Home

My Conversion Story Published in Catholic Digest


I published my conversion story in the Catholic Digest "Open Door" section. I have asked for permission to include it on my web site and they agreed. The Catholic Digest web site.

It was in the Cards

My parents are agnostics, but they are very active in their Protestant church. I, like my parents, enjoyed church activities, but still considered my self an agnostic.

While I was an economics graduate student, a number of coincidences and the help of my Evangelical Protestant neighbors encouraged me to reconsider. I became a believing Christian, but I still had to choose a church.

The only options I took seriously were Evangelical Protestantism and Catholicism. I prayed, fasted, and studied both theology and history. I knew the evidence favored the Catholic Church, but I wanted to be very sure.

As the Protestants based their claims on the Bible, I decided to do an intensive study of the New Testament. Starting with Matthew, I wrote down relevant passages on three-by-five cards.

There were some isolated verses that seemed to support Protestant doctrines, though they could also be explained in a Catholic manner. On the other hand, there was a large stack of cards that supported Catholic doctrine, and many of them were difficult or impossible to explain in Protestant terms.

Three-quarters of the way through the New Testament, I had a stack of cards about two-and-a-half inches thick and I felt the evidence was sufficiently overwhelming. So instead of writing the passages in the last part of the New Testament, I underlined them.

Having finished my careful study of doctrine, history, and, most of all, the Bible, I acted on the results and was received into the Catholic Church.

A Video Version of the above on YouTube

The video retells the story and shows the cards and the Magazine. Click here.

Other articles published and unpublished

An article on vouchers published in the New Oxford Review.

An article on the empty hell debate between the New Oxford Review and Father Richard Neuhaus that theNew Oxford Review rejected. The New Oxford Review suggested that I keep trying and Neuhaus said it was interesting and that he might mention it in his column.

Other web pages on this site

An earlier part of my conversion is covered in this web page on how the number of the beast, 666 and number theory helped my conversion to Christianity.

My parents met in a church singles groups learn how the group had a millenium of happy marriage.

Here is a page on my activities as a Catholic evangelist

Several pages on getting Catholic books into public libraries. These are recommended by Neuhaus and the National Catholic Register.

Several pages on getting better AM radio reception

The Old Testament often foreshadows events in the New Testament. In the New Testament this was considered an important form of Christian apologetic. This essay shows how the stories told about Old Testament figures often foreshadow the events of New Testament figures with the same name. The result is if not proof, powerful evidence that God inspired the Bible. this evidence is called typology, prophesy, or foreshadowing.

I showed this to several professors at the Graduate Theological Union, GTU, in Berkeley. They said I should talk to the most distinguished professor in Biblical studies, Wilhelm Wuellner. When Wuellner saw this, he found it amazing.

I also showed it to Gerry Matatics, a friend of Scott Hahn who was also a Protestant minister who converted to Catholicism. At first he said it was simply impossible, then when he looked at it again he thought it was amazing. We talked about turning it into an academic article, but I have not been able to get in contact with Matatics for years and he has been involved in a controversy.

Because monarchs and other autocrats hate to share the loyalty of their subjects it is hard for a centralized religious organization to maintain the loyalty of even two independent countries. But the Catholic Church has held the loyalty of dozens of countries for many centuries, is this a Catholic miracle?

Home page guest book