In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We are going to share 3 true and powerful testimonies of separated brothers or protestants
who converted to our Catholic faith.
There are cases in which the irruption of God in their lives has happened in a miraculous way.
In others, it has been a slow and painful process that has lasted several years.
Each case is different, two conversions are never the same.
Conversion is a personal process, an encounter between man and God, in which many personal
lifetime aspects and antecedents come together.
In many of these cases there is an anti-Catholicism inherited from the Reformation churches, who
believe that Catholics are not biblical and therefore not Christian, and reject them as
pagans as if they believed in pagan fables and doctrines, which come from Constantine.
Thousands and thousands of Protestants convert to the Catholic faith each year, especially
trained people and those studious of the Bible.
In England in recent years, around 12,000 have been converted per year.
In the USA there are annually about one hundred thousand.
Therefore, we believe that the testimony of these men, pastors and theologians which we
will share in this video can help us affirm our Catholic faith and feel more confident
that we are in the Church founded by Christ two thousand years ago.
His Eminence Saint John Henry Newman was born into an Anglican family of bankers in London
on February 21st, 1801.
Saint John Henry Newman underwent a "first conversion" at age 15, as he called it.
In 1825, after completing his studies at Oxford, he was ordained an Anglican priest.
Three years later he was appointed vicar of the church annexed to the University of Oxford.
In that position, which he held until 1843, he cultivated friendships with educated and
enlightened people in England at that time.
He was the promoter, starting in 1833, of the "Oxford Movement", a religious current
within the Anglican Church, which promoted a "middle way", a third way, between Protestantism
and the Catholic Church.
He tells us
Subsequently, and without being able to specify the order or dates in my words,
I spoke of the Church of Rome as linked to the cause of the antichrist as "one of the
many antichrists
or as a Church that had in itself something Truly anti-Christian
or non-Christian.
But studying the history of the Monophysite and Arian heretics, he realized that he could
not maintain that third way and that he must remain Anglican or become Catholic.
He had to undergo many internal and external struggles to be faithful to his conscience
and he had to try very hard to investigate the truth in the holy Church Fathers of the
first centuries until he gradually came to the truth.
In 1843 he decided to leave his position as Anglican pastor and was reduced to a simple
layman, although he was not yet determined to become a Catholic due to obstacles such
as devotion to the Virgin and the saints.
He says
“In 1843 I took two very important steps
1) In February I made a formal retraction
of all the harsh things I had said against the Church of Rome.
2) In September I gave up my benefit with Littlemore.
Saint John Henry Newman says: between the autumn of 1843 and 1845 I remained in lay
communion with the Church of England, attending as usual its acts of worship and completely
abstaining from dealing with Catholics.
I also avoided places of worship and Catholic rites such as the invocation of saints, which
are characteristic of their creed.
All this I did out of conviction, because I could never understand how anyone can belong
to two religious confessions at the same time”.
On October 9th, 1845, Saint John Henry Newman embraced Catholicism.
“From the moment I became a Catholic, I naturally have no more history of my religious
ideas to relate.
By saying this, I do not mean that my understanding has lain idle or that I have stopped thinking
about theological issues, but that I have no variations to note, nor have I had any
anguish of heart.
I have been in perfect peace and content, I have never had a doubt.
In converting, I have not noticed any change, intellectual or moral, operated in my spirit.
Nor have I felt more fervor.
It was like arriving at the port after a storm, and the happiness I felt remains uninterrupted
to the present.
Nor have I been bothered by the acceptance of the additional articles, which are not
in the Anglican creed.
Some I believed but none of them have been a test for me.
Upon being received into the Catholic Church, I made profession of them with the greatest
ease and I feel the same when I believe them now.”
“I am going to take the doctrine that Protestants consider the greatest difficulty, that is
of the Immaculate Conception that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin.
In fact, it falls by its own weight to say that Catholics did not believe it because
it was defined, but that it was defined, because they believed it.
Far from being a tyrannical imposition on the Catholic world, the definition given in
1854 was everywhere received when promulgated with the greatest enthusiasm.
The definition was made as a result of the unanimous request to the Holy See of the entire
Church for the doctrine on the Immaculate Conception to be declared apostolic doctrine.”
After a trip to Rome in 1847, he was ordained a Catholic priest.
One of his main goals at that time was to show the English that he can be a good Catholic
and a loyal citizen.
Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal in 1879.
Along with him, 22 Anglican pastors and 11 professors from the University of Oxford and
Cambridge were converted to Catholicism.
It is estimated that from Saint John Henry Newman's time to 1935
900 Anglican pastors
have been converted to the Catholic Church.
Anglican Robert Hugh Benson says,
“For 25 years I lived in a clerical environment and
for nine years I was a pastor in a city.
My father was the spiritual head.
He was the Archbishop of Canterbury from the Anglican community of England.
My religious training was very complete ”
"I believed that the Roman Catholics were clearly corrupt and decadent, they were the
ritualistic and polluted, and the Protestants were radical, loud, extravagant and vulgar."
“One day, while in Egypt taking a walk, I entered the town's Catholic church out of
pure curiosity.
It was surrounded by adobe houses and gave the visitor no impression of the solidity
and security that Europe usually provides,
and its interior was unattractive.
However, I now believe that it was there that something akin to the Catholic faith stirred
within me.
Obviously, the church was part of the life of the town.
It was open, like the other Arab houses and it was exactly the same as other Catholic
churches.
There I considered, for the first time, the possibility that Rome was right and that we
were the wrong ones.
My indifference for the Catholic Church began to permeate with respectful fear.
To reassure myself, I struck up a deep friendship with a Coptic priest to whom, upon returning
to England, I sent a pair of bronze candlesticks for his altar.”
“In Damascus I received a new blow when I learned from The Guardian newspaper that
the preacher, to whom I owed all my knowledge of the distinctiveness of Catholic doctrine,
had submitted to Rome.
It is impossible to describe the surprise and horror with which I fitted the news.”
In 1902, while walking with my mother
I told her that I had once again had concerns
about Rome.
I also promised her that if they came up again I would let her know at once.
I will never thank her enough for the way she received my confidences.
I kept her informed, as well as my Superior, of the stages of my process and I obeyed to
the letter the advice of both.
I read all the Anglican books that were recommended to me and consulted with all the skilled people
who were proposed to me.
I do not believe that, in general, Catholic polemicists will come to understand what an
Anglican has to go through before being admitted to the Catholic Church.
I am referring, above all, to internal conflicts.
The prospect of changing the Church means losing the most intimate, the most loved and
known, to fall into a huge desert, where you will be observed.
I was a minister of a Church that seemed to have no clear and unique criteria even
in matters directly related to the salvation of souls.
Let us take as an example a single essential point and that is the doctrine of penance.
In reality, I did not know whether or not it was allowed to teach that it was essential
to obtain forgiveness of mortal sin.
Practically all the anglican bishops denied it and some of them even denied the power
to absolve.
And every day with greater clarity, it was impossible for me to affirm that the Church
of England required sacramental confession.”
A friend, a Catholic priest, told me that the biggest inconvenience he encountered upon
conversion was being forced to deny the validity of his ordination.
Until then he had been a ritualistic pastor, working selflessly among the poor in a major
English city
and who for years, daily celebrated what he believed to be the holy sacrifice
of the Mass.
He told me that he was almost scared to make his first Communion.
Yet the moment the Holy Eucharist touched his tongue, he realized the difference.
He told me that from that moment on he did not hesitate for a second.
Until then he had only received bread and wine accompanied by a non-sacramental grace.
And that this new gift was neither more nor less than the Body of Christ.”
“Now I can say that returning from the Catholic Church to the Anglican one would be to exchange
certainty for doubt, faith for agnosticism
substance for shadows
bright light for dark gloom
universal fact for a provincial and lacking doctrine of history."
"The failures of Anglicanism and Protestantism, in general, are proof that its doctrine is not divine,
the failures of Catholicism only show that it has a human side as well as divine."
Benson converted in 1903, and after studying in Rome, was ordained a Catholic priest.
Since then, he has dedicated himself to writing books to spread the Catholic faith, being
a chaplain at the University of Cambridge.
The great Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, who received the Nobel Prize for literature
in 1928, says
“In Protestantism as I learned to know it, the misfortune is that each one
has "personal conviction ”and his own faith.
I had never doubted that the Catholic Church identified with the Church founded by Christ.
For me, the question of the authority of the Catholic Church was only a question of the
authority of Christ.
I had always considered the Protestant Reformation as the story of a rebellion against Christianity,
even if it was a rebellion of believers and Christians animated by a godly intention.
Nor had the usual objections I heard against Catholicism, such as the bad Catholics scandal,
made much of an impression on me.
The cult of the saints, which has existed in the Church since its origins, responds
to a demand that seems immanent in our nature, as we want to honor heroes.
And about the cult of Mary?
I have always thought that it was logical and natural.
If it is believed that God has saved us, taking our flesh and our blood, we must have for
the Vessel from which He formed His human body, feelings that are unlike any that we
may have for our fellow men: a respect, a tenderness, a compassionate heart.
If it is true that the son of Mary is both true God and true man, then the son is the
Son and the mother is Mother for all eternity.
He being the Creator and she His creature.
It is difficult to put into words what God has given me through His Church.
He himself has said that He gives us His peace, but this peace is not what the world gives.
This peace is of another type.
It can perhaps be compared to the peace that reigns in the depths of the ocean.”
Sigrid Undset was instructed by Monsignor Kjelstrup and was received into the Church
on November 1st, 1924.
She found in the Catholic Church a security for her Christian faith that she could not
find in the churches that emerged from the Reformation.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.