The Nature of Conversion

My conversion from Methodism to Catholicism was not so much a rejection of error as it was an acceptance of the fulness of truth, which is found only in Christ's Catholic Church, and this is the very substance of a real conversion. The process of conversion must always be positive in nature, and so it is never directly the rejection of error; rather, it is the acceptance of truth. As Venerable John Cardinal Newman pointed out in his book, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:

     "[The] gradual conversion from a false to a true religion, plainly, has much of
     the character of a continuous process, or a development, in the mind itself,
     even when the two religions, which are the limits of its course, are antagonists.
     Now let it be observed, that such a change consists in addition and increase
     chiefly, not in destruction. True religion is the summit and perfection of false
     religions; it combines in one whatever there is of good and true separately
     remaining in each. And in like manner the Catholic creed is for the most part
     the combination of separate truths, which heretics have divided among
     themselves, and err in dividing." [John Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the
     Development of Christian Doctrine, (Notre Dame: The University of Notre
     Dame Press, 1989), page 200]

Clearly then, when one focuses on what is true and good in Protestantism, he is not endorsing in toto the theological presuppositions underlying that religion; instead, he is concentrating on those particular goods, which if taken to their logical conclusion will lead Protestants into the bosom of the Church. Some Catholics center so much on anti-Protestant polemics that they run the risk of reducing conversion itself to a negative experience, i.e., into a rejection of error rather than an acceptance of truth, and in doing this they fail to grasp the true nature of religious conversion. Cardinal Newman eloquently explained the error of reducing conversion to a negative experience, when he wrote:

     ". . . if a religious mind were educated in and sincerely attached to some form
     of heathenism or heresy, and then were brought under the light of truth, it
     would be drawn off from error into the truth, not by losing what it had, but by
     gaining what it had not. . . . That same principle of faith which attaches it at first
     to the wrong doctrine would attach it to the truth; and that portion of its original
     doctrine, which was to be cast off as absolutely false, would not be directly
     rejected, but indirectly, in the reception of the truth which is its opposite. True
     conversion is ever of a positive, not a negative character." [John Cardinal
     Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, (Notre Dame:
     The University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), page 200-201]

Admitting that certain doctrinal propositions within Protestantism are true is not an endorsement of that religious system as a valid alternative to Catholicism. Instead, it is simply the recognition of what the Second Vatican Council called the elementa ecclesiae present in the communities that separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th century. [cf., Lumen Gentium 8; Unitatis Redintegratio 3-4] Thus, the proper way to bring Protestants into the fullness of truth, which is found only in the Catholic Church governed by the Successor of St. Peter, is to build on those truths that they already possess.

This is a slightly modified form of an article that I originally posted on the Phatmass Phorum as a thread in the "Converts Anonymous," entitled, "Separated Brethren," on 12 June 2004.

Page Created: 18 January 2004
Page Revised: 21 May 2005