American Converts, In Their Own Words

A very interesting and useful site, at least for those interested in converts, with the simple title From American Converts. Leo Wong has put together quotations from the English scholar John Beaumont’s dictionary of converts, The Mississippi Flows into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Converts to the Catholic Church. Among those quoted are Marshall McLuhan, Hadley Arkes, Clare Booth Luce, Denise Levertov, Dean Koontz, Joyce Kilmer, Russell Kirk, Mortimer Adler, and lesser lights, including your humble blogger.

Not all of them have to do directly with the Catholic Church, many telling about the writer’s discovery of Christianity and of Christ. Here are a few samples, just from the A-F section.

The more I studied the life and works of Christ, the greater grew my admiration for His character. Almost immediately I saw that if it were stripped of its supernatural qualities, it would be meaningless and contradictory.
— Caryl Coleman

What I like about the Catholics is that they have this sort of mussed-up human way. You go to the Episcopal chruch, and people are pretty much alike. You go to a Catholic church, and there are people of all different colors and ages, and babies squalling. You’re standing with these people. You’re saying: Here I am. One of the people who love God.They’re really universal, really catholic.
— Annie Dillard

John Lennon was a beautiful man, but Imagine represents a huge failure of imagination. In 1971 we didn’t need to imagine atheistic internationalism. Communism was living and active, in a least two forms, and it wasn’t producing peace.  . . . What made it possible for so many leaders to issue the orders for atrocities over the course of a half-century and more? They feared neither heaven nor hell. Imagine that.
— Dion

So I picked up this book [The Man Who Was Thursday].… Chesterton in the book has this character who considers himself a poet of anarchy and he contrasts this with a poet who is a poet of law and order.…. The poet of law and order is arguing with the anarchist poet about what constitutes true poetry and he says the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick. And I read that and I was very touched by that, because I longed for that kind of poetry, the poetry of not being sick.
— Dawn Eden

A decisive moment in my journey in faith came when, one day, seemingly out of nowhere, the thought pierced me that Jesus had died for my sins. And, immediately on its heels, came the devastating recognition that I am not worth his sacrifice. Only gradually have I come truly to understand that the determination of worth belongs not to me but to him.
— Elizabeth Fox-Genovese