your local catholic

It makes me so happy to hear that my testimony is reaching other people and touching other people's hearts. Admittedly, I often feel shy (mainly in IRL settings) about sharing my experiences with leaving paganism because I am ashamed of my past. Sometimes it's easier to gloss over that period of my life, but it is so so important to share because paganism and witchcraft are becoming increasingly popular in this day and age.

I’m no witch, never been comfortable with the use of magic so I never honestly practiced anything. But like I’ve called myself pagan for years and never have I found a community where I didn’t feel like an outsider. I’ve talked to many pagans, introduced my best friend into it and watching him get so into it in a almost obsessed way has made me feel even more so like an outsider. Sometimes I can tell he’s disappointed that I don’t see the beauty in the magic or tarot like he does. I’ve been feeling so lost and my family has never been church goers so it’s not like I have any idea how I’m supposed to go about any of it. 

Early on when I was exploring Christianity again, I came to an impasse. I realized that there simply was no way to have a foot in both worlds; there was no way I could be both pagan and Christian. I had a choice: the Christian God or the pagan gods. At first it started out as “well I’ll just take a break from paganism to explore Christianity and see where that takes me”, but that quickly developed into a complete renouncement of my pagan past. What started out as “dipping my toe in the waters” soon became submersion. 

What happened between the toe-dip and the submersion was a lot of research and a lot of prayer. I read the Catechism that my RCIA director gave me and buried myself into Scott Hahn’s books. I had a list of topics that I disagreed with the Catholic Church on, and one by one I researched the Church’s teachings on each of those topics. One by one, the teachings of the Church trumped my previously held beliefs. Granted, before my conversion I knew very little about what I actually believed (in regards to topics such as abortion, marriage, sex, etc.). The worldview I once adhered to as a pagan crumbled, and I no longer could defend staying with my pagan gods. 

I definitely know where you’re coming from. No matter what pagan community I found myself in, I felt like an outsider. I too felt lost and unfulfilled. Because I lacked connections, it was rather easy for me to disappear from my pagan circles as I explored Christianity. My family was never big about religion or church either, so I was completely alone in my pursuits. I just decided one day to email a local church, show up to Mass one evening, and from there it became a domino effect. I soon signed up for my parish’s RCIA class, found myself a sponsor, and with each passing day I became more and more enveloped into Christianity. 

If I had to summarize, the main reasons why I chose Christianity over paganism are as follows:

1. Paganism left me spiritually starved. No matter how many offerings I gave, how many prayers I said, how much devotion I gave to the gods, I was in constant desolation. My mental, emotional, and spiritual health were devoid of life as a pagan. The Bible, on the other hand, answers my emotional needs more so than any other religion or psychologist.

2. The teachings of Christ are infinitely more reliable and truthful than the teachings of the pagan gods that I followed. I realized that the worldview perpetuated by the pagan gods was not the truth. Rather, truth was in Christ alone. Everything that the Bible and the Church teaches has the ring of truth to it. C.S. Lewis perfectly captures how we must approach Christ: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”