During the Easter vigil Mass, in so many parishes, a moving moment comes when the faithful welcome new believers: catechumens (those who receive baptism, Communion and confirmation) and candidates (already baptized) who have typically completed the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA).
According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, tens of thousands of converts across the country joined the Church as full disciples of Christ this year.
In England and Wales, at Easter, some 900 members of the Church of England were received into the Catholic Church, including 61 former Church of England priests. They joined a new Catholic entity, called the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, created by Pope Benedict XVI so that former Anglicans in England and Wales can maintain aspects of their tradition.
The Anglican ordinariate is led by Father Keith Newton, a former Anglican bishop who converted to Catholicism and was ordained a Catholic priest earlier this year.
But what are the ingredients for a successful conversion?
Many Catholics — despite seeing the abundant gifts offered by adult converts — are comfortable letting overburdened priests, RCIA staff and the Holy Spirit serve as frontline “fishers of men.”
Father C. John McCloskey, a priest of the personal prelature of Opus Dei for the past 30 years, is considered one of the Church’s most accomplished “fishers of men.” He has guided dozens of people into full communion with the Catholic Church, including high-profile figures such as federal Judge Robert Bork, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Gen. Josiah Bunting III, economist Larry Kudlow, former abortionist Bernard Nathanson and columnist Robert Novak.
“People are looking for the truth and the happiness that the truth can give,” observed Father McCloskey. “These people, although successful — many, very successful — still found emptiness in their lives. The answer is a man named Jesus Christ.”
“I just happen to have been the right man at the right time to help guide them,” said the priest.
In his book Good News, Bad News: Evangelization, Conversion, and the Crisis of Faith (Ignatius, 2007), Father McCloskey calls on us all to evangelize with zeal and respect for others. He reminds us that Vatican II assigns the laity two tasks: “seeking holiness and extending the Kingdom of God on earth through family life, friendship, work, study — in a word, through apostolate.”
Although he says he is “just an instrument and God uses me,” such a productive instrument must have some rules of thumb for evangelizing. He does.
Five Steps
Describing the heart of conversion as a one-on-one relationship, a gift of self by the evangelizer, Father McCloskey says the best approach is a direct one: 1) Ask a friend or family member if he or she has ever considered joining the Catholic Church; 2) Be prepared to answer questions about the faith (which will probably require some study of your own), but be confident that you almost certainly know more than your non-Catholic friend; 3) Engage friends by suggesting good Catholic books and readings (a “Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan” is appended to his book), while sharing the beauty of the liturgy; 4) Know that conversion often takes time and is ultimately God’s work, and 5) Follow up.
Whether or not your friend starts down the road to Catholicism and joins the Church, the relationship becomes part of an ongoing spiritual process in which all of us participate as believers, almost like the early Church.
Father McCloskey practices what he preaches.
For several years, Meghan Cox Gurdon, a Wall Street Journal contributor and unchurched descendant of the Mayflower pilgrims, sensed God at her side, offering “small bits of direction, as though God was saying to me, ‘If you would like to step this way, it would be lovely.’”
Not knowing how to respond to this “unexpected religious experience,” in 1998 Gurdon called a college friend who gave her Father McCloskey’s phone number at Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C., where he was director from 1998 to 2004.
“He responded immediately and invited me to come talk,” Gurdon recalled.
“Father C. John was the most direct, unapologetic Catholic I had ever met. This was immensely comforting to me. I had visited churches where the priests were sort of lukewarm, but Father C. John speaks with absolute confidence and transparency about the faith. There is something really diamond-sharp about him. And he is unafraid.”
Gurdon was baptized the following Easter, in 1999. Since then, her husband, a British cradle Catholic who had stopped practicing the faith, rejoined too.
Jeffrey Bell, a public-relations guru and former Episcopalian, confirms the effectiveness of Father McCloskey’s approach: “He asks people questions about their religious practices and their feelings, their relationship to religion in the past. People are not used to being asked questions like that, so they answer very honestly. It creates an opening. Father McCloskey taught me the direct approach: Showing interest in someone’s faith history makes it easier to witness what the Church means to me.”
Bell became Catholic in 1978.
Every Opportunity
Convinced that they were ripe for the Catholic Church, Bell advised two friends, economist and radio host Larry Kudlow and journalist Robert Novak, to seek spiritual guidance from Father McCloskey. They both converted.
Father McCloskey advises using every opportunity to evangelize, because you never know what experience or comment may touch another soul.
For Meghan Gurdon’s baptism party, the priest told her to invite everyone she knew: “I had a church full of people. He was evangelizing through me. A woman attended, a deeply religious woman, a Baptist. At the party she said to Father C. John, ‘You know, I’m not Catholic.’ And he said, ‘Not yet!’
“It took over 10 years, but she never forgot what he said. The reverberations of what he does are very wise.”
Gurdon’s Baptist friend is Melissa Overmyer, who calls Father McCloskey’s comment “one of the balls that started rolling” that led her into full communion with the Church. By the time she sought spiritual direction, Father McCloskey had moved to Chicago, but she found another talented spiritual guide, Legionary Father Michael Sliney, and joined the Catholic Church last year.
As a result, Overmyer, who had taught an interdenominational Bible study group in Washington for over 20 years, has started a new Catholic Bible Study Group, the first in the nation’s capital.
In his book, Father McCloskey observes that people of the Jewish faith can have the most difficulty converting to Christianity because they often lose friends and relatives who don’t understand their decision. But in his experience, if Jews convert, it is usually to the Catholic Church, “the gold standard of the Christian proposition,” in his words.
When Israel Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome during World War II, converted to Catholicism (taking the name Eugenio Zolli to honor Pope Pius XII, whose birth name was Eugenio Pacelli), many of his co-religionists were shocked.
As Zolli wrote in his 1954 memoir Before the Dawn: “The convert feels impelled by an irresistible force to leave a pre-established order and seek his own proper way. It would be easier to continue along the road he was on.”
But as Zolli’s wife, Emma, who converted with him, said about the criticism: “Now that I am baptized, I am unable to hate anyone. I love everyone.”
Bernard Nathanson
Perhaps Father McCloskey’s most famous convert is Bernard Nathanson, the atheist of Jewish background who oversaw, by his own estimate, 75,000 abortions; created the 1960s’ national pro-abortion strategy (which prominently included denigrating the Catholic Church), and co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).
Nathanson’s spiritual autobiography, The Hand of God, was published in 1996 by Regnery Publishing — whose owner, Al Regnery, converted to Catholicism under the guidance of Father McCloskey.
About the priest, Nathanson wrote, “He’d heard I was prowling around the edges of Catholicism. He contacted me, and we began to have weekly talks. He’d come to my house and give me reading materials. He guided me down the path to where I am now.”
Father McCloskey says it took about 12 years before Nathanson was baptized, which is not necessarily a long time: “It takes as long as it takes. It could be months, years or decades. There is never any pressure. It is a work of grace, ultimately.”
And the priest himself is not necessarily the decisive factor.
Geraldine Novak confirms that her husband, Robert Novak, who passed away in 2009, met with Father McCloskey weekly for several years, but it was a chance encounter with a college student that propelled him to seek baptism.
While seated at a dinner at Syracuse University, he asked a student wearing a crucifix if she was Catholic. She answered, “Yes” and asked Novak if he was. When the journalist explained he had been attending Mass and reading Catholic literature for several years but had not converted, the woman replied, “Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever.”
As Geraldine Novak remembers, “After that, he did not rest until he made his conversion.” And she did, too.
“I’m grateful for his conversion and mine,” she continued. “We found a wonderful home in the Catholic Church. There is so much mercy and goodness — it is a great blessing.”
Register correspondent Victor Gaetan writes from Washington.
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Thank you for this, Mr. Gaetan.
What a wonderful story of God’s mercy! It is very easy to take our Catholcism for granted and become rather bored by it all. It’s good to be reminded that others desire what we have. Larry Kudlow for president! Oh, I guess there’s already another famous convert running, isn’t there?
What a marvelous story. If the Church had just 100 more men such as Father McCloskey, imagine the impact! God Bless his dedication.
I recently read this book and found it insightful and easy to read.
I thought this piece on the new evangelization was insightful and encouraging. We’re all too familiar with the failures of people (and Churchmen) to live up to the high standard of the faith, but I think we need to hear more of the successes of living the faith and spreading it, in spite of our personal limitations. Ultimately, it is the saints (and converted sinners) who can give us hope and inspiration. I have the pleasure of knowing both Fr. C. John McCloskey and Victor Gaetan personally for many years, and find the article to be both factual and true in a deeper sense, with the splendor of Truth.
This post is wonderful. I feel blessed, enriched and empowered, which as Catholics we all should feel. Remember that the Catechism says, “[L]ay Christians…have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth.” We share in the commission! I think many of us do not know that. Thanks for the reminder.
Undoubtedly Fr. McCloskey’s labors and successes deserve our Church’s gratitude and our congratulations. I’d like to see more books, however, written about people who don’t have degrees from prestigious institutions, work in high-profile positions, etc. Let’s have more stories about the converts from the “other side of the tracks” dividing our parishes, or the disabled, both physically and mentally speaking? And how about the high school drop out who managed to forge out a life and contribute much back to God’s other children before coming into the Church?
These are the people we most likely stand to meet in our parishes; not the big shots, however joyful we should all be that they came into the Church. My two mites for the parish poor box’ worth.
Unless you know people in the Catholic Church to encourage and support your faith, being Catholic is one of the hardest things in the world. When other Catholics treat you badly, how can you expect to bring souls into the Church? The only thing keeping me in the Roman Catholic Church is my love for Jesus and my fear of Hell. I am among the “poorest of the poor” and I have no one in the Church at all. I know up front how some Catholics hate anyone not Catholic, but I love everyone. It is very bitter for me to be Catholic; but I don’t want to go to Hell.
@Rev. Dr. Victoria A. Howard. You won’t go to hell if you’re not Catholic. Having written thus, I’ve exposed myself to a potential flood of “How dare you lead this person astray” replies to my reply.
There are a lot of know-it-all LAY Catholics who delight in giving people non-Catholics and those Catholics who don’t live up to their standards, will go straight to hell. If this crowd of lay busybodies wants to fixiate on whose going to hell or not, remind them they’ve got a HELL OF A NERVE, (my delicious use of this pun is very intentional!) and go on living your life.
Nobody has to tell this bunch to go there. Just ask them not to keep your name on the list of people they want to pull along with them if indeed that’s where their lack of charity will eventually lead them.
The so-called “cradle Catholics” have their holier-than-thou and more proper-than-the-parish-pastor crowd when it comes to seeing to it how the Mass is said, sung, conducted, whatever words one chooses. I’m not fussy. Every parish has them, and if a parish doesn’t, some busybody from a neighboring parish will call the chancery to see to it that St. Mary’s in Pleasantville will get its fair share of miseries to endure. So much for the pleasure of a once contented and well run parish.
To be fair, however, to a lot of “cradle Catholics” (that’s almost as bad as adults in their fifties no less, calling themselves “baby Christians” in some Protestant churches)—we do tire a bit at the rising number of very picky converts arriving from arch conservative Anglican or other mainline Protestant churches. An old quip shared by my long-deceased mother, who was pretty liberal on (some) things that’d surely get her burned at the stake by today’s arch conservative crowd trying to overtake the Catholic Church in this nation) was one she said she used to hear “...about converts ... They’re more Roman than Rome, more Catholic than the Pope.” (That last line might also apply to some of our most ardent baptized-as-babes Catholics.)
It’s like the old story about the town drunks n’ ruffians and ladies of the saloons out West “gittin’ religion” and not only all of a sudden are they attendig Sunday services with gusto, but the town drunk wants to be the head usher and the saloon lady wants her girls to be in the choir with her leading them as the (new) director. Whoaaaaaaaaa, now!
I strongly urge you to make contact with Coming Home International. Those folks working for Marcus Grodi are experts in helping people who want to become Catholic, come into the Church, and those who have joined, but still feel somewhat disjointed between religious cultures (though not left behind, okay, that WAS a very bad pun LOL) indeed have a home.
God Bless you Rev’d Dr. Howard and remember, hell’s not anywhere near on your itinerary.
Nicely done, Mr. Gaetan; concrete examples of the powerful combination of God’s grace and human initiative; Pope Benedict’s and Fr. C. John’s in this case. Who is to say what each of us could contribute with initiative and grace. The harvest is great but the labors few; let’s begin with those we know (family, friends, colleagues) non-Catholics but also lapsed Catholics using Fr. C John’s five steps. The Lord’s grace will make our efforts worthwhile.
Fr. McCloskey is right in saying that people of Jewish faith have great difficulty in converting, because of the attitide of their friends and relatives-fellow Jews. That was one obstacle I had to overcome when converting some 44 years ago. But on the other hand I had a very good friend, the late Ray Smith, a strong Catholic, who guided me. I firmly believe that the Christian faith, and Catholicism in particular, is the fulfilling and continuation of the Jewish faith. Thus I am very happy to be now a Catholic. Words fail me to adequately describe the joy which my Catholic faith brought me. It cannot be described - you have to experience it !
@All who read my last post: Ppardon my typos and horrible lapses in grammar, but they tend to occur when the bags sag too heavily below the eyes, or I’m in a rush. Ah yes, don’t fatigue and haste do wonders to years of thoughtful teaching! this sentence “. . . There are a lot of know-it-all LAY Catholics who delight in giving people non-Catholics and those Catholics who don’t live up to their standards, will go straight to hell.”
Here’s what I should’ve typed before my eyes/or attention to sentence structure went “straight to hell” in the proverbial handbasket.
“There are a lot of know-it-all LAY Catholics who delight in giving people, both non-Catholics, and their fellow Catholics, whom they don’t believe are living up to their standards, the ‘they’re going straight to hell’ treatment.”
If you find any more sins (no doubt committed under the influence of “sufficient REM deprivation syndrome” and just plain laziness, here’s my blanket one-size-fits-all MEA CULPA.
As for my opinions, well, of course ... while I realize only the man wearing all white and living in Vatican City can claim infallibility, my views come close.
Now if you’ll excuse me as I have to walk down to my parish to find a good padre to confess to the sin of PRIDE!
@Steven: Forgiven. You’re a joy to read. Your writing reminds me that, of all the things Catholicism is, we need to remember: being Catholic is fun.
Mr Gaetan provides an excellent discussion of the circumstances of conversion. In Luke 14:25-33, Our LORD tells us to think carefully about the big decision, the great Rubicon along the border of discipleship. Because conversion is so great and determinative a step in our relationship with GOD, adult conversions frequently involve a greater appreciation of what JESUS offers. But we should all rejoice with the saints in Heaven at the conversion of any person. GOD is so perfectly gracious and generous in JESUS and HIS Church….
Reverend Doctor Victoria A. Howard,
PLEASE. Nice try. As a former Wiccan, and a now faithful Catholic, I am not amused. :(
Thank you Ken. There are THOSE moments when a writer has to put on his “game face frown” before banging away at the keys after plunking his rear down. (Writing certainly exercises unused brain muscles, moreso than another sedentary activity, watching BoobTube.com, but like you said, being Catholic should be “fun.” God gave us muscles in our faces for smiling and we need to use them more often than not.
MK: Hope yer gonna read this: There are other muscles and they’re in the heart and they need softening up, especially when it comes to welcoming in new Catholics or people desiring to become Catholics. Now that you’ve “got ‘ligion,” how ‘bout lightening up on Victoria. Hell, this ain’t the Moral Majority. It’s the Catholic Church.
There is no key - this is one little thing where the US “can-do” approach can achieve nothing. It is God who converts us - we can at most be receptive, for we can begin no conversion at all. All is His work; hardly any is ours.
It would be interesting if Father McCloskey gave guidelines for the conversion of muslims in an Islam world
A female server ? Bad. Allowed, but still a very bad idea.
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