Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith

By Judson Carroll

This is the story of my conversion to Catholicism and a defense of Catholic doctrine. I was a student at a major Southern Baptist university and was working in conservative politics when I converted. Coming from an old southern family, this was a life changing decision. Although I did not know it at the time, it would mean being ostracized by friends and family and many hardships in the culturally Protestant American south. Regardless, becoming Catholic was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.

While part of this book is auto-biographical, most of it is a simple explanation of Catholicism using the Bible and the writings of the earliest Christians to explain Catholic belief. This is not a book filled with lofty ideas or complex theology. Due to where I live, I have to be prepared to defend my Church and my faith from many well-meaning Protestants who have a deep hatred of the Catholic Church. I use the words of the Bible to show them that Catholicism is truly Biblical and that their beliefs are not. Often, such discussions lead to a mutual understanding of Christian brotherhood...or they get angry and tell me I am going to hell. You never know what to expect when there is a knock on your door or someone hands you a pamphlet at the grocery store. I grew up with the very real specter of the Ku Klux Klan and the Masonic Order, that violently opposed Catholicism and hated Catholics. Things have changed in that regard, for the better, but the prejudice remains.

I hope that this simple book may lead others to explore Catholicism and find the "fullness of the truth." For Catholics, it will provide plain, Biblically based arguments to counter anti-Catholic attacks..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judson Carroll
• Release date: May 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215861141

Judson Carroll

Judson CarrollI am a certified Master Herbalist and Permaculturist from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, USA. I began learning about herbs and their uses from the old Appalachian folks, especially the Hicks family of Beech Creek, when I was around 15.I host the Southern Appalachian Herbal Podcast: Southern Appalachian Herbs https://www.spreaker.com/show/southern-appalachian-herbsI teach free, online herbal medicine classes: Herbal Medicine 101 https://rumble.com/c/c-618325I also write a weekly article on herbs and their properties: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/151My passion is being outside, enjoying the woods, the water and the garden. My mission is to revive the tradition of “folk medicine” in America, so families can care for their own ailments at home, using the herbs God gave us for that purpose. I am a moderator and contributor for The Grow Network and you can communicate with me there https://thegrownetwork.com/My email address is [e-mail]

Book preview

Confirmation,

an Autobiography of Faith

By

Judson Carroll

Copyright 2023

All rights reserved. This book may not be shared or reproduced without written permission by the author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Beginning

The Church

Authority

Sacraments

Weekly worship of the Christians

Jewish traditions

Saints and Statues

Call No Man Father

The Bible

Conclusion

Introduction

The heart of this book is the story of my conversion to Catholicism. However, this book will not be a standard conversion story. A major influence on my thinking about many things, but especially religion, was William F. Buckley, Jr. I can state, without hesitation, that Mr. Buckley was among the leading intellectual minds of the second half of the 20th Century (at the very least). Most will recall him as a brilliant commentator on politics and economics, a true Anti-Communist, who was the driving force behind political conservatism in America. Some may recall that he also wrote novels, loved to sail and had a wonderful wit. What most may not recall is that Buckley was a devout Roman Catholic and a defender of the faith.

My journey toward Catholicism came in a rather odd revelation. It occurred while I was a student at a politically conservative Southern Baptist college. I was working in the pro-Life movement with several prominent evangelical Protestant leaders. One day though, I realized that the best books on my shelf were not written by Protestants. It occurred to me that the smartest people I knew, worked with and read, were not Protestants; they were Catholics and Jews. That was a rather startling revelation as I was paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend a Protestant University! I had to find out why that was the case… were they smarter due to genetics or better educated and well read due to religious education? Soon, however, a larger question loomed… if they were smarter and better educated, could their religious beliefs and understanding of the hard issues of life, theology and doctrine be superior, as well?

By this time, I had been a committed Christian for years. I came from a Protestant household and I was baptized and confirmed into the Methodist Church. I worked for a time as a Methodist Youth Minister. I had attended both Presbyterian and Baptist colleges. I was even considering becoming a minister. I read the entire Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, each year (a practice I continue with my Catholic Bible, that contains chapters and verses that were removed from Protestant Bibles – more on that later). I was looking for the Protestant Denomination that contained, in fullness and practice, the doctrine and teaching of the Bible.

Although I briefly considered Judaism, it was clear that traditional Judaism was not compatible with my belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So called Messianic Judaism or Torah Observant Christianity was clearly un-Biblical. Anyone with any knowledge of the New Testament, and such books as the letters of Saint Paul would have to admit that there was a major split in religious and cultural traditions and practice between the earliest Christians and Jews. It was not a mere disagreement – it was a violent dispute. While the apostles of our Lord condemned both the traditional Jewish religious leaders who had insisted on the death of the Christian Messiah, and the Judaisers who were Jewish converts to Christianity that sought to maintain the Mosaic Law and Jewish traditions, the religious Jews of the time openly sought to destroy Christianity and kill its members who they considered blasphemers and heretics. While a Jew may convert to Christianity, doing so means leaving the Temple and much culture and social traditions behind. My Jewish friends who are converts to Christianity tell me that it is a very painful experience, involving ostracism from family and community. But, for a Christian to adopt the Jewish religious beliefs and practices that were expressly brought to an end by the words of Jesus and His apostles, while still professing to believe in the authority of Jesus Christ as God, is certainly heretical… it is denying the authority that hinges upon the divinity of Christ and the truth of Christianity.

Having set Judaism and its counterfeits aside, it was time to explore Catholicism. It was very natural for me to pick up a book by my favorite author, Mr. Buckley. The title of the Book was Nearer My God, an Autobiography of Faith. Quite aside from being a book on doctrine, history, theology or apologetics, this book was exactly what the title claimed. It was the story of one man, from childhood to advanced years, coming to understand and appreciate the religion into which he was born and educated. Obviously, my experience was very different. I had not been educated in Catholic schools. My family was definitely not Catholic and I knew next to nothing about the Catholic Church. But, here was the great William F. Buckley, Jr., writing in his erudite, extremely articulate but conversational style. This book seemed like an old friend or a mentor telling me his story and explaining his faith as a devout member of the laity. It was the perfect introduction for me… a little candle that showed the first steps in a long journey out of the darkness of ignorance.

I will admit though, that many concepts in Mr. Buckley’s book were new and very confusing to me. I especially had trouble with the doctrine of Papal infallibility and really, the authority of the Church in general. For reasons I will discuss later, I had a great deal of trouble accepting and respecting any authority. Obviously, the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saints and angels were all very foreign to me. Oddly enough, I accepted the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist explicitly. I had never been taught, as Protestants believe, that the bread and wine are the symbolic body and blood of Christ. Jesus, stated repeatedly and emphatically that somehow this common food and drink became his spiritual body and blood in the Gospels. His word was good enough for me. I was soon to realize that I had a much more literal, and at times even Fundamentalist, view of the Bible as the Word of God than did my Protestant friends, ministers and professors, whose foundational doctrine is Sola Scriptura or the Bible Alone. Perhaps more shocking though, would be the historical ignorance of Protestantism and the extreme anti-Catholic bigotry I would soon face.

I was not raised or taught to hold any bigotry toward other Christian denominations. As for other religions, I was taught that they were people of good faith who merely had different traditions. But, had I ever denigrated another Christian denomination, or even held mine as superior in an arrogant way, my mother would have corrected me immediately. She embraced the teaching of our Lord that we should love God with all of our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves with her whole heart. She spent her life in service to her family and to others, as a psychologist and good neighbor. I was taught that the Bible was the Word of God, and that if you read the Bible and prayed, the Holy Spirit would enlighten your understanding. I had no idea that the thousands of Protestant denominations each differed significantly with each other over major points of doctrine and theology. I just thought that different denominations came from different cultures, but that we all held a basic set of Christian beliefs that were similar. In retrospect, my ignorance of this topic was quite a blessing. Had my beliefs hinged entirely on personal interpretation of the Bible, ensured by the Holy Spirit as to the accurate understanding of that interpretation, the knowledge of such disagreements among denominations would have been extremely troubling. After all, there is only one truth and the Bible states that truth is eternal and unchanging. That would very likely have undermined my belief in all churches and in all I had been taught about Christianity and the Bible.

But, far beyond that, I had no idea of the extreme hatred of Catholicism and of Catholics as individuals, that is taught in many Protestant churches and held by many Protestants. I could never have imagined that simply identifying myself as Catholic would soon mean rejection by friends, enmity among family members and often confrontations that would border on the violent – unprovoked assaults and vitriolic, unreasoning rage from perfect strangers who consider themselves to be good Christians… rage that increases when I quote the Bible. This unthinking, violent rage does not seem to be compatible with the teachings of Christ. Not only is the singularity of truth, and belief/faith in that truth, explicit in Christian doctrine but so is love. Truth and Love are core Christian values. While differences of opinion may arise and vigorous debate ensue among Christians of good faith, I cannot believe that the anti-Catholic bigotry of many (but certainly not all) Protestants, that is so similar to the antisemitism of Nazis and atheistic Communists, can be of God. The true God is the God of truth and love. Satan is the father of lies, confusion and hate. More than once, I have wondered if demonic possession may be at the root of such un-Christian ideologies.

Before I go on with the story, it is necessary that I back up and start at the beginning – not the beginning of my conversion to Catholicism, but of my life as a Christian. This, after all, is an auto-biography of faith, and my faith in God began at an age long before I was capable of reason. It began in the childhood of my earliest memories. Unlike most Catholic books, mine will not be full of lofty ideas or advanced understanding of theology. Mine will be a simple book about one man’s journey.

The Beginning

I was born into a family of great faith, at least on my mother’s side. Both of my maternal great grandparents founded churches – Southern Baptist and Pentecostal Holiness. My mother was raised in the Baptist church her paternal grandfather had built, but at some point her parents had something of an issue with that church. They remained members, but went to church less actively due to some offense the cause of which I never learned. In that rural, southern community, the Pentecostal churches were considered to be of a lower economic class. Both of my grandparents’ families were prominent farming families – old families, descendant of Revolutionary War heroes. But, the Pentecostal movement began and was embraced by the poor following the Civil War. To this day, the Pentecostals are still associated mainly with the rural and urban poor.

Whatever issues my grandparents had with their church, it did not affect their faith. We were a singing family. My grandfather’s booming bass voice was much missed in the choir. He sang in southern gospel tradition in which the bass singer is very dynamic and rhythmic. My grandmother sang in the country gospel tradition that owed to an earlier era. She sang in more the shaped note style, which was popular in country churches in the south in the 1800s. She loved the Carter Family and he loved Red Foley. Both were excellent singers and their harmony is something I will never forget. To this day, I miss singing along to Peace In The Valley and The Church In The Wildwood with my grandparents. In both songs, my grandfather’s charisma shined through. He would sing the first in the bluesy style that came to characterize southern gospel as sung by Elvis and the Blackwood Family; in the more traditional, old fashioned song he would intone the bells with his deep voice ringing, Oh come, come come… Their home was full of Christian music, Bibles, hymnbooks and a variety of books about Christianity. Bedtime for me, when we were with my grandparents, was much the same as it was with my mother. My grandmother would read Bible stories for children and softly sing me to sleep as she gently stroked my forehead. Every meal was a feast and a celebration, duly blessed by prayer. Work was hard. Morals were strict. Life was dominated by family and a strong faith. That is not to say that there were not troubles and human failings. There certainly were. But, my grandparents and great grandparents remain for me a powerful example of a faith filled life and a life embracing Christian charity and service. Their home was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to anyone who needed any kind of help. My grandmother cooked extra food for anyone who may show up, whether a relative, neighbor or stranger. My grandfather helped people of all races and backgrounds with jobs, loans and his political influence. They cared for the sick, took in the dispossessed, helped the poor, acted as marriage counselors, adopted stray animals, etc… they were the living heart of a community. Unfortunately, that community mostly died with them.

My mother was born and raised in that family and that environment. She learned the values and examples of my grandparents and great grandparents. But then, she went to a Presbyterian college. In southeastern North Carolina, the Presbyterian Church is second only to the Episcopal in influence and prestige. While the English founded the Carolinas, it was the Scottish and Scots-Irish who largely populated the region. In those two churches, one finds the oldest and most wealthy families.

By the way it was, essentially, illegal to be Catholic in North Carolina until just before the Civil War. Given that my heritage is mainly a mix of Irish, French and English, many of my ancestors were faithful Catholics. Even the English side of my family is of the House of Wessex, the once Catholic monarchy of England. The various roots of my family tree found fertile soil in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia before America was a nation. Mostly though, they settled in NC, where it was illegal for Catholics to own property or to vote. Our first Catholic Church was established in New Bern, on the coast and up toward the Virginia line. It was burned by Union troops during the war. Even in my childhood, the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses on the front lawns of Catholic households. Both the Klan and the Masonic Order are virulently anti-Catholic groups who are very much associated with the Presbyterian Church. The Klan carries the Saint Andrew’s Cross of the Presbyterian Church and the Masons are called the Scottish Rite. Both are dedicated to the destruction of the Catholic Church. These two organizations were among the most powerful cultural and political forces in North Carolina historically…. They formed the foundation of the Democratic Party, and still are quite influential.

My mother received quite a shock when she went to college. The Presbyterian college she attended was closely allied with communism. Most of her professors were openly communist and the classes on religion and Christianity were taught by atheists. When I had come of age to attend college and chose a different Presbyterian college in the same state, at which to begin my higher education, she warned me that attending a Presbyterian college had nearly destroyed her faith. I later came to learn that communism had greatly infected the Presbyterian Church and its colleges – communists found fertile soil, in spearheading the liberal/socialist direction of the Democratic Party, in the secretive power structure of the humanist Masonic order and in the bigotry of the Klan. My mother was right. When I attended a small Presbyterian college in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, I was struck by just how anti-Christian it was. I only recall one religiously Christian and politically conservative professor… and his colleagues were very much opposed to him. There was talk of stripping him of tenure, but I do not know what happened. I do know that the vast majority of these supposedly Christian representatives of Presbyterian education were openly atheistic and extremely politically liberal. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they quickly found a way to divert student funds to support the Palestinian State. I have no doubt they would have sent the money directly to Osama bin Laden had they been able to do so legally – they loved to organized student trips to Cuba, to help prop up the communist Castro regime.

Somehow, my mother’s faith survived her college experience. During graduate school at a public university, she met my father. His background was very different. He had grown up in a wealthy family that owned several grocery stores. They were nominally Christian. Church and the Country Club were ways of networking with customers and other business owners. He was divorced when they met, and had one daughter who lived with her mother. My mother says that he was quite charming… in the beginning, at least. Sometime after their marriage, his father died and he gained full control of the family business. Whereas, his father had closed the stores on Sunday, my father would not. When my mother asked if he would consider even going to church with us, he became abusive. His abuse eventually caused my mother to have no choice but to divorce him. On receiving this news, he waited to move out until a major blizzard was coming in. That winter morning, he left and had the power and water turned off… leaving us to freeze. My mother kept us warm by burning limbs blown down by the winter storm in the wood stove, melting snow for water and cooking the canned food and dry beans she had.

That event is one of the first and most clear memories of my childhood. Even at the age of just under 5 years old, I was impressed by my mother’s strength and her constant prayer. She must have been terrified, but she never showed it. She said that she trusted God to protect us and to provide for our needs. Her faith was unwavering. Years later, she explained that she and I had both nearly died during my birth. Her blood pressure was spiking and my skull was caught on her coccyx bone. The bone had to be broken for my delivery. According to her doctor and the medical staff at the hospital, we both should have died given the circumstances, and all admitted that our survival and health was nothing short of miraculous. As my father could not be bothered to care for either of us, she not only regained her faith and prayer life through this difficult time, but she prayed that God would protect and provide for me as Father.

It would be my mother’s faith and teaching that would shape my life and this was, perhaps, the most formative event of my life. Now, I make my living writing for preppers and homesteaders about herbal medicine and how to prepare for hard times. Now, I am a devout Christian, with a strong faith that has seen me through countless hardships and tragedies. Would I be that man without my mother’s example and even my father’s cruelty? I do not know the answer. It has taken a great deal to forgive my father, and that is something else I owe to the Catholic Church. Only through the Catholic teaching of necessity of forgiveness and the redemptive nature of suffering was I able to lay down decades of hatred and self destructive anger. Perhaps my father has, or one day will, sort things out with God. I do not know. He has never shown any care for me. The last I heard, he was on his fourth or fifth wife.

Perhaps I spoke with him 12 times between the ages of 5 and 16. I only spoke with him once after age 20… I do know that. I called him and asked him why he abandoned me. We spoke for maybe 30 minutes. He denied all he had done to hurt my mother and me. He barely seemed to remember me at all. When I hung up the phone, that part of my life was done. I had never had a father, and one cannot confront a stranger about things he denies ever happened. Oddly enough though, in that conversation, I mentioned that in becoming Catholic I had to confront the reality of the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father – Forgive us… as we forgive others. My intention was to tell him that I was working on forgiving him. Not only did he admit no faults to forgive, he took issue with me being Catholic! He stated emphatically that Catholicism was a false religion, that Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible, and asked me how much I had to pay a priest to go to confession!!! He would not believe me when I told him that Catholics are instructed to read the Bible and that Confession is absolutely free, much less would he believe that the Catholic Church was the one, true Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself and the source of the Bible. Admittedly, my phone call to him began in anger. It ended in great sadness. All I could do is say prayers and wish him well. No matter how able you are to forgive, you can only reconcile with a person who cares enough to reconcile with you. When a father does not care at all for his son, the son cannot fix the relationship. It began in confrontation, leading perhaps to reconciliation. It ended with my father rejecting me because I had become Catholic.

After my parents’ divorce, my mother and I moved near to her parents. Just before my parents’ divorce, I developed severe asthma that would affect my attitudes toward life and death in ways that are hard to describe. Simply put, I had so many near death experiences, at a very young age, that I lost all fear of death. Conversely, I slept with a baseball bat under my bed until age twelve, or so, in fear that my father would return. He did once, for a holiday. He was very kind at first, even though when he went to pick me up at school in his new Dotson Z sports car, he did not know me and had to ask a teacher which child was his son. That was extremely embarrassing as all the kids gathered around his car and I stood back, unsure and not knowing he would be there. That visit ended when he threatened to push my mother out of an upstairs window. The point of his visit was to show us that he could show up unexpectedly and instill terror – he was in control. This caused my grandfather to assume the role of protector and to become the dominate male figure in my life. I loved my grandfather with all of my heart. He was my hero. Soon, my hero was struck with an illness that changed our briefly peaceful world.

After the divorce, my mother became increasingly religious. We attended the Presbyterian church in town only briefly. The minister was very much of the same ideology she had found in college. Once he began preaching about the Big Bang Theory, Evolution and relativist morality on Sundays, we left and did not return except for their annual Passion Play, which was quite well done. For a few years we attended an evangelical non-denominational church. My mother baptized me at home when I was younger and I was baptized again when I was confirmed Methodist around age 10. I asked the priest, when I became Catholic, if I should be baptized again. He told me that Baptism should only be performed once, and that I was thoroughly baptized! He explained that baptism predates Christianity, and that anyone could perform the sacrament, so long as water was used and the candidate was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

At home, religious programming was often on television. The day began with Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, an evangelical Pentecostal news and religious show. Sundays, we usually watched Rev. Robert Schuller at the Crystal Cathedral. His sermons, based on the Bible and the power of positive thinking were very uplifting for my mother. Perhaps, not ironically, the same magnificent building is now a Catholic Church. It seemed that positive thinking could only go so far.

When my grandfather contracted ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease, our world changed. My mother did everything humanly possible, and then some, to care for him and to try to help him heal. He was the first patient in North Carolina to be cared for at home, on a ventilator with nursing care. We prayed constantly for healing. The elders of both the Baptist and Pentecostal churches came in and prayed for him. Nothing slowed the devastating and terrifying disease. Our prayers were unanswered, and we were forced to face that reality. Some in the Pentecostal Church said that he was being punished for sin. Yet, the Gospel of John tells us:

As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him." - John 9

This brings to mind a story I told in another book, about one of the last lessons my grandfather ever taught me:

My grandfather died of ALS when I was 12, and life changed. Essentially, the entire family fell apart. Even paralyzed and unable to speak or breath on his own, he was the strong pillar that upheld our family, with a firm foundation of faith. ALS is a slow disease. When I was 8 or so, there were some feral kittens I found in the barn and began to adopt. One was particularly rough in his playing and I enjoyed putting a sock on my hand like a puppet and sparring with him. One time, I slipped the sock over his head, expecting him to pull it off. Instead, the kitten ran, through the field and into the woods. I told my mother what happened, not knowing what to do. My grandfather heard. He could not speak at that point and was losing his ability to walk and breathe. Each step and breath was a struggle. He rose and motioned for us to follow. He crossed the field and went into the woods, searching for that kitten until evening. He finally told us to go home and slowly, struggled to follow. The kitten was, of course, on the porch waiting to be fed with the others. He knew it would be. He knew full well that a cat would figure out how to get a sock off of its head. No, his entire effort was the last