Tim Staples was a fallen-away Southern Baptist who as a teen came back to faith in Christ through the witness of televangelists. During his four-year tour with the U.S. Marine Corps, he became friends with a Marine well-versed in his Catholic Faith who challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources.
Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers, but he was not always Catholic. Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps.
During his four-year tour, he became involved in ministry with various Assemblies of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim enrolled in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College and became a youth minister in an Assembly of God community. During his final year in the Marines, however, Tim met a Marine who really knew his faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. That encounter sparked a two-year search for the truth. Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong, but he ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up: the Catholic Church!
He converted to Catholicism in 1988 and spent the following six years in formation for the priesthood, earning a degree in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for two years. Realizing that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic apologetics and evangelization ever since.
Today Tim Staples has become a renowned Catholic evangelist having written many books on Catholicism and producing audio tapes to inspire the Faithful. Tim is an extraordinary Catholic speaker and has passion for the Faith has positioned him as one of the more influencial Catholic public figures in the united states.
Talk Titles:
Jimmy Swaggart Made Me Catholic
Tim chronicles his journey into the Catholic Church, showing how a die-hard Protestant came to realize that the beliefs he sought to defend have no real response to the truths espoused by the Catholic Church.
Sola Scriptura
A Recipe for Confusion
Tim refutes the common texts used by Protestants to demonstrate the “Bible alone” theory, and using the Gospels and the book of Acts he shows that Jesus and the apostles did not teach or practice it.
