by a Seminarian of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary

Some are called to the service of God from their youth, like St. Aloysius and St. Therese, others have to be knocked off their horse, like St. Paul and St. Augustine. But almost always the story of one's vocation is a wonder, probably because in today's world so few seem to be following His call. This story is no exception. It is a fascinating account of one man's up-bringing in Protestant religions to his acceptance of the Catholic Faith and finally his entrance into the Traditional Catholic Seminary in Winona, Minnesota.

In an age when the Church seems to be undergoing a crucifixion like that of her Spouse, when vocations seem to be dwindling both to the priesthood and to religious life, when conversions to the Faith seem to be less and less frequent; it is good and heartening to hear that God has not abandoned His Catholic Church, and that He still draws men and women from the shadows of error into the light of the Divine Truth. I, by the grace of God, am one of those men, and I shall now tell my own story of how Our Lord led me from the errors of Protestantism to the fullness of Catholic truth.

I was born on October 12, 1962, the day after the Second Vatican Council was convened, and I was raised in a small rural town in Northern Kentucky, not very far from Cincinnati, Ohio. My parents were of rather divergent religions; my father being a Southern Baptist and my mother a member of the Re-organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints; an offshoot of Mormonism. I was brought up in the Baptist Church, and attended services there until my thirteenth year. It is interesting to see that even as a child, God was preparing me for my eventual conversion. While still an infant, I was blessed by the Catholic priest who served as pastor of the local parish Church. That, in itself, was rather unusual, especially since my father had no love for Catholicism. During the years up until my thirteenth, I remained completely unexposed to the Catholic Church, but that was soon to change. As I grew up, I began to develop a passion for history, and this was to be one of the instruments God would use to lead me to His Church. At first I absorbed myself in the history of this country, but soon my eyes turned towards Europe and rested on Rome; but it was the Rome of the Caesars, not of the popes which held my attention.

My first real encounter with Catholicism occurred when I was in seventh grade. I was educated in a public school, and there were few Catholics who attended there; but there was one Catholic girl in my class. One day we were given an order form which had a list of various books students could purchase. Amongst these was a small biography of Saint Francis of Assisi. The Catholic girl whom I knew advised me to order it, and I decided to do so, much to the displeasure of certain Baptist classmates of mine. This book opened up a whole new world to me. To think that a man would renounce all earthly treasures and embrace complete poverty for Christ was something beyond my wildest dreams. It was unheard of that such a thing should happen, or at least it was for me. I can remember arguing with my father over the virtue of holy poverty, and over the life of Saint Francis. At this time also, my mother was working on her psychology degree at a Catholic College in Northern Kentucky. Since I was an avid reader, I sometimes visited its library to have a look around. One of the first things I discovered was a book about the saints. I had my mother check it out for me and I quietly read through it. It was all so fascinating and new to me. When I returned it, I checked out another book, but this one was on the papacy. Ah, the popes! How holy and powerful they seemed to me. I can remember telling my father what a great honor I thought it would be to serve the man whom I looked upon as the ruler of the whole world. And that is how I saw him. To see the pictures of the popes wearing the triple tiara, to read that they were the Vicars of Christ, aroused in me visions of kings and emperors, and led me to imagine in a naive way, that the pope was a sort of super-emperor who governed by right all men. I had not yet learned that his authority was primarily spiritual, not temporal. All of this, of course, did not please my father. When I told him that I wanted to attend Mass at the Catholic Church, he strictly forbade me to even set foot in a Catholic Church until I turned eighteen years of age. At this time, I was still thirteen.

During the summer of 1976, I was asked by the Methodist Church in town to play the piano for their Vacation Bible School. I accepted their invitation and played there. After that, little by little, I ceased to attend the Baptist Church and went to the Methodist Church instead. As summer drew to a close, I decided to join the Methodist Church. Several motives prompted me to make this move. First of all, I was dissatisfied with the Baptist Church; secondly, the Methodist Church seemed to me to be closer to the Catholic Church. But perhaps the most pressing motive was that I believed that I was in a precarious position as long as I remained un-baptised. So, in September of that year, I was baptised and became a member of the Methodist religion. After that, I began to settle into a rather active role in my congregation. Thought of going to the Catholic Church began to fade as time went on, but God, in His mercy, was not going to allow me to elude His will quite so easily. I still clung to my love of Saint Francis, and to practices such as making the sign of the cross at prayer, but I progressed no further. Things began to change, however, in high school. I had obtained from my pastor a history of the "Christian Church", and this awakened in me an interest in church history. I discovered, much to my dismay, that I held the position of the heretic Arius concerning the divinity of Our Lord. Arius, it might be well to remember, denied the equality of the Son with the Father in His divinity. He made of Christ a sort of super-creature; neither quite truly God nor truly man. After discovering that the Church had condemned this position at the Council of Nicea in 325, I threw off my own opinion and accepted the teaching of the Church. That in itself was a miracle of grace, for I was usually very stubborn in matters of my own religious opinions. But God had triumphed over my erroneous opinion, and He began to make it known to me that He desired something more.

Up until this time, that is about the summer of 1979, I thought that after high school I would go to college and eventually become an archaeologist specializing in Graeco-Roman history and culture. That, at least, was my intention. Yet my intention was not God's intention, so it was that I began to feel very restless and my soul could find no peace. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but it began to dawn on me that Our Lord wanted me to dedicate my life to His service. Since my mind was still deceived by many false opinions, I could not see clearly what God wished, but I did know that He wanted me to serve Him in some capacity. At first I resisted, but bad things began to happen to me. This went on until finally I could resist no more. I threw myself on my knees in prayer and told Our Lord that I would dedicate my life to Him.

Being a Methodist, I assumed that God wanted me to become a minister, and so I began the process Methodist laymen go through in order to reach that goal. First, I received approval from my local congregation, and then by the district superintendent; a sort of overseer who watched over the churches in his district. Thus ended my senior year in high school. Regarding the Catholic Faith, Our Lord was beginning to re-awaken my interest in it. My interest in church history had led me to discover many interesting things concerning the Fathers and their beliefs, but since I had read history written only from a Protestant perspective I was lulled into thinking that the Reformers had not really broken from the Faith taught by Our Lord, but this was soon to change. During my senior year I had also begun to be interested in theology, and it was during this year that I first began to systematically write down my beliefs, somewhat in the manner of the 39 articles of the Anglican Religion. Comparing my beliefs with the Anglicans (the Mother Church of Methodism), I deliberately rejected some of their beliefs such as the evil of sacred images and the invocation of the saints. I wrote down just the opposite. Sacred images were holy, I wrote; and very useful. The saints, too, were very holy and were to be imitated and could be invoked, though I did not do so. Regarding Our Lady, I saw her as the greatest of the saints, but I did not as yet accept her Immaculate Conception or Assumption. So it was that Our Lord and the Blessed Mother were preparing my heart for the True Faith, but I of course, did not know this yet. Perhaps they worked through an amusing incident which occurred immediately before my graduation from high school. On Class Night, predictions were read as to what various students would be doing in ten years. When my name was read, it was predicted that I would be the Pope! A very strange prediction since I was still a Protestant. Now I don't expect to sit on the throne of St. Peter next year, but it was a curious sort of prediction, for within two years I would be a Roman Catholic.

In the autumn of 1980 I began my college life in a liberal arts school south of Lexington, Kentucky, named Brea College. It was here that my conversion was to take place. The first major turning point occurred while writing a paper for one of my classes. The subject was the Reformation. It was still my first semester in college, but already many things had happened which were to help push me towards Catholicism. I had reached my eighteenth birthday that October, and one of the first things I did was to go to the Catholic Church. It was a Novus Ordo Mass, and the parish was quite liberal, but it still made an impression on me. I had also discovered the works of the Fathers in the college library—but back now to the Reformation paper. I became convinced that the Reformation was a great evil and that Luther was wrong in breaking away from the Catholic Church. With this admission, it could not take long for me to realize that I must not remain a Protestant. I soon checked out Father John Harden's Catechism from the library and I began to investigate the possibility that Rome was right in her teaching. Each doctrine I read of, I tested on the grounds of Scripture and the Church Fathers. I soon discovered the lie of Luther who claimed that he was purifying the Church of doctrinal corruptions invented by Rome in order to restore the Faith, as believed by the early Church. It was utter nonsense. The teaching of Rome was the teaching of the Fathers. The first major doctrines I accepted were Apostolic Succession and Transubstantiation. When I told my pastor at home about my new convictions, he warned me not to mention them openly lest I not be able to continue as a candidate for the ordained ministry. This bothered me quite a bit. If I believed these doctrines were revealed by God, how could I keep silent about them? It was impossible for me to do so. This question initiated a great interior struggle about what to do. To convert to Catholicism—that was a major step. There had been no Catholics in my family for hundreds of years, and opposition at home was growing. Besides that, I had not accepted all of the teachings of Rome as yet. I continued to study the Catechism, and to systematically write down my own beliefs. The longer I did so, the more the momentum increased towards union with Rome. It was incredible. It was as if a force were virtually dragging me towards Catholicism. I can remember writing at the time that I felt as if I was almost being compelled to accept the Catholic Faith. I don't know how else to describe what was going on within me. At last, I embraced the Faith completely. Now, only two problems remained.

First of all, my father was furious at the prospect of my conversion. He had forbidden me to attend the Catholic Church until I was eighteen, but now that I was eighteen and actually hoping to convert to Catholicism, he could not and would not accept the idea. Second of all, there was the unresolved problem of my vocation. Obviously, I wasn't going to become a Methodist minister; but what then? I had been so sure that Our Lord wanted me to dedicate my life to His service. It was now early spring of 1981, and the interior struggle about my vocation brought on by my pastor's admonition to "keep silent" still continued. The idea of becoming a priest entered my mind, but I fought against it. It was impossible, I told myself. I had always assumed that I would have gotten married, settled down as a minister and been pastor of a church. But to be a celibate? No, it was too difficult. So the struggle continued until it reached such a fevered pitch that something had to give way. Then, I knew what I had to do. It was to be the priesthood for me. The struggle ceased completely and a great calm ensued. Our Lord had triumphed over my wilfulness yet again. As to the problem with my father, I decided to try to win him over and so a long, slow process began. At last he gave in, and so on Palm Sunday, 1982, I was accepted into the Catholic Church. My father died of an extended illness that very month, but he had accepted my decision before the end.

Since I had embraced a priestly vocation, the question arose as to how I would pursue it: as a diocesan priest or as a religious? Again, a struggle arose within me. The diocesan priesthood looked easier; after all, one could still own property and there weren't the vows to worry about. The religious life, on the contrary, seemed too difficult. To own no property? To have to obey a superior? No, I thought; God isn't asking me to make such a sacrifice. I began praying the rosary everyday, and as usual Our Lady obtained for me the grace necessary to choose a path contrary to what nature wanted to do. It would be the religious life. But what order? I looked first to the Franciscans, but when they told me that nowadays, social action was more important than contemplation, I dismissed them. Then I turned towards the Dominicans. They had everything I wanted and I fell in love with the Dominican ideal. By this time, I had graduated from college, and I pursued this course full of enthusiasm. But it was not God's will. I was too conservative for them; I wasn't following in the direction the American Church was going, and my love of Latin in the Mass made me too rigid as well as my insistence on Orthodoxy. All this was what they told me. Here was another instance where the liberals had tried to destroy my vocation. My first clash with them had been in Berea. The parish priest did not want me to convert, because as he said, I was "living in the 14th century". 'Ridiculous', I thought to myself. 'The thirteenth maybe, but definitely not the fourteenth!' Since any chance of entering the Dominicans was ended, I began to look around for a conservative order which was loyal to Rome. I did not as yet perceive that Rome was partly to blame for the liberal revolution which was overturning the traditional faith.

The Seminary in Winona, where our young friend eventually ended up.

At last, I discovered what I thought was the answer. In "The Wanderer", I saw an advertisement for Saint Michael's Abbey, a house of the Norbertine Order in Orange County, California. It openly professed loyalty to the Holy Father and to orthodox Catholic doctrine. Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine were to be the guiding stars of every seminarian's studies. They had a Latin Novus Ordo Mass, and they still preserved the Norbertine Chant, which was a type of Gregorian Chant. I visited there first and then in June, 1987 I entered as a postulant. All was fine at first, but God was beginning to open my eyes to the splendour of the Tridentine Mass. It happened that I had bought a pre-Vatican II missal the very week that I left home to enter the Abbey, and I began to study the differences between the Traditional Mass and the Novus Ordo missal. I had never attended a Tridentine Mass, since its celebration was forbidden by all the bishops near where I lived, so the old missal was a revelation to me. 'Why did they change the Mass?' I asked myself as I compared the two rites, but I did not have the answer as yet.

Several events then occurred which were to wake me up and provide me with some answers to the many questions which were resting rather uneasily in the back of my mind. First, there was a conversation I had with one of the seminarians. He put forward the argument that it was possible for a pope to be a heretic, and demonstrated this by history and theology. I was overwhelmed. I had never thought one could ever question the actions of Rome, let alone think that the pope could be a heretic, material or otherwise. But the reasoning was flawless. He then implied that an error had occurred in the promulgation of the new Mass, and that the Holy Father had been responsible for this error. Things then began to come together in my mind. Though I did not believe that Pope Paul VI was a heretic, I did begin seriously to question his actions concerning the reform of the liturgy. The second event was even more momentous. During that summer, as we assumed the role of counsellors for a boys' summer camp, several of the postulants took a few hours off one day to see a film of the Traditional Mass. It was the black-and-white film distributed by "Keep the Faith". Easter High Mass at the Servite Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Chicago! Words cannot even begin to describe the feelings I had as I watched it. That was the moment I knew that the Tridentine Mass was the true rite of the Roman Church. It was so beautiful! Every action of the priest, of the deacon and subdeacon, even of the other ministers who assisted at the Mass, seemed to radiate reverence for God. As the weeks went by, I became more and more disenchanted with the Novus Ordo. The Holy Ghost, I reasoned, does not inspire men to switch from a rite which is more reverent and thus which gives more glory to God, to one which is less reverent. The progression would have to be from less reverence to more reverence, not vice-versa.

The third thing which impelled me towards the Traditional Mass was my reading. By this time I had become a novice. In August, I was clothed in the habit and given the religious name of Frater Dominic, since my love for that saint was known to all. At any rate, it was as a novice that I read "The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber", an excellent book on Vatican II, and "Cranmer's Godly Order", the first book of a trilogy by Michael Davies on the liturgical changes. I at last realized that the new Mass and some of the conciliar documents were an attempt to appease Protestants and others outside the fold of Christ. I had not converted to Catholicism in order to embrace the doctrines and practices of the religion which I had left! The last major step for me was when I heard about the Society of Saint Pius X. It was at Saint Michael's that I first really began to learn about the Society. Some of the seminarians were sympathetic to Archbishop Lefebvre, and I was not long in joining that number. Be that as it may, I did not write to the Society at first since I had not worked out the problem of obedience. It appeared to me that the Society was disobedient to the pope, and I wanted above all things to be loyal to the Holy Father. I had not as yet realized that by holding fast to the Traditional Rites and the Traditional Faith, one is the most loyal to the Vicar of Christ. By compromising, one is in fact betraying the pope, not obeying him.

In November, I finally began writing to the Society. Always outspoken, I began at that time to get into deeper and deeper trouble with my superiors concerning the Mass. It was alright to appreciate the Traditional Mass, but to imply that it was superior to the new rite was unthinkable. "We must do what Rome wants", I was told. To criticize Rome was the unforgivable sin. Many of them knew that the Traditional Rite was more reverent, but they had such a desire to be loyal to Rome that it made them subordinate everything to the end of pleasing the Holy See, whether the desires of that See were right or not. Thus, for example, they permitted the abuse of Communion in the hand, although privately many were against it. A showdown was inevitable. I at last was told that either I confess that the promulgation of the new Mass was the will of God, or I could not be accepted into my first vows. How true are the words of Archbishop Lefebvre: "Satan's masterstroke is to have succeeded in sowing disobedience to all tradition through obedience." This was a case in point. In the name of obedience to the Holy Father I was being required to make a statement which I could not in good conscience make because of my own conviction that to do so was to be disobedient to all the popes who have reigned from the Chair of Peter. Therefore, I left the abbey in January of last year. It was a difficult move since I had grown very attached to the priests and seminarians there. The religious there possessed many good qualities, and I would be the last person in the world not to give them their due. They were very devoted to Our Blessed Mother, a fact which drew me to them in the first place, and they wanted to be loyal to the pope, an intention which is very laudable and which I also share. Virtually none of them had been seriously infected with Modernism, but in their desire to be loyal, or rather to appear loyal to the Holy Father, they were actually helping to undermine his authority. How? Because by accepting the changes in the Mass and the documents of the council totally and unconditionally, they played into the hands of the liberals who by these changes are attempting to destroy the Church. They thus have become their own worst enemy.

Eight months after leaving the Norbertines, I entered Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary. What a blessing it is not to have to continually fight against the scourge of liberalism which even at Saint Michael's manifested itself in the Mass and the classes. The struggle against liberalism will come later when, if God wills and if Our Lady helps me to persevere, I will be ordained a priest. But now, it is the time to learn. That is the end of my story. I hope that it will help those, who like me, struggle to serve Our Lord and His Vicar by carrying forward the banner of Tradition. Perhaps it is not very glamorous in these evil days to hold to Tradition without compromise, but hold to it we must if we hope truly to obey Our Lord and to uphold the authority of the pope. Any other path can only lead to ruin; the ruin both of our souls and of the Holy Church of God.