{"id":4729,"date":"2012-09-10T12:41:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=4729"},"modified":"2012-09-10T12:41:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:41:28","slug":"i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html","title":{"rendered":"I Never Promised You an Ecstasy Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Individual results may vary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Since we\u2019ve been discussing some Mormon perspectives on conversion and personal revelation, I\u2019ve got the perfect excuse to link to Daniel Siliman\u2019s essay on Catholic conversion stories<\/a>. \u00a0It\u2019s very much a RTWT, but I\u2019ll post an excerpt to whet your appetite. (Ok, it\u2019s a long excerpt. I got carried away.)<\/p>\n

My sense is, too, that while there\u2019re certainly historic examples of Catholic conversion narratives, that this widespread popularity \u2014 that conversion narratives as a common Catholic practice \u2014 is new.<\/p>\n

Catholics don\u2019t traditionally need these narratives. If a Catholic is asked, are you a Catholic?, the answer \u2014 the evidence \u2014 isn\u2019t normally going to be a conversion story, or an account of how one got that way. A Catholic might say, \u201cI was born in the church,\u201d or, \u201cI\u2019ve been baptized and confirmed,\u201d or, \u201cI go to mass regularly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The faith is understood as being, in a sense, not personal. It is an institution in which one participates, not something that is essentially about the individual or an internal reality for a single person. It\u2019s not necessary to have searched for the church or to have found it. It\u2019s enough it\u2019s just there and that one just is Catholic.<\/p>\n

\u2026This is different, obviously, for evangelicals. The conversion story is essential to evangelicals.<\/p>\n

The authenticity of one\u2019s faith for them isn\u2019t evidenced by facts, or participation in rituals, or a list somewhere. Instead, it\u2019s evidenced most essentially by the evangelical\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n

\u2026To be a Christian, for an evangelical, it\u2019s essential that one have made a decision \u2014 there has to be this moment of choice. The evidence for that is a story, in this very specific genre of conversion narrative.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a long, long tradition of conversion narratives in evangelicalism \u2014 there\u2019s maybe even an argument that it\u2019s these narratives that bind evangelicalism into a single whole, absent any kind of magasterium. The genre of narativizing one\u2019s own life as a story of searching, running, fleeing, feeling and finding God is central to what evangelicalism is.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it appears that it\u2019s now pretty popular with Catholics. There\u2019re now enough Catholic conversion narratives out there that, even if it\u2019s still not necessary for a Catholic to have this kind of a story ready and rehearsed for a spontaneous delivery, there really is a sub-genre of conversion narratives that are specifically and uniquely Catholic.<\/p>\n

There are two questions, then, that arise from the adoption of this genre of personal conversion story by contemporary Catholics:<\/p>\n

1) What does this tell us about Catholicism today? Or: what is the felt need that these Catholic conversion narratives are responding to?<\/p>\n

2) What does this tell us about about the genre itself?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putting a very heavy emphasis on the conversion story and the moment of recognition seems a little like telling and retelling the story of how a couple met or the way they knew they wanted to get engaged. \u00a0It\u2019s not that those moments aren\u2019t interesting (I only read the\u00a0NYT<\/em> wedding announcements that include stories), and the thought processes can be instructive, but those moments aren\u2019t the heart of the marriage. \u00a0They may have kicked it off, but the marriage itself isn\u2019t an ancedote, it\u2019s a process.<\/p>\n

Thinking of relationships in terms of epiphany moments seems like it would get you stuck on the hedonic treadmill<\/a>. \u00a0If your love is no longer as\u00a0urgent\u00a0<\/em>feeling, if it\u2019s not still giving you hits of revelation, maybe it\u2019s not real love. \u00a0Maybe you\u2019d be better off with a new person who promises new rushes and new moments of conviction<\/a>. \u00a0It\u2019s a bad model for romance or friendship, and I suspect it works out pretty badly when applied to philosophy as well.<\/p>\n

Matt touched on this a little in a comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One of things I enjoy about Catholicism is that it\u2019s not about feelings in the same way Evangelical denominations often are. It\u2019s not necessarily a sign of your lack of holiness that you aren\u2019t constantly in ecstasy, and the beauty of the sacraments is that grace is made concrete. There\u2019s not the pressure to wonder about the silence of God as often happens in Calvinism. When it came out that Mother Theresa often did not feel the presence of God, understanding Catholics saw no fundamental issue, and mostly just thought this showed her faith to be all the stronger.<\/p>\n

That said, you\u2019d be sorely missing a core part of the Faith if you reduce all feelings and experience to \u201cwarm fuzzies,\u201d and I believe that you\u2019d be making a theological error to think that the truth of the Faith rests on some conception of reason seperable from emotions and experiences\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If my<\/em> turning point was \u201cMorality loves me<\/a>,\u201d my project is figuring out how to accept and return that love. \u00a0And it\u2019s a lot more kludgy and tentative than the initial change was.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you want to see a lot of examples of Catholic conversion genre, Why I\u2019m Catholic has a big library of conversion stories<\/a>. \u00a0I didn\u2019t tend to find them persuasive when I was an atheist, though I thought a lot of the Protestant-to-Catholic stories looked like they\u2019d patched errors.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since we\u2019ve been discussing some Mormon perspectives on conversion and personal revelation, I\u2019ve got the perfect excuse to link to Daniel Siliman\u2019s essay on Catholic conversion stories. \u00a0It\u2019s very much a RTWT, but I\u2019ll post an excerpt to whet your appetite. (Ok, it\u2019s a long excerpt. I got carried away.) My sense is, too, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,176],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-4729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-conversion-2","tag-standards-of-evidence"],"yoast_head":"\nI Never Promised You an Ecstasy Garden<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Since we've been discussing some Mormon perspectives on conversion and personal revelation, I've got the perfect excuse to link to Daniel Siliman's essay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Never Promised You an Ecstasy Garden\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since we've been discussing some Mormon perspectives on conversion and personal revelation, I've got the perfect excuse to link to Daniel Siliman's essay\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Unequally Yoked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-10T16:41:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_kOhMVzYEa1I\/S_TCrvrK-oI\/AAAAAAAABQU\/KXcSM56xiGA\/s1600\/Bernini:Esctasy:Teresa.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html\",\"name\":\"I Never Promised You an Ecstasy Garden\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-10T16:41:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-09-10T16:41:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\"},\"description\":\"Since we've been discussing some Mormon perspectives on conversion and personal revelation, I've got the perfect excuse to link to Daniel Siliman's essay\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/09\/i-never-promised-you-an-ecstasy-garden.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"I Never Promised You an Ecstasy Garden\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/\",\"name\":\"Unequally Yoked\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\",\"name\":\"Leah Libresco\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"Leah Libresco\"},\"description\":\"Leah is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. 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