I grew up in the Bible Belt — the southern region of the United States where Evangelical Protestantism reigns supreme and exerts a profound dominance socially and culturally.
I was raised to know and love God, prayed daily and I had a deep desire to enter into his kingdom one day. I grew up with altar calls, Bible studies with my grandma, and loud, fiery Sunday services. Almost everyone I knew was a Christian, and we all held each other accountable for our actions. I felt I was living a life that would get me into heaven.
My high school was in a small town in southwest Oklahoma. The kind of town where everyone knew each other and often attended the same church. Except for that one church across the street. The one with the “idol” of St. Anne with a young St. Mary in front of it. We would never go there. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of people I knew who did. Two of my best friends went to that church. Actually, they were twins, raised in an incredibly devout family that made no excuses for missing Mass. Ever.
In addition, I would often see their family vehicle in the parking lot on days other than Sunday. They were steadfast in faith and practice, and I couldn’t help but admire that. We were in most of our classes together in high school, including AP (advanced placement) government, and it was in this class that seeds were planted in me. It was our junior year, and we had gotten into a debate about the compilation of the Bible.
As Protestants, we believed that the Catholic Church added seven books to the Old Testament. As we were going back and forth about who was right and who was wrong, our teacher, a member of The Cowboy Church (Yes, that’s a real thing) piped up and said, “Martin Luther removed them. That’s a historical fact.”
I’ve always loved history. It’s the story of us; who we are and how we came to be. So, I had no problem accepting the fact that I was wrong. But my classmates, besides the twins and one other Catholic, were up in arms! One even stormed out of the class. It was then that I asked myself, “If we are wrong about this, what else are we wrong about?”
After what felt like a lifetime of reading, research, an invitation to Mass and a Scott Hahn talk, it turned out we were wrong about a lot of things, and among the things I valued most, objective truth was in the top three. Our hearts were on fire for the Lord, yet we didn’t know our Bible as well as we thought we did. The true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is biblical, confession is biblical, the salvific nature of baptism is biblical, honoring Mary is biblical, holy images are biblical and sola scriptura was ironically not biblical.
Fast forward two years, after a failed serious relationship and a lapsed round of RCIA (now OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation of Adults), I’m on a date that I never intended to be on with a Catholic who charitably answered many questions for me and later became my RCIA sponsor, husband and father of my children. And the twins? They’re both godmothers to two of my children. So, why am I Catholic? Because God paved a way for the people I love and the truths I sought and guided me home.
Jantzen, 38, her husband, Tim, and their four children are members of St. Joseph in Waconia. The Jantzens own and operate a youth soccer development franchise and Jessica Jantzen works with an internet infrastructure company founded by a former seminarian that serves Catholic churches and schools across the Twin Cities.
