To complement the release of Word on Fire's new
Study guide that accompanies Father Barron's
Conversion: Following the Call of Christ CD and DVD, the Blog features the compelling conversion story of Carl Olson, the author of
Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? (2003) and co-author of
The Da Vinci Hoax (2004). Carl is the moderator of the
Insight Scoop weblog and the editor of the
Ignatius Insight e-zine, and he remains a powerful voice of Catholic apologetics and evangelization through this popular venue of the new media. We are honored to feature the story of his journey to the richness of the Catholic faith.
The Trajectory of Grace
At the age of eight, I was taking correspondence courses from Moody Bible Institute of Chicago to learn more about the Bible. At eighteen, knowing well the evils of the Catholic Church, I was leading my first college roommate—a cradle Catholic—out of the Catholic Church. Ten years later, having attended an Evangelical Bible college and several different Evangelical churches, my wife and I entered the Catholic Church. At thirty-eight, I was writing a weekly Scripture column for Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.
These brief “snapshots” don’t tell the whole story, of course, but they give a sense of what I call the “trajectory of grace” that my life has taken so far, from being raised in a devoutly Christian but anti-Catholic home to entering the Catholic Church thirteen years ago. If there is one thing I know about conversion, it is that is a grace, a gift, an unearned offering of supernatural life and love.
There are, in a certain sense, a variety of reasons for becoming Catholic. These can, for myself, be broken into categories such as theological, biblical, philosophical, spiritual, historical, and cultural. But, in the end, there is just one reason for conversion. Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote of this nearly a hundred years ago:
Essentially, all conversion is one. The same thing happens when a Protestant receives the gift of faith as happens when a drunkard at a parish mission gets the grace to live sober; as happens in a retreat, when some soul, after many hesitations, decides to give itself up more completely to God… It is God’s will taking over, and a man’s will saying, ‘Carry on.’”
Conversion from a Latin word meaning “turning around” or “turning from.” This in turn is directly related to the Koine Greek word, metanoia, often translated as “repentance.” But the word “repentance,” while describing the action of turning from sin, does not fully capture the other turning, which is toward God and the state of being a new creation in Christ, infused with divine life, and having a mind transformed and renewed by the Holy Spirit (cf., Rom. 12:2). This interior repentance, remarks the Catechism, “is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart…” (CCC 1431).
Although I recognize my decision to become Catholic as a deeply significant, decisive moment of conversion, I also know that conversion is lifelong. It doesn’t end—or at least it shouldn’t end—this side of eternity, for conversion is being transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ. “Christ's call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church” (CCC, par. 1428). And so, in looking back, I see many moments of conversion, as well as far too many opportunities to be converted more deeply missed, pushed aside, or even rejected outright. I also see how my journey to and into the Catholic Church was brought about through the communion of saints, often without me being fully aware of this gift of God until long after the fact.
First, there was the gift of my parents, who taught me to know and love Jesus and to regularly read and study the Bible. My father co-founded a small, fundamentalist Bible chapel when I was a young boy, and we attended services three or four times a week. I learned that truth is objective and does not depend on my desires or opinions; I was taught that moral choices have lifelong consequences; I heard often that Jesus should come before anyone or anything else. But I also learned that the Catholic Church is not really Christian, but a form of paganized “Christianity”, and that Catholics worship Mary and rely on empty ritual and good works to attain heaven. So while I was given a high view of Jesus and the Bible, I was also given a low view of the Church and of history.
In junior high I began reading the poetry of T.S. Eliot, who to this day remains my favorite poet (followed closely by Dante, Shakespeare, Browning, and Hopkins). In Eliot I found expressions of incarnational and sacramental thought that were both foreign and fascinating. “The hint half-guessed, the gift half understood,” I read in Four Quartets, “is Incarnation” And from the same poem: “The dripping blood our only drink/The bloody flesh our only food…” While I believed that God had become man in the person of Jesus Christ, I hadn’t really contemplated the wide-ranging, soul-changing ramifications of that incredible fact. In truth, I hadn’t often considered how thoroughly scandalous the Incarnation really was, and Eliot helped to open my eyes to the divine scandal.
He continued to do so while I attended Briercrest Bible College (Caronport, Saskatchewan) from 1989 to 1991, where I ended up writing a long paper about my favorite Eliot poem, “Ash Wednesday”. In hindsight, that poem opened the door to Mary, the “lady of silences” and “the silent sister veiled in white and blue”; she was a constant presence, even if I didn’t recognize it until years later. At Briercrest I also began to learn much more about Scripture and theology; I was introduced to the concept of “covenant” and I began to understand better the larger picture of salvation history. I was introduced to the writings of Augustine, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Charles Williams, and Flannery O’Connor, and even—gasp!—heard positive words spoken about the Catholic Church. Many questions were answered but, more importantly, many new questions made themselves known, especially questions about Church history and various Scripture passages, such as the sixth chapter of John.
My early to mid-twenties marked a time of great change and subtle, but significant, conversion. Having moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1991, I met my wife and found that she didn’t think I was insane for questioning, seeking, asking, and searching. Quite the contrary, thankfully. Together we began reading Chesterton, Newman, Walker Percy, the Apostolic fathers, Aquinas, John Paul II, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to name a few. We began to see more clearly what Chesterton called “the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy”. Slowly and only somewhat systematically, we learned what the Catholic Church taught about Christ, Mary, the Church, the sacraments, and much more. And we finally realized that God was saying, “Carry on. Come home.” We entered the Church on Easter Vigil of 1997.
One point of special significance to me was (and is) the Church’s teaching on divinization, or theosis. God gives his supernatural life so that we might become true sons of God, “partakers of the divine nature”, through the person and work of the unique Son of God, Jesus Christ. The “trajectory of grace” is aimed at one thing: turning from sin and self and entering into full and perfect communion with the Triune God for all of eternity. True and everlasting life is the point, the apex, the culmination of conversion.