Carl Olson at Ignatius Insight, who is one of my favorite Catholic bloggers, is a former Evangelical Protestant who was once a member of a house church that was an experiment in returning to Apostolic Christianity. He has a long, "must read" post on Evangelical Christians who become Catholics. Here are the quotes that jump out at me.
The irony, to me, is that my experience—and the experience of many former Evangelicals I know—is quite different from the description given by Weber. For example, I was raised in a Fundamentalist setting in which our group (initially meeting in homes) was formed for the simple reasons that we wished to emulate the New Testament church as closely as possible and to return to some form of first-century Christianity. This desire, however sincere and well-intentioned, was naive in many ways, especially since we tended to read the New Testament with little regard to the greater context of first-century Judaism or with scant attention given to the Old Testament. And we had no interest (or knowledge, from what I can recall; I was quite young at the founding of our "Bible chapel") of the Apostolic Fathers; even if we did, it wouldn't have mattered much, since we believed, in general, that the early church had apostasized within a few decades of Christ's Resurrection and Ascension. Put simply, this was "primitivism" in all of its 20th-century, American fundamentalist glory. And it was, in hindsight, a natural and even somewhat logical conclusion to Reformation principles, especially the basic notion that each believer in Christ has the right, even the responsibility, to follow Christ as best he can, as his conscience dictates, guided by his prayerful understanding of Scripture.
He goes on to quote an interview he had with Dr. Francis Beckwith, who was a cradle Catholic who became an Evangelical Protestant, only to return to Catholicism, who in turn quotes R.R. Reno (another favorite writer of mine over at First Things):
IgnatiusInsight.com: You've mentioned, in past interviews, that Dr. Mark Noll's book, Is The Reformation Over? (Baker, 2005), was a helpful work for you to read. Do you agree with Noll's assessment that "the central difference that continues to separate evangelicals and Catholics is not Scripture, justification by faith, the pope, Mary, the sacraments, or clerical celibacy ... but the nature of the church"? How significant is the issue of ecclesiology in current and ongoing Catholic-Evangelical dialogue?
Dr. Beckwith: I partly agree with Noll. I think he is right that logically that once the authority question is answered, the other issues that he mentions fall into place. However, practically, the process is more organic, as it was in my case. Once I saw that the Catholic view of justification could be defended biblically and historically, and that the sacraments, including a non-symbolic understanding of the Eucharist, have their roots deep in Christian history prior to the fixation of the biblical canon, the authority issue fell into place.
Something else concerning authority factored into my internal deliberations as well. But I do not think I can conjure up the words to properly express it. So, I will just rely on an elegant insight offered in First Things by a recent Catholic convert, R. R. Reno, which perfectly echoes my own sentiments: "In the end, my decision to leave the Episcopal Church did not happen because I had changed my mind about any particular point of theology or ecclesiology. Nor did it represent a sudden realization that the arguments for staying put are specious. What changed was the way in which I had come to hold my ideas and use my arguments. In order to escape the insanity of my slide into self-guidance, I put myself up for reception into the Catholic Church as one might put oneself up for adoption. A man can no more guide his spiritual life by his own ideas than a child can raise himself on the strength of his native potential."
I sympathize a lot with Evangelical Protestants because I believe that they have experienced Christ truly and viscerally in reading the Scriptures. The process of conversion begins with hearing the Word; a process which I have myself experienced but have some difficulty explaining. You hear, and all of the sudden, something clicks, something makes sense. One of the reasons I like reading Protestant converts to Catholicism is that they often start with Scripture and then have to reason themselves into the Church.
That route to the Church often goes something like this -- you read the Gospels, you then read Acts, and you begin looking for the Church that is described in Acts. It's not immediately obvious where that Church is. So you begin something of an archaelogical expedition. You start reading the Church fathers -- Justin Martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, Origen, John Chrysostom -- and in reading them something leaps out at you.
The Eucharist.
All of these writers believe that the Eucharist is real -- not symbolic, not a metaphor, not a mere remembrance. A few generations from the Apostles (Irenaeus, for example, was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John), and all of these writers, disagree though they will over theology, all believe that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ.
And then you start looking for Churches that believe that.
You find two. Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
And you also confront the odd fact that though Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism disagree with each other on small (but not inconsequential) matters of theology, they recognize the validity of each other's Eucharist.
And when you ask why, you discover the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. Apostles lay hands on their successors. They pass the gift that was given by Christ to his Apostles, the breath of the Holy Spirit.
And once you accept Apostolic Succession, a few other things fall into place. Scripture, while still an infallible guide, is an infallible guide because she was a product of the Holy Spirit acting through the Church. The books of Scripture were chosen because they had no conflicts with the Nicene Creed, defined in Ecumenical Council.
At this point, you have to ask yourself the question: door number one or door number two?
If I grew up in the former Soviet Union, or in Greece, or in the near East, I would likely have been born into Orhodoxy. But in the West, you find that the vast majority of churches are Catholic, and Orthodox churches are often the churches of expatriates, whose language you usually don't understand.
Then you realize that there is a Catholic church practically on every street corner.
You're home.