Straight and Strenuous
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), the French-English journalist, historian and critic, asserts a Catholic perspective on conversion:
In proportion as men know less and less of the subject . . . they attempt some simple definition of the mind which ultimately accepts Catholicism. They will call it a desire for security; or an attraction of the senses . . . A very little experience of typical converts in our time makes nonsense of such theories. Men and women enter by every conceivable gate, after every conceivable process of slow intellectual examination, of shock, of vision, of moral trial . . .
The Church is the natural home of the Human Spirit. The truth is that if you seek for an explanation of the phenomenon of conversion under any system which bases that phenomenon on illusion, you arrive at no answer to your question.
(Foreword to The Catholic Church and Conversion)
"How very nice for you that you've found ... peace. That you know you're right. I'm sure that's a very comforting feeling." All said with a pat on the head and a patronizing smile. It's our nature to seek the answer to a question as substantial as "Why would _____ convert to Catholicism?" We immediately begin looking for the "a-ha" explanation.
As with two of my friends, people would love, just love, to write off their conversions to the fact that they married Catholic men to begin with. H.A. You must needs know these two women; they are not the type to convert to make nice with hubby. They think. No. They reason. And God forcibly moved them (after many years of a "mixed" marriage) into the Catholic Church to align with Truth, not only with husband. Hmmm.. some days I wonder if God threw us into the Catholic Church. But I digress.
"Were you happy with your church?" Oh. Yeah. We were. As my daughter approached 16 and I began to hear wedding bells (you know, I'm just a girl from Arkansas at heart), I began to get nigh territorial. "We will drive 8 hours every weekend to the state Nazarene college and we WILL find a man!"
Nazarene is in my blood. I love it. I have no distaste toward it -- no matter that one church or another may not have stacked up to my personal desires. I've been a professional youth pastor in the Nazarene Church. I met my husband at and we both graduated from a Nazarene university. Our babies wore "Naz U. 20xx" tee-shirts. One Sonlight poster said my writing "bleeds with a love for the Nazarene church." True.
Our family was passing through no dark night of the soul. We had no theology questions, problems, mid-life crises. We were in love with the Lord and my prayer was "Lord, I love you. If there's more of you then I want it." But I sure didn't see the run-up to the cliffs of Catholicism coming. Like Chesterton, in my benevolence, I thought I would be fair to Catholics. Who knew where that was going? But now that we're home ... it's true. It is peaceful. It is overwhelming. And now I realize that my learning was only scratching the surface. How did one friend put it . . . like going from the swimming pool to the ocean.
For this is one of the very queerest of the common delusions about what happens to the convert. In some muddled way people have confused the natural remarks of converts, about having found moral peace, with some idea of their having found mental rest, in the sense of mental inaction. They might as well say that a man who has completely recovered his health, after an attack of palsy or St. Vitus' dance, signalises his healthy state by sitting absolutely still like a stone. Recovering his health means recovering his power of moving in the right way as distinct from the wrong way; but he will probably move a great deal more than before.
To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not to leave off moving but to learn how to move. The Catholic convert has for the first time a starting-point for straight and strenuous thinking. He has for the first time a way of testing the truth in any question that he raises.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION BY G. K. CHESTERTON
Learning how to think. Straight and strenuous thinking. Economy of thought. All these smart Early Church Fathers and Tolkien, Chesterton, Newman, Muggeridge, Thomas Howard -- Not to mention Sts. Peter and Paul --I've joined their company; my credit card would bear witness that I'm practically sitting at their feet.
It goes back to the CS Lewis trilemma. When someone claims something they are either right or they are wrong. If they are wrong they are either wrong intentionally or unintentionally. So when I claim that God has revealed to me the church is what she claims to be. That her doctrines are true and her sacraments are real. Then you have those 3 choices. I am either right, or I am lying, or I am mistaken. Those who know me find the last 2 options hard to believe. (Comment this)