Gen Z Catholic

Reflections and Experiences

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A Generation Z Catholic Convert sharing his journey, thoughts, reflections and experiences.

  • Conversion of Saint Generation Z

                God works in mysterious ways, and honestly I wish I could brag that my conversion was like St Paul on the road to Damascus. Instead, mine was much quieter and worked over many years of my childhood, teenage years and eventual young adult time.

    Growing up Baptist

                I grew up like a lot of kids in the southern US, born into a Baptist type tradition. I learned that God existed, he loved us and sent his son to die for us, and one of the largest things was the Bible was all that we needed to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Though I went to public school and knew a lot of kids who went to church, I did not attend the big First Baptist Church that had all the kid programs. My dad always tried to take the more traditional and humbler route by taking us to the smallest church, with the youngest adult at the time being my father who was probably in his early 50s at the time.

                I was lucky and did not have religious trauma that led to me finding a different church later in life, in fact, my experience was overwhelmingly positive. This was certainly the church that evangelized me through love and baptized me. All the old ladies loved me because I reminded them of their youngest grandson and it would definitely be a sin if I did not mention the southern potlucks!

                Now it’s time to turn to the confusion of Baptist theology. This is not meant to be ill-natured because the Baptist tradition was very loving to me. If I remember correctly, I was baptized around the 3rd grade. I remember telling the preacher I desired to receive it and so we sat in the back of the church and discussed it. I remember talking to him about what I thought baptism was. I thought it was the cleansing of sin, he told me that baptism had nothing to do with salvation because I had already declared that Christ was LORD. That it was just a public declaration of my faith. This was the first discussion in theology that I can remember that seemed to contradict what I had read and even sung about in the gospel hymns. That is something I had never forgotten.

    Brief summary leading up to college

                I wish that I could say that I continued to attend church on a regular basis and never really stopped practicing but like most kids, the whole family seems to get busy growing up and being involved in sports, FFA, and many after-school activities. That lifestyle can get exhausting and yes, Sundays are supposed to be rest days but not from God. Unfortunately we had many years of permanent rest days…

    College

                By this time, I was your average college guy. I was looking for the pretty girl, playing video games and partying with my friends, and yes my grades were reflecting that hahah. College was fun and I still miss it today even though it’s been close to 10 years since I started but college was also tough for me mentally. When I was nearing the end of my senior year of high school, I had my life planned out. I was going to attend a college on the other side of the state, get my degree and become a military pilot. Well it did not go the way I planned. I got home sick, dropped out of ROTC and honestly had trouble finding purpose. What I did know is that I was not going to give up becoming a military aviator.

                I hopped around to a few different community colleges and kept on track on finishing my degree. I eventually found myself at a 4-year college being one class away from moving into advanced classes but there was one class I kept putting off. That was philosophy.

    Philosophy 101

                Philosophy was not what I thought it was. I was under the impression that it was about writing a stupid paper on why I thought the sky was blue. I finally signed up for it and was ready to get the 16 weeks over with. The first day of class, I arrived early but not locked in, but that day something caught my mind. The professor walked into class and he was wearing a priest’s collar! That was totally unexpected. To be honest, I had heard every anti-priest rhetoric from the Baptist church but I thought let me use college as an opportunity to be open minded and to learn.

                The professor was not Catholic but was an Episcopal priest. His name was Father Matt and was actually a convert from the Baptist church! He was really friendly and really cared about the curriculum and if the students did learn. It did not take long for us to jump into material. He explained very quickly that philosophy is the love of wisdom ( the study of wisdom). That it is the basis of thinking and that everything we know is ultimately rooted in it. I was blown away! I did not know it yet but this class would be life changing to me.

                We talked about form and matter and other basic philosophy principles but the book that really touched not only my mind but my soul was “The Five Dialogues of Plato”. Though I barely passed the class, this book was fantastic. These five short books are all about Socrates, a wise old man in ancient Greece who loved asking deep questions. He believed that by asking questions, people could find the truth and live better lives. Each dialogue shows a different part of his story, from his conversations to his trial, jail time, and finally his death.

                The dialogue that reached me was of “Euthyphro”. The question that is proposed here is “what is piety”. Here Socrates is having a dialogue with a man named Euthyphro. Euthyphro is outside of the courthouse about to go in and prosecute his own father. Socrates is about to go in and defend himself for corrupting the youth. Socrates tells Euthyphro that he must know what he is doing since he is prosecuting his own father. Euthyphro says he is doing it because it is the right thing to do. It is pious. Here Socrates and him engaged in a dialogue around The question What is piety? Ultimately Euthyphro is unable to answer the question but what stuck to me is the contradiction of polytheism. One of the answers that his friend gives is that piety is “what is pleasing to the gods”. Socrates pushes back with another question and says “how can that be so if the same action is pleasing to one god but is not pleasing to another? ”.

                This showed me that God, if he existed, could not contradict himself and that God had to be singular. I do not know why but this led me to rediscovering my faith in God and that I was after objective truth. I did not want to belong to the faith of my fathers for cultural reasons but to be a part of the Church that God left us on earth. Faith had to be reasonable.

    The Bible is a Catholic Book

    I knew that the Bible was the infallible Word of God. That was my starting point. I decided it was time to read the Scriptures with an open heart — without bias, without inherited assumptions. I wanted to see for myself what the Bible actually said about baptism and about the Church that Christ established.

    I already knew that the Bible did not come before the Church — the Church came first, and from her came the Scriptures. But I wanted to understand how that Church actually looked in the Bible itself.

    I’m not a biblical scholar by any means, but it didn’t take long before I started noticing that many things in Scripture simply didn’t match what I had been taught in Baptist theology.

    For example, according to Baptist belief, no man can forgive sins — only Jesus Christ can. But that idea was challenged almost immediately when I read John 20:20–23, where Jesus appears to His disciples after the Resurrection:

    “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

     When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them,

     “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

    That passage stopped me in my tracks. The word breathed didn’t just mean inhaling and exhaling — it was something supernatural. Jesus was doing what God did in Genesis when He breathed life into Adam. Here, He was breathing new spiritual life into His apostles, giving them divine authority — including the authority to forgive sins.

    That realization alone challenged much of what I thought I knew about confession and authority.

    The Next Thing I Found That Was Obviously Not Baptist Was the Teaching on Baptism

    As I continued reading, baptism stood out as something far deeper than I’d ever realized. It wasn’t just a public symbol or a declaration of faith — it was something that actually did something.

    Jesus Himself commanded it clearly:

    “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

     — Matthew 28:19

    Baptism wasn’t optional. It was how disciples were made.

    Even Jesus — who had no sin — was baptized.

    “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John… and behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove.”

     — Matthew 3:13–17

    That scene made me pause. If baptism were only symbolic, why would Jesus do it? He was sinless. I realized that He wasn’t being cleansed — He was making the waters of baptism holy for the rest of us.

    Then I came to Acts 2:38, where Peter preaches to the crowd at Pentecost:

    “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

    That verse shattered my old understanding. Peter didn’t say baptism was an outward sign of an inward change. He said it was for the forgiveness of sins — and that through it, we receive the Holy Spirit.

    Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus confirmed it:

    “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

     — John 3:5

    For the first time, I understood that “born again” meant born of water and Spirit — not just an emotional moment or a prayer, but a real rebirth through baptism.

    Paul’s words in Romans brought it all together:

    “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead… we too might walk in newness of life.”

     — Romans 6:3–4

    Baptism wasn’t symbolic — it was participation. In baptism, I would die to my old life and rise into new life with Christ.

    And then came Acts 22:16, where Ananias says to Saul:

    “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.”

    There it was again — baptism washes away sins.

    Peter drives the point home in his first letter:

    “Baptism… now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

     — 1 Peter 3:21

    Every verse I read said the same thing. Baptism forgives, cleanses, and gives new life. It’s how we’re born again, filled with the Spirit, and joined to the Body of Christ.

    The Bible wasn’t pointing toward the theology I had been raised in — it was pointing straight toward the Catholic Church.

    .

    After understanding confession and baptism, I came to what I now believe is the center of the Christian faith — the Eucharist.

    I had always heard growing up that the Lord’s Supper was just a symbol — a reminder of what Jesus did for us. It was meant to stir the heart, not actually do anything. But the more I read Scripture, the more that view stopped making sense.

    When I opened John chapter 6, I was shocked by how direct Jesus was:

    “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

     He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

     For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

     — John 6:53–55

    There was nothing symbolic about His words. In fact, many of His followers left Him because of this teaching — and Jesus didn’t call them back to say they misunderstood. He let them go. If it were only a metaphor, He would have clarified. But He didn’t, because He meant exactly what He said.

    Then I read what happened at the Last Supper:

    “And He took bread, and when He had given thanks He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My Body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’

     And likewise the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My Blood.’”

     — Luke 22:19–20

    I noticed something I had never seen before — Jesus didn’t say, “This represents My body,” or “This is a symbol of My blood.” He said, “This is My Body… This is My Blood.”

    The early Christians believed that too. In 1 Corinthians 10:16, Paul wrote:

    “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”

    Paul didn’t treat Communion as symbolic — he said it was a real participation in Christ Himself. Then, just a chapter later, he warned:

    “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”

     — 1 Corinthians 11:27

    That verse floored me. If it were just a symbol, how could someone be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord? Paul was clearly teaching that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist.

    When I began to see that, everything changed. The Mass was no longer just a service — it was a sacrifice, the same sacrifice of Calvary made present to us in time. The Eucharist wasn’t something we do for God, it was something God gives to us — His very self.

    I finally understood why the Church calls it the “source and summit” of the Christian life. In the Eucharist, heaven and earth meet. Christ gives Himself completely, body, blood, soul, and divinity, so that we might be one with Him.

    Discovering the Church Fathers

    After coming to believe in the Eucharist, I began to wonder — how did the earliest Christians understand all this?

    If the first believers after the apostles were truly guided by the Holy Spirit, then their writings should reflect the same faith Christ handed down. I didn’t want to rely only on modern interpretations or denominational traditions. I wanted to hear what those closest to the apostles actually said.

    That’s when I discovered the Church Fathers — the bishops, priests, and teachers of the early centuries who preserved and defended the faith long before the Bible was even compiled. Reading their writings felt like opening a time capsule from the first generations of Christianity.

    What I found was shocking.

    They spoke of the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood of Christ.

     They described baptism as the means of being born again and washed of sin.

     They talked about bishops and apostolic succession — the direct passing on of authority from the apostles themselves.

     And they all recognized the Church as one, visible, and universal — what the word Catholic actually means.

    One of the first writings I read was from St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, writing around 107 A.D. He said:

    “Take care to participate in one Eucharist; for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His blood.”

     (Letter to the Philadelphians, 4)

    Ignatius also wrote:

    “Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

     (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8)

    That line stopped me cold — the Catholic Church.

     He used that word in the year 107. Over 900 years before the Reformation, the Church was already called “Catholic.”

    Then I read St. Justin Martyr (around 150 A.D.), describing how the early Christians celebrated the Eucharist:

    “We call this food Eucharist, and no one may partake of it except one who believes that the things we teach are true, who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and for rebirth, and who is living as Christ commanded.”

     (First Apology, 66)

    That description sounded exactly like the Mass. The structure, the prayers, the reverence — it was all there, right from the beginning.

    I realized that the early Church wasn’t Baptist, Reformed, or nondenominational. It was Catholic. The same faith, the same sacraments, the same structure that I saw in Scripture were also alive in the writings of the earliest Christians.

    The Church Fathers didn’t invent Catholicism — they inherited it.

    For me, reading them was like hearing the echo of Christ’s voice still speaking through time.

    Conclusion: Coming Home to the Church

    Looking back now, I can see that my conversion wasn’t a sudden moment, but a slow and steady unfolding of truth. Every part of my journey — from that small Baptist church of my childhood, to the philosophy classroom, to the pages of Scripture and the writings of the early Church — was leading me somewhere. It was leading me home.

    The more I studied, the more I realized that the faith of the apostles didn’t fade away after the New Testament — it lived on in the Church they built, in the sacraments they celebrated, and in the teachings they handed down. What I saw in the Bible was alive in history, and what I saw in history was still alive in the Catholic Church today.

    My conversion wasn’t about rejecting where I came from — it was about finding the fullness of what I had always believed. The Church didn’t erase my past; she completed it. When I walk into a Catholic church now, I see the same Christ I read about in Scripture — the same Christ who forgave sins, who baptized, who fed His people with His own Body and Blood. And I realize that what my heart had been searching for all along wasn’t something new. It was something ancient, constant, and true.

  • Child-Like Faith & Reconciliation

    As a convert, one of the sacraments that I really love is the sacrament of Reconciliation. To me, confession is a place that I know that I can always bring my sins to and know that I am forgiven. During my upbringing as a protestant, it didn’t matter what I did, I was saved but that is not the life of a christian. We see that Judas sold out our LORD, Peter denied Christ not once, but three times. Personally, I do not what is worse than sinning against God.

    Yesterday, I was in line for confession, and I was right behind a family I just met at a parish event. It was just the mom and her about 7-year-old son. Though confession is exciting to me because of the grace of God that I get to receive, the little boy was quite scared for his turn. I certainly felt bad for him because in a way, because it is hard to do these things that God asks us to do. While I sat next to him, I was trying to think about something to ease him, so that maybe he would have a little bit more comfort in approaching the sacrament. Then something hit me.

    Christ has always challenged us to have a child like faith. I think it’s about having that understanding that what I have done is embarrassing and wrong. That’s what the little boy was certainly thinking while I heard him and his mom converse in front of me. “Mommy I’m scared…”, he said. I actually think there is a lesson for us who frequent the sacrament on a regular basis. We start to treat it as a check box, almost on the level of assumption. We should approach it each time with humility and an open heart, not just to seek forgiveness but to repent (to seek to change) as well . 

    I actually envy the little boy’s child-like faith, because he recognizes that he is doing something hard and it challenges himself to grow in his faith and as a person. He sees that what he is doing is intimate and makes himself vulnerable. Those are the hard things that Christ is asking us to do. Be intimate and vulnerable with our LORD. 

    I challenge not only you, but myself to keep a reminder that confession is intimate, that the next time we’re in line for reconciliation, that we think about what it really means to have a child-like faith, to open our hearts to the LORD and know that we have a real, and true God who desires our souls to be with him in the most intimate relationship.

  • Personal Connection of a Catholic Wedding

    Personal Connection of a Catholic Wedding

    Intention of this article and disclaimer

    The intention of this article is to give those who may be a little bit confused on what the church teaches when it comes to marriage. This article is not designed to be an extremely in-depth article on all what the church teaches about when it comes to divorce. Also, I am excluding the exploration of annulments. I am just a simple layperson trying to share something that I have recently witnessed and that I feel that God has touched me to share with you.

    Introduction

    I grew up in a small East Texas town of about five thousand. The area consists mostly of Baptists, Church of Christ, and just a few Catholics. Where I grew up, it was very common to know people like family or friends who have been divorced at least once twice, or three times. Catholics included.

    It was my understanding as an adolescent that divorce is just a sad event when people no longer feel like they can remain married due to financial disagreements, lifestyle changes, or they just want to be with other people. That is not to say that infidelity is not a big cause, but the point is that divorces have become more common and not seen as serious. It falls into the same category as breaking up with someone you have only been dating for a few months. It is not that divorce has become less painful but on the line that marriage has become less serious. The secular world has developed it into a business transaction and when you feel like you are no longer profiting, it is time to move on to the next investment opportunity.

    So, what I intend to explore in this article, is to share what the church teaches on marriage and divorce, and some personal connections that moved me to write this after attending a catholic wedding of a close friend who is my confirmation sponsor.

    What does the Church define marriage as?

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) Paragraph 1601 defines marriage as “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament” (Vaticana, 2019).  If you read slowly, you can see a few words and phrases that are easily looked over but encapsulate a much deeper meaning. The first is “covenant,” the second being “partnership of the whole life” and lastly “dignity of a sacrament.”

    By exploring sacred scripture, we can see that throughout salvation history that a covenant is agreement between God and humanity. In the context of marriage, the marriage covenant is between a husband and a wife coming together before God and with God and making vows that are perpetual and blessed by the Creator for the greater good of the spouses, as well as the procreation and education of the offspring (Vaticana, 2019). Reading the words “partnership of the whole life,” at face value, the words means that it is an ongoing covenant and partnership that is to last until the end of life. That why in the vows of holy matrimony, we hear the phrase “until death do you part.”  For Catholics and even the Orthodox churches we have seven sacraments. I will not be diving into what all seven are, but I will define what a sacrament is because all seven have the same intention in unique ways. Paragraph 1210 say this, “the seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian Life. They give birth and increase, healing, and mission to the Christian’s life of faith” in simple terms, it is the grace we continually receive from God through the church (Vaticana, 2019).

    Marriage is not a handshake deal. it is not just a business transaction to help a couple become financially independent. It is directed at the greater good, our God and our creator and to walk with him. Marriage is a personal covenant that is meant to last a lifetime. It is until death are you relieved from it. There is a purpose to it. Marriage is divine.

    What does Jesus say about divorce with help from St Paul?

    What does Jesus say about divorce? I want to make a comment on why I titled this section the way that I did. The bible is an overview of salvation history where we see the beginning of mankind and the fall in Genesis and ending in Revelations where St John is writing about the end times and the new creation to come but we must remember that our teaching comes from God and that we are just reading the bible. We are receiving grace and teaching from God not the bible. The bible is not God himself. A pet peeve of mine is when I hear someone say, ‘The bible says,” what they should be saying is “the bible reads.”  Jesus is fully God and fully man. He is the second person in the trinity so we can always take what Jesus says to be true.

    In the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 19, two different pharisaic schools are trying to corner Jesus. The Hillels who are more liberal and the Shammai, the conservatives.

    3 Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” 8 He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery (Matthew Chapter 19 verses 3-9)

    Jesus does say that the man and woman are no longer just two but become one flesh and because God has joined them together, no one can separate it, but you might say, wait a minute what about the part where Jesus says “except for unchastity.” Does that give an exception and contradicts what Jesus said? No and here is why.

    Jesus was not speaking to modern secular people. He was a Jew speaking to jews all of them being well versed in the Mosaic Law. It is important to note that context. In Jewish history, there were certain conditions that would make a marriage invalid or unlawful based on the mosaic law (Leviticus chapter 18). The word that is used in the Gospel of Matthew for unchastity is the Greek word “Porneia”. Porneia is a broad term referencing fornification, sexual immoraility and unchasity.

    Keep in mind the terms of marriage and divorce and when they exist. Marriage is found both in the legal sense and the sacramental sense. Legal meaning the local governmental laws where you live but the sacramental sense meaning through God. Divorce on the other hand only exist in the legal sense and cannot exist in the sacramental sense like Jesus declared. Also in verse 8, Jesus clarifies that it was Moses who allowed it and not God.

    (add in a deeper meaning of Porneia, expand exceptive clauses in sub notes of the study bible under matthew 5:31-32) page 1344

    In first Corinthians Chapter 7 verse 10 Saint Paul gives a solution to the problem that we get stuck on when it comes to adultery or unchastity. “To the married I would give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband)-and that the husband should not divorce his wife”.  The apostle does not use the word divorce, he uses the word separate. The only type of separation that a couple is permissible to have when it comes to serious sin such as adultery is to live separately but still not receive a divorce. They can live separately but not remarry. The choices are to reconcile with each other or to remain separately, the first choice is the better one. Saint Paul is still saying that divorce is not the answer even when it comes to adultery.

    Personal connections

    Recently I had the privilege of being a groomsman for one of my closest friends from college who also happens to be my confirmation sponsor. Now I have attended one other Catholic wedding but was not able to attend as a groomsman. Witnessing this marriage was an absolute eye opener when it came to my understanding and the beauty of the sacrament. I was able to see what the sacrament truly means while being able to see some of the parallels that are occurring between that marriage and the marriage, we see between Christ the bridegroom and his bride his holy church.

    One of the first things that I was able to draw a parallel and that my eyes were open to was when it came to standing next to my friend as a groomsman as he and his fiancé stood at the foot of the altar. I was able to witness one of the most beautiful things that occurs on earth. The total and full self-giving of one person to another just like we see Jesus doing for us on the cross. They are both covenants that cannot be broken. Secondly as I was standing there, I realized that I had a parallel between the angels and Saints who had gone before us. In revelation chapter 19 verse seven it says let us rejoice and exult and give him glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. To me it was being able to see such a small glint of what is to come in heaven.

    Being able to compare this marriage on earth to the covenant we have with Christ it would make sense that divorce on earth cannot happen because God cannot divorce us. God does have the power to divorce he is the all-powerful God, but God has made a perpetual promise to withhold the covenant with us in the same way those who are called to marriage make with each other and with God it simply cannot happen.

    Conclusion

    There is a deeper meaning behind marriage and all the sacraments that exist within the church. Though marriage has become the default sacrament, that does not make it any less meaningful than the other six. When a priest or a nun makes their final vows, they are expected to carry those vows for the rest of our lives. Marriage is no different. The next time you are at a wedding I encourage you to listen to the vows and pray and ponder upon what those vows mean and how we see it in our relationship with Christ and the covenant that was established between us and God. I promise you when you start seeing these parallels between the covenant of marriage and the covenant God made with us, you will appreciate marriage and even the other sacraments so much more.

    Works cited.

    1. Vaticana, L. E. (n.d.). Article 7 The Sacrament of Matrimony. In Catechism of the Catholic Church (Second). essay, Libreia Editrice Vatcana.
    2. Matthew Chapter verses 3-9. (n.d.). essay.