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001 - Editor's Note · Catholic Church and Conversion

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  Speaker 1: Editor's note of Catholic Church and Conversion. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Rita. The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K.
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  Speaker 1: Chesterton Editor's note. It is with dividends that any one
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  Speaker 1: born into the faith can approach the tremendous subject of conversion. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: it is easier for one still quite unacquainted with the
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  Speaker 1: faith to approach that subject than it is for one
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  Speaker 1: who has had the advantage of the faith from childhood.
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  Speaker 1: There is at once a sort of impertinence in approaching
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  Speaker 1: and experience other than one's own, necessarily more imperfectly grasped,
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  Speaker 1: and an ignorance of the matter. Those born into the
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  Speaker 1: faith very often go through an experience of their own,
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  Speaker 1: parallel to and in some way resembling that experience, whereby
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  Speaker 1: original strangers to the faith come to see it and
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  Speaker 1: to accept it. Those born into the faith often, i say,
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  Speaker 1: go through an experience of skepticism in youth. As the
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  Speaker 1: years proceed, and it is still a common phenomenon, though
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  Speaker 1: not so often to be observed as it was a
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  Speaker 1: lifetime ago for men of the Catholic culture, acquainted with
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  Speaker 1: the Church from childhood, to leave it in early manhood
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  Speaker 1: and never to return. But it is nowadays a still
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  Speaker 1: more frequent phenomenon. And it is to this that I
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  Speaker 1: allude for those to whom skepticism so strongly appealed in youth,
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  Speaker 1: to the discover by an experience of men and of
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  Speaker 1: reality in all its varied forms, that the transcendental truths
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  Speaker 1: they had been taught in childhood have the highest claims
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  Speaker 1: upon their matured reasons. This experience of the born Catholic
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  Speaker 1: may I repeat, be called, in a certain sense a
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  Speaker 1: phenomenon of conversion, But it differs from conversion properly so called,
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  Speaker 1: which rather signifies the gradual discovery and acceptance of the
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  Speaker 1: Catholic Church by men and women who begin life with
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  Speaker 1: no conception of its existence, for whom it had been
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  Speaker 1: during their formative views no more than a name, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: despised and certainly corresponding to no known reality. Such men
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  Speaker 1: and women converts are perhaps the chief factors in the
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  Speaker 1: increasing vigor of the Catholic Church in our time. The
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  Speaker 1: admiration which the born Catholic feels for their action is
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  Speaker 1: exactly consonant to that which the Church in its earlier
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  Speaker 1: days showed to the martyrs. For the word martyr means witness.
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  Speaker 1: The phenomenon of conversion, apparent in every class, affecting every
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  Speaker 1: type of character, is the great modern witness to the
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  Speaker 1: truth of the claim of the faith, to the fact
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  Speaker 1: that the faith is reality, and that in it alone
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  Speaker 1: is the repose of reality, to be found in proportion
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  Speaker 1: as men know less and less of the subject. In
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  Speaker 1: that proportion to they conceived that the entrance into the
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  Speaker 1: City of God are of one type. And in that
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  Speaker 1: proportion do they attempt some simple definition of the mind
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  Speaker 1: which ultimately accepts Catholicism. They will call it a desire
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  Speaker 1: for security, or an attraction of the senses, such as
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  Speaker 1: is exercised by music or by verse. Or they will
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  Speaker 1: ascribe it to that particular sort of weakness present in
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  Speaker 1: many minds, whereby they are easily dominated and changed in
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  Speaker 1: mood by the action of another. A very little experience
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  Speaker 1: of typical converts in our time makes nonsense of such theories.
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  Speaker 1: Men and women enter by every conceivable gait, after every
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  Speaker 1: conceivable process of slow intellectual examination, of shock of vision
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  Speaker 1: of moral trial, and even of merely intellectual process. They
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  Speaker 1: enter through the action of expanded experience. Some obtain this
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  Speaker 1: through travel, some through a reading of history beyond their fellows,
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  Speaker 1: come through personal accidents of life. And not only are
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  Speaker 1: the avenues of approach to the faith infinite in number,
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  Speaker 1: though all converging, as must be so, since truth is
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  Speaker 1: one and error infinitely divided, but the individual types in
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  Speaker 1: whom the process of conversion may be observed differ in
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  Speaker 1: every conceivable fashion. When you have predicted of one what
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  Speaker 1: emotion or what reasoning process brought him into the fold,
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  Speaker 1: and you attempt to apply your predicate exactly to another,
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  Speaker 1: you will find a misfit. The cynic enters, and so
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  Speaker 1: does the sentimentalist, and the fool enters, and so does
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  Speaker 1: the wise man, the perpetual questioner and doubter, and the
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  Speaker 1: man too easily accepting immediate authority. They each enter after
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  Speaker 1: his kind. You come across an entry into the Catholic Church,
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  Speaker 1: undoubtedly due to the spectacle, admiration, and imitation of some
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  Speaker 1: great character observed. Next day, you come across an entry
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  Speaker 1: into the Catholic Church, are to complete loneliness, and you
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  Speaker 1: are astonished to find the convert still ignorant of the
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  Speaker 1: great mass of the Catholic effect on character. And yet
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  Speaker 1: again immediately after you will find a totally different third type,
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  Speaker 1: the man who enters not from loneliness nor from the
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  Speaker 1: effect of another mind, but who comes in out of
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  Speaker 1: contempt for the insufficiency or the evil by which he
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  Speaker 1: has been surrounded. The Church is the natural home of
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  Speaker 1: the human spirit. The truth is that if you seek
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  Speaker 1: for an explanation of the phenomenon of conversion under any
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  Speaker 1: system which bases that phenomenon on illusion, you arrive at
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  Speaker 1: no answer to your question. If you imagine conversion to
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  Speaker 1: proceed from this or that, on the other erroneous or particular,
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  Speaker 1: limited and insufficient cause, you will soon discover it to
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  Speaker 1: be inexplicable. There is only one explanation of the phenomenon,
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  Speaker 1: a phenomenon always present, but particularly arrest to the educated
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  Speaker 1: man outside the Catholic Church in the English speaking countries.
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  Speaker 1: There is only one explanation which will account for the
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  Speaker 1: multiplicity of such entries and for the infinitely varied quality
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  Speaker 1: of the minds attracted by the great change, And that
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  Speaker 1: explanation is that the Catholic Church is reality. If a
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  Speaker 1: distant mountain may be mistaken for a cloud by many,
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  Speaker 1: but is recognized for a staple part of the world,
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  Speaker 1: its outline fixed, and its quality permanent, by every sort
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  Speaker 1: of observer, and among these especially by men famous for
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  Speaker 1: their interest in the debate, their acuteness of vision, and
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  Speaker 1: for their earlier doubts, the overwhelming presumption is that the
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  Speaker 1: thing seen is a piece of objective reality. Fifty men
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  Speaker 1: on shipboard strain their eyes for land, five and ten,
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  Speaker 1: then twenty make the landfall and recognize it, and establish
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  Speaker 1: it for their fellows. To the remains who see it not,
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  Speaker 1: or who think it a bank of fog, there is
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  Speaker 1: replied the detail of the outline, the character of the
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  Speaker 1: points recognized, and that by the most varied and therefore
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  Speaker 1: convergent and convincing witnesses, By some who do not desire
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  Speaker 1: that lunch should be there at all, by some who
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  Speaker 1: dread its approach as well as those who are glad
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  Speaker 1: to find it, by some who have long most ridiculed
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  Speaker 1: the idea that it was land at all. And it
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  Speaker 1: is in this convergence of witnesses that we have one
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  Speaker 1: out of the innumerable proofs upon which the rational basis
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  Speaker 1: of our religion, reposes the editor and of Editor's Section