Archives for November 2012

It is intriguing to me why so many people become Catholic. These are adults who were in other Christian communities, other religions or none at all. Common threads run through their stories, but each remains unique – and a deliberate, personal, informed choice to be Catholic.

Brantly Millegan, a young, Evangelical convert himself, continues to write some excellent pieces on his blog Young, Evangelical, and Catholic. I last featured aspect one of his pieces on the early Church and in some 7 Quick Takes Fridays (here and here).

This is his latest on piece – this time on converts, complete with a zillion links:

Yes, people do choose to join the Catholic Church.

Both my wife and I joined the Catholic Church as adults (see My Faith Story). The website Why I’m Catholic has a great (and growing) collection of stories of people who joined the Church. There are so many great stories. Obviously, there’s the stories of people like Paul, Augustine, Ambrose, Emperor Constantine, John Cardinal Newman, Dorothy Day, Alasdair MacIntyre, Edith Stein, and G.E.M. Anscombe, Francis Beckwith (who was president of the Evangelical Theological Society when he converted), Scott Hahn, and Richard Neuhaus.

There’s also the bisexual atheist blogger who just became Catholic this last summer, the former evangelical/emergent church co-author of the book Jesus for President who found his way back to the Church via Catholic Social Teaching, the pro-life leaders Lila Rose, Abby Johnson, Bernard Nathanson, and Bryan Kemper, the Wheaton College Bible professor who crossed the Tiber a year and a half ago and the steady stream of disaffected Anglicans joining the Catholic Church. Even former speaker of the house and recent presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (who produced a great documentary on John Paul II) and former prime minister of the U.K. Tony Blair have jumped aboard.

Below are four stories of people who joined the Catholic Church as adults who I think many people probably don’t know about (at least I was surprised to learn about their stories!). One was a convicted homosexual playwright who converted on his death-bed, another was an ex-Marxist who authored the “eco-Bible,” the third was a drafter of the U.N’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the last one was the founder of a whole new academic discipline.

Death-bed conversion of a homosexual playwright: Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

A contributor to the aestheticism movement and best known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde is also a well-known example of a famous person convicted under laws in the 19^th century that punished homosexual acts. What is not as well-known, however, is that he joined the Catholic Church literally on his death-bed. Though born into an Anglican family, his interest in the Church started as a young man. A meeting with Pope Pius IX left a big impact on him, and he read the writings the Cardinal Newman, another great convert to the faith. At the age of twenty four, he actually was set join the Catholic Church, but decided against it at the last minute.

A quarter of a century later, after serving his prison sentence, he unsuccessfully tried to go on a six-month Jesuit retreat. He later developed cerebral meningitis. With his health deteriorating, a friend called for a priest. The priest conditionally baptized him (Wilde had a vague memory of being baptized as a child) and gave him Last Rites. He died the next day.

The liberal environmentalist nobody knew was Catholic: E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977)

Schumacher was a protégé of John Maynard Keynes as a young man and had an accomplished career as an economist. For much of his adult life, he was an avowed Marxist atheist. But a visit to Burma in the early 1950s and seeing how Buddhism shaped the economic life of the country got him to start rethinking his atheism. Upon returning to England, he decided to look into the Christian tradition and read the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, St Teresa of Avila, and St John of the Cross, and the lives of other saints. He also read modern Catholic thinkers Rene Guenon, Etienne Gilson, G. K. Chesterton (another convert), and Jacques Maritain (another convert, see below). A friend eventually persuaded him to read the papal social teaching encyclicals. A friend of his relates how he responded:

He replied, ‘No, no, I’m sure that the Popes are very holy men living in their ivory tower in the Vatican but they don’t know a thing about the conduct of practical affairs…   But this friend…   insisted that he should read the social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno above all…   He did so and was absolutely staggered. He said, ‘here were these celibates living in an ivory tower…   why can they talk a great deal of sense when everyone else talks nonsense’…   (source)

Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the Church’s stance against the use of contraception Humanae Vitae came out as he was getting closer to wanting to join the Church. Though many criticized the teaching, Schumacher was in full support: “If the Pope had written anything else, I would have lost all faith in the papacy.” (source) For his wife and daughter, who had also been considering Catholicism, Humanae Vitae was the final assurance that the Catholic Church was the right place to be. After years of being intellectually convinced of Catholicism, he was eventually received into the Church.

Two years later, he published the book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. Touted by TIME magazine as the “eco-Bible”, the best-seller simply explained in non-theological language the ideas of Catholic social teaching. When he died four years later a celebrity among liberal environmentalists, most still didn’t know he was Catholic. His daughter has related that, as word got out, many were “astounded” and “thought it was a real let-down, a betrayal.” (Read more about his conversion here.)

There is more in Brantly’s full piece, including pictures at: The Converts to Catholicism You Didn’t Know About.

UPDATE: Brantly continues with 4 more notable, interesting converts in More Converts You Didn’t Know About.

My special interest is in those who blog, telling their story and continuing journey. I have assembled a good list, along with links to other good sources of online convert stories. There is also a good list of convert stories published in book form. Explore it at Convert Stories.

Like all of you, I am tired of the election and happy it is over. For better or worse, elections have consequences. This one will be no different.

The big losers are children in the womb. Individual “choices” will be made continuing to snuff-out over 3,000 lives per day in the US alone. In addition to the immediate death of the child, long lasting (possibly eternal) effects will be felt by the mother and others directly involved. Reversing the faulty legal basis for this will now take much, much longer as more intransigent pro-abortion judges are certain to be appointed to the Supreme Court over the next 4 years.

The next set of losers are families who want to protect the sanctity of marriage. Their children will be taught in school that homosexuality is good and normal. Their businesses will be forced to participate (photographers, bakeries, wedding halls, etc.) in these unnatural unions. Coercive pressure will be applied to churches to perform “gay weddings.” Discrimination laws will be perverted to accomplish this. Do not believe anything you have been told about conscience protections, as we have seen again and again, they will be false.

All people of faith are big losers as “freedom of religion” (to live by your faith) becomes “freedom of worship” (something you can do only privately). Religious charities and institutions will shrink and be poorly replaced (if at all) by radically secular, bloated government programs.

There are other big losers too, starting with our children. They will inherit an enormous debt. That debt will be a permanent drag on the economy, impacting their quality of life in numerous ways. We will exchange a broken, but working healthcare system for an even more expensive, dysfunctional bureaucratic one. In the short term, we will all suffer through a recession that will not end.

Steven Mosher shares his thoughts on the election at Catholic Lane. He asks “Question: What Can we Expect From a Second Obama Administration on the Life Issues?”

• Answer: More of the Same
• Supported Sex-Selection Abortion
• Supported Abortion Funding
• Promoted Abortion Overseas
• Eliminated Conscience Protection
• Appointed Abortionistas to the Supreme Court
• Promoted Abortion in ObamaCare
• Funded Planned Parenthood
• Funded Embryo-Killing Research
• Advocated Abortion

Read the full piece for all the details.

Devin Rose writes on his excellent blog (St. Joseph’s Vanguard):

The U.S. has gone over the tipping point. It happened years and years ago, but the evidence for it is in the reelection of Obama.

Sure, Romney lost by a fairly small margin, popular vote-wise. But upon what principles were people voting for him? Based on the correct understanding of the order of truths? Largely, no, and that’s more evidence of the problem.

For example, how many Republicans believe that the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, is the most important issue? Probably 5%, if that.

So while those who voted for Obama certainly have a wrong understanding of natural law and the order of truths, not to mention divine revelation, the majority of those who voted Republican similarly have a wrong understanding of these things. Many of them don’t give a lick about 3,500 children aborted each day in our country, or about euthanasia, embryo-destructive stem cell research, traditional marriage, and so on.

They were more likely voting with the idea that the economy was the main issue, or because they think Romney will be better for their pocketbook.

And in spite of the bad economy, the ineptitude that left four of our people dead at Benghazi, the forcing of people to pay for others’ contraception, a (slight) majority of people in our country voted for Obama again.

Truth is, we as a country have cut ourselves adrift from the moorings of natural law and divine revelation. Our ship, rudderless in the ocean, will eventually hit a big wave and founder. It is not a question of if, but of when, and reelecting Obama just speeds the day. On balance, Romney would not have slowed this catastrophe by much, but he was the lesser of the two evils.

There is more. Read Over the Tipping Point.

Dr. Paul Kengor, as always, has some insightful reflections as well about what just happened:

Fortunately for Obama, two forces intervened to rescue him. One was the mainstream media, which ensured that Benghazi, Hurricane Sandy, and the increase in the unemployment rate wouldn’t be used to undermine Obama. As for Hurricane Sandy, Obama flew in for a photo-op and then immediately returned to campaigning. If George W. Bush were president, a relentless media would have ensured that Bush didn’t return to the campaign trail.

The second force was David Axelrod and the campaign machine. I stand in awe at what they pulled off. They managed to push considerably more Democrats than Republicans to the polls (38-32 percent margin), closer to the 2008 turnout that favored Obama than the 2010 mid-term turnout that favored Republicans. Because they did, the predictions of an easy Romney victory by the likes of Dick Morris, Michael Barone, George Will, and Newt Gingrich (and myself) were dead wrong. We were certain that pollsters were oversampling Democrats. The pro-Republican, pro-Romney, and anti-Obama enthusiasm we were seeing was extremely intense. It was inconceivable to us that it could be overcome by a higher Democrat turnout. Somehow, however, it was, obliterating Romney’s five-point victory among independents. It erased Romney’s 50-49 percent edge in the final polls by Gallup and Rasmussen.

I stand in stunned disbelief. David Axelrod, you are a miracle worker.

How much of a miracle worker? Consider:

The American people reelected a man who presided over one of the worst four-year economic records in American history. By every objective measurement, the economy is far worse than four years ago: 47 million on food stamps (up from 32 million); all-time record deficits and debit (dwarfing the Bush numbers); chronic unemployment; a prolonged non-recovering recovery; 636,000 homeless; a doubling of gas prices; and on and on.

For historical perspective, consider this: No president since FDR in 1940 won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.1 percent. And for FDR, that number was a huge improvement from four years earlier.

How did Obama and his team overcome this? The answer: they successfully blamed it on George W. Bush, with Bill Clinton aiding and abetting the process. There were no limits to how much they blamed Bush, and how much it worked. The Democratic base swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

There is more, so read it in America’s Fundamental Transformation.

Finally, Father John Hollowell talks about his call to the priesthood and the future of the Church:

I’m a bigger fan of authentic peace, but I’d rather have a battle than surface level passive-aggressive “peace” that simply masks evil. I’ve seen, in 3.5 years of priesthood, that perhaps a battle would do us all some good. If the stats hold true, 40% of Catholics who go to Mass every week just stood in open defiance of their bishops and the Church in voting in the affirmative for a candidate who:

1. supports redefining marriage
2. supports forcing the Church to do something it will never do
3. is for abortion through all 9+ months of pregnancy
4. is for the government helping people procure abortions if they can’t afford one
5. provides for the destruction of human embryos for research

Please draw me up a candidate who could more completely embody the opposite of Catholicism.

The Catholic Church in the United States is a cage that needs rattling, and the coming battle will provide just such a shake-up. The days of bishops and cardinals yucking it up with anti-Catholic politicians will soon be at an end. The days of bishops and cardinals wagging fingers at anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians and telling them not to cross this line again…   and then redrawing the line further back…   those days will soon be at an end.

And I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lazy part of me that prefers comfort and wishes it never had to come to blows like this surely will…   but there is another part of me that realizes God is doing something in the hearts of faithful priests and Catholics and I think we’re on the edge of something that will be unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace. I’ve come not to bring peace but rather the sword.” — Jesus Christ. He brings the sword because the sword wakes people up, and it is better to be awakened at the last moment so that one can still repent than it is for a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul.

Read all of Father’s comments in Election Reflection for Warrior Catholics.