My journey to Catholicism has so many beginning points it would be hard to map it out. One day I would like to write more extensively about this. I could say that the journey started in college when I had taken two semesters of Anthropology in a row and began to think more systematically about my faith. It was during this time that I returned to the Methodist Church and began to discover that my journey to Holy Mother Church was really based on my earlier experiences in Methodism. By studying the great John Wesley and the wonderful resources available to me through the Methodist Church and Wesleyan traditions I began to catch a glimpse of an attractive spiritual path. By diving into Methodist faith and practice I discovered that I was in contact with a living tradition that came to Methodism through Weley and to Wesley through the Church of England. I later learned of John Wesley's wish that his Methodist societies not break away from the Church of England to start a separate church. I began to feel more and more that being a true Wesleyan Methodist had alot to do with the Church of England. By reading C.S. Lewis I began to think and feel more like an Anglican. But it was G.K. Chesterton and John Henry Cardinal Newman who were responsible for me seeing as far as Rome. As I saw the elements of the Church of England alive and active in Methodism, so I was beginning to see that those very elements were gifts from the Catholic Church. I began to see that the very traditions that made me feel grounded into Wesleyan spirituality were all present in Catholic worship. It began to dawn on me that those things were not unique to Methodism and the Church of England, but that they had flowed into them from the Catholic Church. It was not long after I realized this that I decided to be confirmed as a Catholic. I have since been quite happy with that decision.

Bill Rogers
Tampa, FL
[email protected] 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wesleyancatholic

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