My Path to Rome
by Peter Kreeft

Excerpted from Dr. Kreeft’s address at the 2004 Path to Rome International Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Kreeft is a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and a Dutch Reformed convert to the Catholic Church. Dr. Kreeft’s career is distinguished by his unique ability to relate matters of Catholic and Christian faith to everyday life and audiences.

There are thousands of conversion stories. How is mine different? How might you profit from hearing mine? How is mine different?

Of course every story is different because every person is different. But how is mine different?

For one thing, I am a philosopher: a fairly unusual occupation. What profit might you get from listening to a philosopher?

Philosophers look for general principles rather than particular facts. So my talk will be unique by not focusing primarily on what is unique and particular to my story but also on what is universal. I will first reflect on some general principles of conversion stories, before I tell my own unique story.

All conversion stories are different and all are the same. They are different in their beginnings and the same in their endings. There are many places to begin from, but all paths lead to Rome. (Some of us are blessed enough to get there in this life.)

All honest conversion stories are journeys from falsehoods to truth, or from partial truths to the fullness of truth. This is the reason why conversion stories begin in many different places and end in the same place: because truth is one and error many. As Chesterton says, there is only one angle to stand upright but many angles to fall.

There is only one honest reason to become a Catholic: because it is true.

No matter how good, beautiful, loving, peaceful, consoling, joyful, or pastoral a church may be, no honest person can enter it unless he is convinced that its good is the true good, its beauty the true beauty, its love true love, its peace true peace, its consolation true consolation, its joy true joy, and its pastoring true pastoring by the true pastors. Truth trumps everything.

Since we all have arrived at one and the same place, and since we have arrived here by such a variety of paths, and since all these paths are paths from error to truth, or from less truth to more truth; and since we all seek truth first if we are honest, therefore the question arises:

Of what possible use is a conference like this, in which we share our different conversion stories? Of what use could my story be to you, who already have come to know the same single Catholic truth I have come to know? The only part of my path you do not know is the errors, not the truths. Why listen to error stories?

This is not just a clever logical puzzle, but a real question that honesty demands we ask. Is this conference really only gussied-up gossip? Why wallow in remembrance of darkness when we have emerged into the light?

I have to answer this question in order to know what would be valuable to you in my story. I must first find the universal principle about the value of conversion stories in general before I can judge what is of value in my story in particular.

A universal principle is best seen in a classic instance of it.

Next to the story of the conversion of St. Paul, in Acts 9, the most famous and most important conversion story in history is probably St. Augustine’s. Next to the Bible, Augustine’s Confessions was the most popular book in the world for over 1000 years. It is the book that would still win first place if a contest were held among all the Christians who have ever lived, asking which book they would choose to take with them to a desert island for the rest of their lives if they could choose only one in addition to the Bible. (When Pascal knew he was dying, he gave away all his books except the Bible and the Confessions. That explains much of the power of his Pensees.)

The whole history of the world would have been more radically different, and more individual lives would have been more radically different, and your life would have been more radically different, if Augustine’s conversion story had not happened, than any other since St. Paul.

So let us take it as our paradigm case to find out what value conversion stories have. Why did Augustine write the Confessions?

Twice in the course of his narrative, he stops to consider that question: what value is there to others in his telling his story to the rest of mankind, or ‘that small portion of mankind that may chance to read this book,’ as he modestly says? And his answer is: “So that they may know out of what depths we cry to Thee.” Confessing both darkness and light, confessing the emergence from darkness into light, is a way of praising divine grace, and is a rehearsal for what we will do forever without boredom in Heaven. The Confessions begins, in its very first sentence, and ends, in its very last sentence, with praise: like human life itself, like the universe itself. Here is one principle of conversion stories: they should be forms of praise, not complaint or bragging, and they should be theocentric, not anthropocentric—as the universe is, and as human life should be.

Augustine’s question (“Why am I writing this book?”) is an utterly honest question (one among hundreds of questions; I know of no book with more interrogative sentences than the Confessions), and an utterly honest answer to the question. For the whole of the Confessions is ablaze with the burning honesty that comes from its being written in the presence of God. It is addressed not to man but to God, like Job ‘s speeches, rather than being merely ABOUT God, like Job’s three friends’ speeches. It is not just theology but prayer, or theology as prayer.

And here is a second principle for conversion stories: they should be prayers, they are addressed to God, they are confessions of truth in the presence of Absolute Truth. Other men are allowed to overhear. They are the eavesdroppers, the third party. God is the first. The convert is the second.

And why does Augustine let us eavesdrop? To preach the Gospel of divine grace to us. And here is a third principle: conversion stories should be a form of evangelism. That is their genus, their frame. They are personal, not only in their author but also in their audience. Like the Bible, they are not junk mail or spam. They are arrows shot at hearts.

And here is a fourth principle: the eavesdroppers are allowed to overhear only if they qualify. Not everyone qualifies. What qualifies is an alignment—not yet of head but of heart. Not yet of head because new truth is about to enter the head of the one who is being evangelized, so the two heads, the head of the convert and the head of the prospective convert, the reader, begin in a state of non-alignment. But the hearts must be aligned to begin with, at least in a fundamental honesty. The recipient’s heart must beat for truth, like the speaker’s heart. Otherwise, says Augustine, readers will certainly misunderstand, for “they do not have their ear to my heart, where I am what I am.”

Jesus used exactly the same hermeneutical criterion for understanding scripture in John 7:17 when He told inquirers who asked how they could understand His teaching, “If your will were to do the will of My Father, you would understand My teaching, for it comes from Him.” That is the most important sentence ever uttered about how to interpret the Bible.

This helps us to answer the question why is it good for us to know “out of what depths we cry to Thee,” why it is profitable to study the different roads by which God’s grace draws us home: because it is important for us not just to understand but also to stand under, to stand under the authority of, to be in the real presence of, to appreciate with both head and heart, to be totally tutored by, God’s grace—to do so with our whole being, especially that central point of our being that scripture calls the “heart,” which means not the feelings but the mysterious non-objectifiable subject or “I” or image of God the “I AM.” With this “heart” we understand God and ourselves, the only two realities we will never be able to escape, to all eternity.

So this gives us a fifth principle of conversion stories: they are valuable not just for knowing God and grace but also for knowing ourselves. For to know ourselves we must know what we most ignore in ourselves, namely our errors, of both mind and will, since these two are so closely intertwined: the mind’s ignorance often comes from the will’s ignoring.

So the bottom line is that we are all here to sing variations on “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound That Saved a Wretch Like Me. I Once Was Lost But Now I’m Found; Was Blind But Now I See.”

Our blindnesses, consequences of sin, are inevitable throughout this second act of humanity’s three-stage drama, between the end of Act One in the Garden of Eden and the beginning of Act Three in Paradise. During this stage, i.e. in this world, God uses our own darkness and even our own sins to liberate us from darkness and sin. That sounds like an unintelligible contradiction, but it is neither. For in this present state we appreciate everything best by contrast: life by death, peace by war, riches by poverty, health by disease, pleasure by pain, freedom by slavery, salvation by sin, truth by error, orthodoxy by heresy. (That will no longer be so in Heaven, of course.) That’s one reason why God allows us to err: for us to appreciate truth. That’s why converts usually appreciate their faith more than “cradle Catholics.”

Thus we have a sixth principle of conversion stories: they are useful for appreciating Catholic truth by means of contrasting errors.

But if that were the only use, my story would not be as useful as most others. For it is not very spectacular, and the contrast not as sharp as many others. Some converts come from Hell-bound depravity, despair, rebellion, and spiritual death. They were not even seeking God, or that which God is—truth and goodness and beauty. They had to have a radical change of heart. A second kind of convert needed only a radical change of mind. They came from sincere but radically wrong errors, wrong isms like atheism, paganism, or humanism. Finally, a third kind of convert comes from half truth, or incomplete truth, or twisted truth, to whole truth, or complete truth, or untwisted truth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church ranks errors by the standard of approximation to the fullness of the Catholic truth, in this order: Eastern Orthodox, Anglo-Catholics, Protestants (with a probable sub-hierarchy of Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and mainline Protestants), Jews, Muslims, philosophical theists or deists, pantheists (like Hindus), and agnostics (like Buddhists).

This third category is the most common. Most of us here today fit this category. We have the least spectacular conversion stories. But for this reason we also apparently have the least useful ones, for there is less contrast. There is more truth in our imperfect and incomplete religions than anywhere else. We traveled to Rome only from Byzantium or Canterbury or Geneva or Wittenburg; others came from much farther away, from Togoland or Beijing or Benares; still others came from Hollywood.

But the very same fact that makes our conversion stories less useful to the Church also makes them more useful, in a second way. And this gives us a seventh principle about conversion stories, that they are useful for almost the opposite reason from the one we just explored, namely appreciation by contrast. Let’s call it appreciation by reminding, or remembrance. We converts are here also to remind cradle Catholics of Catholic truths that they have forgotten but non-Catholics have remembered.

For all the truths of religion that we already knew before our conversions were various parts of Catholic truth, large or small. All heresy is based on some truth. Only the Church can juggle all the balls; only the Church can balance all truths without any one toppling another. For like scripture she is not only the word of men but the Word of God, and while men see only a few of the balls, God sees them all. The point of view of every human soul is only partial, from some of the lower slopes of the mountain, from one side at a time; but the Church’s point of view is from the divine top of the mountain, since her soul is the Holy Spirit.

The truths we knew before we became Catholics, the various truths that each of our non-Catholic heresies taught us, were usually taught at the expense of other Catholic truths, but the truths that were taught were usually those parts of the fullness of Catholic truth that Catholics had neglected or even forgotten, and needed to remember—and usually still need to remember and relearn. Sometimes you old folks need us new kids on the block to teach you to appreciate your mansion. For the Catholic Church is like a multi-storied mansion, or a skyscraper, and other churches are like more modest little buildings, but sometimes the lower stories are appreciated better in the modest buildings than they are in the mansion. And sometimes even the foundation is.

I think that is one reason why God does not yet reunite the Church, and allows the scandal of denominationalism: because some Catholic truths sometimes find a better home, and are better appreciated, in Protestant churches than in the Catholic Church. They found this home only because we Catholics turned them out in the street and made them homeless. (I shall list some of these truths specifically in a moment.)

So a conversion story like mine, from evangelical and Reformed Protestantism, is useful for two opposite reasons: to show off and to show up: to show off the fullness of Catholic truth in contrast to one-sided Protestant truths, and to show up Catholics where Catholics have neglected the truths the Protestants have emphasized, even though they have usually emphasized them at the expense of other, paired truths.

Some examples of these pairs of truths, with the forgotten, Protestant emphasis first and the remembered, Catholic one second, are:
• scripture and tradition
• faith and works
• the personal and the institutional
• the individual and the communal
• the subjective and the objective
• grace and nature
• missions and preservation
• predestination and free will

The differences between Protestants and Catholics regarding these paired truths are not simple differences between truth and error, between true and false propositions, but differences in emphasis. They are both-ands. The differences in doctrine, by contrast, are differences between true and false propositions, between orthodoxy and heresy. They are either-ors. I am assuming we all accept all the Catholic dogmas as divine revelation: to them applies the formula “Rome has spoken, the case is closed.” But our understanding and appreciating them is never closed or finished. And we often neglect one when we remember another.

Let us look at four such differences in emphasis (not doctrine) as a representative sample of many more.

(1) The first is by far the most important. The heart of Evangelical Protestantism is the individual’s relationship to Christ. Their favorite formula, “Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” really contains the fundamental elements of what Catholics insist must characterize that relationship: first, personal, subjective faith (I believe, I accept), second, orthodoxy (the true object of belief), third sanctification (Christ as Lord of our lives), and fourth justification (Christ as Savior). To every Evangelical, this is the non-negotiable heart and center of Christianity, the meaning of life. Beneath all the doctrinal and ecclesiastical objections Protestants have against Catholicism, I think the very deepest objection they have is the personal suspicion that most Catholics do not understand or live this absolute center: that the typical Catholic does not personally know Jesus as his or her Lord and Savior.

How do I respond to this charge? I must be honest: I fear the charge is true. It pains me to have to say it, but we must be honest about our failures. The clerical sex scandal should have showed us that fudging and cover-ups and happy talk always does far more harm than good in the long run. And this, I believe, is our very worst failure: in my experience, at least, among both my supposedly educated Catholic students at Boston College and the uneducated Catholics in my neighborhood and extended family, the average Catholic, unlike the average Protestant, fails to understand not just the Protestant formula but the reality behind the formula.

The defense is often made that it is only the formula that Catholics don’t understand; that even though most Catholics would respond to the Protestant question “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” or “Have you been born again?” by saying “No,” or “What does that mean?”, that nevertheless it’s only the Protestant formula Catholics don’t understand, not the reality. This is sometimes true, and probably no one but God knows how often it is true. But if my students at Boston College are typical, most of those who have taken 12-15 years of Catholic catechism classes still don’t even know how to get to Heaven! When I ask them what they would say to God if they died tonight and God asked them why He should take them into Heaven, less than 10% ever even mention Jesus Christ.

This is an even more serious scandal than moral outrages like priests raping boys, or the Spanish Inquisition, or Renaissance popes controlled by the Borgia family, the Renaissance version of the Mafia. For this is the foundation for everything—“the Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord”—and the foundation, amazingly, just seems to be missing. What have they learned in 12 years of CCD? Usually that God is nice, and compassionate, and loves everybody, and loves life, and loves the environment; therefore it’s nice to be nice, and compassionate, and love everybody, and love life, and love the environment; and that there is no sin or Hell, so there is no need for salvation. The Church is just a very large psychological social worker.

But unlike the average American Catholic, the Church understands the reality behind the Protestant formula very well. I could not have climbed aboard her if she had not. In fact she has far deeper resources for a deeper relationship with Christ than any Protestant church has, for instance the Real Presence in the Eucharist and the experience of the greatest great saints and mystics. What a pity the average Catholic does not know this heritage. We are sitting on a fortune and dealing out pennies.

(2) A second Protestant emphasis is, of course, scripture. “Sola scriptura” is the most foundational justification for all the Protestant heresies: they reject popes, Masses, Marian dogmas, Purgatory, and many other things because they do not clearly find them in scripture. This is of course utterly unhistorical and also logically self-contradictory (“sola scriptura” is not in scripture), as we all know. And as a Bible-loving and Bible-knowing Protestant I found that Catholic Tradition and Catholic saints brought out far deeper diamond-like depths of scripture than I had ever seen.

But what a pity most Catholics do not know this tradition today. “Sola scriptura” makes scripture a homeless hermit; yet most Protestants know and love this hermit more than Catholics love their enthroned King of Books. There is a connection between the first point, Christ, and the second, scripture, as St. Jerome pointed out: ignorance of scripture, he said, is ignorance of Christ. (Both are called “the Word of God.”) Vatican II strongly urged Catholics to love, study, and know scripture; yet the more translations we have, the less we seem to read them. The formula seems to be: exactly as translations multiply, readership divides. It has something to do with beauty, I think; for the words of the King James Bible are more beautiful than any other words ever written, except those of the Latin Mass. My vision of perfect ecumenical reunion is for all Catholics to use the King James Bible and all Protestants to use the Latin Mass.

(3) My third example of learning from Protestants is hymns. Traditional Protestant hymns seem to me to be infinitely superior, both theologically, psychologically and musically, to mushy, mealy-mouthed post-Vatican II Catholic hymns, and even to many pre-Vatican II ones. But Palestrina, I found, was even better, and Gregorian chant best of all. (It seemed the farther back you went, the purer the music. The most horrible religious music of all time has to be contemporary Protestant “praise choruses.” They make me feel not only embarrassed but creepy. I think they were all written by the same person: Ned Flanders on “The Simpsons.”)

(4) Fourth, what I found to be the most general, comprehensive difference between Protestantism and Catholicism was that Catholicism understands and practices the principle that grace perfects nature rather than rivaling it, suppressing it, or substituting for it. Human nature, human happiness, human reason, human history, human authority, all grow rather than shrink under divine grace. And grace itself flowers forth more gloriously this way, as a king shows his greatness by exalting his ministers rather than by micromanaging. All the classic Protestant objections against Catholic teachings seem to come under this rubric: the fear that Catholics over-emphasize Mary and the saints, and the Pope and priests, and sacraments and the Mass, and human reason and free will, and tradition and authority, all assume that God is exalted when man is suppressed. (I speak only of Biblical Protestantisms here; modernist Protestantisms which deny the supernatural, I would not even classify as religions.)

But in rightly emphasizing the human and the natural, modern Catholics often have forgotten the divine and the supernatural. So perhaps they need Calvinists to remind them of the absolute sovereignty of God, and Muslims to remind them that the heart of all true religion is islam, absolute surrender to the divine will, and Jews like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to remind them that “God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.” Solomon called “the fear of the Lord” “the beginning of wisdom.” Modern American Catholic educational ‘experts’ call it the beginning of repression, guilt, and psychological immaturity.