No, I am not a convert.
I was raised in a Catholic family, albeit one of my grandparents was a Margaret Thatcher-loving Protestant Orangeman, while my aunt was a Communist party member (and convinced atheist) who travelled behind the Iron Curtain before 1989. We were quite eclectic, really, with "
pious" churchgoers amongst some of the older generations of my family as well.
Despite being a cradle Catholic - attending mass on Sundays, going to a Catholic school, receiving the sacraments - religion was not a huge feature in my domestic life growing up. No one in my immediate family read the Bible, prayed regularly or taught me to pray, discussed religious matters or really did anything spiritual outside of church. We were believers but relaxed about the whole thing and not dogmatic.
It was really more of an inherited tradition and culture, associated with our heritage, local football team (founded by a Catholic priest in the 1880s to feed dispossessed Irish immigrants during the famine) and a sort of strongly left-wing, socialist working class consciousness, with the parish church as a conduit to community life.
I would call it "
Red Catholicism", typified by this old book that used to lie around in my house, from 1909 and published by the Catholic Socialist Society (passed down):
My great-grandmother once travelled to the US to meet her New Yorker cousins and refused to stay over at one of their houses because she discovered that they weren't voting for the Democrats. She couldn't abide being related to a Republican. Very political.
As I got into my early teens, two of my siblings drifted away from religion and became pretty secular (sort of nominal Catholics come agnostic atheists now who haven't set foot in a church in many a year), whereas I became an avid connoisseur of religious studies of my own volition, without any urging or encouragement (because there wasn't any). I read the Bible and every other Sacred scripture I could get my hands on, and started debating with local Jesuit priests about theological matters.
At this time, I revolted against my familial socialism and became a Tory (like my Protestant side of the family), or Conservative, for a few years - I'm ashamed to say, in retrospect, falling under the influence of my right-wing elder brother, who has now seen the light and abandoned conservatism through my aegis. (I soon grew out of this Tory phase at university and ended up firmly left-of-centre by the age of about 21).
After a period of exploring a range of faith traditions and becoming a bit syncretic, I strongly considered converting to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and was taken through the initial steps by a Greek Orthodox deacon. I think it appealed to me because of the pronounced mysticism
and because I was going through a rebellious conservative phase (oxymoronic I know).
However, I was ultimately turned off by the language barrier and ethnocentricity of the church, which led me back to the universalism of Rome and my birth denomination.
And I've been a contented Catholic ever since, although I've had doubts from time-to-time and even had a short stint of thinking atheistically (but that didn't last long and was more of a youth moment kind of thing).
I'm very assured in my faith today.