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| Reason #8 I Converted to Catholicism: 250,000 Jesus Fans Can't Be Wrong |
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9:24 So they called a second time the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give glory to God: we know that this man is a sinner. 9:25 He therefore answered, Whether he is a sinner, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
It might seem shallow, but one of top ten reasons I converted to Catholicism, was the realization that I was not alone in following His call. For while any religious conversion or most religious experience is a profoundly existentially personal story, oft times the human heart needs to be encouraged with the presence of others.
One of the telling details in the Gospel story referenced above is that "The Once Blind Man" is dogged in his insistence of being brought to light/sight by Jesus despite the skepticism of a mob (including Pharisees). St. John of the Cross did not call it The Dark Night of the Soul for grins. You are facing it in the loneliest times of the day, because in the end: Truth is not a plebiscite. No one likes to feel like they are isolated. There is a human feeling of needing reinforcement in making large life decisions. No one feels that they are Coming into the light, so that you might see sometimes requires listening and seeing simple signs to keep you walking along the path to peace.
Then I discovered "The Journey Home" on EWTN television. "The Journey Home" is an weekly, hour-long talk program that features Marcus Grodi, a former Evangelical Protestant minister who converted to Catholicism December 20, 1992, interviewing people who provide their conversion story, then focus on a specialized topic coming from that person's conversion story; or roundtables of groups of Catholic converts from other religion or Christian denominations. Often these interview subjects are other former Protestant ministers. Frequently the guests are now Catholic priests. Sometimes the interview subjects are former Jewish believers.
While sometimes the show veers into arcane discussions of Biblical basis for papal authority, or other academic considerations of conversion, I found (find it) it mesmerizing. On the EWTN programing schedule, the show is repeated several times a week (kind of like a Wire or Sopranos episode on HBO), and I would watch most airings during my Inquiry and catechumenate stage. To this day I listen on radio or watch video streaming version on the internet.
In the early stages of converting, I found myself bolstered in my seeking for a deeper Christian faith and practice discovering that despite my blind misperception that Catholics had no interest since the Inquisition in bringing "outsiders" into the faith; it turns out that that the Church was not only interested in bringing new people into the Church, that they had created a formal system and curriculum for bringing new people into Catholic Christianity (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, aka RCIA). How wrong I was to think that the Church did not make a priority of reaching out and try to bring new people to the faith.
Watching The Journey Home I was struck with watching people who had much stronger, educated, and consistent Protestant Christian faith, and yet they desperately yearned to become Catholic. Watching The Journey Home kept me confident and centered on not merely becoming a better Bible Christian... going farther to the edges of doctrine or Biblical interpretation; but rather to journey to the center of faith and explore original principals and practices. In California, home of the celebration novelty and seeking for latest sensations, I was hoping to find a new life in old orthodoxy. The true "Shock of the Old" was in my discovery that I was not alone in my search for radical truth within the conservative Christian belief and practice.
Time to channel Greil Marcus for an aside/extended metaphor/analogy to topic and Elvis Presley...
If you are of a certain age, or a young devotee of the Wikipedia, you remember/know that Elvis Presley, the once and future King of Rock and Roll, fell out of favor with the tastes of youth/popular culture around 1967. His songs started to lose their rhythmic/lyric/melodic bite (sounding more like uninspired and dissconnected 3rd rate Tin Pan Alley or Muscle Shoals), the movies became increasingly formulaic and banal, the whole Elvis enterprise took on the whiff of product and not inspired popular art fueled by the inspiration and ambition to bet the most out of his talent, and get out of the wrong side of the tracks of Memphis. His sound and message was deemed too traditional, not keeping up with the times. Yet through renewal of purpose (whether the King decided that he needed more income to keep the the Graceland empire going, or that he was too young to just throw away his God-given talent--- remembering that Elvis was God-fearing Southern Christian gentleman bred to the bone-- the emotional But there remind a certain truth and confidence in Elvis: typified by the greatest hits album Presley album cover of the King wearing a gold lame suit, analagous to Jesus at the Transfiguration, or a Pope in his vestments. And the bold title "50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong" became a phrase, and snarky individual variations on it, has since been used to justify guilty pleasures or popular art for forty years.
Back to our regularly scheduled blog... My first Inquiry class included two other people; eventually my RCIA class would have seven other people (of widely divergent demographics and faith journeys) fully initiated into the Catholic Church Easter Vigil 2007. I remember being so shaken from my typical solipsism by this community of seekers, that I asked the next series of questions: How many adults in America voluntarily enter into this strict, communal, hierarchical, ancient, seemingly patriarchial, out of touch with dominant culture religion every year? How many convert without the motivation of complying with the desires of a future spouse to have a Church wedding for parents/grandparents? How many Americans enter into this religion that is fundamentally anti-American is so many of it's precepts and attitudes? Turns out most years since the late Eighties 200,000 to 250,000 Jesus fans in America annually convert to the Roman Catholic Church. In 2007, the most recent year documented on the web, 100,000 Americans converted to Catholicism.
Those might might not seem like big numbers in a country of 280 million people (and given the large number of ex-Catholics cf Pew Foundation Study of Religion in America released early 2008), but I was shocked by 200,000 converts. In a country founded predominantly by fundamentalist Protestants (save the specific Catholic colony Maryland), of the seemingly endless number of Protestant non-Denominational "mega-Church" featuring a worship style more in-tuned with contemporary popular culture, it is truly shocking to me that there are more than a literal handful people voluntarily joining a worship tradition that is physically difficult, emotionally demanding, and "anachronistic." But of course, I was often dead wrong and biased about such matters prior to my conversion.
The corollary to being amazed that as many as 250,000 people in a our country convert to the Roman Catholic Church, is being curious about "celebrity" Catholic Converts. Wikipedia has a list that I am linking to here. The idea is not that celebrities are better than me; after all, I believe deeply in the Elvis/Griel Marcus notion of "No man is better than me, and I am better than no man." It is just that given the historical socio-economic cultural context of World Wars, Gilded Ages, and "rugged individuality" the past 150 years in America and Europe it is amazing that there are any successful individuals who take Christianity of any sort seriously enough to convert one way or another.
For those who do not like to "click through" as they read, I compiled highly edited highlights version of the Wikipedia list of Celebrity Catholics from the time before I crossed over includes: Mortimer Adler, Johann Christian Bach (son of the GREAT composer and Lutheran choirmaster Johann Sebastian Bach.... maybe a little tension at Christmas the first years for that family??), Robert Hugh Benson (son of the Archbishop of Canterbury... maybe more tension than the Bach household during the holidays????), Judge Robert Bork, Dave Brubeck, Gary Cooper, Dorothy Day, Faye Dunaway, Lola Falana, Ernest Hemingway, Katharine the Duchess of Kent (Wimbledon president), Gabriel Marcel, Marshall McLuhan, Thomas Merton, Robert Novak, Walker Percy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited).
Look at that edited list, and consider the obstacles, (self-imagined, familial, scriptural, dogmatic, etc.) those individuals had to overcome to hear the Call and not the Noise. Consider the confidence and trust they placed in Jesus to accept God's grace toward their ultimate decision to heed the Call of God to enter the Church. Think of Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Great Britain (land of Henrys, Beckett, Sir Thomas More). Think of each person, each story, each Dark Night of the Soul with "saints known only to God" behind the number 250,000. Think. Imagine. Wonder. God's grace is surely afoot in the world.
Of course, every person is a celebrity in the sight of God. Every person of faith, every person period is loved by Jesus. He wants the best for us; the "best" being to follow his way, live through his truth. He wants us, each of us, to bring the Good News to the world via word and deed. No matter the travails in our lives, no matter our talents and gifts, Christ is there with infinite comfort and Divine Mercy. And every person of faith has a testimony that in it's own way is fascinating, often times quite moving. Some people have stories so moving, and artfully told with the tools of digital technology, that they become "internet celebrities." Here is one such conversion of heart story, the famous MySpace.com "the woman at the well." I hope you find her witness as encouraging as I did.
We are ALL called to make a "conversion of heart" every day to join ourselves to Christ. So in a real way, all believers can take heart in the aggregate number and the individual stories behind the number of believers across the world; collectively and individually, 1.3 billion Jesus Fans Can Not Be Wrong.
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