The reason for my question is that I had an extensive conversation with Tom Cabeen if he advocated all the doctrines in the Protestant churches he had been associated with and he said it was possible to be associated without accepting all their doctrines.  That seemed to be his approach in the past and it ended up creating problems between him and the congregation administration.  So it was not a wild question to wonder if he had joined the Catholic Church under the same premise, Jim.

Hi Blondie, Jim and all,

I just thought it might be a propos to mention to all of you that what drew me to the Catholic Church was not an analysis of her doctrines or practices. What drew me was hard historical evidence that she was the legitimate descendant of the church founded by the apostles; the same church, all grown up. I confirmed to my own satisfaction that all the essentials that were there at the time of the apostles are still in place.

That was not the first time I had come to a church based on historical evidence. The first church I came to for that reason was the Anglican/Episcopal church, which I began attending after reading the early church writings. It was historical data, not doctrines or scriptural texts, which made me come to the conclusion that the Anglican church had once been a part of the Catholic church (Bede, in particular) and that at the time of the Reformation, had made a complete break with the Catholic church (Belloc and Eamon Duffy, in particular), losing her legitimate apostolic succession in the process.

That is why the first mass we ever attended at our parish was on the day Gloria and I were confirmed as Catholics. We were with an Episcopal church, where I was a choir member and soloist. I had agreed to stay with the choir and sing until the end of the choir season at the beginning of June. My wife Gloria and I were confirmed on June 9, 2006. (We felt no reluctance. We had based our decision on verifiable facts, supported by the evidence of those who had made the same journey before us. It was a bit like prepaying for a month in Hawaii without first having to go there to make sure it is really the kind of place where one might want to spend a vacation.)

When we were confirmed, we were asked if we accepted the beliefs listed in the Apostles' Creed (Google it if you are not familiar with it). They asked about each one separately. I had no problem at all with any of these teachings. At the time I was confirmed, there were still a number of Catholic doctrines which I did not understand very well. There still may be. The ones I have studied since then I have found to be logical, scriptural (based, of course, on the Catholic interpretation of Scripture), and strongly rooted in history, that is, having been widely believed, in some form or other, right back to apostolic days.

I still have much to learn about Catholic teaching and practice. But I can say this about each "new" (to me) doctrine I have studied since my initial interest in the Catholic Church: I have been both surprised and pleased to learn the extent to which each one fits neatly into the Catholic (and early Christian) understanding of Christ's teachings, how they urge one toward holy living, how logical and scriptural they are, and how widely accepted they have been by people who are obviously godly men and women, based on the corpus of their writings and the record of their actions (the saints). But in the meantime, as we study, Gloria and I are associated with a community of faith in which we are growing in Christ at a much greater rate than we ever did prior to this, whether on our own or in association with other faith communities.

But it would not be appropriate to say that I examined all Catholic doctrine in detail, and based on my passing favorable judgment on them, decided to join the Catholic church. In order to do that, I would have to know as much as the Christian Church has learned in two thousand years. It was the obvious shortcomings of that approach that made me reject it and seek a better paradigm for finding the truth about the Christian Church, the historical one.

Your brother,

Tom Cabeen

Hi Blue,

Just a slight correction: The Catholic Answers website is at http://www.catholic.com, not http://www.catholicanswers.com.

Tom Cabeen

btt