My Conversion Story - Gary Hoge

CatholicOutlook.com Backup Welcome My name is Gary Hoge (which rhymes with vogue). Welcome to my website! If you want to learn more about the Catholic faith, you’ve come to the right place. I’m a convert to Catholicism from Evangelical Protestantism, and before I became a follower of Jesus Christ in 1986 I was an atheist. So I’ve covered a lot of theological ground in my life. I’m not a scholar – and I don’t pretend to be – but I’ve learned a lot along the way, and I’d like to share it with you. If you’re interested, you can read more about me here: * My journey from atheism to Evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism * Pictures of my reception into the Catholic Church Mission My goal for this site is simply to try to explain the Catholic faith in a way that’s easy to understand, and to explain why I think it makes more sense than the alternatives. So, if you’re a Protestant who wonders why his Catholic friends confess their sins to a priest and kneel before the Eucharist, or if you’re a Catholic who wonders the same thing, this site is for you. Together, we’ll cut through the myths and the misconceptions, and spell out as plainly as possible what the Catholic Church really teaches. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you learn here. A Special Note to Protestants If you’re a Protestant, there’s one thing you need to bear in mind if you want to understand the Catholic faith: when it comes to theology, Catholics and Protestants don’t speak the same language. Oh, they use the same words, but they use them in different ways, and that often leads to a lot of unneccessary confusion and misunderstanding. Part of this is simply the result of the two groups living apart from each other for the past 500 years, but part of it is also the result of the fact that, as my friend Mark Shea says, “Catholic theology has an incorrigible knack for obscuring marvelous insights in confusing terminology.” That’s a pity, but we won’t let it stop us. In addition to explaining what Catholics believe, I’m also going to explain why they believe it, and why I think Catholic theology makes sense. I’m going to be asking you to use your common sense. Simply put, common sense is hearing hoofbeats behind you and knowing that although it could be a zebra, it’s most likely a horse. So what I’m going to try to do is to show that when all the evidence from Scripture, history, and reason is considered, the Catholic position is the one most likely to be right. In order to demonstrate all of this to you, I will appeal to Scripture and try to show that Catholic theology is faithful to the text, and to the context, and that it makes more sense than the alternative explanations. I’ll also appeal to the writings of the early Christians, because they bear witness to the faith that they received from the apostles. If I can show that Catholic teaching is consistent with what they say the apostles taught them, then I think that is strong evidence for the truth of that teaching. What I hope to show is that to consistently reject the Catholic position is to consistently choose the improbable path.

Something for Everyone Originally, I thought I was creating a website that would explain the Catholic faith to Protestants, but over the years I’ve heard from many Catholics who have told me that they, too, have benefitted from what I’ve written here. So, now I think of this site as a guide for anyone who wants to learn more about the Catholic faith. I cover many topics, from the papacy to Scripture to geocentrism (yes, geocentrism). Be sure to check out my dialogues; they’re a lot of fun. Also, don’t miss the many wonderful cartoons, courtesy of “Reverend Fun”. So take a look around and explore wherever your curiosity takes you. And may the Lord Jesus bless you!

My Conversion Store - How I went from being an Atheist, to a Baptist, to a Catholic by Gary Hoge When I was a child, my Father taught me the basics about God, and he read to me and my brother from a child’s narrative version of the Bible. I loved listening to those stories, and looking at the beautiful illustrations, but somehow, I never really developed much faith in God. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I thought going to church was incredibly boring, or perhaps it had to do with the influence of my mother, who was an agnostic. Although she never overtly discouraged me from believing in God, thanks to her I learned very early in life that some people didn’t. And it seemed to me as I got older that it was usually the smartest people who didn’t believe in God. I don’t know at what age I finally lost what little faith I had, but by the time I was in high school, I considered myself an atheist. I suppose it would probably be more accurate to say I was an agnostic, because if you pushed me I probably would have admitted that I couldn’t be absolutely certain that God didn’t exist, but I really believed that He didn’t. I thought that religion was for emotional weaklings who couldn’t handle reality. As far as I was concerned, man had created God in his own image many centuries ago in order to explain how the universe worked. But then we developed science, and we started to understand the natural processes that govern the universe. As time progressed, and we made advances in such fields as astronomy, physics, and biology, it seemed to me that we had less and less need to appeal to some “God” to explain things. I could forsee the day when we finally understood enough of the mechanics of the material world to do without God entirely. I longed for that day, because I thought the world would be a much better place without religion. Better for me, anyway. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I didn’t like being told I was a sinner and that some of the things I was doing were wrong. What right did these people have to judge me? But my attitude began to change during the dismal and dreary Winter of 1986. I was a college student at that time, attending Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia. For the first time, I began to realize that there was a dark side to my atheist philosophy, and that in some very real ways it was a double-edged sword. I thought it had served me well in the past by freeing me from the constraints of religion so I could live as I pleased, but now I was beginning to feel that living as I pleased wasn’t really all that pleasing. In fact, it seemed kind of empty and pointless. For some reason that I couldn’t explain, I began to grow restless and dissatisfied. I wanted something more, but I didn’t know what. I guess I wanted some meaning in my life. After all, I believed that humans were just biological accidents, the result of millions of random forces coming together just right to spontaneously create life. We live, we grow, we die, and then we simply cease to exist. In the end, what’s the point? In the past I hadn’t noticed these things, probably because I was too busy seeking my own pleasure. But it seemed as if there were some sort of inexorable law of nature at work. I found that the more I had, the more I wanted; and the more I got, the less satisfying it was. It was like a cruel joke, and I found myself sinking into despair. Outwardly, I had everything; inwardly, I had nothing. I began to wonder if I would ever be happy again.

Then one day I found myself sitting in a fast-food restaurant eating a bowl of chili. Suddenly, a single thought flashed through my mind: “What about God?” I had no idea where that thought came from, but I pondered it seriously for the first time in my life. There was a glimmer of hope in that thought, the first hope I had seen in a long time, and it flashed through my mind like a beacon. It occurred to me that many people found meaning in their lives from a relationship with God, and I was just desperate enough to consider the possibility. Of course, I didn’t want to embrace the idea of God just to cheer myself up, but I wondered, what if there’s really something to it? What if it’s real? I decided right then and there to find out. My roommate was a Christian who attended a small Baptist church just outside of town, and I decided to go with him to church the following Sunday. I imagine that my sudden desire to go to church must have been quite a surprise to him, but he did his best not to show it. He probably didn’t want to scare me off. When the appointed day arrived, I found myself sitting in Gateway Baptist Church, listening to a man by the name of Dewey Weaver, who was the living embodiment of every stereotype I ever had of a Southern Baptist preacher. His accent, his hairstyle, and the way he waved his Bible in the air were the very things I used to make fun of. I felt like an idiot for being there. What was I thinking? I just hoped that my friends wouldn’t find out. But there must have been something attractive in what Pastor Weaver said, because the next week, there I was again. In fact I kept coming back week after week. After a while I no longer noticed Pastor Weaver’s style, and I liked his sense of humor, but more importantly, the message he preached showed me exactly why I was in despair: It was because I was a sinner in desperate need of a savior. I’d heard that before, of course, and dismissed it as bunch of foolish theobabble, but this time it was beginning to register. Jesus wasn’t just a misunderstood itinerant preacher from Galilee mouthing a bunch of fluffy platitudes about being nice, nor was he some sort of nationalistic Jewish rabble-rouser who ran afoul of the Roman oppressors. No, according to Pastor Weaver, He was God in the flesh, who loved me so much that he laid down His life to make atonement for my sins, so that I could be forgiven. I was thinking about this gospel message one night as I was going to sleep, and for the first time in my life it all made sense. I was struck by the logic of it, and by how well it explained the human condition, especially my own. And I realized that somehow I had crossed the line from unbelief to belief. I didn’t know exactly when it had happened, but I knew that I believed. I truly believed that strange, foolish message that I had once wondered how anyone in his right mind could believe. And now, looking back, it all seemed so obvious, and I wondered how I could have been so blind. That night I asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins, and I asked Him to come into my heart, just as Pastor Weaver had explained. I pledged to follow the Lord from that day forward, as best I could. A few days later I descended on the local Christian bookstore, to get some materials to help me understand this new faith. I liked the idea of Jesus very much, but I still didn’t care much for the concept of organized religion. So naturally, the book How to Be a Christian without Being Religious, by Fritz Ridenour, jumped out at me and I snatched it right up. I also bought D. James Kennedy’s books, Why I Believe, and Truths that Transform. These, and some others, formed the foundation for my new Christian theology, which naturally enough, resembled the Calvinistic and Evangelical theology of Kennedy, Ridenour, and others whose books I read. I also read many apologetics books, like Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict and Paul Little’s Know Why You Believe, books that explained the rational basis for the truth of Christianity. It was important to me to know why I believed what I did, both for my own benefit, and also because I wanted to be able to defend myself against people who would assume, as I once did, that if I were a Christian I must be a dim-wit. I managed to graduate from college, and about a year later God blessed me with the best wife a man could ask for. Several years later He blessed me again with a wonderful son. I read the Bible, and even learned a little Greek so I could read the New Testament in its original language. But one thing I

never could do was find a church with which I was entirely comfortable. By my count, my wife and I visited twelve different churches in the Northern Virginia area. Some were Baptist, some Assemblies of God, some Presbyterian, one was even Messianic Jewish, but most were simply “nondenominational,” which generally means quasi-Baptist. I found good things in each of these churches, and good people, but I noticed that every time I went to a new church, I heard a new theology. And sooner or later I would discover something in that theology that conflicted with my own. Perhaps they had what I considered a strange view of the end-times, or they refused to accept the possibility of charismatic gifts (I was not charismatic myself, but I thought it was wrong to reject the idea, since it is so clearly taught in the Bible). We attended a semi-charismatic Episcopal church that we enjoyed very much, until I discovered that they baptized infants. We finally settled on a small “Bible” church. We weren’t entirely happy with it, but we were really tired of “church shopping.” In all those years, one church I never even remotely considered was the Catholic Church. I didn’t believe that the pope was the anti-Christ, or anything like that, but I did think that Catholicism was chock-full of unbiblical teachings. I suppose I would have conceded that it was a Christian Church, but just barely (and only because I did meet one Catholic who actually had an interest in God). Generally, I thought that anybody who read and believed the Bible would steer clear of Catholicism. I assumed that the millions of people who are Catholic were probably born into it, and were obviously biblically illiterate. I felt sorry for them, and I hoped they would one day sit down and read the Bible for themselves, without the pope’s help. If they did, I believed they would quickly become former Catholics. Unfortunately, though, most of the Catholics I knew were completely disinterested in the Bible, or in Jesus, or in God. They were thoroughly secular in every way, completely indistinguishable to me from non-Christians, except that they managed to go to church from time to time, which they seemed to regard as a burden. (One of my friends told me that his goal every Sunday was to get in, “put in his hour,” and get out). A church that would produce such spiritual lifelessness was not a church I wanted to be any part of. But one day a Christian friend of mine at work showed up at my office with a book in his hand. He said that one of his Catholic friends had given it to him. It was called Catholicism and Fundamentalism, by Karl Keating. It purported to defend Catholicism against the attacks of certain anti-Catholic Fundamentalists, and at the same time to show that the Catholic faith offers a better, more coherent explanation of the biblical and historical data than does Protestant Fundamentalism. Frankly, I was amused that someone had the guts to even try to defend Catholicism on biblical grounds. I figured it should be easy to refute Mr. Keating’s arguments, since I knew that Catholic theology was blatantly unbiblical. So I read the book, and I was glad to find that Mr. Keating was a good writer who had a sense of humor. At first, I read it as if I were a prosecuting attorney, looking for weaknesses. But to my surprise, this guy was rational and articulate, and what he was saying was making sense. I didn’t know what to make of that, but I began to read more sympathetically, and I really tried to understand what Mr. Keating was saying. As I learned first-hand about Catholic theology, it became clear that I had not understood it before. I was surprised to learn that the Catholic Church did not actually teach the unbiblical things I thought it did, and that the things it did teach actually had a pretty good biblical basis. I realized that somewhere along the line I had absorbed many misconceptions about Catholicism. The problem, I suppose, was that almost everything I knew about it came from Protestant sources (which is like learning about Israel from only Palestinian sources). To my surprise, I also discovered that once I did understand the basics of Catholicism, I could not refute it. I wasn’t necessarily convinced that it was right, but I couldn’t prove that it was wrong either, and that rankled me. If there’s one thing I want to be certain of, it’s my faith. I want to know what I believe and why I believe it. But now, after reading this book, I got the uneasy feeling deep down that the Catholic interpretation of the Bible actually made more sense than mine did.

As I said, I wasn’t convinced right away that Catholicism was right, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I settled the question one way or the other. So I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I sought out the best Catholic apologetics I could find, and also the best Protestant apologetics. I read Akin, Armstrong, Hahn, and Shea, among others, on the Catholic side, and Geisler, Kennedy, Ridenour, and Stott, among others, on the Protestant side. Generally, my impression was that the Protestant authors didn’t understand Catholic theology very well, because they kept criticizing it for things it didn’t really teach. The Catholic arguments seemed pretty good to me, and I kept hoping that one of the Protestants would engage them, but they never did. As I began to better understand Catholic theology, I found that I could easily counter the Protestant arguments against it, but I could not counter the Catholic arguments against Protestant theology. Indeed, they seemed to me to be unanswerable. I began to seriously question the foundational doctrines of Protestantism: sola fide and sola Scriptura. The Catholics made an excellent case that neither of these is taught in the Bible, and that they are both actually refuted by the Bible. Not only that, but neither of them were believed by essentially anyone before the Reformation. I found the Protestant argument in favor of these doctrines unconvincing. They appeared to be taking the Bible out of context, and sidestepping verses that weighed against their interpretation. Sometimes they would quote from some ancient Christian who seemed to support their position, but they ignored other things the same ancient Christian wrote that made it clear that he didn’t support their position. Because Protestants were the ones who broke away from the Church, alleging that it had become corrupted, I knew that the burden of proof was on them, and frankly, I didn’t think they had made a very good case. The more I understood Catholic theology, the more I felt that it was actually more biblical than my own theology. This was very disconcerting, because I had a high regard for the Bible. I was very proud to be an Evangelical Protestant, because we had the reputation of being biblical literalists, and we were often called “Bible Christians.” God said it, I believe it, that settles it. But as I learned the Catholic interpretation of the Bible, I felt that it was more true to the plain meaning of the text than my own was. I saw that it was true what Mr. Keating wrote in his book: Fundamentalists use the Bible to protect beliefs that are, in fact, antecedent to the Bible, which is interpreted so it justifies what they already hold, although most fundamentalists think what they believe comes straight out of the sacred text and that they are merely acknowledging its plain meaning. . . . They do not hesitate to read between the lines if such reading is needed to preserve their position – a position that precedes their scriptural interpretation.1 I discovered that in most cases where Catholics and Protestants disagree over biblical interpretation, it was, ironically, the Catholics who interpreted the Bible literally, where we Protestants gave it a figurative, allegorical interpretation. A few examples should illustrate this: * When Jesus says, “You must be born of water and the Spirit,” Catholics interpret this literally: “Water” equals “water,” i.e., baptism. But some Protestants say that the water refers to something else, perhaps the preaching of the gospel, or even the amniotic fluid of natural child-birth. * When Paul says that Jesus cleanses his church by “the washing with water,” Catholics interpret this literally. “Washing with water” equals “washing with water”; another reference to baptism. But some Protestants say it refers to something else, perhaps the Scriptures. * When Jesus says, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven,” Catholics, again, interpret this literally and believe that Jesus gave his apostles

the authority to forgive sins in His name. But some Protestants say that this is just a reference to the apostles’ authority to preach the gospel. * Again, when Jesus says, “This is my body,” and “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” Catholics interpret this literally. The Eucharist is His body; it is truly His flesh and blood, though it does not appear to be. But most Protestants say that it remains only bread and wine (or grape juice) and that, once again, we should not take Jesus’s words literally.. * When James says, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone,” Catholics interpret this literally. “Not by faith alone” equals “not by faith alone.” But Protestants insist that “not by faith alone” really means that we are justified by faith alone. This is actually one of the core doctrines of Protestantism, sola fide. Talk about irony! It seemed to me that Catholic theology usually allowed the Bible to simply mean what it says, without the complicated exegesis and linguistic gyrations that were sometimes necessary to make it support my beliefs. I got the uncomfortable feeling that many of the “problem” passages in the Bible were only a problem because I was trying to pound a square Protestant peg into a round Biblical hole. The round Catholic peg seemed to fit much more easily. In my research, I also read some of the writings of the earliest Christians, men who learned the gospel from the apostles themselves, or from their immediate successors. As a Protestant I had never heard of these men. I had never heard of John’s disciples Ignatius and Polycarp. I had never heard of Irenaeus or Justin Martyr either. I had no idea that these men, and others, left behind writings that might shed some light on the faith of the early Church. In my twelve years as a Protestant no one had ever told me that the apostles’ own disciples left us writings witnessing to the true apostolic faith. Isn’t that strange? Here we had, essentially, a second-century Bible commentary, written, in some cases, by men who knew the Bible’s human authors personally. Why would we ignore such an incredible resource? We Protestants believed that the Holy Spirit spoke to us, so wouldn’t it be worth seeing what He said to the apostles’ own disciples, many of whom laid down their lives rather than compromise the faith? Well, I for one wanted to see what they had to say. These guys knew the apostles, lived in their culture, spoke their language, and in all likelihood, read the original copies of the New Testament books (in their own native language, no less). If anybody knew the correct Bible interpretation, I figured it would be them! So I read all of the epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, both of whom were disciples of John. I read some of Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp. I read the epistle to the Corinthians that was written by Clement. I also read portions of Justin Martyr’s letter to the Roman emperor, Antonius Pius, written within living memory of the apostles, and which attempted to explain the Christian faith to an outsider. It was uncomfortably obvious to me that the second-century Church was much closer in its beliefs to the Catholic Church than it was to my “Bible” church. John’s disciple Ignatius even referred to the Church as the “Catholic Church.” They had bishops, and priests, and deacons; they thought they could lose their salvation; they believed that baptism regenerates; they thought that the Eucharist was a sacrifice, and that it really was the Body and Blood of Christ; and they believed that the succession of bishops in the Church was the standard of orthodoxy. This blew my preconceived ideas about the early Church right out of the water. I had always assumed that the early Church was essentially Protestant in its doctrines and that the distinctively Catholic doctrines were later corruptions that infected the faith sometime around the fifth century. Not so. In fact, I couldn’t find any evidence that the distinctively Protestant doctrines like sola Scriptura and sola fide existed at all in the early Church.

This was overwhelming to me, and it reminded me of what that famous Anglican convert, John Henry Newman, said: “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” This was all very unsettling, to put it mildly, but at this point I tried to look at the situation objectively. I think I have an advantage here, because I came to the faith as an adult. Since I didn’t grow up in a Baptist-type faith, it was not inconceivable to me that it could be wrong. After all, someone had to be wrong here, and it just might be me! So I stepped out of the fishbowl, as it where, and tried to look at my own denomination and my own theology as objectively as possible. I was surprised to learn that my evangelical theology was mainly an American phenomenon that didn’t go back more than a hundred and fifty years, much less back to the time of the apostles. Having read the writings of the early Christians, I knew for a fact that they would have rejected my theology as “another gospel” (see Gal. 1:6-8). Given all that I had learned, I had to admit that the Catholic explanation of Scripture and history was much more likely to be correct than my denomination’s explanation, and I realized that if I wanted to go on being a “Bible-believing Christian,” I would have to become Catholic. As far as I could tell, the Catholic explanation of Christianity was consistent with the plain meaning of the Bible, and it was consistent with what Christians believed from the apostolic era right up to the Reformation. Protestantism, on the other hand, was mainly based on two doctrines that I didn’t think were very well supported in Scripture, and which were entirely absent from Christian history before the Reformation. I didn’t see how Protestantism could be a return to the purity of the early Church, as I had been taught, because the early Church was Catholic. Therefore, I concluded, somewhat sadly, that Protestantism was not a “reformation” of the faith at all, but a corruption of it. And yet, even though the shattering of the visible Church has been a tragic thing, God has brought good out of it. Today, Evangelical Protestants are some of the best, most devoted Christians in the world. It’s hard to find fault with that! And that’s why I created this website, to help these good people, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to understand what the Catholic Church is really all about. End Notes 1 Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 26.

My Reception into the Catholic Church Monday, August 2, 1999 St. Mark's Catholic Church Vienna, Virginia