I’m learning a lot from these “conversion” testimonies from both ways. It seems one group is running to bondage and one group is running to Grace and Liberty in Christ. This former nun is of the latter.
"Having read [Francis Beckwith]'s book, I am appalled at the blatant misrepresentation of both the Reformed teaching as well the teaching of Roman Catholicism. His lack of knowledge on historical issues is forgivable, given his ignorance, but to misrepresent and caricature the Reformed faith and to misrepresent the salvation teachings of Rome is simply irresponsible and dishonest..."There are many, many "former-Protestant-turns-Catholic" conversion stories posted on FR that bear these same marks. The majority focus on converts who display a poor command of their former faith. Many of them are billed as a "former so-and-so" even if that identification occurred only in childhood! Others bear witness to converts already being swayed by "every wind of doctrine", having jumped from church to church multiple times before they converted to Catholicism. Most of these conversion stories fall into a common theme - see if you can spot it.
-- from the internet article Why Scripture and the Facts of History Compel Me, a Former Roman Catholic, to Remain a Committed Evangelical Protestant
Take, for example, the story of James Akin. A convert in his mid-twenties, he was actually a whole lot of things before he became Catholic in his mid-twenties, but he is billed as being a "former Presbyterian".
Another favorite is the story of Rodney Beason, supposedly a former Calvinist, and solicited a second time as having "a powerful conversion story". While a first year college student, he claimed to already have "a library full of Calvin, Luther, Warfield, Hodge, Murray, Owen, Machen, etc" and to have "helped plant a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church". A little digging on Google, however, and we find that trumpeting Beason's team-switch was premature at best. In the end, Rodney Beason himself signed up to FR just to fill us in on the rest of his "powerful conversion story". Having abandoned the Catholic Church within two years of his 2002 conversion, he wishes Catholics would stop (re)publishing his story.
And then there's the tale of Rob Evans. I know what you're thinking - "who is Rob Evans?" Evans' previous claim to fame was a direct-to-VHS children's series titled The Donut Repair Club, marketed to children in Evangelical households in the early 1990s. When he wasn't entertaining children, Rob was a Presbyterian Pentecostal Baptist multiple-church-splitting spiritual wanderer, who was kicked out of at least one congregation before his conversion to Catholicism. His conversion nicely coincided with EWTN acquiring broadcasting rights to his out-of-production Donut Repair Club.
And finally, there's Fr. Erik J. Richtsteig, billed as a "former Mormon" The problem is, Fr. Richtsteig stopped being Mormon by the time he was just eight years old, meaning he had never held office, never been on a mission, never been through a Temple ceremony. His "Mormon" experience was limited to Sunday attendance (without his mother) "sporadically".
I wonder how many of these Catholic converts actually attended churches that proclaimed the whole council of God? A question I would ask is how many Catholic converts previously went to churches with strong systematic confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession, and how often were they taught the confession, like in a Sunday School class, and how well did their minister cover all the doctrines in the confession of faith? I would expect some rather weak answers.
-- from the thread Systematic Theology and Catholic Converts