Your stories are all moving - I won’t recount mine, as I was received into the Church back in 1998, seven years this Easter. I was, though, interested in the little spat over the term ‘conversion’. Like so many words, it’s got multiple meanings as an abstract noun, but the concrete noun ‘convert’ generally only means one thing. I mean, it’s quite true that we’re called to continual conversion of life; the Catholic Encyclopaedia article which someone referenced above points out its older use of entering the religious life (I believe that the traditional Benedictine vows include ‘conversion of life/manners’) - but ‘convert’, in a Catholic context, still has the single meaning of ‘someone who becomes a Catholic, not having previously been such’.
I think, too, we should hold on to that meaning, and not allow ourselves to be pedanticised out of it. When I became a Catholic, we converts had to go along to the diocesan pastoral centre and have a day with the Bishop, an avuncular chap who liked to be called ‘Father’ rather than ‘My Lord’ or ‘Monsignor’. He was very careful indeed never to use the C-word: we were all ‘New Catholics’, and it didn’t matter whether we’d been ‘candidates’ or ‘catechumens’. The fact is, the more liberal and/or ecumenical among the clergy (and laity) dislike the term because it implies that Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc, aren’t quite the same as Catholics: that there’s a real change in belief and life when one leaves one’s old communion and takes on a new allegiance. It isn’t tactful to talk about ‘converts’.
Nevertheless, before ecumenism ruled OK, Catholics prayed (in this country) for the ‘conversion of England’ every time they went to Benediction: and I still pray for it daily. And I agree with Steve Ray and Marcus Grodi - I’m a convert and proud to be one. (No, not that sort of pride: it’s grace, and I’m not worthy of it. But I’m proud anyway!).
Sue
