Showing posts with label Catholic Conversion stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic Conversion stories. Show all posts

Saturday, November 24, 2012

CEBUANO PASTOR, ANTI-CATHOLIC AND FOUNDER OF RELIGION CONVERTED TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Former Protestant Pastor Danny Cugtas, now proud to be a Roman Catholic.

100% KATOLIKONG PINOY! Danny Cugtas, also known as Dan, is then an evangelical pastor in Cebu and is a founder of an evangelical sect named "Jesus the Church." Dan, in his pastor-hood, is an arduous debater against other religions. With the Bible as his basis, he pinned down many leaders and pastors with the genius of his oral delivery emphases. With regard...s to the Catholic Church, he strongly condemns the Church and her doctrines. He is an avid assaulter for the Church's use of images and for the Church's veneration of Mary and the saints. He is utterly convinced that the Catholic Church is of the Devil.

Dan then decided to barge in and continued on assaulting the Catholic Church by dealing with Bro. Socrates Fernandez, a catholic apologist, in the latter's catholic radio program. Questions were hurled and Bro. Soc answered them accurately. Unsatisfied and unconvinced, Dan then challenged Bro. Soc into a formal debate. Dan did his best to pin down the catholic apologist with his anti-catholic arguments, but Bro. Soc bore everything patiently, and with his distinctive calm voice, answered everything just accurately. When it is the turn of Bro. Soc to do the rebuttal, Danny is surprised to know that there are aspects of the Church that he did not fully understand.

At the end of the day, Danny is completely convinced and he decided to leave the religion he founded.

"What opened my eyes is the humility that Bro. Soc. showed" Danny said in an exclusive interview. "I had neglected this Christian virtue in my reputation as founder and bible debater. And I realized, to be fully humble, you must let yourself be subjected to the truth. Pastors like me then tend to cover up what is false in us by projecting ourselves boldly, while in the Catholic Church, you had no sense to push yourself up, for the truth is in this Church, and sooner and later a God will be there to judge you to reward or punish you. Sooner or later, you will be found in the same place of truth, everyone of us in this Church, and you will be judged on how you used yourself for the service of the truth."

Danny Cugtas is now back home to the Catholic Church. He joins Socrates Fernandez and co. in their radio and television broadcasts and in special events, Danny offers himself to witness on his conversion.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Former atheist poet reveals details of her Catholic conversion

 
 
 
 
Rome, Italy, Jul 27, 2012 / 03:51 am (CNA/EWTN News)

“Until two years ago, I was a really committed atheist and I really hated the Catholic Church,” said poet Sally Read, as she explained how all that dramatically changed during nine months in 2010.

“The whole process took from March to December, and I was received into the Catholic Church at the Vatican in December, so it was a bit of a lightning flash,” she told CNA on July 24.

A 41-year-old Englishwoman, Sally Read is regarded as a rising star within the world of poetry. Her publisher describes the former psychiatric nurse as “one of a new generation of younger poets shaping the future of British poetry.”

She now lives in the Italian seaside town of Santa Marinella with her husband and their daughter. It was there that her conversion story began two years ago while she was writing an anthology based on her experiences with psychiatric patients.

“As I was writing this book, I became very aware that I didn’t know where the soul was and I didn’t know if the soul existed. And it was really driving me crazy.” Her frustration led her into discussion, and often heated debate, with a Canadian priest who was based in the coastal resort town.

“So, while I was talking to this priest about, well, is there a God and all of that kind of stuff, I kind of had this feeling as a poet that God was the ultimate poet and the ultimate Creator, and I was simply being used as an instrument,” she recalled.

It was at that point that she phoned the priest to say, “I don’t think I’m an atheist after all.” But she refused to make the intellectual leap to Christianity, insisting to her priest friend that he would never convert her.

“He was very patient and very good.” He said, ‘Christ will convert you, I’m not going to convert you ... .”

Read was raised in a strictly anti-religious household and, so, she now felt like “everything I had ever believed in (was) being turned upside down.”

“It was very, very difficult. I mean, I wasn’t sleeping at all. I was very emotionally traumatized,” she said, describing those months in 2010 as “the most disrupted period in my whole life.”
Her turmoil ended abruptly one afternoon when she stepped into a local Catholic Church.

“Just one day, I was in tears and said to this icon of Christ, ‘If you’re there, then you have to help me.’ And, this thing happened which is very hard to explain, but I felt as if I was being physically lifted up and my tears stopped, and I felt this presence.”
 
She described the sensation as “utterly tangible,” so much so that from then on she “knew that life was devoted to Christ. There was nothing else.”
 
Her journey into the Catholic Church quickly followed.
 
“I realized that there was only one Church and the way to be closest to Christ was to be a Catholic, because it’s the Eucharist and taking Communion.”
 
Since then she has faced opposition from family members and shock from a socially-liberal artistic establishment. And, yet, “I’m still happier than I’ve ever been,” she said with a broad grin on her face.

As for writing, her third anthology of poetry will be released this year. But the philosophical outlook of her work has now changed dramatically.

“So, I don’t know where it’s going to go with poetry, but I think it’s going to be interesting,” Read said.


The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in U.S.A. 

MATTHEW 28:19-20
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.