Shortly after their wedding in 2002, a Gen-X couple in Texas decided to create their dream life. They wanted to move somewhere they loved, God’s country, a place of majestic mountains and sweeping alpine meadows.
Leaving behind friends, family and jobs, in 2003 Alex and Reagen Dirksen pulled into Colorado during a snowstorm. But the couple – one Baptist, the other evangelical – quickly became frustrated when they began shopping for a church.
“Not to rip on the other churches,” says Alex, 31, who sports a close-cropped beard and black- rimmed glasses. “But we didn’t feel they had the depth we were looking for.”
This Easter, the Dirksens converted to Catholicism.
It’s common to hear about the exodus of people leaving Catholicism. But the untold story is that 750,000 people converted to Catholicism nationally over the past five years, at a steady rate of 150,000 annually.
Also obscured is this sub-trend: An increasing number of converts are evangelical pastors, seminarians and Bible teachers.
They include Marcus Grodi, a former evangelical pastor who started The Coming Home Network, geared toward helping Protestants make the switch, featuring everything from a popular TV show to an annual conference.
Evangelical Christians who “come home to Rome” say they’re drawn to the authority, tradition and aesthetic beauty of Catholicism.
They consider this the church that Jesus built, often embracing Catholic orthodoxy with evangelical zeal.
Many are like the Dirksens, who diligently tried one church after another – including an evangelical megachurch in Colorado Springs – but still felt spiritually homeless.
So they began to pray:
Lord, we’ll do whatever you want us to do.
We’ll go wherever you want us to go.
We’ll say whatever you want us to say.
And we’ll give away whatever you want us to give away.
After all, Jesus taught that the true disciple gives up everything to follow the Lord.
“At first I thought, ‘This is a cool prayer,’ ” says Reagen, 26. “But when things started happening, I thought, ‘Oh, no! Why did I start praying this?’ ”
The answered prayer made her very nervous, because suddenly her husband craved Catholicism.
Reagen is an open, round-faced blond who radiates joy whenever she talks about the Lord. To her, Catholicism meant rote prayers and empty rituals. She wanted her faith challenged, to know God better than she knew herself. Besides, Alex’s fixation with Catholicism struck her as odd, considering his evangelical upbringing.
“I had always grown up thinking that the Catholic Church was not legitimate,” explains Alex. “They weren’t really believing Christians. ”
But he had begun to suspect that what he knew about Catholicism was shrouded in myth.
Pursuing truth, he reread a book called “Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism,” by Kimberly and Scott Hahn, the daughter and son-in-law of Alex’s childhood pastor.
Scott Hahn, a Presbyterian minister, was known as a militant anti-Catholic. So he shocked those in Alex’s evangelical circle when he converted to Catholicism. But now, spellbound by Hahn’s dramatic conversion story, Alex craved more knowledge.
Where was Christ in this church? Such questions soon morphed into a siren call.
The tale of the Dirksens’ conversion evokes an image of religious explorers navigating through a thick fog, aided only by a spiritual compass.
Alex, the wayfarer out front, often felt confused. He felt his heart leading him there, but too often things remained very murky. Would his wife trust his pursuits in the Lord?
Another problem: Reagen had started to explore Catholicism with him, but her enthusiasm was tepid. “I had to deal with a lot of anger issues toward him,” she says. “I didn’t understand why he wanted to do this.”
Although Alex’s desire led them to
Catholicism, it was Reagen who found Pax Christi.
An artist who often painted outside in the neighborhood, she’d been struck by that round building nestled amid rolling hills.
But she was blunt when they first met with pastoral associate Paula Sarge to explain why they wanted to attend explore Catholicism through the Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults classes.
“I told her I wasn’t as interested in Catholicism as my husband,” says Reagen, who grew up Baptist in East Texas, where brimstone is as plentiful as barbecue.
At first, Reagen attended RCIA classes to support her husband. But soon she grew to love the people at Pax Christi, and the faith they practiced.
“After a while I thought, ‘This isn’t just for us. This is for me.’ It was really exciting.”
But Reagen’s mother didn’t really understand, at first, though she’s now very supportive. And Alex’s brother-in-law sent him a five-page letter “saying how bad this was,” recalls Alex.
Worse, his parents were embarrassed by his decision, and tried to debate him out of it until the conflict grew so painful that everyone stopped discussing it.
Then there was the matter of church doctrine.The Dirksens drew up a list of potential “trouble points,” then had a three-hour meeting with Debbie Vasicek, director of faith formation.
For Reagen, the potential deal-breaker was birth control. “We told her we weren’t in a position to have a lot of kids right now,” she says.
“(Debbie) did a great job of saying, ‘You can’t just do what we tell you to do. You have got to figure out where it fits in your life, and what the Lord is asking you to do,”‘ Reagen says.
Vasicek often finds herself explaining the teachings on conscience. “It’s not good enough to do what the bishop says,” she says.
“You have to read about it, reflect upon it, pray about it, be in dialogue with other Catholics about it, and check with other sources of authority in the church.”
Such guidance eased Reagen’s concerns.
“I tend to be a rebel sometimes,” she says, sitting on the couch at home with her husband, near a key rack that dangles two wooden crosses on leather strings. “I don’t want people telling me what to do all the time.”
Alex’s head swivels her way, his dark eyes piercing, and surprised. “I think people have a problem with authority,” he says. “They don’t want it. But I think God made this world to be built on authority. On this Earth, the pope is our spiritual leader, and I enjoy that.”
In their bedroom is a small sanctuary that features a thick well-worn Bible on a low wooden shelf, under a large laminated map of the world.
Places they would like to work as lay missionaries are circled: South America, Africa, Indonesia.
They are praying about a three-year commitment with the Franciscan Mission Service, which promotes evangelization. They would love to work with women on issues of poverty and AIDS.
But they seem baffled when asked how they balance this desire with controversial papal teachings that oppose the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
“I have to be honest,” says Alex. “I don’t know enough about that to speak on it. I just have this image of holding someone who is hurting.”
Catholic doctrine – not to mention rosters of saints and reams of papal teachings – is complex, so Catholicism reveals itself slowly to converts.
It’s like two newlyweds getting to know each another, one surprise after another.
But this they know. “We grew up Protestant, so we don’t want to bash it,” says Alex. “But our hearts lined up with what Catholicism teaches. “
WHAT CATHOLICS SAY
Nearly all Catholics and Protestants believe in God (97 percent and 99 percent, respectively.)
But there’s a larger gap in their attitudes toward
religion and society. Only 52 percent of Catholics agree that religion can answer most of
today’s problems, compared with 69 percent of Protestants.
2004 Gallup poll
MORE TO KNOW
Over the past two years, more than 1,000 Christians attended the annual conference of The Coming Home Network, an international organization that aims to help Protestant clergy and laity convert to Catholicism. This year’s conference, called
“Deep in History,” will take place Nov. 4-6 in Columbus, Ohio. For more information,
visit chnetwork.org.