Things You Should Know Before You Convert From Atheism

Brief Overview

• Converting to Catholicism from atheism is not simply adding religious practices to your existing life; it requires a complete reorientation of how you understand reality, morality, meaning, and the purpose of human existence.
• The Catholic Church welcomes former atheists and takes their intellectual questions seriously, but it also expects them to work through those questions honestly rather than setting them aside after baptism.
• You will need to genuinely accept the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, and the authority of the Church before you receive the sacraments, and no good RCIA program will let you gloss over any of those commitments.
• The transition from an atheist worldview to a Catholic one involves confronting hard questions about suffering, evil, free will, and the reliability of human reason, and the Church has substantive answers to all of them that deserve careful study.
• Some of your closest relationships, particularly with friends and family members who remain atheist or secular, will face real strain after your conversion, and being prepared for that reality makes it easier to handle with charity and patience.
• The intellectual and philosophical tradition of the Catholic Church is one of the richest in human history, and former atheists who engage it seriously often find that it addresses their deepest questions with far more rigor than they expected.

You Are Not Just Joining a Religion, You Are Changing Your Entire Account of Reality

Coming from atheism, you have built your understanding of the world on a foundation that holds the material universe as the only thing that exists, that human beings are the product of unguided natural processes, and that meaning and morality are human constructions rather than discoveries. Converting to Catholicism means replacing that entire foundation with something structurally different. The Church teaches that God is the creator of all that exists, that the universe is not self-explanatory but depends on a transcendent source for its existence, and that human beings are created with an intellect and will ordered toward knowing and loving God (CCC 1). This is not a minor adjustment to your existing worldview. It is a fundamental change in the most basic categories you use to interpret everything else, from the nature of the human person to the basis of moral obligation to the meaning of suffering and death. Many people who come from atheism into the Church treat this change as primarily emotional or spiritual, a shift in feeling rather than in metaphysics. But the Church takes the intellectual dimension of this conversion seriously and expects you to take it seriously too. The Catechism opens with the assertion that the desire for God is written into every human heart, and that reason itself can lead a person to the recognition of God’s existence (CCC 33). This means the Church does not ask you to abandon your rational faculties when you convert. It asks you to use them more fully and more honestly than you did before. If you come into RCIA still uncertain whether God exists and hoping the process will sort it out automatically, you will likely finish the year still uncertain. Work through the foundational questions first, with honesty and rigor, before committing to the sacraments.

The Existence of God Is Something the Church Believes Reason Can Establish

One of the most important things to know before converting from atheism is that the Catholic Church does not treat belief in God as a leap of faith that bypasses reason. The Church teaches that the existence of God can be known with certainty through human reason alone, without the help of divine revelation (CCC 36). This is a strong and specific claim, and it is grounded in a long tradition of philosophical argument stretching from Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas to contemporary Catholic philosophers. The classic arguments for God’s existence, including the cosmological argument from the existence and contingency of the universe, the teleological argument from the order and purposiveness of nature, and the moral argument from the objectivity of moral obligation, are all part of the intellectual tradition the Church draws on. Aquinas’s five ways, presented in the Summa Theologiae, remain among the most carefully argued cases for the existence of a first cause, an unmoved mover, and a necessary being. Contemporary Catholic philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, Edward Feser, and Robert Spitzer have developed these arguments in dialogue with modern science and philosophy in ways that are accessible and intellectually serious. None of these arguments are magic bullets that force every rational person to accept God’s existence. But they are substantive philosophical cases that deserve honest engagement rather than dismissal, and if you are coming from atheism, you owe it to yourself to work through at least some of them carefully before you decide the question is settled. Many former atheists who become Catholic report that the arguments for God’s existence were part of what moved them, not as proofs that compelled assent mechanically, but as reasons that made theism intellectually credible and even compelling. Take the philosophical tradition seriously and let it work on you honestly.

The Problem of Evil Will Come Up, and the Church Has Real Answers

If there is one argument that keeps more people in atheism than any other, it is the problem of evil. How can an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God exist when the world contains so much suffering, so much injustice, and so much pain? This is not a new challenge. It was raised by Epicurus in ancient Greece and has been formalized by contemporary philosophers like J.L. Mackie and William Rowe. The Catholic Church does not pretend the problem is easy or that suffering is not real. What it does claim is that the existence of suffering is compatible with the existence of a good and powerful God, and it offers several serious responses to the challenge. The Church teaches that God permits suffering partly because he created human beings with genuine freedom, and genuine freedom includes the capacity to choose evil and to cause harm (CCC 311). This does not explain all suffering, since much of it comes from natural causes rather than human choices, but it addresses a large portion of the problem honestly. The Church also teaches that God can bring genuine good out of evil, not by denying the evil but by ordering it toward a greater end, as illustrated most clearly in the crucifixion of Christ (CCC 312). The Christian account of suffering is not that it is meaningless or that God is indifferent to it, but that it has been taken up by God himself in the person of Christ and can be united to his redemptive suffering. This does not make suffering pleasant or easy, but it does give it a context and a meaning that pure atheism cannot provide. Many former atheists report that it was precisely their honest engagement with the problem of evil, and the Church’s serious response to it, that moved them toward rather than away from faith. Do not avoid this question. Work through it carefully and honestly.

Science Is Not Your Enemy in the Catholic Church, But Your Relationship to It Will Change

Many people come from atheism with a deep commitment to science and a conviction that religious belief is fundamentally at odds with scientific reasoning. The Catholic Church rejects that dichotomy. The Church teaches that faith and reason are not opposed but complementary, and that both the book of Scripture and the book of nature are sources of truth about the same God (CCC 159). The history of science actually offers significant evidence for this position. The Catholic Church founded the first universities in Europe. Catholic priests and religious include Gregor Mendel, who established the foundational principles of genetics, Georges Lemaître, who first proposed what became the Big Bang theory, and Roger Bacon, who helped develop the empirical method. The Church’s official position accepts the scientific evidence for the age of the universe and the evolution of species, provided that these accounts are understood within a theological framework that affirms God as the creator who works through natural processes (CCC 283-284). What changes when you convert is not your respect for science but your understanding of what science can and cannot tell you. Science describes how the material world works. It does not and cannot address why there is a world at all, why the laws of nature have the character they do, or what human life means and is for. These are philosophical and theological questions that science, by its own methodology, is not equipped to answer. For a former atheist who treated science as the model for all genuine knowledge, accepting the legitimacy of philosophical and theological reasoning as distinct but valid ways of knowing is a significant intellectual shift. It is also one that many scientists, including practicing Catholic ones, have made without any sense of contradiction.

Morality Will No Longer Be Something You Construct, and That Is Harder Than It Sounds

One of the most significant intellectual shifts involved in converting from atheism to Catholicism concerns the nature of morality. Most atheist worldviews hold that moral norms are human constructions, products of evolution, social agreement, or individual preference, rather than truths about the way things objectively are. The Catholic Church teaches a fundamentally different view. The Church holds that the moral law is not a human invention but a participation in God’s own eternal law, knowable through human reason as the natural law and further clarified through divine revelation (CCC 1954-1960). This means that when the Church teaches that killing innocent human beings is wrong, or that honesty is a genuine obligation, or that certain acts are objectively disordered regardless of anyone’s preferences, it is not reporting a majority opinion or a cultural agreement. It is claiming to articulate truths about human nature and human good that are real and binding independent of what any particular person or culture happens to think. For a former atheist who has been accustomed to constructing their own moral framework, this is a significant change. It means that some things you currently do or approve of may need to change, not because the Church is imposing arbitrary rules, but because the Church teaches those things are genuinely harmful to human flourishing and contrary to human nature and dignity. The Church’s moral teaching covers areas including sexual ethics, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, the obligations of justice, and the nature of virtue, and none of these areas are optional modules you can ignore. Coming to Catholicism from atheism with a willingness to genuinely examine your moral life, rather than simply adopting Catholic religious practice while keeping your previous moral framework intact, is essential to authentic conversion.

The Sacraments Are Not Rituals You Observe, They Are Events That Actually Do Something

For someone coming from atheism, the Catholic sacramental system is one of the most conceptually challenging aspects of the faith. In an atheist worldview, ritual is at best psychologically meaningful and at worst empty superstition. The Church teaches something entirely different. The sacraments are efficacious signs instituted by Christ that actually confer the grace they signify (CCC 1127). This means that something real happens when a person is baptized, confessed, confirmed, or receives the Eucharist. The sacrament is not merely a human action that expresses an interior spiritual state. It is a divine action working through material signs, water, oil, bread, wine, human words, to accomplish a genuine transformation in the person receiving them. For a former atheist, accepting this requires not only believing in God but accepting a specific theology of how God acts in the world through physical and communal means. The Eucharist presents the most challenging case. The Church teaches that in the Mass, the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit and the words of consecration, a teaching known as the Real Presence (CCC 1374-1376). This is not a metaphor or a pious way of saying that Jesus is spiritually present wherever believers gather. It is a claim about a real transformation of the substance of the bread and wine. For someone who a few years ago may not have believed that any God existed at all, accepting this specific and demanding claim requires a significant degree of intellectual and spiritual trust. Many former atheists find that reading the early Church Fathers, who speak about the Eucharist in unmistakably literal terms from the very beginning of the Christian era, helps make the historical credibility of this teaching clear. Take the time to understand the sacramental theology before you receive the sacraments, not as a formality but as a genuine preparation for what you are entering.

Baptism Will Mark a Real Break With Your Previous Life, Not Just a Symbolic One

If you were never baptized as a child, your reception into the Church at the Easter Vigil will include baptism, and the Church’s teaching about what baptism actually accomplishes is worth understanding clearly before you arrive at that font. The Church teaches that baptism forgives all sin, both original sin and any personal sins committed before the moment of baptism, and that the newly baptized person emerges from the water genuinely clean before God (CCC 1263). This means that however long and complicated your life before faith was, however many things you did or said or believed that you now recognize as wrong, the sacrament of baptism wipes the slate completely. No penance is assigned for sins forgiven in baptism. The Church also teaches that baptism incorporates the newly baptized person into the body of Christ, making them a member of the Church and a sharer in the divine life (CCC 1265-1266). This is not a bureaucratic membership but a genuine ontological change, meaning a real change in what you are before God. For a former atheist who may have lived for decades outside of any religious framework, the weight of that moment is significant. Some converts from atheism report feeling the weight of years of life lived outside of faith and experiencing a genuine sense of relief and renewal at baptism. Others find the experience more quiet and interior, without dramatic emotional intensity. The emotional experience is not what matters. What matters is the reality the sacrament accomplishes, and that reality is real whether or not it produces feelings you can identify or name at the time.

Your Former Atheist Friends Will Likely React Worse Than You Expect

Converting from atheism to Catholicism, of all the religious conversions a person can make, tends to produce the most negative reaction from former atheist peers and communities. This is not a surprise once you think about it honestly. Atheism often functions not just as an intellectual position but as a social identity, a community of people who share the conviction that religion is irrational, that religious belief is a sign of intellectual weakness, and that the secular worldview represents humanity’s advance beyond superstition. When you convert, you are not simply changing your personal beliefs. In the eyes of many of your former community, you are rejecting the shared identity, endorsing the enemy, and possibly suggesting by your example that the atheist position is not as secure as they thought. The reaction can range from gentle puzzlement to active contempt, and in close friendships it can involve a real sense of betrayal. The Church does not ask you to abandon these friendships or to stop caring about the people in your life who remain atheist. The Catechism is clear that the Church respects the genuine moral seriousness and search for truth that many atheists show (CCC 2125-2126). But the Church also does not ask you to hide or soften your conversion to avoid causing discomfort. The faith you are entering holds that God exists and that the Church is the means of salvation entrusted to humanity by Christ. That is an exclusive claim, and honest atheist friends will recognize it as such. Be patient, be charitable, be genuinely interested in continuing the friendships wherever possible, and do not be surprised if some of those relationships change significantly in the months after your baptism.

Prayer Will Be Completely New and Possibly Strange for a Long Time

For someone who spent years as an atheist, the practice of prayer is not just unfamiliar; it is conceptually odd in a way that is worth naming directly. Prayer is conversation with a person who is not physically present and who does not respond in audible words. For a former atheist, sitting down to pray for the first time can feel like talking to an empty room, and that feeling does not always go away quickly. The Church teaches that prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God and that it takes many forms, including praise, thanksgiving, petition, and quiet listening (CCC 2559). The Catholic tradition has a rich and developed structure of prayer that includes the Liturgy of the Hours, the rosary, lectio divina, which is a slow and meditative reading of Scripture, contemplative prayer, and many forms of intercessory prayer. For a former atheist, beginning with structured prayers rather than purely spontaneous conversation often works better, because structure gives you something to do when you do not yet have the instinct for unstructured prayer. The Our Father is the foundational prayer Christ himself taught, and the Church considers it the model of all Christian prayer (CCC 2759). The psalms, which form the backbone of the Liturgy of the Hours, are the prayer book of the Bible and cover every human emotion and situation with a directness that many converts find genuinely accessible. The important thing to know is that prayer is a skill that develops with practice, and the early months of prayer for a former atheist are often dry and uncertain. That dryness does not mean God is absent or that prayer is not working. It means you are learning something genuinely new, and that learning takes time and patience.

The Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity Will Reshape Your Politics and Ethics

One of the areas where conversion from atheism to Catholicism produces the most practical friction is in politics and public ethics. The Catholic Church holds a coherent and comprehensive social teaching that does not map neatly onto any modern political party or ideology. The Church is strongly and unconditionally opposed to abortion, holding that human life must be protected from conception, because the Church teaches that the human person receives a rational soul at fertilization and that the taking of innocent human life is always gravely wrong (CCC 2270-2271). The Church is also committed to the preferential option for the poor, the rights of workers, the duty of nations to welcome immigrants, the abolition of the death penalty in modern circumstances, and the protection of the natural environment as a moral obligation rooted in stewardship of creation (CCC 2401-2463). These positions cut across standard political alignments in ways that will likely require you to rethink some of your previous political convictions. For former atheists who came from politically progressive backgrounds, the Church’s teaching on abortion and sexual ethics will require honest reckoning. For those from politically conservative backgrounds, the Church’s social and economic teaching will do the same. The Church does not endorse any political party, and it does not ask you to either. What it does ask is that you take its moral teaching seriously as a guide to how you engage with political and social questions, rather than simply baptizing your existing political preferences with religious language. Many converts find this uncomfortable in specific areas. That discomfort is useful. It means the faith is asking you to grow beyond your previous commitments rather than simply blessing them.

You Will Need to Develop Intellectual Humility About What You Do Not Know

Atheism often cultivates a particular kind of intellectual confidence, the conviction that the burden of proof lies with those who claim God exists, that the default rational position is skepticism about supernatural claims, and that the absence of empirical evidence for God is itself a kind of evidence against him. The Church does not ask you to abandon intellectual rigor, but it does ask you to examine whether that confidence is itself as well-founded as it seems. The history of philosophy is full of serious thinkers who have argued, carefully and rigorously, that the universe’s existence and character cannot be adequately explained without reference to a transcendent cause. Ignoring that tradition, or dismissing it without genuine engagement, is not the rational position it presents itself as. The Church teaches that genuine faith involves the intellect and the will working together, and that intellectual humility, the recognition that human reason has genuine limits, is part of honest thinking rather than a failure of it (CCC 155-156). This does not mean Catholics believe things without evidence or reasons. It means they recognize that some questions, including the deepest ones about existence, consciousness, morality, and meaning, exceed the reach of empirical science and require a different kind of reasoning. For a former atheist who equated rational belief with scientifically verifiable belief, developing comfort with philosophical reasoning, metaphysical argument, and the kind of convergent evidence that makes a worldview compelling without being mathematically certain, is a genuine intellectual development. Most former atheists who persevere in the faith report that their thinking became broader and more nuanced after conversion, not narrower, because they stopped excluding whole categories of serious argument from consideration.

The Church’s History of Intellectual Engagement Is Deeper Than You Probably Know

One of the most common misconceptions former atheists bring to a consideration of Catholicism is the idea that the Church has historically been an enemy of intellectual inquiry and scientific progress. The actual historical record is considerably more complex and more favorable to the Church than this caricature suggests. The Catholic Church founded the first universities in Europe, including Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, all of which developed within the framework of Catholic intellectual culture. Catholic scholars like Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and Robert Grosseteste helped establish the principles of empirical investigation that later developed into modern scientific method. The Church’s engagement with philosophy has been continuous and serious from Justin Martyr in the second century through Augustine in the fourth and fifth, Anselm and Aquinas in the medieval period, and into modernity with figures like John Henry Newman, Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, and Joseph Ratzinger. The relationship between the Church and Galileo, which is the example most often cited to suggest Catholic hostility to science, was far more complex than the popular version suggests, involving a mixture of theological miscommunication, political pressure, and personal conflict rather than a simple case of religion suppressing scientific truth. None of this means the Church has never made errors in its engagement with science or philosophy. It has, and honest Catholics acknowledge that. But it does mean that the narrative of Catholic anti-intellectualism that many former atheists carry is a significant oversimplification that deserves to be examined and revised. Coming into the Church with an accurate understanding of its intellectual heritage rather than a caricature of it will serve your formation and your intellectual life far better.

You Will Encounter Cafeteria Catholicism and It Will Confuse You

One of the disorienting experiences for a former atheist who converts to Catholicism is encountering, often fairly quickly, the large number of Catholics who do not practice the faith seriously or who publicly dissent from Church teaching while still identifying as Catholic. Former atheists who convert after rigorous intellectual engagement with Catholic theology sometimes expect the Catholic community to be populated by people who hold the faith with the same depth and seriousness that drove their own conversion. The reality is considerably more varied. Many Catholics were baptized as infants and never formed a serious adult understanding of or commitment to the faith. Others have picked and chosen which teachings they accept, dissenting publicly from the Church’s teaching on contraception, divorce, homosexual acts, or other areas while continuing to attend Mass and identify as Catholic. This phenomenon, commonly called cafeteria Catholicism, can be genuinely confusing for a convert who took every step of the process with full seriousness and full commitment. The Church teaches that the faithful owe the assent of faith to defined Catholic doctrine and that selective acceptance of Church teaching is not consistent with full communion (CCC 891-892). But the practical reality of parish life means you will sit next to people who openly disagree with the Church on serious matters and see no conflict in doing so. The honest response to this is not contempt or superiority but a clear-eyed recognition that conversion does not automatically produce deep formation, and that the Church is a community of sinners and seekers as much as it is a community of saints. Measure yourself against the fullness of Catholic teaching and the lives of the saints, not against the average pew-sitter, and give your fellow Catholics the same patience you would want extended to yourself.

Confession Will Be the Most Uncomfortable and Most Necessary Practice You Adopt

Coming from atheism, you have probably spent years making your own moral assessments of your behavior without any framework of confession, absolution, or sacramental accountability. The Catholic sacrament of penance and reconciliation, which requires confessing specific sins to a priest and receiving absolution, will be one of the most practically challenging practices you encounter. The intellectual foundation is clear enough: Christ gave his apostles the authority to forgive sins in his name, as stated in John 20:22-23, and the Church understands that authority as continuing through apostolic succession in the ordained priesthood. The priest does not personally forgive sins but acts in the person of Christ, whose absolution is given through the human instrument of the ordained minister (CCC 1461). The practice requires contrition for sin, a full confession of mortal sins in kind and number, and willingness to perform the penance assigned. For a former atheist, the very concept of sin may require significant reconceptualization. Atheist moral frameworks often recognize harm, injustice, or social wrong, but the category of sin adds a relational dimension, the recognition that every moral failure involves an offense against a personal God who loves you and whom you have chosen to act against. Accepting that framework means taking seriously the idea that your actions have a significance before God that extends beyond their social consequences. Many converts from atheism find that the first confession is one of the most significant moments of their entire spiritual life, not because it is emotionally comfortable but because the specific naming of wrongs done and the concrete reception of absolution produces a clarity and peace that no amount of self-reflection or therapy fully replicates. Go to confession with honesty and courage, and keep going regularly after your first time.

The Liturgical Calendar Will Gradually Structure How You Experience Time

One of the practical changes that comes with Catholic life, and one that former atheists often find genuinely surprising in its effects, is the liturgical calendar. The Catholic Church organizes the entire year around the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, moving through Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, the Triduum, Easter, and Ordinary Time again in a rhythm that is ancient and deliberately structured. For someone who previously experienced the year primarily through secular or commercial rhythms, work cycles, holidays, and cultural events, the liturgical calendar offers a completely different framework for how time is understood and inhabited. Advent is a period of preparation and waiting before Christmas, with its own prayers, practices, and penitential character that the commercial Christmas season almost entirely ignores. Lent is forty days of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer oriented toward the Passion of Christ, culminating in Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. Ordinary Time, which makes up the bulk of the year, is not empty or uneventful but a sustained engagement with the mystery of Christ’s life and teaching through the Sunday Scriptures. The Church also marks feast days of saints throughout the year, giving Catholics regular opportunities to remember specific men and women whose lives embodied the faith in concrete historical circumstances. For a former atheist, entering this calendar and allowing it to shape your daily and weekly experience is a significant cultural and spiritual change. Many converts report that after a year or two of living the liturgical calendar, they find it difficult to imagine structuring their inner life any other way, because the rhythm it creates is both humanly natural and spiritually sustaining in ways that the secular year simply is not.

Community Life in the Church Will Require Active Investment From You

Former atheists who enter the Catholic Church sometimes arrive expecting the community to envelop them automatically, drawn by the theological conviction that the Church is the body of Christ and that belonging to it will be a warm and immediate experience. The actual experience of parish life is usually more ordinary than that. Most Catholic parishes are large, somewhat anonymous, and not naturally configured to draw in newcomers or integrate converts into a living community without intentional effort on both sides. The Mass itself, while the central act of Catholic worship, does not by itself create the kind of personal fellowship and mutual accountability that a healthy faith community requires. The Church teaches that Christians are called not only to gather for the Eucharist but to live in active charity and mutual service (CCC 1822-1829). That active life of charity and mutual support happens in ministries, small groups, parish organizations, and the informal relationships built over time rather than in the pew on Sunday morning. A former atheist entering the Church needs to know that finding genuine community in a parish will require showing up for more than Mass, introducing yourself to people, volunteering for something, and persisting through the early period of anonymity before real relationships form. The Church also has a rich network of movements and communities beyond the parish, including lay communities connected to religious orders, Catholic young adult groups, apologetics communities, and organizations oriented toward service of the poor, all of which offer more intensive community than a standard parish can provide. Find your people deliberately rather than waiting for community to happen to you, because in most parishes it will not happen any other way.

The Saints Are Real People and Their Lives Will Teach You More Than Theory

One of the unexpected gifts many former atheists receive when they enter the Church is the communion of saints, the vast company of men and women across twenty centuries whose lives were shaped by the Catholic faith and who are now, the Church teaches, alive in God. The saints are not abstract figures or religious mascots. They are historical persons with documented lives, specific struggles, recognizable virtues and faults, and concrete examples of what Catholic faith looks like when it is lived seriously in real circumstances. Augustine of Hippo was a brilliant and morally compromised intellectual who spent years resisting conversion before finally submitting to the faith he had argued against. Thomas Aquinas was a relentless and systematic thinker who built the most comprehensive theological synthesis in the Church’s history. Teresa of Avila was a practical administrator and a mystic who reformed an entire religious order while writing some of the most incisive accounts of interior prayer ever produced. Edith Stein was a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism, became a Carmelite nun, and died at Auschwitz. Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati was a young Italian student who combined intense athletic and social life with deep prayer and daily service to the poor before dying of polio at twenty-four. For a former atheist who dealt in abstractions, encountering the saints as particular individuals in particular historical circumstances often makes the faith far more concrete and compelling than any theological argument can on its own. Read their lives. Engage with their writing. Let their specific and costly examples of Christian living raise the bar for what you understand the faith to demand and to offer.

You Will Likely Face a Spiritual Dryness After Initial Conversion and It Is Normal

The period immediately following conversion from atheism to Catholicism is often marked by a strong sense of spiritual clarity, relief, and even joy. After years of living without the framework of faith, receiving the sacraments and entering the life of the Church can feel like arriving somewhere you did not know you had been looking for. But that initial period does not last indefinitely, and knowing this ahead of time prevents a great deal of unnecessary confusion and discouragement. The tradition of Catholic spirituality has a well-developed account of what the mystics call spiritual dryness or desolation, periods in which prayer feels lifeless, God seems distant, and the sense of conviction that accompanied conversion is no longer emotionally available. St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about these experiences, calling them the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the soul, and identifying them as normal and even necessary stages in the development of mature faith. The Catechism acknowledges that the interior life involves periods of difficulty and spiritual combat and that perseverance through dryness is part of genuine faith (CCC 2729-2731). For a former atheist, a period of spiritual dryness can feel like confirmation of the old suspicion that religious experience is merely a psychological phenomenon that comes and goes. The Church’s response to that feeling is clear: do not make permanent decisions about the faith based on temporary emotional states. Keep praying, keep going to Mass, keep receiving the sacraments, and find a spiritual director who can help you understand what you are going through. Many of the greatest saints in the Church’s history, including Mother Teresa, who experienced decades of spiritual dryness while continuing to serve faithfully, found that the dryness itself was a form of spiritual growth rather than evidence of absence.

The Commitment You Are Making Is Total, Long-Term, and Worth Making With Full Honesty

The Catholic Church does not ask for a provisional or conditional commitment. When you receive baptism, or when you make your profession of faith and receive confirmation and the Eucharist as a previously baptized person, you are committing yourself to the Catholic faith for the rest of your life. You are agreeing to submit your intellect to the Church’s teaching on faith and morals, to live according to the Church’s moral framework, to receive the sacraments regularly, to support the Church’s mission with your time and resources, and to raise any children you have in the Catholic faith (CCC 2225). These are not light obligations, and a good RCIA director will present them clearly rather than softening them for the sake of making conversion seem easier than it is. For someone coming from atheism, where there were no external religious obligations at all, the weight of this commitment is especially significant. The good news is that the Church also knows that human beings fail, that ongoing conversion is the normal experience of Catholic life rather than an exception, and that the sacrament of reconciliation exists precisely to deal with the reality of sin and failure without requiring the faithful to start over from the beginning. What the Church asks is not perfection but genuine commitment and genuine willingness to return when you fall. Former atheists who enter the Church with that kind of clear-eyed honesty about what they are agreeing to tend to persevere through the difficulties that come after conversion far more successfully than those who enter with a vague sense of spiritual attraction but without a full understanding of what Catholic life actually requires. Be honest with yourself, honest with your catechist, and honest with God, and the commitment you make will be one you can actually keep.