Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy

4 Leaving Wheaton, Finding Rome: The Improbable Conversion of Evangelicals to Catholicism

183 } ~4~ Leaving Wheaton, Finding Rome The Improbable Conversion of Evangelicals to Catholicism “. . . as a[n evangelical] missionary taking the gospel to illiterate people, I realized I had to be absolutely sure, before God, that what I was telling them was, in fact, the Christian Faith, free from error. It had to be one hundred percent Truth. The problem was, using my ‘Bible alone’ prin­ ciple, I had no way to be absolutely sure.” ~Kristine Franklin People convert to Roman Catholicism for a variety of reasons, none more unique than the one that led to the conversion of Alec Guinness, known to most of us as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the mega-hit Star Wars. While acting the role of a priest in Father Brown in Burgundy, France, he tells the story of a late-evening shoot that attracted a fair number of local folk, including children. In his autobiogra­ phy he writes, McKnight Faith final.indd 183 5/22/08 11:27:38 AM 184 Finding Faith, Losing Faith A room had been put at my disposal in the little station hotel three kilometres away. By the time dusk fell I was bored and, dressed in my priestly black, I climbed the gritty winding road to the village. In the square children were squealing , having mock battles with sticks for swords and dustbin lids for shields; and in a café Peter Finch, Bernard Lee and Robert Hamer were sam­ pling their first Pernod of the evening. I joined them for a modest Kir, then discovering I wouldn’t be needed for at least four hours turned back towards the station. By now it was dark. I hadn’t gone far when I heard scampering footsteps and a piping voice calling, ‘Mon père!” [“My father!”] My hand was seized by a boy of seven or eight, who clutched it tightly, swung it and kept up a non-stop prat­ tle. He was full of excitement , hops, skips and jumps, but never let go of me. I didn’t dare speak in case my excruciating French should scare him. Although I was a total stranger he obviously took me for a priest and so to be trusted. Suddenly with a “Bonsoir, mon père,” [“Good night, my father”] and a hurried sideways sort of bow, he disappeared through a hole in a hedge. He had had a happy, reassuring walk home, and I was left with an odd calm sense of elation. Continuing my walk I reflected that a Church which could inspire such confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as schem­ ing and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudices. McKnight Faith final.indd 184 5/22/08 11:27:38 AM Leaving Wheaton, Finding Rome 185 Not many can tell such a story, but such an event contributed to Guinness’ conversion as he tells it in his memoir Blessings in Disguise. G. K. Chesterton , on my Hall of Fame list for those who know joie de vivre, was converted, in part, because after writing a book called Heretics, he was challenged to write not only what he was against but also what he was for. The next book, called Orthodoxy, was a robust defense of a path he was charting for his own life on his own journey that ended in Catholicism. Once, when asked, “Why did you join the Church of Rome?,” Chesterton replied in his Autobiography, “To get rid of my sins.” Like America’s great baseball spinner of tales, Dizzy Dean, Chesterton would have had other answers on different occasions. I must add that two of Chesterton’s finest books, St. Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox” and his Autobiography, illustrate for us one of Chesterton’s forgivable stylistic features: in his own autobiography we get almost no biography, while in St. Thomas’ biography we get a lot more autobiography. That sentence, if I may be so bold, also illustrates his love for paradoxes. Famous converts are regularly paraded by Catholic advocates, and none has done the job better than Fr. Charles P. Connor in his Classic Catholic Converts , where he offers vignettes of such notables as Elizabeth Ann Seton, John Henry Newman, Robert Hugh Benson—whose father was no less than the Archbishop of Canterbury—Edith Stein, Jacques Maritain, Ronald A. Knox—whose...