How A Protestant Made Me Catholic

hey everybody in this video I want to share with you how a Protestant made me Catholic okay so more accurately this video is gonna be about how a Protestant kept me Catholic because I was in fact raised in a Catholic home both of my parents are Catholic I'm the youngest of five kids and so we were all raised in the Catholic Church going to Mass together receiving the sacraments but unfortunately like so many people by the time I was a teenager by the time I entered into high school I just became really disinterested in my faith and so as a high school student I was pretty much just going through the motions I checked off all the right boxes you know that I was supposed to check off that my parents I knew that my parents wanted of me so I'd go to Mass every Sunday with my parents and anytime we'd go to confession I'd go with my parents and I would just confess the same generic list of sins that I confessed since I was a second grader but my heart was really far from God I had no relationship with him at all and unfortunately when I was about to leave for college I met this young lady and there were a couple things that struck me about her first of all I thought that she looked pretty good and that's what drew me to her in the first place the second thing that I noticed about her as we started to become friends and we started to pursue a dating relationship I noticed very quickly that she was in love with Jesus and being a disciple was the most important part of her life I noticed that she was praying on a regular if not daily basis I noticed that she was trying to read the Bible everyday and those were two things I absolutely never thought about doing having like any type of daily prayer time or about reading the Bible on my own just to get to know Jesus in a more intimate way and so as we started to pursue a dating relationship the question from her came pretty quickly not in hostility but just in curiosity and that question was why are you Catholic she wanted to know why I was Catholic and that was a question that I had never seriously considered in my entire life I really had no idea why I was Catholic or if I if I should even be Catholic other than the fact that that's what my family was and that's what I was raised to believe and so I left for college I went to the University of Illinois and for the first time in my life I considered that question why am i Catholic so as I went off to college to the University of Illinois I set out really for the first time in my life to try to answer that question why am i Catholic or or consider if I should even be Catholic or perhaps I should be you know Protestant like this young lady that I was dating at the time and so I started to read the Bible I started to look to the Scriptures for answers I started to just to study do a little bit of research on my own and as I began to do this I honestly just became convinced very quickly that I had to remain Catholic and really there were several reasons for why I felt like I had to do this but I'd like to share with you at least three of the reasons three of the things that convinced me that I had to be Catholic not just because my parents were but because I believe that's what I was called to be and that's where God was leading me so the first thing that convinced me to remain Catholic was the evidence that I found in Scripture so Scripture was kind of the first place that I looked to for answers to kind of answer that question why am i Catholic or to see if I should even be Catholic because this girl that I was dating at the time she was you know really into Scripture and that's where she was looking for her answers and that's where she was going to come to know Jesus in a more intimate way so I figured that'd be a pretty good place to start you know where in the Bible are all these things that I grew up believing such as like baptizing infants or if baptism is necessary for salvation or why do we believe as Catholics that the Eucharist is substantially the body blood soul and divinity of Jesus that that's really Jesus present in the Eucharist or why do we pray to Mary in the Saints so these were the questions that I had in my mind these are some of the questions that she was asking me at the time so these were the questions that I was just looking for answers to in the scriptures and as I began to do that I just became so amazed and excited by how strong the biblical foundations for all of these Catholic doctrines all these Catholic dogmas really were for all of the objections that this young lady had or all the just the questions that I had I found that those objections is 10 to be only very surface level and when I actually look to the New Testament in particular and I look to the Bible as a whole old and new together I just became so convinced that what the Catholic Church taught was so grounded in the Bible the evidence pointed towards the Catholic Church and the doctrines that I grew up believing more than it pointed to to anything else all these different Catholic beliefs that I that I grew up being taught and that my parents you know lived out just started jumping off the page to me when I would read the New Testament when I'd read the Old Testament basically anywhere I'd go there was just all these answers to these objections to my faith as a Catholic and so first and foremost it was the Bible it was the it was the Bible itself that actually led me to the Catholic Church and with that I also discovered that the Bible is really a Catholic book because the church the Catholic Church is actually who brought us the Bible when I looked at the early church when I looked at the you know what the foundations of of the church I found that that Jesus himself actually established a church to be the pillar and the foundation of truth he built that church upon Peter and the Apostles and as time went on some of them less than half did write letters that eventually became known as the New Testaments but for several hundred years we just had some of these letters circling circulating around these different churches so we had know the Bible that we know it as today we didn't have these New Testament documents compiled as Sacred Scripture but what we had was the church that Jesus himself founded in what I came to discover was actually the Catholic Church and it was that Catholic Church that over centuries eventually met together in councils and determined which of these letters were inspired and to be believed and trusted by all of the Christian faithful in its that church that has continued to teach us and to lead us to Jesus and to teach us truth throughout the centuries throughout the millennia up until this present day the second thing that convinced me that I had to remain Catholic was was a group of people called the early church fathers now the church fathers were a group of men who were Christians in the first few centuries after the time of the Apostle so there in the first few generations after the time of the Apostles and some of these men even knew the Apostles themselves and learned from them and what convinced me to become Catholic from these men in their writings was that what they were teaching and what they were were believing from the very beginning were these really deeply Catholic truths two examples would be like this universal belief that baptism is is regenerative baptism actually forgives us our sins it saves us and it's necessary for salvation that's what I grew up believing as a Catholic but when I looked at the very first century first second and third centuries I found that all of the early Christians believed this you know from the beginning from what they had learned from Jesus and the Apostles another example would be the Church Fathers almost universal acceptance of Jesus's real presence in the Eucharist again as a Catholic I grew up believing that Jesus is really substantially fully present in the Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine what I found in the Church Fathers was that from the very beginning all Christians believe this because this is what Jesus had taught the Apostles who had carried on that tradition that belief to the other Christians in the first few centuries and I was so amazed by this discovery and how Catholic the early church really was and what they taught and I just kind of thought that you know if that's what the first Christians believe that if these if these Christians who actually knew and were taught by the Apostles were believing these things about the Eucharist were believing these things about about praying to Mary or about baptism then that had to be you know what was true and what what Jesus and the Apostles taught and finally the third thing and really the the foundational thing that that led me to remain Catholic that convinced me that I had to be a Catholic was this concept of authority so when I like was looking into Protestantism you know not necessarily any in particular denomination but I just looked into Protestantism as a whole one of the foundational you know disagreements one of the one of the foundational things that separated Christians at the time of the Protestant Reformation was this idea of Authority and so although as I said I looked to the Bible for you know for answers and and I found a lot of great answers and evidence for believing the things that the Catholic Church teaches what I also found was that the Bible alone can't be our only Authority of faith it can't be the sole authority of faith because first of all its self refuting I found that if the Bible is the only thing that I have as my authority and nothing else well that still leaves nobody to interpret the Bible for me and it also means that I should find that doctrine of Sola scriptura of the Bible alone within the Bible itself and I didn't find any anywhere in scripture that actually led me to believe that that was a principle that the Apostles and the early Christians followed and I didn't find it anywhere in scripture teaching that so therefore I thought that to believe that the Bible alone is our is our only Authority of faith it's kind of self refuting and again back to the point that that there is no one to interpret it for me even if the Bible is an authority which I believe it is an extremely important Authority for us as Christians if I'm left to myself to interpret it then there are as many different interpretations of it as there are people and so this was one of the biggest things that like convinced me that I had to remain in the Catholic Church because I think since the time of the Reformation we see this this growing and growing number of different denominations all taking the Bible as their only rule of faith and yet interpreting at different ways and about things that actually do involve our salvation but when I looked to the New Testament in particular as an historical document I discover that Jesus himself didn't establish this book to be the foundation of faith but he actually established a church on Peter and on the Apostles and he gave us that church to lead us into all truth so that we could come to know him and in way in that that that church was actually who then eventually brought us the Bible and that authority has been passed on through the centuries and something called apostolic succession to this present day in that succession has occurred within the Catholic Church so I found that the Catholic Church is the only church that can actually make an historical claim all the way back to the original apostles and to Jesus himself in this direct line of apostolic succession and I believe that Jesus gave us this church so that we could be one as Jesus himself prayed for so those are just a few of the reasons why I I am Catholic and and it all started with this Protestant who led me to consider the question why am i Catholic in that that Protestant that young lady who started me on that journey it just happens to be my wife now and I am grateful for her and her witness for for showing me what it means to be a disciple for opening me up to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and I'm also so happy and grateful that just over two years ago she entered into full communion with the Catholic Church so to this day I always let her know that it's her own fault that she's Catholic because if it weren't for her I may not be the practicing Catholic that I am today and finally I'm just so grateful to God for giving us this church to bring about the salvation of the world so that's the story about how a Protestant made me Catholic I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below and just have some more dialogue about this have a great day everybody god bless you

Channel: Sean Hussey

Views: 255,179

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Id: DxywfVSlq2Y

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019