Dr. Kenneth H. Howell
former Presbyterian minister and seminary professor
Summarizing my journey to the Catholic Church is a bit like attempting to put the Internal Revenue Code on a postcard. But I will venture to sketch the highlights of this journey.
My knowledge of Catholicism in childhood was limited to my father’s side of the family, some of whom were devout, but most of whom were Catholic in name only. I can remember at times being impressed with the aesthetic appeal of the Catholic Church and having a sense of something greater. But I was completely at a loss to know what that was.
In my late teens (college years), I had a deep sense of the grace of God in my life and loved to read the Sacred Scriptures. I read spiritual literature that stressed the importance of a daily communion with God in the Spirit and found at times an unusual degree of closeness to God, which I can only describe as a gift.
During the late seventies, I attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I learned the art of biblical interpretation and other theological disciplines. Although I had no interest in the Catholic Church at that time, I do remember being repulsed by the anti-Catholic attitudes of some of my conservative Presbyterian friends. To me, Catholics were misguided, but they were Christian.
In my seminary days, I remember formulating a theological issue that was to play a crucial role in my journey later on. I realized that the only way to justify the splitting of Western Christianity that occurred in the Reformation was to see the Protestant Reformers as bringing the Church back to its original purity from which it had fallen. This meant that the Protestants were the true Catholics.
Summarizing my journey to the Catholic Church is a bit like attempting to put the Internal Revenue Code on a postcard. But I will venture to sketch the highlights of this journey.
My knowledge of Catholicism in childhood was limited to my father’s side of the family, some of whom were devout, but most of whom were Catholic in name only. I can remember at times being impressed with the aesthetic appeal of the Catholic Church and having a sense of something greater. But I was completely at a loss to know what that was.
In my late teens (college years), I had a deep sense of the grace of God in my life and loved to read the Sacred Scriptures. I read spiritual literature that stressed the importance of a daily communion with God in the Spirit and found at times an unusual degree of closeness to God, which I can only describe as a gift.
During the late seventies, I attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I learned the art of biblical interpretation and other theological disciplines. Although I had no interest in the Catholic Church at that time, I do remember being repulsed by the anti-Catholic attitudes of some of my conservative Presbyterian friends. To me, Catholics were misguided, but they were Christian.
In my seminary days, I remember formulating a theological issue that was to play a crucial role in my journey later on. I realized that the only way to justify the splitting of Western Christianity that occurred in the Reformation was to see the Protestant Reformers as bringing the Church back to its original purity from which it had fallen. This meant that the Protestants were the true Catholics.
In 1978, I was ordained a Presbyterian minister (Presbyterian Church in America) and served two churches while I also obtained a doctoral degree in biblical linguistics. Shortly after my ordination, I was preaching a homily on the unity of the Church and stated that the only justification for the Reformation was that the Catholic Church had left the Gospel. I further said that the demands of unity in the Church, for which our Lord prayed in John 17, required us to do this: If the Catholic Church ever comes back to the Gospel, we must go back to it.
Little did I realize in 1978 that I would someday eat my words.
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