Why I became a Catholic -- CathNews NZ Pacific

Why I became a Catholic

Friday, August 21st, 2015

Ten years ago this month, I became a Catholic.

It happened in the attic of the guest house at Ealing Abbey. There was just me, a friend and a monk, and the operation took about an hour.

Afterwards we went for cocktails. I started things as I meant to go on.

I guess the two big questions to ask a convert are: why did you do it and are you happy? Answering the first point is hard.

It’s like asking a man why he married a woman. There’s a temptation to invent a narrative – to say, “this happened, that happened and before we knew it we were where we are today”.

But the simpler, yet more complex, answer is this: I fell in love.

I was lucky to grow up in a household open to religious belief. My grandparents were Christian spiritualists; Grandma advertised as a clairvoyant.

Mum and Dad became Baptists in the 1990s. I remember the pastor one Sunday telling us that evolution was gobbledygook. The teenager in me came to regard the faithful as fools, but I was wrong. I couldn’t see that they were literate, inquisitive, musically gifted and the kindest people you’d ever meet.

But I went my own way and embraced Marxism.

By the time I arrived at Cambridge University I was a hard-left Labour activist and a militant atheist. I saw life as a struggle. Salvation could only come through class revolution. The life of the individual was unimportant.

Mine was unhappy. Very unhappy. I disliked myself and, as is so common, projected that on to a dislike of others. I’m ashamed now to think of how rude and mean I was. Perhaps I was ashamed then, too, because I had fantasies of obliterating myself from history. Continue reading