A conversion story:EVANGELICAL, EPISCOPALIAN, CATHOLIC

[Denise]

EVANGELICAL, EPISCOPALIAN, CATHOLIC
The Rhone to the Thames to the Tiber

January-February 2011By Taylor Marshall

Taylor Marshall, currently a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Dallas, is the author of The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity (St. John Press, 2009) and The Catholic Perspective on Paul: The Apostolic Origins of Catholic Christianity (St. John Press, 2010). This article originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of The Coming Home Network International Newsletter and is reprinted with permission. © 2010 Coming Home Network, PO Box 8290, Zanesville OH 43702; www.chnetwork.org.

When I was eight years old my best friend informed me that I was going to Hell since I had not been baptized. He had been raised in a devout Missouri Synod Lutheran home and knew well enough that he belonged to Christ through baptism. I, on the other hand, had not been raised in any Christian tradition, nor had I been baptized. It seemed, then, that I would not be saved, nor could I be saved. Baptism remained for me something mysterious and unattainable.

My family was not Christian but was generally virtuous. My mother forbade certain shows and movies as inappropriate for little ones. Lying and stealing were condemned and traditional values upheld. Nevertheless, religion was lacking. My maternal grandfather abandoned his childhood Lutheran faith when the pastor publicly rebuked him regarding his tithe. My maternal grandmother left her childhood Catholic faith when she witnessed a priest scold a pregnant friend who turned to the Church for help after she had conceived out of wedlock. My paternal grandfather died while my father was a boy and, as a result, my father did not receive any religious education. Both my parents were spiritual orphans and, as my Lutheran friend observed, I had not been baptized and was heading toward eternal damnation.


Salvation Through Scripture

All this changed when I was twelve. I received a baseball autographed by the catcher of the Texas Rangers, Darryl Porter. Under his name he had written: “Rom 10:9.” I was eager to decipher his secret message for me, and I soon found out that this code word was a Bible verse. When I finally got hold of a Bible and found Romans chapter 10, verse 9, my heart filled with joy as I read these words: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

At last, I thought, I’ve discovered a way to be saved!

Immediately I said aloud, “Jesus is Lord” (since the Scriptures instructed “with your mouth”). I uttered my first prayer to God, confessing that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. I didn’t know what these words meant, but I knew that I wanted to be saved and that I’d discovered a way of salvation without the apparent prerequisite of baptism.

I was eager to learn more about Christianity, so I began to ask questions. I wanted to know about Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Catholics. I discovered the meaning behind holidays like Christmas and Easter. Before long our whole family was attending services together at the nearby church, a Methodist congregation. During this time I felt that God was calling me to become a pastor.

One day a well-meaning evangelical Protestant camp counselor told me that I must read the Holy Scriptures every day because the Antichrist would soon arrive and confiscate every copy of the Holy Bible remaining on earth! In the days of tribulation, he explained, the only Scriptures we would possess would be those we hid in our hearts through memorization. As a 16-year-old looking for spiritual direction, I took his admonition seriously. In the next two years, I read the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation three times consecutively.

In time I discovered that there were “liberal” and “conservative” churches. As it was explained to me, “liberal” churches follow reason, and “conservative” churches follow Scripture. I certainly wanted to be one of the faithful Christians who followed Scripture.

I visited a charismatic congregation and was impressed by the “altar calls.” At the end of every sermon the pastor would ask all present to close their eyes and bow their heads. He next addressed those who were not Christians or who needed to recommit their lives to Christ. Then he would call them forward. These penitents often cried while the music roared. I found this all very impressive. But after about three months, I noticed that the same people “got saved” week after week. The routine increasingly appeared formulaic. I desired something deeper.


John Paul II: The Antichrist?

After high school I was accepted into Texas A&M University, where I majored in philosophy and minored in Greek and Latin. There I encountered a “Bible Church” and was delighted to find a congregation that was biblical, conservative, and balanced. I became involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, went on a summer missionary trip to China, and always tried to share my faith with those who did not know Christ.

Whenever I asked a Catholic whether he knew Jesus Christ as his “personal Lord and Savior,” I received only blank stares or stuttered replies. I became convinced that Catholics were not “saved.” As I understood it, Catholics might wear crucifixes but they did not know the crucified Lord personally.

As I learned more about Catholics, I found that they were seemingly obsessed with the “Eucharist” (a new term for me). I soon discovered — to my horror — that they worshiped the Eucharist as if it were Christ Himself! I also learned that they were united in their love and appreciation for “Pope John Paul the Second.”

My knowledge of the Catholic faith at that point consisted of three things: (1) Catholics do not know what “faith in Christ” means; (2) Catholics worship bread; and (3) Catholics love Pope John Paul II.

Like the once-Anglican John Henry Cardinal Newman, I jumped to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was the Beast of the Apocalypse and that the Pope was the Antichrist. If the Pope loves Jesus Christ, I reasoned, then he would certainly teach his people to have faith in Christ — to love Him always and to draw near to Him — not to worship bread or ignore the Scriptures.

My mind was made up. I agreed with a remark the Puritan writer Richard Baxter once made: “If the pope be not anti-Christ, he hath the ill-luck to appear so much like him.” Here, I thought, was a man who fit the description of the Devil’s allies in the Apocalypse: He wore gold and jewels, and he surrounded himself with men donning scarlet and purple (Rev. 17:4). Crowds hailed him. He addressed the United Nations. Presidents and prime ministers visited him and kissed his ring. He held up bread to be worshiped. John Paul II simply had to be the Antichrist.


Faith & Reason Come Together

I soon discovered a theological system that would further confirm my suspicions about the “anti-Christian” nature of the Catholic Church. Among my evangelical friends were those who favored “Reformed” theology. These men often met together to discuss John Cal­vin and others in the Reformed theological tradition. I purchased my own copy of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and, for the first time in my life, I discovered a system of Christianity that claimed to be intellectually coherent and faithful to Scripture. I had initially believed that faith stood contrary to reason, just as “conservative” Christianity stood contrary to “liberal” Christianity. At last, I learned that faith and reason complement each other — that faith perfects reason. The Reformed version of Protestantism was conservative, anti-Catholic, and intellectually satisfying for me as I sought to find my way through college as a philosophy major.

As I read Calvin and other Reformed theologians, I discovered four things. First, I learned that sacraments are important. Calvin seemed to take the sacraments more seriously than I presumed possible. He made a strong case for infant baptism and weekly communion. Although Calvin’s understanding of the sacraments was seriously erroneous in many ways, I discerned through reading him that the sacraments are the divinely appointed means of grace.

Second, I came to see how God ordered the history of human redemption covenantally. Salvation history was important, and the New Testament stood in continuity with the Old Testament. Having rejected dispen­sational­ism, I began to read the Old Testament in light of the New.

Third, I discovered the fathers of the Church, especially Augustine, John Chrysostom, and Ambrose. Their teaching opened up many new doors of understanding for me.

Finally, I concluded that Catholic teaching was even worse than I had previously imagined. The Protestant Reformers revealed further “Romanist errors” regarding justification, authority, eucharistic sacrifice, and the Virgin Mary.

Despite my acquired prejudice against “Romanism,” my introduction to the Church fathers eventually led me to read them in their own words. As I read the fathers, I discovered that they were liturgical, and that the Eucharist held the central place in their worship. I also observed the ancient threefold hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon — which in turn led to my appreciation for apostolic succession.

I still held to the traditional Protestant distinctions of “justification by faith alone” and “Scripture alone.” But I was becoming progressively sacramental. After graduating from Texas A&M, I enrolled in the nation’s foremost Reformed seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. If the faculty of Westminster could not cure me of my growing appreciation for the sacraments, I would do the “reasonable” thing: I would follow the road to Canterbury and become an Anglican!


Becoming an Anglican Priest

At this time I met my future wife, Joy. She had been raised Baptist but had also become a “sacramental Presbyterian.” We were both members of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). On our first date she mentioned the Eucharist. On our second date, she brought up apostolic succession. Here was a beautiful college girl asking the same questions I had been asking! I was convinced that she was the woman for me. A year later we were engaged.

Westminster Seminary was a wonderful place for us, and we grew in our faith. Yet it became increasingly clear to us that Reformed and Presbyterian churches were too “Protestant” for us and that the Catholic Church was, well, too “Catholic.” So we followed the via media and became Anglicans.

I felt an initial joy and excitement as I began to pray the Divine Office throughout the day, attend daily communion, and receive spiritual direction from an elderly Episcopal priest. Our first child, Gabriel, was baptized in the Anglican tradition. Before long we were in seminary again — this time at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin.

Nashotah House bears a reputation as the Anglo-Catholic seminary of the Episcopal Church. “Anglo-Catholicism” refers to a movement within Anglicanism that leans toward a more Catholic understanding of the Anglican tradition, especially the Anglican priesthood. My Episcopal bishop explained to me that he was satisfied with my theological education but that he wanted me to become more liturgically and devotionally Catholic. He desired for me to learn how to chant, baptize a baby, celebrate funerals, cense an altar, and hear confessions. I was to become not merely a “minister” but a “priest.”

Now that I no longer maintained that the Catholic Church was entirely evil, I began to experience what some have called “Catholic angst.” As I enthusiastically adopted more and more of the Catholic tradition I felt drawn in some ways to the Catholic Church, and I began to feel a certain anxiety. As G.K. Chesterton observed, “The moment men cease to pull against the Catholic Church, they feel a tug towards it.”

My time at Nashotah House exposed me to Catholic piety in a tangible way. The Angelus bells were rung morning, noon, and evening. We prayed and chanted the cycle of the Breviary from our hand-carved choir stalls — stalls similar to those found in medieval monasteries. I wore a black cassock every day to prayers and classes, and I removed it only after the seminary celebrated Vespers toward the end of the day. Priests were available for confessions. The Anglican Eucharist was celebrated every morning, sometimes with the priest facing ad orientem — toward the East — as was done in the old Latin Mass. Eucharistic adoration was encouraged.

On some days I would wander off into the woods in my cassock, read devotional literature, and pray in silence. I often read works by St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzus during these times. Now I look back on those days as essential preparation for what would eventually become a difficult and rocky time.


The Pope Is Dead!

On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II died. When I came home, my wife could tell that something was wrong. I recited, almost as if I were speaking in tongues, Papa mortuus est, which in Latin means, “The Pope is dead.” Although I had once labeled John Paul II the Antichrist, I now revered him as a father. It was as though my own father had died, and I had never known him. Everyone else at the seminary knew that a great man had died.

Deeply moved by the passing of John Paul II, my wife and I decided that we would attend Holy Mass at the local Catholic parish to show our respects to the Pope and perhaps hear a moving homily in tribute to the man people were already calling “John Paul the Great.” The following Sunday, we arrived at a modern-looking building and entered for Mass.

As it turned out, the Catholic priest said precious little about John Paul II. Instead, he spoke about how St. Peter was not the true author of either 1 Peter or 2 Peter. Moreover, during the consecration prayer he had people come forward and stand around the altar with him. The priest proceeded to recite a eucharistic prayer he himself had composed — a prayer that rhymed, which went something like this: “On the night before he was dead, Jesus took into his hands bread.”

Joy and I were horrified. Not only was this terrible poetry, it seemed sacrilegious and contrary to the life and message of John Paul II — a message of perfect obedience to Christ. We loved the Catholic Pope, but we were not ready for this local Catholic parish with its liberal priests and hokey rhymes.


A Rabbi Points Me to Rome

A few weeks later I was ordained an Anglican deacon. Soon afterward I was ordained to the Anglican priesthood. It was a time of great joy and excitement.

I was assigned to be the curate at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. I felt perfectly fulfilled as I began to preach, celebrate the sacraments, and exercise pastoral care. I was especially excited one day to make my first hospital visit as a clergyman.

The pastor of the parish gave me the name of a woman who was about to undergo an operation at the local hospital and who had asked me to visit her. Little did I know that by the end of that day I would have a conversation with a rabbi that would set my entire life going in a new direction.

I drove to the hospital and, with a prayer book under my arm, I obtained my clergy parking tags, washed my hands, and went upstairs to the waiting room. It was packed with people waiting for their loved ones to return from surgery. I went to the desk, smiled at the receptionist, and said, “My name is Fr. Taylor Marshall and I’m here to see Joanna Smith before she goes into surgery.”

The receptionist’s fingernails stopped clicking on the keyboard. “Great. You can just go on back there and see her.”

I turned around and saw two swinging medical doors. “Through there?”

“Yes, Father. Just go on in. Mrs. Smith is already with the anesthesiologist.”

As I came to the doors, I pushed the button and they swung open. I walked forward and they closed behind me. I entered into a large room with eight beds. A nurse smiled at me.

“Pardon me. Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m here to see Joanna Smith.”

“She’s over there in bed #1. The anesthesiologist has already been here. She’s probably already asleep.”

“That’s O.K.” I said. “I’d still like to pray for her.”

The nurse had no problems with this proposal and left me alone in the room.

I walked over to bed #1 and saw a woman in a hospital gown already fast asleep. I opened my copy of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, where a gold ribbon marked the section titled “The Order for the Visitation of the Sick.” I then gently laid my right hand on the arm of the sleeping woman.

Her eyes flung open with an expression of fright. “Who are you?” she asked, startled. The anesthesia had not yet begun to take full effect.

I was just as startled. I pulled my hand away from her arm. “Excuse me. My name is Fr. Taylor. I’m here to pray with you before you go into surgery.”

She took one look at my clerical collar and cried out, “But I’m Jewish!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong bed. I was looking for someone named Joanna Smith.”

“That’s me. I am Joanna Smith.” She obviously had no idea why a Christian minister was bending over her bed with a prayer book in his hand.

I paused and thought to myself: Is this some sort of joke that older priests play on new priests? The pastor sends me off on my first hospital call with all sorts of sound advice, but neglects to tell me that the lady is Jewish! I collected myself.

“Well, would you like me to pray for you before you go into surgery?” I asked.

“Oh, I would love that. Thank you so much.”

I placed my right hand once again on her arm and prayed that she might be kept safe during her procedure. I left her with some words of comfort as her eyes became heavy and she fell asleep.

When I returned into the waiting room, I saw a bearded rabbi. “Are you here to see Joanna Smith?” I asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am,” he answered.

“Go through those doors and follow the hallway to the left. Bed #1. She’s about to go under for surgery.”

Looking into the perplexed eyes of the rabbi, I could see what he was thinking: Why does this priest know all about Joanna? He thanked me and disappeared behind the automated doors with a push of a button.

Just after that, I recognized someone in the waiting room. It was Mr. Smith from St. Andrew’s. Now I understood why I had been sent to pray with a Jewish woman: She was married to an Episcopalian.

Up until now, I hadn’t known that his wife was Jewish. He was nervous about her surgery, and we talked for a while until the rabbi returned to the waiting room. Mr. Smith introduced us and we engaged in a brief conversation about liturgy and the importance of chant.

Then the rabbi turned to Mr. Smith and asked a very unusual question. “What is the Hebrew name of Joanna’s mother?”

After thinking about it for a moment, Mr. Smith answered, “Gee, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was going to ask Joanna the name of her mother, but she was already asleep by the time I found her.”

“Why would you need to know her mother’s name?” her husband asked.

“We Jews believe that if someone is suffering and we invoke his or her mother’s name in prayer,” the rabbi explained, “then God will be more merciful in granting your intercession for that person.”

My first reaction was to dismiss the statement as mere superstition. However, as I let the rabbi’s answer sink into my soul, I realized the profundity of his belief. This rabbi believed that God was especially merciful when a mother was invoked for the sake of her child.

As an Anglican priest trained in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, I had a budding devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I immediately realized the implications. I believed that Mary was important because she was truly the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore the Mother of God. God had chosen this human woman to be the pure virginal vessel of His Incarnate Son.

If Jews believed that invoking the mother of someone caused God to be more gracious in answering an intercession, then wouldn’t the name of Mary be worth invoking? Didn’t her Son, Jesus Christ, become the Suffering Servant in order to redeem us? Even more, Mary wasn’t just any ordinary mother; she was the only person ever created who could speak to God the Father and refer to “our Son.”

That’s when it hit me. Catholic devotion to Mary is not only based on sound Christological arguments. Marian piety is not only patristic. The Church reveres and invokes the Blessed Mother because it inherited the Jewish custom of showing profound reverence for the spiritual role of the mother of a family.

Here was a surprising confirmation that Catholic customs are rooted in a Jewish understanding of God and His People. I began to study Catholic traditions in light of the Old Testament and found that the hermeneutic of continuity unveils an authentic Christianity that is distinctly Catholic.


The Canterbury Trail to Rome

Joy and I decided to fly to Rome before we did anything drastic. While in Rome, we had the opportunity to attend Holy Mass with Pope Benedict XVI. I stood there in St. Peter’s Basilica in my Anglican cassock, knowing that I could not go forward to receive the Holy Eucharist. Everything in my soul desired to be in communion with Pope Benedict XVI. In that moment, I knew that I was in schism and out of communion with Christ’s divinely instituted Church.

The next day I met Msgr. James Conley, who introduced me to William Cardinal Baum. The cardinal took me to his apartment overlooking St. Peter’s Square, where he questioned me about a number of doctrines: sacraments, Mary, the Eucharist, the priesthood, the Church, liturgy, and so on. At the end of this inquisition, he closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “My son,” he said, “you are a Catholic. It is time for you to come home.”

He encouraged me and prayed with me. He even gave me a rosary that had once belonged to Pope Benedict. We prayed together in his private chapel before the Holy Eucharist — the Lord Jesus Christ. My path was now clear: I would become a Catholic no matter how much it would hurt, no matter how much it would cost.

When we returned home from Rome, I immediately went to see Bishop Kevin Vann of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth. He received me warmly and became my true father in Christ. Three months later, I renounced the priestly ministry I had received in the Episcopal Church, in preparation for entering the Catholic Church.


Home at Last

The Episcopal Church possesses many ancient Christian practices. But I came to see that the Anglican schism of the sixteenth century, and the Protestant Reformation in general, did not reflect the original trajectory of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were not free to create a “new Israel” or form a new denomination of “Reformed Israelites.” No matter how corrupt the priests and kings of Judah might have become, the covenant of God remained in effect. I came to understand that the Reformation was generally a rejection of a united, visible Church — a notion taken for granted in the Book of Acts and especially in the writings of St. Paul.

Bishop Vann received our family into full communion with the Catholic Church on May 23, 2006. It was of course difficult for me to lay down the clerical collar. Nevertheless, I became a Catholic because I realized that, unlike the Catholic Church, the Episcopal denomination could not trace its doctrine, liturgy, customs, and morality back to a first-century rabbi named Jesus who roamed the Holy Land with a band of Jewish disciples.

As a Catholic, I can now say with the Apostle Paul (who was once Rabbi Saul) that I “share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16).

When I recall how the Holy Spirit worked in my heart long ago, when I uttered a meager prayer based on a baseball autograph, I cannot help but wonder at the Divine Mercy of God. He is calling us all to Himself, and He uses a variety of means. I still recite Romans 10:9 and say with my mouth, “Jesus is Lord.” Now, however, I am able to confess this mystery while I stand upon “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

NOR