The journey back home

Probably one of the most famous American converts today is Scott Hahn. According to his own testimony, all his researches in Tradition, Dogma, History and Theology, led him to Rome. He broke away from the tradition of his childhood and embarked on a new road. It cost him a lot. He lost his job, his position among the Evangelists and most of his family and friends. In the USA, he certainly is a modern St Paul. Although once a man who severely abused Catholics, who wrote against them, and was ‘a living advocate of anti-Catholicism’, he is now a man who firmly defends that faith

At first sight, it seems like a joke to become a Catholic in the West today at an adult age. Is it possible at all? In a world where everything is open to you and everything is allowed to become a part of something that tells you what to do and how to do it, how to live, seems almost unmanageable! Yet there is a placid undercurrent moving; thousands of people are finding Christ in a community named the Catholic Church. What’s even more miraculous and interesting is the fact that hundreds of Protestant Clergymen and Pastors are converting to Catholicism. How do we refer to these people: converts? I am not completely sure! They believed in Christ, Sacred Sripture is their bastion, they are devoted to Christ, but something is missing. Do we call it the fullness of knowledge, the fullness of truth, or do they realize that what they were doing and teaching wasn’t the complete truth after all?

Experience of the new tradition

In England and America up to World War II the converts to Catholicism played an important role in intellectual leadership in the Church. Among them we find names such as John Henry Newman, Orestes Brownson, G.K. Chesterton, Graham Green, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Marshall McLughan, Richard Simpson and others. At that time it seemed almost contradictory to claim that one could be “a Catholic intellectual”, since these two things were thought not to mix. These people stated differently, and they proved it. Their work in the areas of science, history,

literature and philosophy proved largely that Catholicism is an intellectually liberating power, and not restrictive and negatively forceful even though it has a dogmatic style and a hierarchical structure. They started the enormous work of research and interpretation of Catholic history trying to prove its great value. They established a new tradition, by directing their intellectual efforts to establishing a degree of credibility for the Catholic Church beyond its own circles.

In more recent history too, we have to mention the four hundred Anglican priests from England and the large number of their followers who converted to the Catholic religion in 1993. English politicians, Anne Widecombe and John Gummer, were among them. One of the reasons for the shift was the ruling of the Anglican Church allowing women to take Holy Orders. What’s interesting is its similarity to the cause of the breakaway of the Anglican Church in the time of Henry VIII.

The full article can be found on pages 50-54 of January 2007 issue.