I am a heretic. I (sort of) like the Catholic Church.

Around two years ago my wife and I got it in our minds that we might be moving soon. My daughter was soon to graduate from high school, and we felt that after graduation there might be a window of opportunity to move if it seemed to make sense.

Now as it turned out my daughter attended University of Vermont and moving would make absolutely no sense as I would be forfeiting in state tuition. Anyway, since my prostate cancer surgery, I am a little less inclined to move. Now my prognosis is good now, but it could change at any time. If in fact I only have 5-15 or so more years left (who knows I might have that anyway) I don't want two of those years tied up in moving. I would like to simplify my life, not make it any more complex.

Anyway, one day a silly thought came into my mind. I had the thought that since my conversion to Jesus Christ in college, that all of my church experience had been in the Charismatic / Pentecostal tradition of Christianity (primarily Assemblies of God). This was because the first church that I associated with after Christ was the Church of Good News in Rumford Maine. Had it been the Baptist church across the river in Mexico (or down the river in Peru..love these names) my Christian life would have a different orientation. Or had I remained in the Methodist church of my parents, the orientation would be different still.

Anyway, I thought that if we were to move locations, I might be open to changing my tradition. (Even though I am Charismatic / Pentecostal..I am sort of the cautious type in this..and some parts of their theology I have some reservations about). But to what? I knew quite a bit about the Pentecostal / Charismatic tradition (from experience), quite a bit about the Methodist tradition (from my upbringing), and some about the Baptist tradition (from my piano teacher and grandparents). Beyond that point however, I was ignorant.

But I decided if I were to change traditions, I would do it right. I would first educate myself on the various traditions out there in ChristianityLand and then make an informed decision. I would not base it on transient stuff Christians often make such a decision on like the pastor or the program or the friendliness of the church.

Now many Christians I know would never have included the Catholic denomination in this list of traditions worthy of studying. However, these Christians never knew the LaPlante family in Rumford, Maine. However, having known them, they are the primary reason I just never could became a rabid anti-Catholic (well maybe a mild one when I lived in NY state). I guess I just could never reconcile the Catholics being the antichrist and the pope the whore of Babylon (or is it vice versa) with the obvious Christian testimony of the LaPlante family. Given a choice between some folk's opinions and people I know and respect, I will side with people I know and respect any day of the week thank you.

Besides I knew enough about Catholicism to know that they claimed to have started it all (what with St. Peter being the first pope supposedly). So I figured that any group that claimed to be my spiritual ancestor and the origin of Christianity was worthy of investigation.

One day I decided to google "evangelical catholic" and came across this web site and this one. Eventually I found this one. I found them all fascinating. This was the first time I had really read about Catholics from Catholic sources. I began to entertain the following questions:
* My understandanding of the Catholic Church was entirely through Protestant sources. Was my understanding correct? If I was misinformed, was it intentional? Disclaimer: in my current church I have never heard one thing negative about the Catholic Church. Now we don't preoccupy ourselves with the other churches in Franklin county, but to the extent that other churches are mentioned, it is almost always positively (I remember a wonderful sermon our pastor preached on St. Patrick a while back).
* I knew of people who were raised Catholic but came to Christ through our church and others like it. But here were folks who made seemingly informed decisions to leave their Evangelical church for the Catholic church. And to my surprise they did not spiritually die. In fact they seemed to thrive spiritually. What's up with that?
* They seemed to have at least some valid points when they were critical of Protestants. Yes 30,000 denominations seems to be a tad exaggerated. But the bigger issue is whether denominations is what Jesus had in mind when He designed the church. This amongst other points seemed to be valid concerns.
* Maybe the differences between our traditions is not as great as we make them out to be. I mean these guys did appear to be evangelical and Catholic.

And finally the unthinkable one:

What was God speaking though this? Is this all because He is leading me to (sometime anyway) go through the mother of all tradition changes? Assemblies of God to Catholic seemed very wild..but strangely not impossible. But..any move of this magnitidue must be very well thought out and very reasoned. Who knows, maybe this denomination is the whore of Babylon and this whole line of thinking is simply satanic deception.

Anyway..this seems like a good juncture to hang it up for the evening and continue at another time. I think I will stay on this topic a while. Hillary, Obama, and McCain are getting boring.