Testimonial: Jeremy N.
Jeremy’s Story:
I was raised in a non-religious home, and in the midst of the turmoil caused by my parents’ divorce in 2nd grade, I sought comfort in the family of my best childhood friend. They regularly attended a large Southern Baptist church in the Atlanta suburbs. Spending most weekends with them, I attended the church as well and this led to me identifying as a Christian. I was baptized 1992 at the end of my sophomore year of high school. Sadly, my faith journey soon calcified into a self-righteous moralism believing myself to be morally superior than my family members.
“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6).
Oppose me He did, but in order to humble me! In college at Georgia Tech, I encountered academic failure for the first time. These academic struggles shook me to the core of my achievement-based identity. Through them, the Spirit led me to understand and embrace that my worth and identity was based foremost on being a redeemed, child of God. This was liberating!
During this spiritual growth, I became involved in Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru) and interned with them as a missionary. I also enrolled in a Reformed seminary part-time, seeking an academic career in theology/philosophy. My seminary experience left me increasingly skeptical of ever knowing theological truth with certainty. This skepticism devolved into a cynicism-bred depression, for which I sought professional counseling, and soon thereafter left Cru staff – and seminary – abandoning plans for an academic career in theology or philosophy.
Eventually, I affiliated more with Calvinism and became involved with a Presbyterian (PCA) church that had a vibrant campus ministry. I converted to Calvinism and remained a Presbyterian until formally dissolving my membership with our local congregation upon developing Catholic convictions and taking RCIA classes.
A sudden, unexpected conversion
These new convictions became manifest in a rapid, unexpected conversion experience that unfolded in the course of little over a week, the soil of my heart and mind having been cultivated by months of listening to Atlanta’s Catholic radio station, AM 1160 The Quest, and by reading Paul Kengor’s, A Pope and a President, which tells the marvelous story of how God providentially used the informal alliance of Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan to topple the Soviet Empire. I gained esteem for the papacy, and I could not deny the holiness radiated by the Pope.
The conversations on The Quest Atlanta Catholic radio made the faith feel both fresh and familiar at the same time: most of it felt deeply agreeable and consonant with what I already believed. As for distinctly Catholic doctrines that I disagreed with, for the first time I was listening to Catholics explain these things on their own terms, and I grew to appreciate that they were at least coherent within the Catholic system.
My intellectual respect having been won, I became open to the critiques of Protestantism I encountered on certain programs, especially the call-in talk show, Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders. Anders taught me that the Sola Scriptura doctrine, along with many others I took for granted, were not held historically by the early Church but were modern innovations. Once this pillar of the Reformation dissolved in my mind, I knew that, logically, Catholicism was now a live option: a realization that was deeply unsettling as the trust gap between my heart and the Church was enormous.
To bridge this gap, I had to take a step of faith in the direction in which the Holy Spirit had been tugging me subliminally. On the way to pick up my children from school, I called Dr. Anders, during his show, to make plain “what was stopping me from becoming a Catholic.” This was the first time in my life I had ever felt even an inclination to call a talk radio program of any kind! My question expressed my lack of faith in the Church due to its alleged historical sins and errors. As usual, Dr. Anders gave a well-informed answer with gentleness and respect, but it was not so much the content of his answer that impacted me as the humbling sense that there was SO much more to this story that I did not know.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? ‘I the LORD search the mind and try the heart, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.’” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
In a lecture by Dr. Anders on the problems with the Reformed conception of assurance of salvation, he quoted a historian on the Puritan psyche that they had “exchanged the treadmill of penance and indulgences for the iron couch of introspection.” This cut to my heart like a knife! I, too, had lived for years tortured by an introspective approach to gaining “assurance of salvation,” obsessing over the spiritual meaning of my thoughts and emotions. Dr. Ander’s portrayal of the sacramental approach to assurance offered by the Church as a more objective way of knowing one is in a “state of grace” was enough to liberate me from the “iron couch”! I now knew there was another way!
All of these thoughts were stirring in my soul when I told my wife – and best friends – that I believed God was calling me to the Catholic Church. Exhausted from the pandemic (my wife was an ER nurse) and a number of family issues, she declared, “I don’t have the emotional energy to engage with this right now. Call and talk to Brad.” Dr. Brad Gregory is a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, hired originally as a Reformed Presbyterian scholar. She and I both knew that if anyone could talk me out of this, it would be Brad! I wanted to ask him, with as much as he knew about Catholicism, why he was not a Catholic. I emailed to ask for a phone meeting. He replied, “I would be happy to talk with you but full disclosure: I am joining the Catholic Church on Pentecost. I will try to be as objective as I can.” Whoa!
We talked the next week for 2-3 hours and it probably was the most exhilarating, meaningful conversation of my life, covering history, philosophy, sociology, biblical theology, and more. We were truly of one mind. By the end of the conversation, I knew my mind had changed fundamentally, along with the trust in my heart, and that this change was irreversible. The Catholic Church is who she claims to be!
I wanted to give my devoted – and very holy – wife more time to process and come to terms with these sudden, profound changes, so I did not join with my RCIA cohort at the 2022 Easter Vigil but was confirmed on All Saints Day that same year.
Since becoming Catholic, I have experienced a spiritual revival, significant healing, and a renewed desire to use my gifts to build up the Church. I help teach RCIA, and I started a local evangelism team for St. Paul’s Street Evangelization. I continue to pray and strive for the unity of all Christians that Christ prayed for and that will be ultimately realized when He returns.
Jeremy Noonan
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus
Douglasville, Georgia