Former Louisiana Anti Catholic Becoming Catholic

No not Jimmy Swaggert just an average person but God still rejoices.

Tip of the Hat to Army of Martyrs for leading me to this convert blog that is of great interest. That is On the Road to Rome .

I find her conversion story very interesting for several reasons. First she seemed to experience the three Christian communities that are at the heart of Louisiana life and often bumping against each other. That is Catholicism (though as we shall see she never practiced it but was very ant it), the Baptist Faith, and the United Pentecostal Church which a unique bird to say the least.

This is pretty amusing about trips she would make with here friends to this Catholic Church in Marrero (This is right outside New Orleans Proper).

I was quite fervent in my honest desire to serve God. “Surely there is such a thing as absolute Truth,” I thought. It was here that I was introduced to the necessity of “right” doctrine and to the demonic works of the Catholic Church. My friends and I would often steal away to the local Catholic Church – Visitation of Our Lady Parish, on the corner of Barataria and Ames – and pray quietly for the conversion of these “deceived” souls, “rebuking” devils and “spirits of false doctrine.” Never did we think to pick up a book BY a Catholic and find out what they believed for ourselves. Surely, these people who “worshipped” statues and practiced “vain repetition” couldn’t be believed on ANY point.

Who knows perhaps Christ in the Blessed Eucharist in her trips to the Catholic Church to pray for the poor heathen affected her in some way she did not know.

The anti Catholicism she was around is interesting and how it affected her.

People assume as a former Southern Baptist I was around it too. I really was not. In the Northern part of the State in the rural Parishes there are few Catholics. Frankly Southern Baptist didn't give the Catholics must notice down the street. Plus there is a weird social dynamic in some of these Northern Louisiana small towns. Calling out another faith in a very explicit way( who are your neighbors) is tricky business. For instance I can never recall a Baptist Homily (sermon) on how the Methodists and Presbyterians were out of the gourd to baptize babies. I am sure it was occurring in perhaps other small Churches and the UPC perhaps but when you go to the ESTABLISHED SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCH of the Town ( The Church where all the big shots go and odds are the Board of Deacons has the town's Bank President on it) well it is just different terrain.

Anyway back to her blog. She highlights a lot of eventual faith journey that went back and forth from UPC to Baptist and serious entry into the reformed Calvinist community to the Catholic Church.

Keep her and her husband in your prayers. I might give her blog the Opinionated Catholic "Baptism" and declare her a Louisiana expat and thus put her on the Louisiana Catholic update. Till then she will be in the general links.