What do these four men have in common? They are all traditionalist and all very critical of many aspects of the Catholic Church, in particular the clergy and even the Pope.
What else do those men have in common? They are converts or reverts to the Catholic faith.
I do not normally think of myself as a “convert”, in that I didn’t convert “from” anything, and in fact had probably never been to church more than a couple dozen times in my first 15 years of life. My family was vaguely Christian-oriented (not baptized) and religion or Bible reading was not practiced in my home, “who Jesus was” was never considered, and common “big issue” moral principles were just assumed — don’t steal, don’t harm people, be good to people, be honest, be fair, be polite, and no sex until marriage. Nothing terribly profound, again, more atmospheric than anything else.
Then I began to study Catholicism. I had never had any exposure to Catholicism, other than a couple of casual friends, and my cousin had married a fairly serious Catholic, converted, and I admired their sensible, erudite, urbane lifestyle. But I began to dig into it, on a whim I started the Knights of Columbus correspondence course, and things began to “click” — “
this is the truth,
this explains it all,
this is what is wrong,
this is what is missing in all the other churches”. Becoming persuaded of it, I sought baptism and was baptized after a fairly short instruction period (there was no RCIA then).
Having made this leap, I then began to notice within the Church some inconsistencies — “why does the Church teach against birth control, but very few people accept or follow it?”, “why did the Church have this beautiful, holy, majestic, glorious Latin Mass, and then
poof!, all of a sudden, it vanished and they don’t even want you to
talk about it?”, “why did the old catechisms teach various things so clearly, but now, nothing is absolute, these sins aren’t preached against, it’s all about ‘conscience’?”. And so on.
I think one thing that has helped me — and I’m not suggesting that “only converts are good Catholics” — is that I didn’t have any concept of “Catholicism as taught to me from babyhood by people I trust”. Other than the casual example of some Catholics whom I admired, I had no preconceptions, no concept of “these are my people, this is my heritage, I’ve always been taught this, and there couldn’t possibly be anything deficient in the actual practice of the people, least of all in those entrusted to teach me”. It’s hard to describe, but I hope the reader knows what I’m getting at. When I once told a “cradle Catholic” friend that one of our priests had taught error (saying that Paul VI was wrong in
Humanae vitae), she was deeply hurt and simply couldn’t absorb the idea of a priest being “in error” — “you mean he made a mistake, he misunderstood something, right?”.
Moral of the story, I think sometimes a convert can see things more clearly in the Church than a “cradle Catholic” can. And sometimes “bringing things up” is not well-received. We don’t always like what we see in the mirror.
