On September 4, I celebrated five months as a Catholic. Sometimes that sentence still catches me off guard. Not because I regret it. I don't. If anything, I am still amazed that after all the years I spent as a Protestant, all the questions I wrestled with, all the books I read and all the conversations I had, I eventually found myself standing inside the Catholic Church saying, "Yes. This is where I belong." Five months is not a particularly long time, especially when you consider that Christianity has been around for two thousand years, but it has been long enough for me to learn that becoming Catholic did not magically make the questions go away. In some ways, it gave me an entirely new set of them.
I have been on Paltalk since 1998, which is a ridiculous amount of time to spend on any online platform. At this point, I have probably been there longer than some of the people arguing with me have been alive. Over those years, I have made international friendships, talked to people on the phone, met people in person, prayed with people, laughed with people, argued with people and, yes, managed to make a few people absolutely hate my guts. That's Paltalk. It has always been this strange little corner of the internet where you can have a theological discussion with somebody in another country one minute and be arguing about something completely ridiculous ten minutes later. I have stayed because, despite all the nonsense, there have been real people and real relationships on the other side of those screen names.
Becoming Catholic changed some of those conversations for me. Suddenly, I wasn't just Rachel anymore. I was the Catholic. It doesn't matter that I spent most of my life Protestant. It doesn't matter that I studied Christianity for years. It doesn't matter that I have degrees in religion or that I have spent countless hours reading Scripture and wrestling with theology. Once people hear "Catholic," a lot of them seem to put the rest of the story down and pick up whatever preconceived idea they already have about the Catholic Church.
That has been one of the strangest parts of these first five months. I knew people would disagree with me. Of course they would. I didn't become Catholic believing that everybody else would suddenly agree with me. What I didn't expect was how often I would have to defend the basic idea that I am still a Christian.
On the evening of September 4, the exact day I was celebrating five months as a Catholic, I was in a Christian room on Paltalk when a woman using the screen name Provs_888 came in and asked if she could play a sermon. The room was active. People were talking. It wasn't some empty room where everyone had gone to bed and somebody was desperately trying to keep the conversation alive. I made a joking comment: "Oooo, can it be Catholic?" I wasn't demanding that a Catholic sermon be played. I wasn't trying to hijack the room. It was a joke, and honestly, considering the reaction that followed, apparently it was a much more dangerous joke than I realized.
Provs_888 became upset and came in and out of the room, and administrators eventually came in to defend her. At some point I was told, "This isn't a Catholic room. It's a Christian room." I have thought about that sentence quite a bit since then because it says far more than the person saying it may have intended. I don't need every Christian room to be a Catholic room. I don't need Protestant Christians to play Catholic sermons for my benefit. I have spent most of my life listening to Protestant preaching, and I am perfectly capable of listening to it now. What bothers me is the underlying assumption that a room can be Christian while Catholicism is treated as though it automatically exists outside the definition of Christian.
That's where I start to feel like a misfit.
The conversation eventually turned into what these conversations so often turn into: a discussion about whether Catholics are actually Christian and whether Catholic teaching is compatible with the Gospel. People brought up statues and whether Catholics worship them. Mary became part of the discussion, as she almost always does. Mother Teresa came up. Someone talked about having attended twelve years of Catholic school. Someone else talked about going through RCIA and leaving. There were questions about baptism, being born again, salvation and whether Catholics understand the Gospel correctly. Some of the people talking had personal experience with Catholicism, while others were speaking from what they had been taught about it.
I don't have a problem with any of that by itself. I actually think Christians should be able to have serious theological disagreements. Tell me you think Catholic teaching about Mary is wrong. Fine. Tell me you think the Catholic understanding of justification is wrong. Let's talk about it. Tell me you don't believe in the Real Presence or that you think Catholics misunderstand the role of tradition. I will disagree with you, but at least we're having a theological conversation. I can handle being told that I am wrong. What I have a harder time with is when disagreement stops being about doctrine and starts becoming a judgment about the people who hold the doctrine.
That happened during this conversation. Provs_888 said that the Roman Catholic Church teaches "another gospel." She said Catholics "do not teach the Gospel." And then she said, "we should condemn them." All three statements came from the same person, and that last one stayed with me. There is a difference between saying that you believe Catholicism is wrong and saying that Catholics should be condemned. One is a theological position. The other becomes personal very quickly.
I want to be fair here because I don't want to write this as though every person in that room was attacking me. They weren't. There were people who disagreed with Catholic teaching without saying that every Catholic was damned. Beloved22, for example, openly said they disagreed with a lot of Catholicism, but also said, "i will never say catholics are not saved though as a whole.. some saved some not like the other denoms sitting on them pews." That comment actually meant something to me because it showed that disagreement and condemnation do not have to be the same thing. Beloved didn't suddenly become Catholic. I didn't suddenly become Protestant again. We still disagreed. But there was a recognition that neither of us gets to sit in God's chair and determine the eternal destiny of an entire denomination.
Unfortunately, the conversation did become about me personally. Someone referred to my "big day" when I became Catholic, describing it almost as though I had been "sworn into" the Roman Catholic Church. Someone questioned whether I had been born again before being baptized into the Catholic Church. Someone said Catholics think they aren't born again before they are baptized. And then Dani-613 said, "beloved Ruth told randers that randers isnt saved."
There is something surreal about seeing your own salvation become a topic of conversation among people sitting behind screen names. I can sit here and write about theology all day. I can explain why I became Catholic. I can explain what the Church teaches about baptism, grace, justification, the sacraments, Mary and salvation. I can cite Scripture and the Catechism. I can have the historical arguments. But none of that changes the fact that there is a human being sitting on the other side of this screen who has feelings.
Of course it hurts to be told that you aren't saved.
I can pretend it doesn't. I can make a joke about it. I can say, "Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm Catholic. Apparently I'm going to hell. Nice to meet you." And honestly, sometimes humor is the only way I know how to keep from screaming. But underneath the sarcasm, there is a real hurt. I did not become Catholic because I stopped believing in Jesus. I did not become Catholic because I stopped reading Scripture or stopped caring about the Gospel. I became Catholic because after years of studying, questioning, praying and wrestling with Christianity, I became convinced that this was where I belonged. Having somebody tell me that decision means I am not saved isn't simply a theological disagreement. It feels like being told that the faith I have spent years trying to understand is somehow invalid because I arrived at a different conclusion than they did.
That is a difficult thing to carry.
Someone else asked the question that inevitably comes up when people see me getting into these arguments: if people are treating you badly in these rooms, why don't you stop going to them? I understand the question, but I keep coming back to the same answer: why should I? Why should I leave a Christian conversation because I am Catholic? I am not asking anyone to become Catholic. I am not demanding that Protestant rooms change their theology. I am not walking into a Baptist room and telling everyone they need to start praying the Rosary. I simply don't understand why my presence as a Catholic should automatically mean I don't belong in a Christian conversation.
I didn't become Catholic so I could become an outsider. I didn't leave Christianity and join something completely unrelated to it. I didn't abandon Jesus, throw away my Bible and decide I was done with everything I had believed before. My conversion was the result of taking Christianity seriously enough to keep asking questions even when the answers became uncomfortable. I studied. I prayed. I wrestled with things. I changed my mind about things. I changed my mind again. Eventually, I crossed the Tiber.
And now I'm learning that conversion doesn't necessarily end when you enter the Church.
Sometimes conversion means learning how to live with being misunderstood.
That may actually be one of the biggest lessons of these five months. I expected to spend this first part of my Catholic life learning about the Mass, the sacraments, the saints, Catholic theology and all the other things that come with entering a tradition I didn't grow up in. I expected to have questions. I expected to occasionally feel like I had no idea what I was doing. There are still moments during Mass when I look around and think, "Okay, everybody else seems to know exactly what they're doing, so I'll just follow along and hope for the best." That's part of learning.
What I didn't expect was that I would also have to learn how to be Catholic when other Christians don't consider me Christian enough.
And that is where the word "misfit" keeps coming back to me.
I am too Catholic for some Protestants and too Protestant for some Catholics. I'm too theological for people who want simple answers and too questioning for people who want certainty. I'm too traditional for some Christians and too willing to question tradition for others. I don't fit neatly into anybody's box, and for a long time I thought that meant something was wrong with me.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe I don't have to fit neatly.
There are people who have legitimate wounds from the Catholic Church, and I don't want to dismiss those experiences simply because I am Catholic now. Some people were raised Catholic and left. Some were taught things about Catholicism that I believe are inaccurate. Some had experiences with priests, parishes or Catholic institutions that hurt them deeply. I can understand why those experiences shape how they see the Church. I can disagree with their conclusions without pretending their pain isn't real.
What I want in return is the same courtesy. I should be allowed to disagree with Protestant theology without being treated as though I have rejected Christ. I should be allowed to say that I believe Catholicism is true without somebody deciding that they know the condition of my soul. I can be wrong. They can be wrong. That's what theological discussion is for.
Disagreement isn't persecution. But cruelty isn't Christian witness either.
Five months ago, I thought becoming Catholic meant I had finally found an answer to something I had been wrestling with for years. Now I realize that finding an answer didn't mean the questions would stop. In some ways, the questions are better now. They're less about trying to figure out which box I belong in and more about how I am actually going to live my faith.
How do I remain faithful when people misunderstand me? How do I love people who genuinely believe I am wrong? How do I defend what I believe without becoming consumed by every argument? How do I disagree without becoming bitter? How do I stop allowing somebody else's opinion of my faith to determine how secure I am in it?
Those are harder questions than "Am I Catholic?" That question has already been answered.
Yes, I am Catholic.
And yes, I am Christian.
I'm still learning what both of those things mean in my life. I'm still asking questions. I'm still reading. I'm still wrestling with theology. I'm still figuring out where I fit. I'm still occasionally getting irritated enough at Paltalk to wonder why I haven't deleted the entire thing from my computer after all these years.
But I'm still here.
Maybe that is what these first five months have really taught me. I don't need Paltalk to tell me whether I belong. I don't need Protestants to approve of my conversion, and I don't need Catholics to tell me whether I'm Catholic enough. I don't need somebody behind a screen name to pronounce judgment over my soul.
I know why I became Catholic. I know what I believe. I know that I didn't walk away from Jesus when I entered the Catholic Church. If anything, I walked toward Him.
Five months later, I am still Catholic. I'm still Christian. I'm still learning, still questioning, still believing and still trying to figure out what it means to live faithfully in a world where people don't always understand the road I've chosen.
Maybe being a misfit isn't the tragedy I once thought it was. Maybe I don't have to spend the rest of my life trying to convince everybody that I belong. Maybe I can simply belong where I believe God has called me and let everybody else figure out what they think about it.
People see the destination. They rarely see the wilderness that led you there.
I know my wilderness.
I know how long I searched.
And five months into this journey, despite the arguments, the accusations, the misunderstandings and the occasional desire to throw my computer out the window, I am still here.
Still Catholic.
Still Christian.
Still following Jesus.
And that is enough for me.
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