Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

This is a safe harbor for inquirers and catechumen to ask questions and share their journey into Holy Orthodoxy. Please be kind to our newcomers and warmly welcome them. All Forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.
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Maria
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Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

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We are all converts from the newborn child who was immersed into the waters of Holy Baptism to the senior citizen who is baptized on his death bed. Conversion is God calling us to a deeper walk with Him.

We all have been blessed, so let us freely share the blessings that we have received.

Please feel free to share your own pilgrimage into Orthodoxy. To start, answer any or all of the following questions keeping in mind that whatever you write will be visible to the entire world wide web. This is an opportunity to share the wonderful miracle of grace that God has given you, to forgive all, and to encourage everyone to make this voyage with you.

  1. Since Orthodox Christianity is often called the best kept secret, how did you learn about Orthodoxy?
  2. Did you feel excited upon learning about Ancient Christianity? Or was it a total shock?
  3. Tell us about your first visit to an Orthodox Church.
  4. Describe your biggest struggles. Did your parents, siblings, friends, or spouse agree with your decision to seek the truth about Holy Orthodoxy? Or did they prevent you from attending services and inquiry classes? How were these issues resolved?
  5. Did your prayer life improve, or did you find yourself struggling with God?
  6. How did you feel as the date of Holy Baptism approached? Did things go smoothly, or did it seem like the devil wanted to prevent you from approaching the Baptismal pool.
  7. Do you still experience mountain highs and valley lows in your walk with God?
  8. What books helped in this walk with Christ?
  9. What books were a hindrance?
  10. What are your favorite prayers?

A note of caution: Please keep the stories focused on your interpersonal relationship with God. Avoid writing any polemics or anything that would offend a relative, loved one, or friend.

If any of our members would like to respond and question excerpts from these conversion stories, please be kind and start a new thread on that topic.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Maria
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Re: Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

Post by Maria »

Part 1

When I was growing up in Roman Catholicism, my fondest memories were attending St. Lawrence Martyr Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, California, where bells tolled the Angelus, the Mass was still served in Latin, and where I made my First Holy Communion early in the morning in a long line of little girls wearing bridal white and shivering with veils blowing stiffly in the cool ocean breeze. We had gathered outside the church for the procession into the church, and we had to hold onto our veils, so they would not blow away. Other memories were visiting the warm Southern California beaches on Sundays after Mass with my loving family, listening to waves crash on the shore, skirting around the jelly fish, catching sand crabs, building sand castles with my brother, and looking up at the coastal mountains and wondering what was on the other side. Yes, I was one of those obedient cradle Catholic, but I spent most of my life struggling and trying to justify the mountain of changes which Vatican II had created. With the "Sound of Music" in my ears, and the new openness in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church, we were encouraged to attend ecumenical vesperal services with Anglicans and Lutherans, and even a holy service at the local Jewish Synagogue.

With this new openness, I met my future husband at an Evangelical Thanksgiving dinner in 1981. He was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, and we were wed in September 1982. As our new family grew, the evangelical protestants welcomed us into their homeschool outreach program where we spent days visiting beaches, aquariums, pumpkin patches, missions, and ghost towns. On Saturday evenings, we visited the local parks and sang Christian Gospel music under the stars with crickets singing the chorus.

With all this new ecumenism, the once held sacred teaching, "Outside the Catholic Church, there is no salvation," became strangely archaic because we were being taught that everyone who said, "Lord, Lord" was a Christian. Somehow, we were all part of One Church, even if members did believe in strange and diverse teachings. Although this did not sound right, with "kumbaya" resounding in our ears, and with girls wearing flowers in their hair, we did not dare judge one another or question the leadership in the Vatican, lest we be judged "holier than the Pope."

TO BE CONTINUED

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Maria
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Re: Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

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Part 2

Our first and only son was born in 1984, but I almost lost him when the gynecologist took me off the natural thyroid prescribed by my general practitioner. After experiencing cold chills, exhaustion, and serious cramping, he allowed me to resume the medication. Since he took me off thyroid immediately after my son was born, I could not bear any more children and suffered at least two early miscarriages.

During the years starting in 1973, the Catholic Church in Los Angeles had been undergoing continual liturgical abuse with Novus Ordo clown masses and beer masses, but we had been conditioned to accept all these changes with special retreats held in the parishes. Few people spoke out, but those who did had difficulty finding a new church as the old Traditional Latin Mass was only held in a few isolated parishes that were two to three hours away (one-way) by car. In addition, the people attending those masses tended to dress like the Amish, so that did not appeal to me or to my husband.

Less than a year after my son had made his first holy communion in 1992, the choir at St. James Catholic Church sang, "Her Name is Jesus." We left that parish immediately and started our long search for the True Church. We knew that Protestantism was filled with errors, so we contacted some of our Catholic homeschooling friends, who were members of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) or who attended Traditional Latin Masses (TLM) at a few parishes in the Los Angeles Archdiocese under Cardinal Mahony. We avoided attending TLMs as soon as we learned that hosts consecrated at a previous clown or beer mass could be reserved in the tabernacle and distributed at the TLM mass. Why take chances, and why travel two to three hours one way only to discover that the only Latin Mass offered in the diocese had been cancelled?

Our journey to Orthodoxy began when I suffered a severe case of pneumonia on Easter 1993, where I almost died with a 105 degree temperature for more than five days. With the continuous beeping of the hospital monitors day and night, the only prayer possible was the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner." When the doctor said that there was a chance that I might not survive, I promised the Lord that I would look into Orthodox Christianity if He saved me. That very next day, a new powerful antibiotic was administered to me, and I slowly regained my health over three months, but this time of convalescence allowed me to study and read Orthodox Christian literature. Among the books that I read were Beginning to Pray, by Archbishop Anthony Bloom, The Jesus Prayer, A Monk of the Eastern Church [Fr. Lev Gillet], Philokalia: Writings on the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Trans. Kadloubovsky and Palmer. 1992, and the New Testament.

On August 1, 1993, the beginning of the Fast of the Theotokos, we attended Divine Liturgy for the first time at the Melkite Eastern Catholic Church only because some of our friends had heard that the Melkites were part of the Orthodox Church, and I wanted to be faithful to the promise I had made our Lord. The confusion started because Cardinal Mahony had asked the priests at St. Charles Borromeo to tell the parishioners not to attend St. Anne's Melkite Catholic Church down the street as it was not "Catholic." At our first meeting that evening with a Melkite priest after Supplicatory Prayers that August 1, 1993, he told us that Melkites believe that the Orthodox Church is not heretical. Therefore, we asked if we could attend Catechism Classes at St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral. He did not object, so we started our inquiry into Orthodoxy. Finally, we left the Melkite Church in September 1995, and were received into the Orthodox Catechumenate on October 1, 1995, The Feast of the Holy Protection of the Theotokos.

TO BE CONTINUED

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Maria
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Re: Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

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Part 3

Flashback to my high school and college years and my struggle with Papal Powers

One of the most difficult steps which a convert from Catholicism to Orthodoxy must take is putting aside the 1870 Vatican I dogmas of Papal Infallibility and Papal Supremacy. These were stumbling blocks for me too.

Because of the saintly image projected by Pius XII during the late 1950s when I was a child, and his popular biography which portrayed him as a saint, during my senior in high school, I applied and was accepted into the Dominican Order after a couple of interviews. Thus, on a bright sunny in early August, I cut short my summer vacation, and entered the postulancy, a six month period were I was studying and looking into the monastic life. When I became a novice and started to really live the monastic life, we had to read almost all of the recent papal encyclicals and selections from the book, The Church Teaches, which contained pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic conciliar documents, including the Seven Ecumenical Councils, Council of Trent, and Vatican I.

In our survey class, we were only required to read the document on Papal Infallibility, not the one on Papal Supremacy. Later on as a novice, I left the convent due to Buddhist teachings given in a taped retreat given by Thomas Merton. However, in the mid 1990s after I had married and was looking into Orthodoxy, I read all the council documents in translation from the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the Council of Trent, and Vatican I, and my eyes were opened. By 1995, I could no longer accept Papal Supremacy--the idea that the pope was supreme over each and every bishop. That was not the way Christ established His Holy Church, because Peter did not super manage the rest of the 11 Apostles. He could never have done any travels if he had. Neither could the Apostles or St. Paul have done their missionary journeys if they had to make visits to St. Peter every 24, 36, or 48 months. After Papal Supremacy fell, then Papal Infallibility was the next to topple, and I realized that I could no longer call myself a Roman Catholic. On April 6, 1996, our family was chrismated into the Greek Orthodox Church.

Soon after Hitler's Pope was published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell, my husband and I purchased a couple of copies and started reading them. This carefully researched book using sources from the secret Vatican Archives exposed the connection between the Vatican underground and Hitler. It also exposed the connection between the Vatican, the Franciscans, the Ustaše, and the slaughter of the Orthodox Serbian Christians from the cliffs of Medjugorge during World War II. The late British author, Michael Davies, also exposed the connection between Medjugorge and the Ustaše and proposed that the so-called "virgin" was actually a ghost as villagers had reported strange tapping on the windows and knocks at the door with no one being there. Hitler allowed the Vatican underground to operate freely under the conditions that top ranking members of Hitler's staff could use this underground to escape to Argentina when necessary.

However, the most important knowledge gained was that Pius XII, being a canonical lawyer before his election to the Pontificate, was the person responsible for the Code of Canon Law of 1917. This information concerning Pius XII's important role in writing the Code of Canon Law of 1917 is also found at Wikipedia and a few Catholic websites. It was he and his staff of canon lawyers who rewrote all the Holy Canon--Canons which had excommunications attached to them if altered. These Canon Laws were rewritten to make the Ancient Canon Laws comply with the recent 1870 decrees of Papal Supremacy requiring that all bishops must now be approved by the Holy See before their election and consecration.

The Ancient Canons only stipulated that each bishop in the Holy Catholic Church (both East and West before the Schism) needed to be elected by the diocesan priests and laity, and then have the election confirmed by three neighboring bishops who would do the consecration of the newly elected bishop. Only after the newly elected bishop was consecrated was his name sent to the Pope or Patriarch and then added to the diptychs for commemoration. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 changed this procedure to remove any local control so that the Pope had to approve all new bishops throughout the world. This made things very difficult especially during the communist persecution which followed the release of the Code of Canon Law in 1917.

Whereas the ancient pre-Vatican I procedure had required the signature of three neighboring bishops to elect a bishop, the new post-Vatican I procedure required the vacant diocese to secure the names of three men (laity, priest, or bishops of another diocese) who would then be submitted to Rome. The Pope of Rome then had the authority to elect one candidate or elect all three candidates for different dioceses. He could also reject all of the candidates and demand that the vacant diocese submit a new list of three worthy candidates.

This happened to the Melkites, who at the death of Bishop Ignatius in October of 1992, repeatedly had to send in new lists to the Pope of Rome until the name of Bishop John was finally chosen as Eparchy in November of 1993. A mysterious bishop from the Vatican came to visit our parish and interviewed me and several other parishioners at random to verify that Bishop John was a good man, only then was he approved by the "Supreme Pontiff," the Pope.

The very fact that the Ancient Holy Canons were adulterated in 1917 to comply with Vatican I dogmas of Papal Supremacy and Infallibility, and then again were modified in 1983 to comply with the changes mandated by Vatican II is very disturbing. These Ancient Holy Canons have anathemas attached, so they should have never been changed.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_G ... _of_Newton

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Maria
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Re: Discovering Orthodox Christianity: My Conversion Story

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Flash Forward to my years as a graduate student in college:

While I was in college earning my M.A. degree, I had fallen into a false modernistic love, ecumenism, while taking upper division and graduate courses in English. However, God did not abandon me to this foolishness. He opened my eyes when I had been approved to do a graduate level stylistic study comparing C.S. Lewis' Perelandra with James Blish's A Case of Conscience. After graduation, I read and reread almost every book written by C.S. Lewis after his conversion to Christianity. In addition, I read books written by Father Seraphim Rose and other Orthodox Christians. These books along with guidance from my spiritual father helped to freed my soul from all the errors I had picked up in college.

It was during these post-graduate years, from 2009 to 2011, that I began to see the very present dangers of ecumenism. My husband and I had begun to read a passage from an Orthodox Christian book every night in our resolve to learn more about True Orthodoxy. It was to be a very difficult journey because so many churches claim to be The True Orthodox Church, and yet, there is only One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

To Be Continued ....

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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