I haven’t linked to Unam Sanctam Catholicam in quite a while. No particular reason, but they have a great post up now containing some conversion stories to the Church. Some are actually reversions. Boniface rightly points out that while we who are very involved in the Faith tend to focus on the crisis quite a bit and the mass flight of souls from the Church, it is important to remember that there are still many converts into the Church, as well. Heck, I’m one of them, and it hasn’t been that long – it will be 16 years this Easter. So while we all recognize many grave problems and may have a lot of worries for the future, we should always keep in mind that God is ultimately in charge and we know how this story ends for ourselves (if we remain faithful) and for the Church at large.
Boniface has 5 stories and I’ll share 3 of them, do please go to his site to read the rest. Maybe I left the best ones there.
The Wrong Priest
A agnostic young man with a sordid history and nothing but ridicule for the Catholic Church takes a dare from a friend to go into a Catholic confessional. He stops randomly at a parish in Detroit and goes into the confessional with the intention of mocking the priest and wasting his time. Little does the man know he has walked into the confessional of Fr. Eduard Perrone of Assumption Grotto, the most bad-ass priest in the Archdiocese of Detroit and definitely the wrong priest to casually pick on! The priest asks, “What do you have to confess?” The man arrogantly says, “Nothing.” Father says, “We’ll see about that.” He takes out an examination of conscience pamphlet and starts reading through it, asking the man whether he’d committed each sin. By the end of the list the man is broken and realizes his sinfulness. He make a sincere repentance and is received into full communion with the Church not long after. He later becomes a catechist in his own parish. [Some shades of Padre Pio, without, of course, the ability to read hearts in depth! I do love the idea of a very orthodox priest coming across some sullen, cynical soul who says “I have no sins,” and answering “We’ll see about that!”]
Just One Traditional Latin Mass
A young man who was quite a ways through medical school was invited to Mass by a priest who regularly says the Traditional Latin Mass. He was uncertain about Catholicism in general, let alone the Traditional Latin Mass. The priest implored him. “Just one Latin Mass,” he told the medical student. The young man assented and attended the one Traditional Mass. He was blown away. A year later he was in the seminary. He has now been a priest for over ten years. Just one Traditional Latin Mass. The priest who related this story, Fr. Kevin Lutz in Columbus (the most bad-ass priest in Ohio), stated that he had personally led over ten men into the priesthood in a similar manner.
Beautiful Singing
An ardent atheist who had made a very determined rejection of God and His Church had a Catholic wife. She attended Mass alone for many years and prayed patiently for her husband. Eventually the husband consented to come to Mass with his wife, where he was struck by the beautiful singing of one of the cantors. The beauty of the singing melted his resistance, and he became convinced of the reality of God. His heart now softened by God’s grace, his intellectual opposition withered away.
Boniface adds:
The interesting thing is that in none of the above cases was the person converted by hearing a bunch of arguments. It was other things: beauty, liturgy, a sense of their own sinfulness, the glory of Catholic culture. To be sure, after their hearts were converted, argumentation and intellectual reasoning helped edify them in their faith, but in none of the five cases did rational argumentation precipitate their conversion.
These stories should give us confidence in the power of God’s grace; He calls whom He wills. It is His Church and He can bring in anybody through any means He chooses. When we see something like this unfolding before our eyes, as I did in a story I narrated recently, our job is to support them with prayer and, when necessary, by answering their questions. But we do not make converts, at least not in the strict sense. The Holy Spirit, “who convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8), it is He who makes converts by turning hearts of stone to hearts of flesh (cf. Ezk. 36:26). Faith is a gift.
That’s why this blog is more about preaching to the converted and increasing the Faith or good dispositions of already solid Catholics. Converting folks through argument is very difficult, though it does happen sometimes.
My own conversion was more or less inexplicable and miraculous, I cannot explain it myself. I wasn’t looking to “convert,” I had already been nominally, formally Catholic for years but felt no particular fervor or attachment to the Faith. I originally converted at the behest of my gorgeous, wonderful wife. But after making a wreck of my life in many respects, I found myself pretty much adrift and in danger of losing everything, and God somehow, I know not how, asserted Himself into my soul and gave me the hope and direction I desperately needed. This occurred slowly, there was no “ah ha!” moment, but gradually over the course of a year or more I became a convicted Catholic. Many many prayers, possibly most of all those of my deceased mother in law, and the fortuitous assignment of a good priest to a local parish played big parts in that process. I was miles from being a “trad” or anything like that back then.
But I was not won over by any argument. It was an act of Grace, for which I had little or no responsibility. And as I look at my paltry efforts regarding loved ones who are outside the Church, I can say that my mostly intellectual arguments have failed. But exposure to beauty and the TLM and many other efforts have failed, as well. As Boniface says, faith is a gift, and God calls whom He wills. While God wills all to be saved, we don’t get infinite chances and some – many, according to our Blessed Lord – refuse the call. All we can do in those sad situations, so common today, is to pray and practice virtue and hope that God will touch them in one way or another.