I was born and baptized Catholic, as my dad was an immigrant from Chile. Growing up, I was taught only the bare basics of the Faith, a few stories from the Bible, the Our Father prayer, and only the bare basics about God, there wasn’t even that much about the Trinity other some things about Christ being God’s Son. I never learned the Hail Mary prayer, let alone, the whole Rosary, I didn’t know anything about the Saints, Church history, or any spiritual practices or the like, only what was mentioned above. My dad did try to take me to mass a few times, but I had no idea what was going on or what it all meant. So I didn’t have much of a Catholic life growing up, and with the things that typically plague the life an Aspie at school, I didn’t have the time or energy to think much about spiritual things growing up.
In my late teens, early adult life I officially slid away into Deism, though I myself, referred to myself as a “monotheist,” as I still believed, or rather wanted to believe, that God could still intervene in things. I knew little about the Faith and so came to believe that events in the Bible and the like were impossible to prove; on top of that, as an Aspie, I became cynical and began to assume, that organized religion was simply there to make God comprehensible and conform to society’s norms. For a long time I rejected Catholicism and struggled with understanding God and dealing with my own issues, and how I should live my life and live it in a way that was good and the like.
Later on, I found myself running into personal struggles, I won’t go into details on them here, I’m not sure if they would be considered triggering or not, but I’ll spare the details for now; these struggles led to me going online to search for help with this struggle, back then, the only sites that I found on there that would help with this issue were Christian sites, so I started getting exposed to Christian material. Later on, I started playing a strategy game called Rome: Total War, and it came with an expansion called Barbarian Invasion, which takes place during the fall of the Roman Empire and, while playing that game, you’ll receive notifications about certain events that take place during that time period and many of those events had to do with Church History and the Early Church Fathers. I also had a general interest in history and that also led to Biblical and Church history, as well as other historical events in which the Church was in some way involved. With all this information being exposed to me, I started learn a lot of things, I learned that events in the Bible weren’t as far fetched as I originally assumed, I learned that the Church Fathers were very intelligent people, as were the later Doctors of the Church; and that they were open minded when it came philosophical matters. I learned that the Old Testament Prophets, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and many other Saints, not only defied social norms, but also sometimes even risked life and limb, and would even willfully lay down their lives for the Faith.
So all this was slowly leading me back to the Faith, and yet I still wasn’t convinced, I still needed something more. The final part came with Our Lady, I started getting interested in Our Lady due to personal reasons that I’ll spare everyone the details with on here, though some might already know; oddly enough earlier in life I also had a brief phase of interest in Our Lady for pretty much the same reason, though the phase didn’t last back than, it actually ended through an attitude of “it’s too good to be true.” This time though the phase didn’t end, it led to the Fatima Apparitions, I’m pretty sure most people on here know that it was Our Lady of Fatima that brought me back to the Faith; I had heard of Our Lady of Fatima before, but this time was different, this time things rang through for me and thus, some time in July, 2016, I reverted back the Catholic Faith.
So that’s my reversion story, please tell me your own conversion or reversion story.
