This afternoon I visited an Evangelical Christian community to watch my little nephew's performance in his Sunday School Camp's concert. Over a hundred children were there, and since it was their concert, many parents were around as well.

To my surprise, I met a couple of old friends of mine from seminary. It had been close to ten years now since we'd last been in touch. What surprised me about meeting them at this event was more that the last time I knew them, they weren't a part of this particular community.

Anyway, we managed to catch up. And of course, the big news: Sherman was now Roman Catholic.

This was the reaction I received to this news release: "You?! Of all people?? Sherman - the free-spirited open-ended Charismatically-inclined guy we knew at seminary - you?!" Yeah, me. "But... but... what made you decide to become Catholic?"

I was hardpressed for an answer, because what would've taken me an hour and a half to relate had to now be compressed into a fifteen-second answer. For the first time, I realised I had to have an instant fifteen-second answer for pressing moments when people asked me, "Why have you become Catholic?" I had to have an answer that was compelling enough, that wouldn't communicate a wrong impression that being Catholic was equivalent to joining "just another Christian denomination" like all other Protestant denominations to which I'd belonged prior to this.

(Just a by-the-way clarification: the notion of "denominations" is a Protestant notion. For the Catholic Church, the concern is simply whether a particular community constitutes a true Church or not based on the four marks of the true Church. So you're either a Church or you're not; the word "denomination" doesn't come within our ecclesiological radar.)

As I began searching my mental database for an answer, my mind quickly started racing down the hierarchy of truths, and it stopped at this point: APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. And I quickly told my friends, "I became Roman Catholic because my conviction led me to an understanding of Apostolic Succession". And of course, there wasn't time to explain further.

But why Apostolic Succession? Because of this:

• Apostolic Succession gives you the Magisterium which is responsible for guarding and transmitting the Deposit of Faith in its purity. With this, there is no longer a need to make ourselves the arbiters of truth as if we could be wiser than Holy Mother Church which has existed through the guidance of the Holy Spirit for 2,000 years.

  
  

• Apostolic Succession gives you a validity of the Holy Orders of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. Your sacraments are valid, and your Eucharist is truly the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ through which you receive divine life. No more having to struggle with 300 possible alternative interpretations for the sacrament; you can just return to the most ancient understanding / reality embraced by Jesus and His Apostles.
  

Perhaps I was once free-spirited and open-ended because I never truly knew what to believe. Or who to believe. Despite all that I'd thought I knew, I felt disconnected (in many ways) from my faith and the institutions with which I was associated.

As a Catholic, because of having received the entire Deposit of Daith and having accepted the duty of loving obedience to Holy Mother Church, I know that what I believe is the very faith lived by the Holy Apostles of Christ.

So what made me become Catholic? It's a one-and-a-half-hour story. But here's what it was if I had only fifteen seconds to answer this question: Apostolic Succession.