Fifth Stumbling Block: Faith vs. Works
Sixth Stumbling Block: Authority
Seventh Stumbling Block: The Church’s Imperfections
The Worst Stumbling Block of All: Me
Foreword
By Scott Hahn
I’ve heard Kevin Lowry tell his conversion story, and he usually zeroes in on a particular moment, which is particularly memorable for me since I was a part of it.
Kevin was still a Protestant, and I had gained some fame and notoriety for my conversion from the same brand of Protestantism. Kevin was persuaded, as I had been, but he also faced the million-and-a-half fears and hesitations I had faced. I knew that the way out of that foggy swamp was not argument, because each side always had a plausible counterargument — plausible at least to a fearful, wavering soul.
So I reached into my pocket and handed him my rosary — blessed by Pope John Paul II. I gave it to him and urged him to use it.
It had worked for me. And it worked for Kevin.
For him, for me, and for everyone on God’s green earth, conversion is not the matter of a moment. Nor is it the product of an argument won or lost. It is literally a turning (from Latin conversio) of the soul away from things and toward God.
Some people say that, technically, Protestants don’t “convert” to Catholicism because they already have a place in the Church by means of Baptism. That’s true in the most semantically precise sense. But I would argue not for this increasingly narrow definition of conversion but rather a broader application.
We’re all converts. Every one of us. Everyone who’s ever darkened the doorway of a confessional is a convert. We walk into the box as if we have a crick in our neck; we’re facing the wrong way. It’s unnatural. It’s uncomfortable. We strain to see the light. It affects our reading, our driving, our eye contact with people we love.
Through confession and absolution, we’re set free. We get the anti-inflammatory that enables us to turn this way and that — and we use that freedom to turn toward God.
Kevin Lowry gets this. He knows that we’re all converts, and that we’re going to spend a lifetime turning and turning and turning, ever more toward God if we do it right.
I’m grateful for the day I turned for a moment away from my arguments and toward the Mother of God. I’m grateful for the movement of the Holy Spirit that prompted me to point the same way to Kevin. I’m grateful to Kevin for taking up the challenge — and then setting it down for his readers, who, I hope, will number in the millions.
Introduction
Transformed: Lessons of a Grateful Convert
Here’s something I believe: If Catholicism is true, then it should change us. In fact, it should change everything about us. Here’s something else I believe: The Church actually does have the capacity to effect change and in a way that is unique to her. And while we’re on the subject of things that I believe, here’s another: The evidence for the Church’s ability to change us is everywhere. Throughout the ages, countless individuals have seen their lives transformed through their Catholic faith. For those who choose Christ and His Church, a lifetime of adventure awaits. Not the kind of adventure we see in movies but rather one of faith, a faith that grows until it permeates every aspect of our being. As we embark on the adventure by placing our lives in the service of God and others, transformation inexorably follows — the kind of transformation we were meant for.
A lifetime journey into faith and faithfulness in the Catholic Church may sound daunting, and perhaps it is, but it is also overflowing with meaning. The ultimate goal of such a life is nothing less than total conversion, which is another name for the transformation of which we have already spoken. To undergo conversion is to undergo a change; and in some form, this change is necessary for all of us, whether we come from another religious tradition or from a family that has been Catholic since before the death of the last apostle. To undergo conversion is to become different, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is to be made different. It is the start of the process of becoming a saint, for that is the ultimate point of conversion and God’s goal for each one of us.
Becoming a Catholic — entering the Catholic Church — is often dramatic and frequently involves trading in our worldview for something that can seem foreign. It’s seldom linear, and can involve taking one step forward, and two (or three) steps back. In my case, the seeds of Christianity were planted during my Presbyterian childhood. I made a decision for Christ during my pre-teen years, backslid a good bit subsequently, went to a Catholic college, and after some trial and error (mostly error), finally wound up coming into the Catholic Church. I was a true convert, by the way, since I had never been baptized (odd but true). Only after my baptism did I stop and look around, winded and breathing hard, and realize that I wasn’t at the finish line.
I was only at the starting gate. My transformation — my conversion — had just begun.
But it had begun.
I should probably tell you right up front that getting to the starting gate was not easy for me. My conversion was neither the most straightforward nor the quickest one on record. I was good at resisting change, and before I took the plunge I stood at the water’s edge for a long, long time. But I finally jumped in, and I’m here to tell you that the water’s beautiful. I’ve been a Catholic for more than twenty years now — practically half my life — and from what I can see, the Church is what she claims to be: the specific road that Christ gave us to walk as we approach Him.
I believe that becoming a Catholic has enabled me to make more progress in my journey toward God than any other single act could have done. Christ has changed me through His Church, and I am confident that He will not be done with me until I have become the person I was created to be.
But there are some hard facts that I have had to deal with along the way. One of them is that the process of transformation takes time and is not all fun and games. It starts deep in the soul, showing itself first as a restless and often uncomfortable drama of the interior life. Step by step you find yourself becoming more and more committed to seeing the adventure of faith through to its end. Eventually, the discomfort fades and the restlessness wanes. Yet the adventure continues. At times, it barely seems to inch forward, and at others it hurtles on at breakneck speed.
Once we have reached that moment of grace, the instant when everything becomes different, we can see for the first time that faithfulness is what we have been yearning for all along, often without knowing it. It is, after all, what we were