What Was Actually Lost?

In my previous post, I told the story of the calling, the spiritual anguish, and my path to the Catholic Church. Here I ask what I actually left behind when I converted – not in matters of doctrine, but in the concrete realities of everyday Christian life. Was it a genuine loss, or simply a difference to which I have grown accustomed?

No Conflict to Leave Behind

For me, this question begins with a premise that may not apply to everyone: I never experienced any strong conflict between church and prayer house. Throughout my childhood, I accompanied my parents to both, and I noticed none of the tension between “church people” and “prayer-house people” that apparently existed elsewhere. It was the parish priest himself, Kaare Time, who dedicated our prayer house, and his preaching could be every bit as radical as that of the lay preachers who visited us. Preachers came from many different organisations, but largely the same people attended regardless of which organisation was responsible for the series of meetings.

For me, then, the “loss” was never a matter of leaving one organisation for another. What I had to relate to was something else: a looser and more composite culture of devotion without sharp organisational boundaries.

Choosing a Congregation as an Adult

The question became more pressing when, after completing my education, I moved closer to the centre of Sandnes and had to choose a congregation for myself. I did not feel strongly attached to any particular organisation, since none had dominated my upbringing. I also noticed that the walls between the various congregations in Sandnes were fairly high, and I was afraid of committing myself to something that did not suit me. In addition, I was wary of a certain pressure towards intimacy that I encountered in some places – for example, the expectation that one should come forward and ask for prayer if one had sinned or had some other need. I therefore kept my distance for a long time, attending several congregations sporadically and going to church from time to time.

Eventually, I found my way to Hana parish, which had only recently been established after being separated from Høyland parish. It was a parish of the state church, not a prayer-house congregation, but it nevertheless retained much of the informal character I knew from the prayer house. Laypeople were deeply involved, both in the services and in practical work. On occasion, a layperson would both lead the service and deliver the sermon. My transition therefore did not take me directly from a typical prayer-house fellowship into a clearly hierarchical church. In Hana, I had already found something of an intermediate form: a state-church parish with strong and relatively non-hierarchical lay participation.

The House Fellowship That Disappeared

One thing I genuinely lost was the house fellowship. This was a small group that met regularly in people’s homes for conversation, prayer, Bible reading, and social fellowship. I first belonged to such a group in the prayer-house congregation and later in Hana parish. In the Catholic parishes I have known, I have not found anything that quite corresponds to it.

This meant a great deal to me during the years when I lived alone. It was the closest thing I had to a form of family life. Once I married and had a family of my own, the need was no longer as pressing, so the loss did not feel particularly great in my own case. But I believe that some people will miss precisely this very deeply when moving from a Protestant congregation to the Catholic Church – especially those who, as I did for a time, live alone.

A Different Kind of Preaching

One difference I have noticed is that preaching in the Catholic Church is generally less directly concerned with sin, conversion, and personal conduct than the preaching I was accustomed to at the prayer house. I cannot say that I personally miss this very much. But my understanding is that the Norwegian revival movements were historically marked by precisely this kind of preaching. When one considers their positive fruits, both in individual lives and in society, it is reasonable to ask whether such preaching might still have something to contribute within a Catholic setting today.

A related question is whether the lives of the saints, confession, and the sacramental life can lead to the same kind of self-examination and conversion, but by different means. Since becoming Catholic, I have begun reading some biographies of saints and have benefited greatly from them. I believe they could have helped me considerably during the years when I struggled with spiritual anguish. Yet I am unsure whether such biographies can truly replace more direct and confrontational preaching. They work in a different way and may not fulfil the same function.

An Undramatic Conversion

Another possible loss concerns the personal conversion story – the testimony that is often a central form of expression in low-church spirituality. I have little to contribute from my own experience here, because my conversion was as undramatic as it could have been.

After I married, there was a period when we attended both the 9.30 Mass at the Catholic church in Stavanger and the 11.00 service at Hana parish, and for a time we received Communion in both places. When I later learned that, as a Protestant, I was not supposed to receive Communion in the Catholic Church, I stopped going forward there. When we moved away from the area two years later, we lost our natural connection to Hana and continued attending only the Catholic Church. I remained a Protestant for another three years before formally becoming Catholic.

For me, the decision was largely a matter of becoming a member of the church I actually attended rather than the one I no longer attended – and of finally being able to receive Communion again. A few friends were slightly surprised when they heard about it, but it never became a major issue, and I did not make much of it myself.

What Was Lost?

So what was actually lost? For me, it was not an organisation or a clearly defined confessional identity; I had never possessed a strong one to lose. The real loss was the house fellowship, which gave me something close to family life during a period when I needed it. Everything else is more complicated. I had already found relatively non-hierarchical lay participation in Hana parish; confrontational preaching is something whose value I can reflect on without personally missing it; and the moment of conversion itself was too undramatic to leave any sense of emptiness at all.

Perhaps this is itself part of the point: when we ask what is lost in becoming Catholic, we are really asking several different questions. Their weight varies from person to person, depending on which part of the low-church heritage has most deeply shaped their life. Any attempt to determine what may be preserved, purified, or recovered must therefore begin by distinguishing between these different forms of loss.