¶1Big news, God exists. Christ is Lord. He established [music] the Catholic Church. I'm not kidding. >> Joe Schmidt, a Princeton University philosophy [music] PhD student and former public critic of theism and Catholicism, has announced [music] his return to the Catholic faith.
¶2After years of questioning, rejecting, and ultimately [music] re-examining his belief in God. Schmidt grew up in a devout Catholic family, attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school, and actively practiced the faith. But during his teenage years, questions about evolution, [music] suffering, and the problem of evil gradually shook his convictions. By around 10th grade, he had embraced atheism and naturalism, [music] influenced by arguments from prominent atheist thinkers. Later, after discovering [music] contemporary philosophical arguments for God's existence and corresponding with Christian philosopher Josh Rasmussen, Schmidt abandoned his confidence in [music] atheism and became a settled agnostic.
¶3During his graduate studies [music] in philosophy, however, his position began to change again. Arguments concerning [music] the foundation of reality, consciousness, morality, beauty, and the extraordinary conditions necessary for life [music] gradually convinced him that theism offered a powerful and unified explanation of the world. But Schmidt's journey did not stop [music] with philosophical arguments. Over the following years, he became [music] increasingly [singing] interested in reported miracles, Marian apparitions, Eucharistic miracles, >> [music] >> and the extraordinary lives of Catholic saints. The stories of [music] saints such as Maria Goretti and Maximilian Kolbe also affected him on a deeply personal level, [music] drawing him toward the spiritual life of the church.
¶4After years of examining objections [music] to Catholicism and wrestling with the evidence, Schmidt eventually reached a decisive [music] moment. >> Imagine if I died right now and I saw Christ. I can't [music] imagine having to tell him that I have to tell him by my life as a non-Catholic. I was just >> [music] >> not willing to bet my soul on just like not only a single conspiracy, but just like a conspiracy of conspiracies that are just [music] like conspiring to make it look as though Catholicism is true. And so, the day after that call >> The following day, Schmidt performed an examination of conscience covering roughly a decade of his life away from the faith.
¶5The day after that, he [music] made a general confession marking a decisive return to the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. For Schmidt, [music] however, conversion was not simply an intellectual conclusion. He described [music] it as a transformation of the heart shaped not only by philosophical reasoning and what he regarded as evidence for Catholicism, but also by the example [music] of Christ, the witness of the saints, and what he experienced as God's grace drawing him back. And after years of questioning [music] whether Christianity was true, he now describes his conversion in remarkably simple terms. >> Hey, our time [music] together has unfortunately come to an end.
¶6That's my conversion story. It's ultimately [music] a love story and I hope it's the beginning of a similar love story >> [music] >> on your end. >> From a devout Catholic childhood through atheism and agnosticism to a renewed belief in God and a return to the Catholic [music] Church, Schmidt now says his journey was ultimately not only a search for truth, but a journey back to [music] Christ.