June Catholic ReCon Testimony

Eddie Trask- From Megachurch to Mass: My Journey Back to Catholicism

Here is this month’s summary of a Catholic ReCon testimony. This time, I have decided to share Eddie Trask’s own testimony. Eddie hosts the weekly interviews of Catholic converts and reverts. This is his own story of coming home:

Eddie starts his conversion story with his youth, sharing how though he had been baptized Catholic as a baby and been confirmed in the Church, even serving as an altar boy for ten years. Then, he shares about how as he entered college, he stopped attending mass and stopped practicing his faith.

After college, he married a woman, who had grown up in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, but like him, she had left her faith. Until six months into their marriage, when she asked Eddie if he would be willing to go to church with her. So, it’s then they begin their search for a church. They eventually settled on a mega non-denominational church because the preaching seems good.

Eddie talks about participating in multiple altar calls and being baptized, but how even as he longed for God to change his heart, it just wasn’t happening. He was stuck in the same sins, feeling unable to change. Until, the Holy Spirit brought a deep conviction within his heart, a conviction that led him to confess his secret sins to his wife. He speaks of this being a turning point that began a two year journey of searching for the truth.

A search that at first led him to the start of the Reformation, where a wall seemed to stop him from going any further. Until, he went to bed crying out to the Lord to help him in the confusion he was feeling with it all, as everything he had been learning swirled in his head. That’s when he woke up sensing that wall crumbling, as he decided to now go back and start searching for the truth from the days of Jesus Christ up to the Reformation.

A search that took him to the Church Fathers and their continual efforts to uphold the truth, through every opposition they faced. When he got to the Reformation, he saw how each splint-off group that formed at that point came from Catholic men who decided to leave the Church, in the wake of abuses they observed within the Church.

Yet, Eddie then shares how now, as we compare the billion odd Protestant believers to the billion odd Catholic believers, we can see that abuses are present in both: leaving the Church didn’t eradicate the abuse within their midst. He then shares how since the Reformation, “faith” alone and “grace” alone and “Scriptura sola” doctrines have been used to justify interpretations of the Bible that directly oppose what the first Christians, who walked with Jesus, believed and taught.

He also shares about how he disovered that the early Christians had in fact walked, steeped not only in the holy Scriptures, but also in Church tradition, passed on from generation to generation, from the time of Christ. This was something Eddie also found reflected in Scripture. For example, in 1 Timothy 3:15 ‘(NRSVCE) we read Paul writing to Timothy: “ if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” And in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (NRSVCE) we read: “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”

Thereafter, Eddie came across the Catholic apologist, Patrick Madrid, after reading material from various non-Catholic apologists. To help people understand the danger of individual interpretation, detached from Church guidance, Madrid took one sentence and showed how, depending on the intonation the six words (I never said you stole money) could be interpreted differently, depending on which of the five different categories of interpretation were chosen. For example: “I never said you stole money.”, “I never said you stole money.” “I never said you stole money.” “I never said you stole money.”I never said you stole money.” “I never said you stole money.”

He then spoke to the clear appointment of Peter by Christ, recorded in Scripture, and how he realized that those who split off from the Church effectively appointed their own leaders in place of the leader appointed by Christ. He then spoke of reading about the heinous crimes committed under various Popes, but how he then also read of heinous crimes committed within Protestant churches and within atheist groups. What he saw through it all was humanity.

Looking back in time he could see that at the start of the split-off, the Protestant denominations had the same church traditions that Catholics still have today. But as every fracture thereafter unfolded, the sacraments got diluted, credibility got lost and victimhood increased, something he sees unfolding in society too.

He explains that, for example, when parents get divorced their credibility wanes, their children may feel victimized, the teaching of those parents gets diluted. You are effectively so far removed from your genesis, saying: “how weird is that”, not knowing where you come from. He explains how we have kept what we like and removed what we don’t through the years.

It made him wonder: if the Bride of Christ is injured: do you grab that injured Bride and throw her Body into the furnace? And whether in doing so, you’re then left saying: “I have the right House.” and yet there are hundreds of others saying the very same thing. Which is why you get people church-hopping, which Eddie explains he did also. He explains that you are effectively imprisoned by the offences, continually casting off the wounded members of the Body of Christ in the process.

So, Eddie says that leaves us asking: “To whom shall we go?” He asks: Do we put our trust in Calvin or in Luther or in Someone else? He explains that there is no consistency going back to the time of Christ, connected to these leaders, unlike there is with the Catholic Church, where the teaching and traditions espoused today can be traced back to the first Church, with Christ at her Head.

For Eddie, these conclusions brought him back to the Church. He explains that the atmosphere in the Church was not what spoke to him. What mattered to him was that his heart was being changed. He explains that before, he had his “law” glasses on. But now, he put on “grace” glasses to humbly receive the teaching of the Church. He explains how it was through God’s grace that he found himself being conformed to Christ.

For a complete version of Eddie’s testimony, see the Catholic ReCon video here:

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📅 Conversion stories are shared weekly at CatholicRecon.

✍️ Want to share your testimony? Fill out Eddie’s form here:

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