By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN
The Mississippi Flows Into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Converts to the Catholic Church, by John Beaumont (South Bend, Ind.: 2014), 1013 pages. Limited copies available through amazon.com.
A collection of short biographies of American converts from colonial times to the 21st century, these accounts provide biographical information about each person, excerpts from their writing or conversation that explain their reasons for conversion, and commentary about their lives and works from other observers.
A voluminous work, the book presents many stories that encompass the lives of people from all professions, all religious affiliations, all educational backgrounds, and all social classes who all found a home in the Catholic Church and the deepest fulfillments of their heart’s greatest desire.
In the words of Alfred Young, a 19th-century convert who graduated from Princeton and studied medicine at New York University: “Rome is like the center of a circle, the point of unity at which at which all the countless radii converge from all possible directions.”
These many sketches of various converts testify to the universality of the Catholic Church that unifies rich and poor, educated and simple, men and women, and young and old by one of its distinctive marks — its oneness.
For example, history professor Thomas Woods’ study of Western civilization illuminated the many contributions of the Catholic faith to all facets of life: the founding of universities, the development of international law, the scientific revolution, the arts of living embodied in monastic life, and a concern for the poor.
He wrote, “The Church, in fact, built Western civilization.”
R.V. Young, professor of English, admired the Church’s prophetic teaching in Humanae Vitae and its courageous defense of the sanctity of life against all the destructive forces unleashed by the sexual revolution’s attack of traditional morality:
“We insist upon being the gods of our own world with the result that we become instead slaves to our own basest passions and, ultimately, to dehumanizing political and cultural forces.”
Protestant minister Steve Wood’s study of the Church Fathers led him to question some of the Protestant errors that formed his theology and the false view of the Catholic Church he had acquired from his background. As he pondered Christ’s prayer “that they may also be one, as we are one,” he realized that “Jesus prayed for a visible supernatural unity in His Church” and concluded that Protestantism amounted to “nothing but disintegration, splintered, not unified, a proliferation of squabbling, competing denominations, many masquerading under the title ‘nondenominational’.”
As a pastor witnessing the devastation of divorce as the bitter fruit of the sexual revolution and the consequences of contraception, he learned to his amazement that all Protestant churches until 1930 had condemned artificial birth control only to succumb to the radical views of the 1960s: “I wondered, was the Catholic Church alone in holding the line in this vital area? Why did the Protestant churches cave in to the Planned Parenthood philosophy?”
Several renowned athletes and coaches like heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson and Knute Rockne entered the universal Church for various reasons. Patterson, a troubled youth growing up in poverty with a background in truancy and crime, embraced the Catholic faith because of the peace that passes all understanding that the sacraments offer, especially to one living in the midst of the crime and danger of inner cities.
Notre Dame Football coach Knute Rockne was inspired by the piety of his athletes who attended daily Mass at an early hour no matter the hours of sleep they sacrificed: “I used to be impressed by the sight of my players receiving Holy Communion every morning.”
Deciding to accompany his athletes to Mass on the day of their football game “for the sake of appearance,” Rockne confessed that “these youngsters were making a powerful impression on me with their piety and devotion.”
Rockne concluded he had found the missing piece in his life and converted, convinced beyond a doubt “what a powerful ally their religion was to those boys in their work on the football field.”
The book includes conversion stories of many actors, actresses, and celebrities in show business. Married to Delores Reade, a devout Catholic, comedian Bob Hope entered the Church at age 93 through the power of his wife’s many prayers. Former actress Mother Dolores Hart, prioress of Benedictine Abbey in Connecticut, at age ten desired to enter the Church. After a famous career in films with Elvis Presley, Robert Wagner, and Montgomery Clift, she broke an engagement and entered religious life.
Political figures and political writers like Newt Gingrich, Marco Rubio, Joseph Sobran, and Samuel Francis also number among the converts. After two divorces, Gingrich’s marriage to Catholic Callista Bisek centered his life on Catholic tradition and culture that eventually led to his desire to enter the Church: “When you have 2,000 years of intellectual depth surrounding you, it’s comforting.”
The change in his religious development was deliberate, but a critical turning point was worshiping in Catholic churches throughout the world and discovering “the richness and diversity” of the universal Church: “Over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace.”
Marco Rubio’s family, baptized Catholic, embraced Mormonism when they moved to Nevada, but Rubio, moved by a papal Mass he watched on television and influenced by the works of Scott Hahn, returned to the faith of his childhood.
The victim of divorce at age eight, conservative political writer Joseph Sobran on his own at age 14 decided to become Catholic, especially admiring the moral clarity and authority of the Church: “I became and remain a Catholic because the Church maintains a consistent morality — while the rest of the world keeps veering off into moral fads.”
To Sobran the moral order is an undeniable self-evident truth: “God has made the world as it is and no human will can repeal its moral order. These aren’t the Pope’s personal opinions; they are objective truths.”
Political activist Jeffrey Rubin, born to a Jewish father and Episcopalian mother but raised as a Reformed Jew, lived as an atheist. However, his study of art history in college educated him in Catholic culture and transformed his Godless worldview: “When I later came to consciously consider Christian doctrine, I was surprised at how much I had already learned through the medium of pictures.”
Comparing atheistic ideologies to Christian culture, Rubin found the evidence of the Catholic Church’s civilizing influence on the Western world compelling. Contrasting the secular views of Nazism and Communism to a Christian worldview, Rubin learned that all ideas have consequences and by their fruits you shall know them:
“And what could they offer to compare with the many charities, hospitals, orphanages, the great art, music, literature, and accumulated wisdom that were the legacy of the Catholic Church?”
Linda Poindexter, ordained as a priest when the Episcopal Church welcomed women into the ministry, soon recoiled at the liberal direction her church pursued, clergy “coming to believe that homosexual unions were something that could be blessed by the church and that sexually active homosexuals could be ordained.”
She found the moral rulings of the church’s General Convention (elected representatives and bishops) to be more under the influence of political ideologies than religious doctrine — a body of officials who possessed no authentic authority to determine matters of faith and morals.
Thus she came to appreciate the infallible teaching of the Magisterium in the same light as Cardinal Newman who explained it “as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought which is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses.”
Radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a speechwriter for President Reagan, explained her conversion as a series of conversations with a Catholic friend who recommended that she speak to a priest, her decision to read the Bible and pray, and the power of the Holy Spirit. She felt exhilarated at her reception into the Church (“I realized something profound was happening to me”), and remarked that “for as long as I could remember, I felt like I was finally ‘home’.”
Prayers And Good Influence
As these brief sketches illustrate, God’s grace — like leaven — is always active in the world in a mysterious, hidden way.
A person reading of the development of Western civilization and noticing all the contributions of the Catholic Church, someone troubled by legalized contraception and abortion that undermine the moral pillars of religion and society and inspired by the pro-life movement, an observer noticing the great faith of Catholic football players, a person marveling at the sublimity of great Christian art, someone looking for moral certainty and authority in a world of revolutionary changes — all operate as channels of grace to lead all the many roads (the radii of the circle) to the center: the one, true, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church God established as the home for all who seek love, peace, truth, beauty, and hope.
God’s grace works through the prayers of a wife petitioning for her husband’s conversion, through the good influence of a loyal friend who speaks the truth in charity, through a book that speaks to the heart and soul, through the example of a holy person, through the great art that lifts the mind to the transcendent, and through a restlessness and sense of discontent at all the world offers that does not satisfy the deepest hungers of the heart.
God’s grace is the invisible leaven that changes everything in a person’s life and in the world which the secular mind never sees.
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(Mitchell Kalpakgian is a professor emeritus of humanities.)
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