“So they led you to believe.”

Growing up I heard the expression several times: “So they led ya to believe.”

In other words, if you believed something contrary to what they believed you had been deceived by others who hold the same view. Now of course, just analizing the statement we find that it is highly condescending and arrogant, as it is used to belittle another and presumes that they are right in their own views.

However, the principle of the statement - that people can be misled - is a valid concern. Ironically, those who used this statement around me when I was a youth were Protestants who had a strong dislike for anything Catholic.

Why did they hate the Catholic Church so much? Precisely because they were “led to believe” that The Church is something that it is not!

In my last blog about Facing Family & Convert Books I mention that after the Protestant Revolt people began demonizing the Catholic Church in order to justify the sin of their division. Calling the papacy (the office of the pope) the “anti-Christ” was just one of these tactics. Biblically and historically a good Christian scholar can point out the papacy in the New Testament (starting with the Apostle Peter), its perpetuation through history (265 popes since the first century), and its practical nature (as the “final authority” to unify Christians doctrinally).

IN OTHER WORDS, just because some people call the pope an “anti-Christ” doesn’t mean he is. In fact, such statements are quite foolish, since the popes have always taught Christians to draw near to Jesus Christ and to prayer.

The real dilemma for anti-Catholic Protestants is bound up in their own misconceptions of the Catholic Church, of Catholic practice, and of what they were “led to believe” concerning their view of what Christianity is “supposed to look like.”

For the first 1,500 years of Church History there was 1 Church. The Protestant Revolt changed that. Now Christians are highly divided and many are very confused about “Christianity” and especially “The Church.” A good study of Church History and of Ecclesiology (the theology of the nature of the Church) can help.

Facing Family & Convert Books

To become a Catholic Christian is to regain one's Christian unity.

There is something truly joyous in discovering the real Catholic Church after one has the personal revelation that Christians are sinfully divided. The New Testament condemns church division/factions as one of the most grievous scandals (see 1 Corinthians 1:10, 12:25; Galatians 5:20) as it introduces strife and enmity between those called to loving unity in God.

Many of us who were raised Protestant either just ignore the fact if we are lax Christians, while those of us who were more zealous attempted to resolve the problem through proselytizing others into our denomination (I was of the latter category as a youth). Of course, such small scale efforts really don't work when hundreds of other denominations are undoing their work through the same efforts.

Yet, it is also truly frustrating after becoming Catholic when Protestant family members criticize you without being willing to engage in intellectual dialogue. It is one thing for one's family not understand or appreciate why people become Catholic, but it is another for them not to respect you enough to ask questions and learn why you made such an involved change in life.

Hence, many of us have written books on the matter of conversion to the Catholic Church. In fact, since the 1990s there has risen a whole genre of Catholic convert books now. There are about 20 of them that have become extremely influential in exposing Protestant misconceptions about the Catholic Church, helping people realize that The Church is not a big evil machine.

Several of such books have specific focuses and recount personal narratives of how the Holy Spirit moved them to discover what they needed to discover the real Catholic Church. Since the Protestant Revolt it became "necessary" for Protestant to demonize the Catholic Church in order to justify their divisions. If they called the Church evil, who could blame them for separating from it?

Thus the great division of the Protestant Revolt became another fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah's bewailing, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20)
Protestants began calling The Church "evil" and their division "good." And the bitter relations between Catholics and anti-Catholic Protestants began.

I have written one of the latest of these books. I was raised as a nominal Christian, yet with many Seventh-day Adventist ideas (my Father's upbringing). Seventh-day Adventism is one of those denominations that are not only "anti-Catholic", they are hyper-anti-Catholic as an actual part of their theology.

After the Holy Spirit led me into The Church via answered prayers, I was easily re-influenced by Seventh-day Adventism and became a practicing one for about six months again. This lasted until I became conflicted with where God was leading me through answered prayer and where others were leading me through their interpretational arguments. Ultimately, I came to recognize the difference between allowing humans to lead me astray and allowing God to lead me by prayer.

The projected release date of my book is this November through CHResources. It is entitled:

Praying Made Me Catholic

With the Biblical & Historical Reasons I Must Remain Catholic