The conversion of Dr. Francis Beckwith, until recently the president of Evangelical Theological Society, to the Church is a noteworthy event. In an interview he made the following point:
‘Something else concerning authority factored into my internal deliberations as well. But I do not think I can conjure up the words to properly express it. So, I will just rely on an elegant insight offered in First Things by a recent Catholic convert, R. R. Reno, which perfectly echoes my own sentiments: “In the end, my decision to leave the Episcopal Church did not happen because I had changed my mind about any particular point of theology or ecclesiology. Nor did it represent a sudden realization that the arguments for staying put are specious. What changed was the way in which I had come to hold my ideas and use my arguments. In order to escape the insanity of my slide into self-guidance, I put myself up for reception into the Catholic Church as one might put oneself up for adoption. A man can no more guide his spiritual life by his own ideas than a child can raise himself on the strength of his native potential.”‘
Amen! There are certainly many reasons converts convert, but this sentiment – and the remark that Kingsley Amis once made about Evelyn Waugh, saying that his conversion was as “a self-insightful alternative to suicide” – are for me worth pondering as they roughly correspond with my own experience. Any other converts? What made you join the Catholic Church?
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