Why would someone convert to Catholicism?

[Angrboda]

I think your Catholicism is showing.

You obviously went to a lot of effort in your attempts at stealth evangelization, except like most bad lovers, you came like a rocket even before we'd progressed very far into foreplay.

I'll simply point out two errors. First, there's good evidence that, informally, without the influence of a central authority, a stable canon was shaping up by the end of the second century. Furthermore, many of those who exerted the strongest influence on the solidification of canon did so without explicit mandate from any centralized Roman authority. Moreover, the consolidation of power in Rome happened rather late in the process of canon formation, and throughout the centuries, the Holy Roman Catholic church has been as much an unstable and decentralized force for orthodoxy as not, with significant events being the late consolidation of power, frequently weak and impotent early papal regimes, the Avignon crisis and other occurrences of multiple or false popes, the Great Schism which led to the split between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Roman Catholicism, and finally the schism with the orthodox Holy Roman church which led to the Protestant reformation. So, no, far from being a bedrock upon which one can rest a consistent, unified, and enduring legacy, the Catholic church has been a Johnny come lately, wracked with numerous problems and divisions, and as often caused as many stumbling blocks in the path of consolidating the faithful as it might arguably be said to have solved. And now, in the 20th and 21st centuries, the Catholic church's mishandling of the problem of sexual abuses among its ranks of clergy, its unpopular stance on reproductive rights, as well as its vacillation between using the carrot or the stick in managing relations with its faithful, has left us in a world in which the Catholic church is once again causing the faithful to splinter and divide, rather than serving as a strong force to encourage a cohesive and unified faith. So, again, no, the Catholic church hasn't been a unique voice, encouraging unity and salvation in Christ's name, but just another weak, often impotent, and frequently divisive voice in the history of the body of Christ as a whole.