Growing up, I genuinely thought there was only one way to be Christian. Surely all Christians were subjected to the cumbersome family tradition of reciting the rosary every night! Surely it was a universal Christian experience to doze off sitting in the pews during Sunday mass; to look forward with barely contained excitement to your First Holy Communion, and then to tamp down a smile after you finally receive Jesus for the first time — in the flesh! — in the most uncomfortable dress you’ve ever worn.
I mean, sure, I knew about “them”. The Protestants. I briefly attended an Anglo-Indian school when I was a pre-teen, and I had a couple of “them” in my class. “They’re Christian,” I was told, “but not like us.” When I probed for more information, the most I got was: “They don’t say the rosary.”
When I was in my late teens, and decided religion wasn’t for me at all, it didn’t really make a difference. I rejected the Catholic and the Protestant God. (Not that I could have picked out either from a lineup.) But even then, I had a strange sort of loyalty to the Church I grew up in. So when I was invited to a Protestant praise-and-worship meeting by a girl from college, I did not show up on principle.
I hadn’t been showing up to Mass either, but that’s besides the point.
Fast forward to when I was twenty years old and realised (surprise, surprise) that God is real, Jesus loves me, and I needed to start being a better daughter. The “big things” — that God created the universe, that I needed to be delivered from my sin, that Jesus did just that when he died on the cross two thousand years ago — made sense to me only through supernatural grace. By which I mean I don’t recall actually being convinced by any logical arguments; rather, when I listened to the Gospel with an open heart, I began to believe it.
But that’s not how it worked with the “rest of it” — the vast body of Catholic teaching that, up until then, I had wholeheartedly rejected.
Specifically, I had issues with:
Catholic teaching on homosexuality and sex outside of marriage
The necessity of going for Mass on Sundays
The role of men and women in the Church (I believe the precise words I used to describe the Church back then were “misogynistic and embarrassingly outdated”)
The intercession of Mother Mary and the saints
None of these made sense to me just by listening to them with an open heart. I had specific doubts, rebuttals, and preconceived notions that I needed to overcome. Furthermore, as an adult, nobody had ever reasoned with me about my Catholic faith. I didn’t even know that one could reason with their faith. Three years of attending a media college had taught me to rigorously question and cross-examine everything.
I brought the same approach to my new-found faith. Yes, I believed that Jesus died for me, and that I needed to receive that free gift in some way in order to get eternal life. But I wasn’t about to go back to being a “blind faith” Catholic. If I was ever going to say a rosary again, I needed to know why.
A second conversion
The first step was to read. I started with the Theology of the Body, because my issues with Catholic sexual morality trumped everything else. On a good friend’s recommendation, I picked up ‘Theology of the Body for Beginners’ by Christopher West.
Reading that book is what I now regard as my second conversion moment; not a conversion of the heart (which had happened months before, and had started me on this journey of wanting to rediscover my faith), but a conversion of the mind. It was the moment I first realised that the Catholic Church had good reasons for teaching what she did. As Pope John Paul II, and Christopher West, broke down for me in painstaking detail the beautiful theological purpose of our bodies, I was wholly and entirely converted to the faith.
How was this? I hadn’t yet looked into Mother Mary, or the rosary, or the saints, or the Eucharist, or any of the other doubts I had. But I didn’t need to know the answers to all my questions right then; all I needed to know was that there were answers. I did not need to be a “blind faith” Catholic anymore.
Those first few months, the learning curve was steep and magnificent. I read Why We’re Catholic by Trent Horn cover-to-cover, twice. I watched hour-long debates between renowned Catholic theologians and Protestant and atheist scholars. I listened to Catholic Answers podcast episodes more than I listened to my favourite podcast, Reply All. I went on long walks with my Catholic friends and quizzed them on the small things about being Catholic I had never gotten the chance to ask.
Asking questions was my new superpower. Nobody had ever encouraged me to do that before, so I had to make up for twenty years of lost time.
It’s been three years since my “conversion of the mind”, and I still discover new things about the Catholic faith. For example, the other day I found out that the sacrament of baptism actually confers saving grace.
Meaning that if you have been baptised, and then you die without having committed a mortal sin, you go straight to heaven.
I relayed this to my Catholic friend with excitement, but of course, it wasn’t news to her. Some of my Catholic friends grew up “super” Catholic: they attended or organised viewing parties for theological lectures; they always knew that Jesus changed the Greek word for “eat” in John 6 to emphasise that he wanted his followers to really chew on his body; they never considered for a second that praying to statues of saints was in some way violating the first commandment written in Exodus.
I’m grateful for their knowledge and how readily they shared it with me. But I find it unfortunate that they make up a minority of Catholics. There are so many Catholics around me who don’t think there’s any difference at all between a Catholic Mass and a Protestant prayer service. And if they have questions about the Eucharist, they don’t know whom to ask. Many don’t even know that asking questions is allowed; or that it just might lead them to a new conversion, a new love and devotion to their faith.
The truth that I have discovered over the past three years is that Jesus Christ is present in a real and unique way in the Catholic Church. While other denominations do possess some truth, the fullness of truth and divine revelation is only found in the Catholic Church. It was precisely the Catholic Church that Jesus founded when he gave Peter “the keys to the kingdom” in Matthew 16. His promise that “the gates of hell will not prevail against you” applies in a unique way to the seat of Peter in Rome, currently occupied by Pope Francis.
Of all the ways to be Christian (and now I do know that there are more than one), being Catholic is the best. I know this despite never having been Protestant. I know this because the Catholic Church has good, true, and beautiful reasons behind every single one of her teachings. And I might not know each one of those reasons, but I know they’re there, and that is enough for me.
These days, I try to spend a couple of hours a week studying the Catechism. I follow a series of in-depth video guides put together by my favourite Catholic apologist, Trent Horn. I take copious notes, and frequently fall down rabbit holes while independently researching my own doubts. It’s a fascinating, time-consuming, deeply satisfying endeavour.
I also try, as much as possible, to share what I learn. The easiest way I’ve found to do that has been through Instagram reels (although Instagram comes with its own set of evils, so I’ve deleted the app off my phone for now). My dream is to make it commonplace for everyday Catholics to ask difficult and challenging questions about their faith, and go looking for answers. It’s a vast, idealistic, impossible dream. There are a million ways to accomplish it, and very few of them feel doable on any given day.
But when I do feel discouraged, I only need to wait until my next hour of Catechism study before I’m once again invigorated to go out and share all the “good reasons for the hope that is within” (1 Peter 3:15). That being said, if you’ve read this far and are pretty convinced that you’d like to dive into the Catholic faith, here are some beginner-friendly recommendations.
How to not be a “blind faith” Catholic
For a top-level understanding of Catholic doctrine
Read ‘Why We’re Catholic’ by Trent Horn. This is the definitive introduction to the Catholic faith, put in layman terms, with an abundance of examples and easy-to-follow reasoning. This is easily my most-referenced Catholic apologetics book.
Get your hands on ‘The Case for Catholicism’ by Trent Horn. This one is less conversational and reads more like a textbook. I keep it on my laptop as a handy resource when I have specific questions.
For a better understanding of Catholic moral teachings
Read ‘Theology of the Body for Beginners’ by Christopher West. This will give you a solid Biblical and theological grounding to understand pretty much every Catholic teaching on sexuality.
Read ‘Made This Way’ by Trent Horn and Leila Miller. Each chapter describes in brief what the Catholic Church teaches on various topics like divorce, modesty, sex before marriage, etc, followed by a section on explaining the topic to little kids and teenagers. I find those sections extremely helpful in understanding Catholic moral teachings in simpler terms.
Read ‘Persuasive Pro-Life’ by Trent Horn for a comprehensive understanding of the Catholic pro-life position.
For ongoing growth in your Catholic faith
Become acquainted with ‘Catholic.com’. This website is my go-to for any random questions I have about being Catholic. They have a million articles on anything under the sun. I’m particularly partial to the articles written by Jimmy Akin and Trent Horn (who is, if you can’t tell yet, my favourite).
Watch/listen to the Sunday Catholic Word podcast. Karlo Broussard puts out an episode every week breaking down the Sunday readings from a Catholic theological perspective. They’re easy to understand, well researched, and will make your Sunday mass much more meaningful.
Watch/listen to the Catholic Answers podcast. I especially love the ‘ask us anything’ episodes.
I want to end with a disclaimer. Of course, apologetics is not all there is to being Catholic. There are many who make a big deal about being “right”, to the extent of putting down our Protestant brothers and sisters. There are many who make their faith all about having the perfect arguments for everything, but fail to live it out, to obey what they defend.
But I have also experienced first-hand what faith without reason does (or doesn’t) accomplish. I think there are many people out there, young people, who are being taught to question and cross-examine everything by the world and by media, who will no longer take “because I said so” as reason enough to do anything. Do we have an obligation to go out and reason with them? To speak their language, listen to their questions, and respond with logical reasoning? I believe we do.
St Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” To understand the good reasons behind the Catholic faith, and then to take these reasons to those looking for them, is precisely what “being all things to all people” entails.
There are many out there who, having posed one or two difficult questions about the Catholic Church, have walked out of her doors. It is up to those of us who remain within to arm ourselves with humility, kindness, and reason, and bring them back.
I remember going on to a similar dive in my late teens, even purchasing a copy of Catholicism for Dummies 😄 I was like "There are answers! Why doesn't anyone know or care?" Though I am no longer super into apologetics, I see the need for us to share a reasonable faith for those whose obstacles are primarily are intellectual (This just doesn't make sense!)
But I think I've been drawn more and more into realizing a truly persuasive faith is one where you experience radical love, often through other Christians, when you need it the most... and that's what opens you up to the more rational and logical aspects of faith. Otherwise it just feels like one of many philosophies that noone has much interest or motivation in studying.
I guess it always comes back to "What real practical difference can this make?" And when you see living saints, people living differently, that answers the question. So I guess I've been trying to work on the love aspect for a while, since I went a bit overboard with a hyperfocus on truth for several years.
Love and truth together can transform the world!