This Agnostic Scientist Converted After Witnessing a Miracle at Lourdes

Source: ChurchPop

Alexis Carrel was born into a Catholic family in a small town in France in 1873. He attended Mass regularly and went to Catholic schools run by Jesuits. Unfortunately, by the time he went to college he was an agnostic. He completely rejected the Catholic faith and wasn’t even sure if there was a God.

However, he wouldn’t stay that way. And an extraordinary miracle from Lourdes helped lead him back.

As an agnostic, Carrel studied biology and medicine and went on to become a world famous scientist. He developed a way to allow organs to live outside the body, a huge step toward organ transplants, and he developed new techniques for cleaning wounds. Most importantly, though, he invented techniques for suturing large blood vessels, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1912.

This is why his opinion about alleged miracles at Lourdes mattered so much.

Although the original apparitions at Lourdes had occurred in 1858, people in the early 20th century (as they are today) were still claiming to be cured by the water there. Despite the large number of alleged cures, the French medical establishment was firmly against the possibility that anything supernatural was happening.

Carrel himself was also a strong skeptic. That is, until he met a girl named Marie Bailly.

He was on a train to Lourdes with a doctor friend to see the hysteria for himself in 1902 when he came across Bailly, who apparently had something called tuberculous peritonitis. It was a fatal disease. She was only half-conscious and had a swelled belly. Trying to help, Carrel gave her morphine, but said he didn’t think she’d even survive the rest of the trip to Lourdes. Other doctors on the train came to the same conclusion.

When they arrived, her friends carried her to the grotto, and three pitchers of water from Lourdes was poured on her. With each pour, she said felt a searing pain throughout her body. To the amazement of the doctors present, her belly started to flatten back to a normal size almost immediately and her pulse returned to a normal rate.

By that evening, she was well enough to eat a normal dinner.

The scientist in Carrel didn’t know what to make of it all. He had to admit that everything he knew about medicine made it seem like her cure was indeed miraculous. But he knew that publicly claiming to have witnessed a miracle would ruin his career. So he just stayed quiet about it all. He didn’t even want people to know he had gone to Lourdes.

However, Bailly’s cure quickly became national news. News outlets reported that Carrel had been present, but that he didn’t think there was anything miraculous about what happened. This wasn’t exactly accurate, so he was forced to publish a public reply. In it, he scolded religious believers for generally being too quick to claim something unusual was miraculous, but he also criticized the medical establishment for ruling out the possibility of miracles, saying that Bailly may indeed have been cured miraculously.

This was a public scandal! How could someone so steeped in science and so accomplished in medicine say that Bailly’s cure might have been miraculous? His career in France was over. Unable to work in hospitals any longer, he moved to Canada, and eventually the United States. He joined the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York and spent the rest of his career there. (Marie Bailly, for her part, joined a convent.)

So he had been convinced the woman’s cure could have been miraculous – what did that mean for him spiritually?

He didn’t know what to do with it exactly, since fully admitting to himself that he had witnessed a true miracle at Lourdes would require him to rethink his religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

It took him 25 years of working it out in his heart and mind, but finally, in 1939, he decided to meet with a Catholic priest in order to seriously consider returning to the Church. They became friends, and three years later he announced, “I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all the Catholic Church teaches.”

And just two years after that, he died. But not without receiving Last Rites on his deathbed.

God had brought him back just in time.

Pray for Alexis Carrel, may he rest in peace!

CBCP News: How Christine Jacob left the Church and came back

Christine Jacob with her kids (Photo: Ruel Tenerife)

MUNTINLUPA City, April 20, 2016, CBCP News – Like many in the showbiz world, Christine Jacob experimented with religion.

“It was a very, very tough time in my life,” she noted, describing the days she was on noontime TV almost daily.

Though a cradle Catholic herself, the Olympian swimmer and show host would join Born-Again fellowships with her celebrity friends in her desire to have what she called a “personal relationship with Jesus.”

She thought this could also help her become immune from the bad influences the entertainment industry is notorious for.

“For a while, I didn’t know where, how I was going. And that was when I got into Born Again. That, at least, at that point, helped keep me grounded,” she explained.

Ironically, after years of “soul searching,” she would find what she was looking for in the faith of her youth.

“And from there I was just praying for somebody to just come into my life, you know? … And then I met my husband who’s Opus Dei,” she continued.

Back to Rome

It was thanks to Mr. Francisco Sandejas that Christine was able to make the “return trip” to Rome.

But her “reversion” was not without initial reservation on her part.

“We would always debate, trying to see who’s the best, trying to convert each other or something like that,” she explained, smiling.

“He taught me how to relearn the Catholic faith over again,” she added.

Also thanks to her husband, Christine got exposed to the pro-life cause, becoming one of the country’s better-known defenders of family and life.

Former Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) - Alfie Angeles - Bumalik sa pagiging Katoliko

Isang malaking PASABOG ng isang DATING IGLESIA NI CRISTO na ngayo'y BUMALIK sa INANG IGLESIA! Salamat po kay Bro. Atty. Marwil Llasos, OP at mga kasamahan sa TV Maria at KNOW THE TRUTH sa kanilang talino at dedikasyon sa pagpapalaganap ng pananampalatayang Katoliko.

Why I finally returned to the Catholic Church

Revert Story from Catholic Anchor

By CHARLIE ESS

With pain comes perfection, Christ taught. Thanks to the gift of the Catholic Church we are able to reach this perfection through a glorious journey. But for too many years this was not the way for me.

My parents planted the hope of salvation and the reality of heaven within me during the impressionable years of adolescence. Practice in faith and good works as a cradle Catholic included a few years as an altar boy and a strong sense of compassion as I worked my way through the lower grades in a Catholic school.

Five decades later, however, I’m looking back with envy at that child in terms of purity, the quest to embrace the sacraments — which included the possibility of holy orders — and good works as a way of strengthening my spiritual life. How simple it seemed then to keep my soul spotlessly clean with the belief that in the event of sudden death the Kingdom of God was unquestionably at hand.

Now, I face the reality that, like everybody else, I must one day die. Moreover, I have some catching up to do after a hiatus of nearly 30 years from the Catholic Church.

I moved to Alaska in 1978, and though there was ample opportunity to continue attending Mass and receiving the sacraments, I lived life on the beaches, the mountains and on boats. Though I believed in God as the Creator, I did not live the life of a religious hermit as I had originally intended. Instead I embraced wide ranging religious ideologies. I gravitated toward secular thinking and found plenty of camaraderie. What didn’t come in the form of worldly ways during my life as a commercial fisherman surely befell me when I entered a licentious period as a writer. I had joined the national subculture of some 20 million baptized Catholics who no longer practice their faith. I had become a “fallen away Catholic,” as my grandfather used to call those who left the church either in quest of liberties granted by other forms of theology or those who walked away from any sort of Christly tethers altogether.

My departure from the Catholic Church left me with an uneasiness whenever I contemplated my journey with God. I knew too much about the Catechism and caught myself trying to arrive at various checkpoints in the journey through a feigned innocence. Not that other churches I had attended condoned my immorality, but I had drifted away from a discipline, an essential way of thinking, of praying, of examining conscience and of confessing.

Most tangible among the triggers would be the periodic discovery of one of my rosaries out among books or other trinkets in a storage shed. Though the familiarity of its beads would bring pangs of a guilt that I would later associate with a nudging of the conscience to grow closer to God, it was divine intervention and the intuition of my wife Cheryl that eventually lead me back to the Catholic Church.

Like many couples, we struggled in our marriage, and though we knew God must be at its center, we so often got caught up within ourselves. Cheryl, meanwhile, had begun watching EWTN and had a growing curiosity about the magnitude of Mary in Catholicism. This occurred shortly after we moved to the Palmer side of the Matanuska Valley.

At the same time, as parents we had started “church hopping” in our desire to provide some Godly roots for our kids. For several months we were unable to reach consensus in joining churches of this or that denomination, and we settled the matter by rotating among individual choices each Sunday. On a particular weekend, when it seemed we had tried them all, it was my turn, and I suggested attending Mass at St. Michael Catholic Church in Palmer. I prepared myself for our awkward genuflections and kneeling during the consecration.

While the kids had questions about incense, holy water and other rituals after Mass, Cheryl experienced an epiphany of sorts and shortly thereafter enrolled in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA), by which adults come into the Catholic Church. A year later, on the eve of her confirmation and first Holy Communion Father Tom Brundage asserted our marital vows — this time they were sacramental.

As for me, the return to the faith has been blissful as I rediscover the purpose of spiritual tools that were given to me when I was young. In a sense I have arrived, broken, but back at the threshold of a great workshop that I’ve had access to since I was a kid. At its center, like some great lathe or milling machine, is Christ’s passion, replete with the original manual on how to accept pain and create selflessness, and the periphery has been festooned with the seven sacraments, with Sacred Scripture, Holy Mass, adoration, the daily recitation of the Rosary and countless chaplets and prayers. Practicing one aspect of the faith, I have discovered, leads to a desire to practice others.

I still struggle with sin, the reality of death and the endlessness of eternity like I imagine anyone who’s bothered contemplating such matters might. With my return to Catholic discipline, however, I find hope in reaching for perfection as each day ticks toward the end of my tenure here on earth. And hope fuels my journey toward eternity, one day at a time.

Why All the Iglesia ni Cristo® claims and what they know about the Catholic Church are deep in error!

Comments from Iglesia ni Cristo^® (INC) logo: Christian or Masonic symbol? by a Catholic revert from INC^® back to the Catholic Church.

Number of revert Catholics in the US (2012). Photo Credit: Nineteen Sixty Blog

When I went back to Catholicism after years of listening (INC was one of them) and going to other denominations Jesus gave me a special message during one of my deep meditations (in original tagalog) which I would like to share with everyone.

“Anak, huwag kang lumingon sa paligid, sa akin ka lang tumingin, makakaraos ka rin sa taglay mong hirap at liwanag ko anak sa iyo’y darating. Ang bigay ko sa iyo ay pagibig, sana anak sa puso mo ay itanim, pagingatang lubos ang bigay kong punla upang anak sa puso mo ito’y lumago. Tunay na tunay kitang mahal, o anak tanggapin iyong mga pasanin, manatiling tapat sa iyong mga hanggarin dahil anak sa itaas doon kita dadalhin, upang anak ang langit ay iyong marating.”

Right after receiving the message.. I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote them without thinking nor trying to remember how He said it…it flowed effortlessly and done in just few seconds without stopping even half a second. I share this message to anyone who is ready to receive this. I did not dare to translate into English for fear that I may translate it wrongly.

THE PROBLEM WITH INC is that they use their mind to rationalize every word they read in the bible instead of using their hearts and try to meditate the real spiritual meaning of the scriptures they read. If only they search and read the Bible in all entirety, their is a good chance they will be able to connect with verses that are related in meaning. The danger is when you translate the Bible into the Filipino Language there is always a chance that translations will be accorded to the capacity of whoever is doing the translation of the Holy Scriptures. The most complete and perhaps void of errors is the Catholic Bible as the scriptures written where taken from the original books carefully studied and transcribed by many holy persons (not by few) not in months or years but centuries to make sure there were no errors during transcription. The Catholic Bible is the result of many minds (holy and mystics) who gathered together to put together all books done in centuries not days or months and transcribed them into one Bible for all Christians and Gentiles. When the protestant wants to translate the bible according to their needs that was the beginning of the advent of many religions to come and they come and go. Most non-Catholic bible were the translations of only few people and done in shorter times. Felix Manalo did his own thorough studies and comparison of different bibles in 3 days only though may have developed the rest of INC’s bible as the sect grew and progress of the years. Catholic Bible has been reviewed and re-reviewed by many theologians and bible scholars for one purpose only to ensure that there are no errors, additions and omissions. In other non-catholic bible there are additions and omissions of books and scriptures. This is what the Book of Revelation has been warning everyone not the mere addition or omission of some words or verses as other verses can cover them but they are the omission of books. Like Islam, they have omitted several books and added some to the original books of scriptures from the Genesis thru Revelation. When I read King James Bible several times, I decided to just keep and use the complete original and error free Catholic Bible that was originally translated into English not in Tagalog as I am having an issue on they way the were translated which not all can fully grasp (too wordy).

Tom Cruise's ex-wife returned to the Catholic Church

Tom Cruise's ex-wife Katie Holmes has returned to the Catholic Church since she left for her husband's Scientology sect.  Tom Cruise is said to have enjoyed second highest position in the hierarchy of Scientology.

"(Katie Holmes)who renounced her Catholic upbringing for Scientology when she married Cruise in 2006 – has registered as a parishioner at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York City not far from her Chelsea apartment. That presumably means she'll be taking Suri along with her to Mass. “Everyone is thrilled to have Katie join us,” a member of the church's choir told The Huffington Post on Monday. “She has not yet attended a service, but when she does she will be welcomed with open arms.” -Yahoo!News!

Catholic Revert: Tim Ohmes is a revert back to the Catholic Church from The-Church-of His-Own-Self-Made-Doctrines

Source: Why I'm Catholic

"Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you." Is 49:15

My mother died when I was 5. Her death shattered my world. I'm sure she never forgot us but I felt forgotten. I was one of seven. My father later married a widow of 4 and had 4 more for a total of 15 children. In the town where we grew up, this was way too many children.

We were Catholic in a town that believed Catholics got it all wrong. I was a social misfit. I was often told, "You know all you Catholics are going to hell don't you?" Our prayer life consisted of Mass, Stations of the Cross and reciting formal memorized prayers (like the rosary). I usually spent the time "counting down" the prayers rather than actually praying. I paid little attention to the words. I knew nothing of the Bible. I was poorly catechized and poorly formed, but God had not forgotten about me.

Lorraine Murray's Conversion Story

By Lorraine Murray

Lorraine is a Catholic revert and ex-feminist who returned to the faith of her childhood after 25 years an atheist.

I Was a Teenage Feminist: My Journey Back to Mother Church

I was in the newsstand of the Miami bus terminal, my saddle oxfords a bit scuffed and my

uniform crumpled after a steamy day of classes, when I spotted something that utterly horrified me.

It was not an X-rated book or magazine, but something much worse, "Why I Am Not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell.

I didn't dare pick it up for fear that it might burst into flames. You see, I had been raised in a Catholic, Italian-American family that traced its faith back to the old country for generations back. To me nearly the whole world was Catholic, and although I had heard about Protestants – the nuns had told us about the Reformation, although they preferred the term "Revolution" – I had never encountered someone who would brag about rejecting Christ.

Moira Noonan: My Conversion Story

Moira Noonan left Catholicism for the New Age in the early 1970s after suffering a crippling accident for which her faith seemed to have no answers. She went on to serve as a minister in the Church of Religious Science for 20 years, mastering such disciplines as clairvoyance, hypnotherapy, spiritual healing, and past-life regression. Her tumultuous life at the time, and her subsequent return to her original faith after a series of powerful inner experiences, are the subjects of this absorbing account of spiritual quest and rebirth. Noonan's story has been an inspiration to thousands of people who have begun to feel the inadequacy of New Age-inspired road maps to enlightenment. Her knowledge of that world is unusually thorough and grounded in experience, and she approaches it in a constructive, upbeat manner, making her story all the more compelling. -goodreads.com

Source: Christendom Awake - My earliest memories of Catholicism was my mother saying that she sent us (my brothers and sisters) to Catholic School so the nuns could raise us because they did a better job than she did. The first school I went to was in Detroit for kindergarten, a Sacred Heart Convent School in the order of St. Madeline Sophie. By the time I was in third grade we had moved from Detroit to New Jersey where I had attended public school due to lack of a Catholic School in that area. By eight grade I was sent away to boarding school in Philadelphia called Eden Hall, the Sacred Heart Convent, when I was in tenth grade the school suffered a fire and burnt down.

I was transferred to a secular college-prep boarding school called MacDuffie School for Girls. This transition placed a real damper on my faith journey. This non-Catholic environment started me out on the dangerous path into the New Age World. One of my teachers, in her twenties, had befriended me and many of the girls at the school both during and after school hours. She had studied in India and had a strong belief in the Hindu Religion, she was also engaged to a Hindu who was a professor at Princeton University. He wore the traditional dress of a turban and came to visit her at our boarding school on a regularly basis. We attended many different Indian concerts including Ravi Shankar and became more fascinated with the mystery of the Indian Culture and religion.

Catholic Revert: Russ Rentler

By Russ Rentler

Born and raised Catholic, Russ left the Church as a teenager and became a devout evangelical Christian for many years. His journey of faith has taken many dramatic twists and turns culminating in his joyful reception back to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

About 35 years ago as a young teen, I strayed from my Catholic faith and began to look into the occult and the rock and roll culture for answers and peace in my life. My parents brought me to Church faithfully but didn't allow their faith to help them with their personal problems. They had a troubled marriage and alcohol abuse was a chronic unspoken demon in their lives. As a teenager my Catholicism meant little to me, though I do remember praying the rosary at night to help me sleep when I was troubled by something.

One night, I went to Bible study hosted by a friend of mine whose parents were ex-Catholics. There was tremendous joy and peace in the folks we met and I knew they had something I needed and wanted. That night I asked Jesus to forgive me and come into my life. I recited a prayer known as the Sinner's Prayer. God heard my prayers and I was set free from many vices in just one night. I had a very emotional experience and remember it as "better than any high that was out there." I was "born again" and my life took an abrupt and markedly different course. My parents reacted very negatively since they had no idea of the secret life I was living and my Mom kept saying "Why do you need to be born again? You are good kids."