One never tires of reading conversion stories. This has nothing to do with triumphalism or “poaching”, which aggrieved Anglicans have accused Pope Benedict of doing recently, and everything to do with God’s unfailing patience towards his lost sheep. The book constantly reminds one that faith is a gift. We Catholics often trundle along complacently, secure in our supposed merits; reading the stories of these “23 surprised converts” is a humbling, if also exhilarating experience. They searched long and hard for the truth which we so often take for granted and remind us that following it requires sacrifice. Some are famous names; others unknown; all have a distinctive lesson to teach.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, an academic, found her conversion an embarrassment to her colleagues; having divorced faith from moral and intellectual authority they found her decision “virtually incomprehensible”.

Like Susan Bujnak, she was deeply troubled by Ivan Karamazov’s remark: “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.” Bujnak herself had flirted with the Objectivism of Ayn Rand, only to realise in disillusionment that it was a disguised form of self-worship. She ended up in Rome, alongside Francis Gajowniczek, the Auschwitz prisoner whose life was saved by St Maximilian Kolbe, and concludes: “Like him, I hope my life will be a witness to the power and glory of God, whose grace is the one constant in this whole wide world.”

Steven Mosher’s story is one of the most dramatic. Witty, honest, engaging, he describes the intellectual milieu of Stanford University, dominated by “Darwinian cant”; he was unconvinced by the “unlikely argument that life had arisen, proliferated and evolved into beings intelligent enough to wonder about their own origins solely by chance.” Sent to China on a graduate social anthropology programme in 1979, just as China embarked on its one-child policy, he watched a forced, late-term abortion and became pro-life “in a flash of recognition of our common humanity.” He saw that the Chinese women, who desperately wanted to keep their unborn children, were not given the “choice” that their Western counterparts regarded as their right.

Catherine Schneir, from the Jewish tradition, provides the best answer to those who question how one could join a Church so beset by moral scandals: “A bad day in the Church is better than a thousand good days in the world.”

Roy Schoeman, also Jewish, once a highly successful member of the faculty of Harvard Business School, discovered like many of the other contributors, that his outwardly enviable life was empty of meaning. He had a mystical experience in a dream – and woke up to find he loved Our Lady.

Joseph Pierce, now an associate professor at Ave Maria University, was a more surprised convert than most. He grew up in the East End, joined the then National Front and found himself sentenced to six months in prison for inciting racial violence. Here he discovered Chesterton’s writings on distributism and found his way, led by GKC, into the Church.

Paul Quist, like several contributors, came from a Lutheran background; he realised that without the Magisterium Lutheranism “would drift towards moral and theological relativism.” When his wife discovered the meaning of the phrase Veritatis Splendor she wept.

Austin Ruse, now president of C-Fam, a social policy pressure group at the UN, was once a hard-drinking and hard-selling advertiser. He also stumbled across Chesterton, as well as Thomas Merton and the writings of William F Buckley. His story, recounted with much candour and humour, included many backslidings and hesitations: “I was 36, mostly alone, unemployed, with a nearly ruined career” is his own assessment of his life before the hound of heaven finally caught up with him.

William Toffler, a doctor who once carried out abortions and sterilizations, wrestled with his conscience for a long time before finally deciding to change his medical practice after reading Humanae Vitae.

Robin Landon Pudewa was for years a member of a New Age cult; during a period of sickness she happened to pick up the New Testament and saw how different Christ was from the avatar he had been presented as in occult teachings. Shannon Counihan was once a practising witch and a member of a coven; it was her Catholic boyfriend who provided the example she needed to break away from the literally spell-binding, diabolical practices she had engaged in.

Russell Ford’s account is certainly one of the most moving; still serving a 25-year prison sentence for a crime he might not have committed, he converted in jail under the tutelage of a saintly prison chaplain and went on to found First Century Christian Ministries, an apostolate that has since made hundreds of convict converts. Surrounded by the rejects of society, Ford came to realise that “no soul is beyond God’s reach.”

© 2010 Francis Phillips

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk