The Complete History of the Universe: A Personal Journey

For years, the Catholic Television Network (EWTN) has had a show called The Journey Home. My parents used to watch this show when I was a child, for the few years that we had a dish before we tore the roof off the house. To the best of my recollection, the purpose of the show is to display how Catholicism is an awesome religion because so many people convert to it. When I found out that all the episodes are available online, I decided to watch them and review them. It’s undeniable that people convert to Catholicism; my question is, do they have good reasons? How many of them started as some form of Christian in the first place? How many came from other religions? How many were atheists or skeptics? Why did they convert, and would the answer to that question be a convincing reason for a skeptic?

If you decide to watch these episodes with me, you may notice that I ignore a lot of things I could respond to. The target audience is Catholics, and this is clear from the very first minute that Marcus Grodi begins speaking. These stories aren’t necessarily meant to convince a skeptic, but to strengthen the faith of a Catholic, or possibly convince a non-Catholic Christian to convert, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. Nonetheless, I’d like to see if this collection of conversion stories contains any compelling reasons for a skeptic to convert.

The thirteenth episode is titled “David Currie: A Bible Church Missionary Who Became A Catholic – The Journey Home Program” and aired December 5, 1997. It can be viewed online here.

This David was also raised in a very faithful Christian home. For him, the main factor leading him out of Protestantism was Sola Scriptura. For those who don’t know, Sola Scriptura is the very that the Bible is the only authority. The episode gives many good reasons that this view is wrong; to me, the strongest of these is that it isn’t scriptural. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to take the Bible as the only authority. The best it takes is that studying the scriptures is profitable. Once again, this is an issue that, if I were already Christian, would lead me to say, “Oh, Catholicism is the true denomination.”

There’s not really much else for me to say, here.