Excellent post. I agree. I think a lot of times apologetics is preaching to the choir, strengthening an already held position. I think most people become Catholic for a variety of sometimes complicated reasons, and I doubt that apologetics alone usually does the trick. Personally, some self-appointed apologists turned me off of Catholicism at first, although I found some of the Marian apologetics helpful once my heart and mind were open to the prospects of becoming Catholic.
Yeah, it was one and then two for me.
A good friend of mine converted, and at some point I had to say, ok, I love my friend, I know he's not stupid, and I know he's not insane. He must see something here that I don't and I can't just keep arguing about it with him.
I decided that I had to really understand Catholicism for his sake and if he was right I had to change.
And I did change because the minute I began to evaluate the Catholic faith through the matrix of the love of my friend instead of trying to disprove it, my protestant foundations began to crumble.
Number 2 is what happened to me, too. The apologetics were no use to me until I settled the question of authority. Learning about Baptist history opened me up to the fact that sola Scriptura is un-Biblical. It all started when I learned modern Baptist beliefs are not entirely consistent with Baptist beliefs during th Reformation. I also started to wonder why so many evangelicals accept beliefs condemned as heretical by the Early Church, and why we stopped holding all-Church Councils. My search quickly led me to Rome (although, I must be honest and say I knew very little about the Orthodox Church when I was received into the Catholic Church, and am now having to face the Orthodox Church's claims to being the True Church).
Great post! The heart change is the real miracle.
My story's similar to Matt Yonke's. I wasn't interested in even hearing about Catholicism until I learned one day that a very intelligent and sincere Protestant writer named J. Budziszewski had converted. He was smart and Catholicism was dumb: it didn't compute. So I was faced squarely with the possibility that Catholics might have some truth that Protestants didn't, but it was only through the incredible grace of God to me in that moment that I was able to accept that possibility. Then it was all over but the formality of actually learning Catholic doctrine. 
As soon as I read Catholic arguments I accepted them, to me they seemed obviously more sensible than the Protestant position. But only because my heart had already changed.
Commenting by HaloScan
