and it’s the foundation of all Christians from all times and places. We are unified by our history. But we don’t all admit it …yet.

This is why I nod in complete understanding with St. John Henry Newman, a nineteenth-century Catholic convert from Anglicanism, when he said, “To be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant,” and why every week I find more evidence to the truth of twentieth-century Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s observation that, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

These two ideas, in a nutshell, are what happened to me.

After recognizing the basic premise that how we worship matters, my next question was what stared me in the face for years — for most of my thirties, undoubtedly, as I wrestled with my own view of church after having lived overseas for several years as an evangelical, cross-cultural missionary, then later as a pilgrim returning to her home culture and finding a spiritual home in the older tradition of Anglicanism:

Says who?

Where are we getting all this (gestures broadly at Christian theology and culture) from? Who says this is how we “do” church? Who says the Bible is the Word of God? Who says these are the books that belong in the Bible? Who says this is how such-and-such verse is interpreted? And how do we reconcile various interpretations of said verses? Who says this is how someone becomes a Christian? Who says these are the people meant to be leaders of churches?

Billions of Christians agree that God exists and Jesus is God, but beyond that, serious differences emerge. Many say that all that matters is “a personal relationship with Jesus.” Who determines what that looks like? Is it arrogant for one Church to say they’ve got it right and other expressions of Christianity have it wrong?

Again, I’m not an apologist, but here’s where many good-willed Protestants would argue that all these answers are found in the Bible, that this is where we find all our answers for doctrine and how to live. Appealing to the Bible isn’t a bad thing; after all, all Christians do agree that it’s the inspired Word of God, and thus authoritative. This is where we could wade into “Sola Scriptura” waters a bit, but I want to get into that later. For now, my realization was this:

Jesus left a Church, not a Bible.

There’s the aforementioned moment when Jesus named Peter the rock on which he will build his church, and there’s also the basic idea that the Bible itself never prescribes itself as the only authority. In fact, the Bible describes the Church as the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3:15), not the Bible. Jesus started a Church—a living institution full of and led by broken people, yet with authority to carry out his mission and to speak and act in his name. He started this by appointing his closest disciples, the apostles, who then (because they were mortal and would die) passed on their authority to successors.

This apostolic succession is how the Catholic Church can trace all of today’s priests, bishops, and popes, all the way to Jesus appointing the original twelve with Peter as their leader. That was absolutely wild for me to realize. The laying on of hands to appoint other leaders is a real thing, not just a symbolic gesture of “You have the right intent in starting a neighborhood church—go for it.” There’s something legit in a long line of leaders appointing their successors with Jesus at the beginning of that line.

For me, this was incredible comfort, because I had gotten to the point in my faith where I questioned absolutely everything with, “Oh yeah—says who?” If there’s no one central, authoritative Church established by Jesus, then we Christians are left to our own devices to decide what’s true and what’s not. Yes, there’s the Bible, but who’s to say how to interpret the Bible? As soon as there’s a decision made that we don’t like, or that seems fishy, or that doesn’t jibe with our modern sensibilities, we should just find another church that fits our preferences. We’ll just take our ball and play elsewhere. And as soon as that local expression of the church doesn’t fit our convictions or tastes, then time to rinse and repeat. Heck, for some people, that means starting a whole new denomination or branch off of an existing denomination. And why not, if where we are currently doesn’t seem to make sense to us?

Seeing as Jesus talked to his followers about unity more than just about anything else, it didn’t seem to me like this was what he had in mind. Why would he establish a visible Church on earth led by imperfect people, then leave them to their own devices to figure out how to do it?

This is ultimately why apostolic succession became such a hinge point for me, especially as an Anglican. Because unless the answer to “Says who?” is “Jesus says, that’s who,” then why follow a tradition made by a fellow mortal human being? If I became convinced that there is an expression of the universal Church that was literally established by Jesus himself, and not King Henry VIII, or Luther, or Calvin, or Jim Bob down the street, wouldn’t it be silly at best for me to go with one of the later-founded denominations and not the OG church? This was the hinge-point question I wrestled with.

This is why I then went to the early Church writings. It didn’t dawn on me until my search for answers that I was well-versed in the Bible, thanks to my evangelical upbringing, but that I didn’t know much else about what happened with Christians until the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. There was a whole blank chasm in the timeline of history, and this became a head-smack “duh” for me: What did happen in those first fifteen centuries? And most importantly, what happened in those first few centuries post-Jesus on earth? After all, that’s probably where the meat of the whys and hows and wheretofores would be, since those early Christians were really close in time to the original source.

There are countless conversion stories that begin with, “Well, I began reading the early Church fathers and mothers...” Many people in Protestant schools, seminaries, and structures wonder why they’re ‘losing’ many of their faithful to the Catholic Church, and the common denominator is always that they have their students and participants read early Christian documents. It happened to St. John Henry Newman, which is why he said that to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant. It happened to me. Those details are for next time.

In short (who are we kidding? This isn’t short), it started with the recognition that how I worship matters, and then it led to “Who says?” matters. And it was the realization that unless the answer is “Jesus says,” then why would I participate in or obey any other church expression?

Ultimately, apostolic succession was THE issue for me, because if the Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the faith, then I could submit to that truth and then wrestle with all that the Church teaches, from transubstantiation to Marian doctrines, knowing that there are smarter, wiser people than me who’ve wrestled with this a million times deeper than little me. And that the Church is very okay with me wrestling. There’s a difference between assenting and questioning, and the Church delights in our ‘yes’ even if we freely come with a bazillion questions.

As Kyle and I summed up our journey the week we came into the Church: We became tired of being our own pope. We were road-weary from carrying the burden that it was up to us to decide what was true and what wasn’t, what was the correct interpretation of Scripture, and that it was up to us to pass on this self-determined truth to our children. It was an exhausting way to be a Christian, carrying a weight none of us were meant to carry alone.

And as a couple of twenty-first-century American kids who were raised on a diet of individualism and self-determination because it’s in the very air we breathe, boy howdy was it both weird and freeing to submit ourselves to a two-thousand-year-old Church. It’s still a weird feeling!

Next time, I’ll get more into the nerdy weeds about what those early Church fathers say, why apostolic succession really does trail from St. Peter to the current Pope Francis, and why because of this succession, it was more than just doctrinal differences that made what Luther and Henry VIII and Calvin and beyond did more than just a newer way to worship Jesus. In the meantime, here are a few resources about this topic that helped me, if you’d like to dig deeper:

• What the Early Church Believed: Apostolic Succession

• What is Apostolic Succession?

• Apostolic Succession in the Bible

• Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas Beaumont

• Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be, Too), by Brandon Vogt

• Stunned by Scripture: How the Bible Made Me Catholic, by John Bergsma

• When the Church Was Young: Voices of the Early Fathers, by Marcellino D'Ambrosio

• Trent Horn’s Counsel of Trent episodes

• Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Ascension Presents episodes

• Long-form discussions on Pints With Aquinas (depending on my questions)

Gratefully not my own pope,

Tsh

p.s. A common pushback after making the case for the Catholic Church being the OG Church is, “Okay—if that’s true, then why are there so many ‘bad’ Catholics now? Why do most of the Catholics I know not know anything about how to be a Christian? Why do lots of predominately Catholic countries have all sorts of superstitions and weird rituals?” Many times, these arguments come from folks who were raised Catholic but not well catechized and then left the Church, or even had bad experiences with the Church in their upbringing, so this is fair. These were questions I had, too — basically, if the Catholic Church is the church Jesus founded, then why the bad fruit? Again, more on this soon. But the quick answer, in case my words above leave you with this conundrum, is something Brandon Vogt encouraged me with when I asked him these questions: Don’t look at the worst examples, look at the best examples—the saints. Look at Joan of Arc, Augustine, Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Mother Theresa, Maximilian Kolbe, and countless more. Just like how Protestants wouldn’t want their faith judged solely or mostly by certain folks or expressions out there that give Christianity a bad name, let’s make sure we don’t do the same to our Catholic brothers and sisters.

I love the movie Steel Magnolias for many reasons, including the fact that it feels like I’m at a family gathering listening to my aunts whenever the women gather at Truvy’s salon to gossip and argue. But there’s a line — an unimportant, throwaway joke of a like — spoken by Truvy in that film that I sometimes wish were true:

“Oh Annelle, God don’t care which church you go to, just so long as you show up.”

It’s endearing and I completely get the spirit of her comment, and I’m also not pretending like this film is meant to be a theological treatise. But here’s the reality of life, which has been true since the foundations of the world were created: God indeed cares how we worship.

I’m not implying God cannot move beyond our mere human ideas and human-made constructs of things, such as denominations or buildings or even doctrines. God clearly speaks to people in all sorts of ways, well beyond churches and preachers. God uses things like nature, poetry and music and films, and even heretical or anti-or non-religious teachings to bring people to truth. All truth is God’s truth, wherever it’s found.

But God — because He is good — cares about how we worship. And the reason is not that God demands to be worshiped in a certain way, like a hubristic mythological god threatening certain actions and sacrifices lest he smites or curses the humans out of pride and vanity. God desires us to worship in a “right and just” way least of all because it’s good for us.

“Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi” is an old Latin saying that directly means, “The law of prayer leads to the law of belief leads to the law of living,” but the spirit of the phrase means, “How we worship directly affects what we believe, which then affects how we live.” Its watered-down modern second cousin, which I say all too frequently with my kids and students (more about habit formation than theology but still applies here) is, “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

God has divinely created us with a need for our bodies and minds to connect with our hearts. We are body-soul composites, not one or the other. Whether we like it or not, whether we recognize it or not, what we do with our bodies affects what happens in our minds and in our souls. (This is why it’s not good for weak mortals like myself to wait until I feel like working out in order to work out, because it’ll absolutely positively never happen otherwise.)

We actually live out this reality all day long. Exercise is an obvious example, but we also go to work even when we don’t feel like it, we cook dinner and fold laundry because it needs to be done and not because it sounds like the most pleasant way to spend a late afternoon, and we pay our taxes not because the IRS is a well-oiled machine who always has our best interests at heart, but because we don’t want to go to jail. We stop at red lights even when we’re in a hurry. We adults take actions that are not led by feels-good desire all day, every day.

We All Worship Something

If our actions matter in the ordinary quotidian things like the above, then they matter tenfold in how we worship. Worship is not merely a matter of right-thinking that stays in our heads. Our worship affects how we view the purpose of life, how we interact with other people in the world, how we spend our money, what sort of art we value, what gives us peace and solace, and countless other things, including how we view God and the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. This is because ‘worship’ is not just bowing down to a deity, mind checked in at the front, or who we pray to, or what style of music we sing in praise to the divine.

Side note: In this ongoing series, definitions will matter in substantial ways. During my discernment period when I was in the Tiber swimming between one shore and the other, I kept bumping up against this idea of clear definitions — when we use a word, sometimes we assume something is meant when it actually isn’t. It may feel clunky, but my storytelling will include a number of brief side trails (not full-on rabbit trails) where terms are defined.

The definition of ‘worship’ is “the acknowledgment of another's worth, dignity, or superior position.”1 It is recognizing the reality of another’s true nature. (This is why in old-school marriage rites, spouses would say, “With my body I thee worship” — they weren’t pledging to bow down to each other as though they were deities, they were admitting a recognition of each other’s divinely-appointed dignity.) We moderns associate worship exclusively with the broad idea of religion, but worship is a humane act that engages our mind, soul, and body toward the right recognition of a thing. This is why it’s actually a form of justice, because ‘justice’ is "the constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her rightful due.”2 To worship is to give right acknowledgment.

We can’t escape worship because we humans are worshipping beings. It’s hard-wired in our longing to give a right recognition of things — this need to worship comes from the same place as our desire for legal justice when a crime has been committed, for an apologetic wave from a driver when we’ve been cut off in traffic, and when we’re frustrated when a co-worker gets the credit for the hard work we did. To worship is to render justice. Even folks who claim no formal religion walk around worshipping because it’s hard-wired in our very make-up. It’s just what the agnostic David Foster Wallace once said: “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship,”3 and what the convert Bob Dylan once crooned, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”4

And connected with the idea of ‘worship,’ ‘religion’ is “the moral virtue by which a person is disposed to render to God the worship and service he deserves.” This, too, “is sometimes identified with the virtue of justice toward God, whose rights are rooted in his complete dominion over all creation.”5

In other words, religion is rendering justice to God. It’s giving God his rightful due. And to worship in the context of religion, therefore, is to render to God the worship he deserves.

What sort of worship does God deserve? What an odd thing to say at first blush.

It’s as though this is saying that what or who we worship matters, of course, but how we worship matters too. What sort of worship should we be enacting? Is there such a thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ worship? And how is it not hubris for mere mortals to say they hold the corner on the right way to worship?

It was these initial questions that ultimately led to my conversion to Catholicism, but the answers were years in the making, and one answered question led to a million more to unpack. But if you’ve subscribed to this column in The Commonplace, that means you’re at least a little curious as to how all that went down.

Please note that so far, in reference to the maxim of “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi,” I haven’t really referred to Catholicism specifically. At this point, I’m not making any apologetical case for the particular means of worship offered by the Catholic Church. That’s all in good time when it makes sense with the story I’m telling here. Right now, I’m simply stating the fact that how we worship matters. Whether we’re Catholics or Baptists or Lutherans or good ol’ non-denominational folks, like I was for all of my upbringing, or even Muslims or Buddhists or skeptics or atheists or deconstructionists or whatever new definition comes to our shores tomorrow — how we worship matters. And it matters for us and for our humanity. Right worship in the context of religion — giving our Maker his rightful due — makes us more human. In fact, it’s the most humane thing we could possibly do.

How We Worship Matters

We all have a liturgy, both to our religious services and to our ordinary days, even when we don’t recognize them as such. For the high-church types among us, the liturgy is obvious: the collects, the creeds, and the consecration. But low churches have them too: the greeting at the start of a church service, the order and rhythm of the type of praise-and-worship songs sung, the cadence in how the preacher prays, and so forth. So, too, do our days: our morning and evening routines, where we eat our meals and what we do before we partake of them, what we listen to while we make dinner, and the seasonal traditions throughout the year we can’t imagine the holidays without are all part of our unique liturgies. The word ‘liturgy,’ after all, means “the work of the people;” it’s “a public service, duty, or work.”6 It’s how we work. It’s how we do our thing. It’s how we move about in the world.

If how we worship — how we give God his rightful due — is tied to our liturgies — our work of the people, then those liturgies should matter because how we worship matters. Would it be so bold and daring to venture out and whisper that, perhaps, there is a right and a wrong way to worship and enact our liturgies?

Perhaps. Perhaps especially if our liturgical worship forms are tied to truth, because by definition, truth is simply the “conformity of mind and reality,”7 it’s “what is.” It’d be an incongruent shame to our human nature if our liturgy didn’t reflect the truth — the what is-ness of the reality of the world.

This basic realization is part of the foundation that led me to ask certain questions which led me to answers I never saw coming. These initial, surface-skinned answers first pointed to Anglicanism, where I joyfully partook in the body of Christ for about five years before becoming Catholic. After all, its liturgical rites and view of religion felt so spot-on. It really did seem like the “right and just” way to worship God. But little did I know that those years were actually part of a longer on-ramp to a much bigger, much older tradition where so much was ultimately familiar to these Anglican rituals I loved. (Turned out, there was a historical reason for that familiarity. And it’s the same reason why so many Catholic converts these days swim the Tiber by way of a pitstop at the Anglican Church.)

I haven’t made any sort of case for Catholicism yet, and for good reason. First, I was drawn to the larger, simpler idea that how I worship matters. It’s not just a matter of personal preference; it’s a matter of my divinely-crafted nature. At the very beginning of my questioning of everything I knew, I had to ask myself: Is how I currently partake in the Body of Christ reflective of how I’m meant to truly worship? As much as I appreciated the Bible-soaked tradition of my evangelical childhood and adolescence, something about it felt… off. It felt like wearing a too-itchy, ill-fitting sweater. But that’s not quite the right analogy because it smacks a bit too much like personal preference. The whole cadence of the approach to worship felt way too new. Too American. Too unfamiliar with what I read in the Bible, later with what I experienced in visiting different cultures and their worship services around the world, and even later with what I read from the early Church Fathers and Mothers.

Much, much good has come out of modern approaches of worship, so I’m not saying God hasn’t used them. At all. But I did wonder if those approaches to “doing church” — the gatherings, the musical praise-and-worship followed by a long sermon, nary a sacrament to be found — was what Jesus originally meant by being the Church.

These questions first led me to look in Anglicanism for the answers, where I was happy to be for a while. But if I’m honest, hindsight tells me I parked there because it felt safer than being Catholic. There, no one would be concerned for my salvation or put me on a prayer list. Even with all the robes and the liturgical calendar, it was still Protestant and so it was okay.

Five years later, though, I had to wrestle (and whoo boy, wrestling I did) with the conviction that, yes, Annelle, God cares about us both showing up to church and about how we worship at said church. And I swam the Tiber not quite kicking and screaming, but more with a doleful yet resolute obedience, because I realized that my not submitting to the authority of the Catholic Church would ultimately be for me a sin (“a word, deed, or desire in opposition to eternal law” — again with the definitions).8 Once I knew what I knew, I couldn’t un-know.

There’s a Texas-sized sweet yellow onion-worth of layers here, and I plan to slowly peel them each away with this series. All in due time.

Funnily enough, this video from Brian Holdsworth just released this week. It’s pretty spot-on to what I’m referencing in this essay:

Edited to add: Holy cow — similar to how when you buy a new car, suddenly everyone else around you has that car, I feel like I’m suddenly seeing stuff all over the internet about this topic (hello, algorithm). The brilliant Joe Heschmeyer just released this episode — I know the title feels click-baity, but the content is really good (here it is in audio form, if you prefer):

Coming up: why apostolic succession and authority ultimately mattered first and foremost above any questions I had about the weird Catholic stuff, like Mary and purgatory; why beauty and goodness mattered just as much as truth in my conversion (and why that made it hard to leave Anglicanism); how I reconciled with the whole women-not-being-priests thing; why confess your sins to a priest; how on earth I could come to agree that the bread and wine really did become the body and blood of Jesus and the whole thing not being only a memorial we should occasionally do; and more. Because I really did wrestle with all those things and a thousand things besides.

Thank you for reading. More is on its way.

Ora et Labora,

Tsh

p.s. A few years before I converted, my friend and podcast co-host (and fellow convert) told me I should just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to hear directly from the horse’s mouth what it is the Church teaches and not just assume the hearsay I’d been taught by drinking the Protestant waters in which I swam. That was really good advice, and thankfully, it’s pretty easy for anybody to do that now: I highly, highly recommend Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast The Catechism in a Year if you’d like a short, daily play-by-play rundown of Catholic theology in a nutshell.

p.p.s. Another really good, friendly, easy-to-read book is Brandon Vogt’s Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be, Too). Back in my discernment process, I got to chatting with him online, and he graciously sent my family several copies of this book. It was quite helpful — another resource I highly recommend, if you’re truly curious.

p.p.s. For more on the specifics mentioned in this essay about true worship, religion, and justice, It Is Right and Just: Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion, by Scott Hahn and Brandon McKinley is a great read.