“There are as many reasons for ‘converting’ as there are converts. Evelyn Waugh became a Catholic with, by his own admission, ‘little emotion but clear conviction’: this was the truth; one ought to adhere to it. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote that his journey into the Catholic Church began when, as an unbelieving Harvard undergraduate detached from his family’s staunch Presbyterianism, he noticed a leaf shimmering with raindrops while taking a walk along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass.; such beauty could not be accidental, he thought - there must be a Creator. Thomas Merton found Catholicism aesthetically, as well as intellectually, attractive: once the former Columbia free-thinker and dabbler in communism and Hinduism found his way into a Trappist monastery and became a priest, he explained the Mass to his unconverted friend, poet Robert Lax, by analogy to a ballet. Until his death in 2007, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger insisted that his conversion to Catholicism was not a rejection of, but a fulfillment of, the Judaism into which he was born; the cardinal could often be found at Holocaust memorial services reciting the names of the martyrs, including ‘Gisèle Lustiger, ma maman’ (‘my mother’).”
In a recent column, George Weigel (columnist and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC) reflected on the “symphony of truth” found within the Catholic Church.
To access Mr. Weigel’s complete essay, please visit:
The Catholic Difference: Converts and the symphony of truth (11 JAN 12)
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