It's good to see such a strong understanding of the Church Triumphant. However, I can't help but hope that there's at least some thought given to the Church Suffering, as well.

Not simply for people like "X," but for holy men and women as well--if it is not clear that they are in Heaven, praying for them is just as important as praying to them.

If they are yet in Purgatory, there is nothing better you could do for them. If they are not, still God will ensure that the prayers offered do not go to waste.

I am always struck by how stark and dry other church's services feel (Methodist, Presbyterian to name a few). Which I guess was the point of the Reformation.

We're really all converts, whether raised Catholic or not. Even those of us raised Catholic at some point have to make a leap to mature faith.

OTOH, much of what you write here comes perfectly naturally to someone raised Catholic, no matter what their relationship now with the church. And you never lose it really, kind of like riding a bike. That's the gift we hope to give our children.

David,

Thank you so much for this. I don't know what else to say except that I think I understand the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Kamilla

Thank you, "LV," for the important reminder. The article wasn't intended to ignore the Church Suffering, but it wasn't really my subject, which was the convert's disconcerting experience of unexpected and perhaps unwanted abundance.

Perhaps interestingly, in my experience and the experience of others I've known, praying for the recently dead is easier than praying to them. The fact that you can do something for loved ones who have died is for many Protestants one of the Church's great attractions, but praying to them . . . not so much. I'm not sure why this is true, and don't know if it's generally true, but it was for me and many others.

David

Good post, David.

Interestingly enough, as a Protestant, I think I would have the opposite problem. I've said prayers to my deceased grandparents and father, asking for their intercession on my behalf, but praying to St. Polycarp (one of my favorites) or someone else whom I've never known personally seems kind of odd. Asking for intercession by a beloved family member who has gone on doesn't strike me as being that much different from asking for their intercession when they were alive (in that regard, I'm perfectly in tune with the Communion of the Saints), but asking for someone from the distant past to pray for you seems like asking a complete stranger.

Interesting thought David. I see that I am deficient in yet another category. I'll have to think about that.

One thing I learned becoming a Catholic: No matter what, it is better to be a Catholic.

I may not like where the Church stands*, but it will not move, and suddenly persecute me for believing what it had previously accepted and taught as true for thousands of years.

Most Catholic problems stem from local acculturated feelgoods who advise bishops - who then fail to support suffering faithful lay people.

This is a huge problem, yes, but can be accepted as part of the sufferings of Christ.

It could also be remedied - and is being remedied - by constant renewal. I am impressed with the seriousness of the younger priests here.

They have no time at all for pop psychology, etc. They key question is, "What think ye of Christ?" All else follows.

*Actually, I have no problem with it. I just mean, in principle, I can expect it to be the fixed point.

Thank you for the article, it is always interesting to see how converts see the faith.
As a lifelong Catholic ( with a 10 year absence) I like to refer to the cath. religion
as drawing from a " Tresure chest" with always something new to discover.
Any catholic and especially converts would gain great strides by reading the lives of the
saints, yes sometimes a childs version will do.. Also participating in various devotions is
a great faith builder. The people who participate are quiet knowledgeable and love to share
their faith.
I can only recommended it.

...I pray to saints even the Pope doesn't recognize. When we went to the cemetery as children, we used to visit the graves of my brother and sister who died a few days after birth. Because they had been baptized, my mother said they were angels (not true, but a common belief in Mexico... heck, close enough). It was kind of cool having a brother and sister who were angels.

In Latin America, it is hard not to think at times that the graves are shrines and not places of mourning. Maybe it's "Catholic ancestor worship", but people feel that they are helped from beyond the grave by even the suffering souls in Purgatory (there are holy cards for the "Anima Sola", and people can seach my site for an English translation of the prayer.) Down there people have all sorts of "Catholic spiritual helpers", some good, some bad, some not so clear: Sarita Colonia, Juan Soldado, La Milagrosa, Gauchito Gil, Pedro Jaramillo, etc.

All canonization does is say that a public cult can be celebrated for a person, and indeed it should. But I am beginning to think that, scratch the surface a bit, and PRIVATE cults are just as necessary. I pray to my deceased grandmother and some of her "folk saints". I knew one blind woman who was a pillar of the Legion of Mary in my town who I consider a saint. Saints from long ago, reigning in glory both in Heaven and in th hearts of all the faithful, serve as an example of emulation and intercession that tie us into the mystery of the Universal Church through the ages (the Virgin, St. Jude, St. Michael, St. Joseph), but those "uncanonized" saints make it all real and tangible in the here and now. Both are very much needed, and both should be propagated both from the pulpit and in the Catholic home.

David,

Great post! Many years ago, I was surprised to find "by chance" a dear friend "upstairs" by the name of Blessed Odoric Mattiussi --- a 14th century Franciscan friar and missionary to China. He came from my grandfather's region in northern Italy. He is a dear friend.

Thank you for these helpful comments. And thank you in particular, GL, for shaaring a response I had never thought of.

An Anglican friend wrote me to object to what he thought was my appropriation of a general Christian experience to argue that "somehow one encounters it [this experience of unexpected fullness I described] more fully in the Roman Catholic communion."

One has to remember that non-Catholic readers will sometimes read into an article a polemical or apologetic intention one didn't have. I keep forgetting this. In this case, I was only trying to describe an aspect of the convert’s experience, and quite honestly (Scout's honor, hope to spit, etc.) was not even thinking of anyone else’s. Cradle Catholics like to find out how the new Catholic sees things, so I thought I'd explain one aspect of our experience.

But thinking about the matter in response to my friend's comment, I’d note that certainly many other Christians will have the same experience, because God gives more than we can ask or imagine. That would be a staple of the serious Christian life. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

But I think their experience of this abundance won’t be as extensive as the Catholic's because their understanding of things is limited in relation to the Catholic's. This experience of our communion with the dead is a particularly Catholic (and Orthodox) one, though to some extent shared with some of the traditions descended from the Catholic Church. And it’s only of the aspects where the Church offers more than the non-Catholic's (and non-Orthodox's) own traditions.

Like David, I am a convert to the Catholic Church. Unlike David, I did not come from any previous Christian confession, and did not join the Roman Catholic (i.e., Latin) Church; rather, I was baptized into the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church, together with my wife and children, back in 1996. For those unfamiliar with it, the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church is one of the 21 "sui juris" Eastern Churches in communion with Rome; it worships according to the "Byzantine rite", which is to say, it's liturgy, spirituality, doctrine and discipline follow those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, but has full ecclesial communion with the Holy See.

I don't think that any of us ever had any problems with the liturgical or spiritual life which we joined, possibly because we had nothing against which to compare (I had, through family members, attended both Roman Catholic and Dutch Reformed services--to say nothing of Synagogue services). And, as compared to those, the Byzantine/Orthodox Tradition is alien indeed: the church itself is lavishly covered with icons, the altar is hidden from view by the iconostasis (like a chancel screen, only covered with icons and fitted with three doors through which the priest and deacons emerge at various times), and the entire service is sung a capella, a dialogue between celebrant and people.

Veneration of Mary (whom we address as the Theotokos) and of the saints is unavoidable, as it is built explicitly into the liturgy itself (and there are all those icons!). Veneration of icons involves making several metanias (profound bows) and actually kissing the icon. In fact, we kiss a lot of things--icons, the cross, relics, the priest's hand, the Gospel, whatever. It is done so unselfconsciously that one feels odd if not participating.

The interior of the Church, laid out and decorated according to canons established at the end of the iconoclasm in the 9th century, make real the notion that "we are surrounded by clouds of witnesses". From the dome above, Christ Pantokrator, Lord of All, looks down on us, enfolding the congregation, and indeed, the whole universe, in the sweep of his arms, surrounded by Cherubim and Seraphim, the Patriarchs Prophets and Forefathers.

In the conch of the apse, the visage of the Theotokos, with the infant Christ seated in her lap, gazes down upon us in the Icon of the Sign, proclaiming the revelation of God With Us. On the walls of the sanctuary, the twelve Apostles celebrate the Liturgy together with the bishop and the presbyters.

On the iconostasis, the Royal Doors bear the icon of the Annunciation, proclaiming the reality of the incarnation and the fulfillment of God's Divine Economy of Salvation. On either side of them stand the Evangelists, proclaiming the Word to all. Large icons of Christ and the Theotokos provide visible focal points for our prayers during the Liturgy, which require us to bow frequently to each. On the Deacons Doors are the images of St. Stephen Protomartyr and St. Lawrence. Above these sit the Apostles, and above them, in the Festal Row, icons of the Twelve Great Feasts through which we mystically participate in God's manifestations or Theophanies.

Elsewhere around the church, from the walls, from the pillars, from the ceilings, the saints gaze down upon us, together with the various scenes from the Bible and from the Feasts of the Church. As the smoke of the incense rises towards the ceiling, so our gaze is carried upward with it, and at once we realize that our earthly Liturgy is itself but a sign of the heavenly Liturgy that perdures in the kairos, the timeless eternity of God. But we believe the image, the sign, the symbol, do not merely represent the reality they depict, but in fact participate in the reality of that which they depict. So, just as the icons we venerate participate in the reality of the persons or events they depict, so too the Liturgy itself participates in the heavenly Liturgy, and is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

Within the Liturgy itself, one finds troparia and kontakia (short hymns) commemorating the saints in accordance with the Church's liturgical calendar (the Festal Menaion). Within every Liturgy there is a hymn commemorating the Theotokos. On the Marian feasts, there are special hymns that exalt the woman who bore God the Word, yet always within the context of the incarnation. Mary is "more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim", not because of who she is (she is merely human in every way), but in what she did ("Let it be to me according to Thy will"), and the cosmic implications of that act of submission to the divine will. If you can't accept Mary, you won't be comfortable with Byzantine liturgy at all.

The complete integration of text, chants, architecture, decoration and ritual actions in the Byzantine rite immerse the worshiper in a thick matrix that embraces all the senses and leads one seamlessly into the fullness of the Church and its Tradition. Liturgy is the medium of catechesis, which takes the form of mystagogy, an initiation into the Holy Mysteries, which in turn place us on the path to theosis, the transfiguration of our nature, so that we can become, in the words of Peter, "partakers in the divine nature".

This is heady stuff, and upon exposure to it there are generally two reactions: to flee in absolute horror, or to be overcome by the awesome presence of God among us. As the Russian Primary Chronicle famously put it, "We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth, for on earth there is no such beauty; but this we do know: that God dwells there among men".

For this reason, the person who converts to this form of Christianity, whether it be through the Catholic or Orthodox communions, has little choice but to embrace fully and without reservation an entire Tradition, a way of living and being human, that begins with the Liturgy and proceeds from there to personal piety that is in essence an extension of our liturgical piety (the private prayers being extracted mainly from the Divine Office, particularly Vespers and Matins), and to a rigorous ascetic discipline that, paradoxically, is not in the least legalistic.

David wrote: "This experience of our communion with the dead is a particularly Catholic (and Orthodox) one, though to some extent shared with some of the traditions descended from the Catholic Church. And it’s only of the aspects where the Church offers more than the non-Catholic's (and non-Orthodox's) own traditions."

I don't think I have yet to find a Greek Catholic or Orthodox convert from Protestantism who had a problem with this element of the Tradition. I think that this may have something to do with the ways in which such converts come either to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches.

I've read a lot of "convert stories", both Catholic and Orthodox, and it seems to me the former come to accept the Latin Church primarily through a dialectic process: they ask certain questions, they get answers, they weigh the answers, and in the end feel the weight of the evidence comes down of Catholicism. It is, on the whole, an intellectual process of assent, based on a rational discourse.

Converts to Orthodoxy (and Greek Catholicism, too) seem instead to experience a mystical encounter with truth as embodied principally in the liturgical experience (see my pervious post). Catechesis in the sense of formal classroom training is rather new for us, and rather "after the fact". As I said, our real catechesis is mystagogy through liturgy, and so the usual process for a convert is to come to the Divine Liturgy (usually), and then, for reasons that may not be entirely evident to him, to keep coming back, again and again, until it becomes obvious to him that he must become a part of this experience in the fullest sense. Along the way, he may ask questions, which usually arise in the context of the liturgy anyway. At some point, he goes to the priest and asks to become a catechumen.

Neither the Orthodox nor the Greek Catholics have anything like the formal RCIA process of the Latin Church. Most of the time, parishes or dioceses make up their own set of catechetical materials. There are certain basic prayers that need to be learned, sacraments that need to be explained, hymns that have to be memorized--but a lot of that is done by osmosis. In many instances, a catechumen is assigned a spiritual father, who guides the seeker to enlightenment on a highly personalized basis. At some point, the person is deemed ready for the sacraments of initiation, which are variously known as Illumination or Enlightenment. For some it is sooner, others later. Unlike the Latin Church, we generally don't wait for the Easter Vigil; there are a number of feasts during the year deemed suitable: Pascha, Theophany, Annunciation, Transfiguration, Pentecost and a few others I've probably missed.

One thing that helps the Newly Enlightened as he begins his path to theosis: the continued guidance of a spiritual father, who is not normally a priest, and may not even be a monastic. But the notion that one more spiritually adept should instruct and guide those who need assistance is deeply rooted in our Tradition, and this, together with the way in which people convert, may be one reason why the issues David raised don't usually come up with us.

I am grateful to Stuart Koehl for taking the time to write two interesting and informative responses.

My only quibble is with part of the second response, where I think he draws too stark a distinction between the types of converts. I have, for example, known Protestant converts and would-be converts to Orthodoxy who had great trouble with their new relation to the dead and with their new relation to the Mother of God. They were drawn by the whole Thing, but nevertheless some elements still bothered them.

But more to the point, most conversions to the Latin Church really aren't primarily intellectual. Some of the conversion stories can give that impression, perhaps bec. the writer is writing for his former colleagues and putting the story in terms he thinks they'll understand (they might simply blow off the kind of story Stuart tells as "subjective").

In my own experience, and that of many others, we were drawn into the Church by the whole package, by "the Thing," as Chesterton put it. Part of the Thing was its enormous intellectual resources and the answers it offered to the questions we were asking, so that argument certainly played a part, though the degree of the part varied with the person, but the fundamental experience was much more like the one Stuart describes for eastern Christians than the one he describes for Western.

In fact, now that I think of it, this column is a kind of testimony to that experience. I found this expanded and expansive world, offered to me in the Church, powerfully attractive. It wasn't a matter of argument but of experiencing a deeper and wider understanding of human community.

Perhaps those converts who write up their conversion stories should be more careful to describe their movement more clearly, and not to over-emphasize the intellectual. That might be quite useful, evangelistically.

My own story, for those who might be interested, describing the experience of "Roman Fever," can be found in Surprised by Truth III.

I'd have to agree with you, David, in your quibble with Stuart Koehl. Most of us converts are already participants in the Western ethos, so it is natural for us to perceive, understand, and describe our conversion experience in intellectual terms. But the medium is not the whole message.

I went through a process of questioning and answering that would appear, from the outside, to be highly intellectual---reading JH Newman's *Apologia,* e.g.---but which was in fact highly aesthetic. As a young boy I had read Tolkien, and his imagination has become my childhood love. My intellectual justifications for becoming Catholic were just that---justifications for allowing myself to be swept up into a romance that had long earlier won my heart.

This is the Church which embraces the whole of Christ: The stern but salutary preaching of Gandalf, the wide-eyed and heavy-hearted passion of Frodo, the royal servitude of Aragorn. Granted, the Protestant Rohirrim do their duty, but even they in the end must understand themselves simply as allies of Gondor. She may sometimes be proud or pompous, but she is the only conceivable throne for the King when he should return. Like Pippin before the very flawed Pope Denethor, how could I resist?

Renate Mross declares: “Any Catholic and especially converts would gain great strides by reading the lives of the saints, yes sometimes a child’s version will do.” And boy is she right!

These holy biographies bind us personally to all sorts of Catholic people who, by the grace of God, lived lives worthy of the title, Saint. Those books, many containing photos and drawings, can help David Mills’ “old students and friends suffering from the continuing – the continuous – degeneration of the Episcopal church,” because the Saints are the real heroes of history. But most heavenly biographies will never be read on earth.

My parents were converts. Mom was always trying to talk Dad into entering the Church. He would quiz us children on the Baltimore Catechism; he knew just about every answer. But words didn’t “convert” Dad; his youngest child did. Mike was six-years-old, when he was killed by a drunk driver in front of our home. He was the youngest of us 14 children (there were no twins) and he had Down’s Syndrome. Dad took his last assignment in the Air Force in the Sacramento, California area because the finest Down’s specialist in the U.S. lived there and Mike could receive the very best medical care.

Distraught, Dad began calling most or all of us older children begging for answers, “Why would God allow this?”

When I said, “We should thank God for the time we had with Mike. Maybe God let it happen because He knows you and Mom won’t be able to care for him when he gets older.”

“You’re all saying the same thing,” he said, in something of a daze.

My siblings asked me to speak at Dad’s funeral in 1989, fourteen years after Mike died. And so I spoke of the most amazing gift that Mike gave to Dad: a profound belief in Jesus through the Catholic Faith. Mom had literally tried to talk Dad into becoming a Catholic; but Mike did so without a single word about religion. Everything about the little guy spoke about love and joy; in spite of numerous surgeries.

Renate Mross called the Catholic Religion a “‘Treasure Chest’ with always something new to discover.” What a treasury of friends we will discover in Heaven! Don’t be shy about asking for their help now, you can thank them later.