Those Messy Catholic Converts

Yes it is true!!! Speaking as a Convert no doubt I annoyed and annoy many "cradle Catholics" still. I was thinking of this when I saw where the comment section was going at Vox Nova's post And You Wonder Why I Criticize Evangelicals So Often….Now there are two themes in the post and in the comment section I wish to address.

First as you can tell in the comments ,there is theme that is I see sometimes at VOX NOVA and in fact at other Catholic blogs that are different as night and day from Vox Nova.. That is Catholic Converts and how they need to shed all this baggage and they are still not thinking with a Catholic mind. Now no doubt there is some truth to this in some cases.

Though I am not sure what has got people all upset at Converts over at poor EWTN. I think it is maybe because they are not talking about subjects that some Catholics are really into 24/7. For instance some folks at Vox Nova might be upset that these folks are not talking about Catholic Social Justice and issues like the war and Health Care .While over at the numerous more traditionalist sites are in an uproar they are not talking the Latin Mass all the time. These two different groups though at times have a common charge. Those people NEED TO SHED THEIR EVANGELICAL and PROTESTANT BAGGAGE.

When the Bishops , Priests, and others say that Evangelicals have insight and something to offer Catholics they are not just whistling Dixie. They mean it. So when a Evangelical converts to Catholicism some of that "baggage" is good and needed.

Rod Dreher touched on Converts in a post where he is examining what someone was saying about Chesterton at Gopnik loves G.K. Chesterton, but is troubled. Let me post this part:

In taking stock of Chesterton's Catholic apologetics, though, Gopnik finds the great man to have been not much more than a hack. Again, Gopnik:

In these books, Chesterton becomes a Pangloss of the parish; anything Roman is right. It is hard to credit that even a convinced Catholic can feel equally strongly about St. Francis's intuitive mysticism and St. Thomas's pedantic religiosity, as Chesterton seems to. His writing suffers from conversion sickness. Converts tend to see the faith they were raised in as an exasperatingly makeshift and jury-rigged system: Anglican converts of Catholicism are relived not to have to defend Henry VIII's divorces; Jewish converts to Christianity are relieved to get out from under the weight of all those strange Levitical laws on animal hooves. The newly adopted faith, they imagine, is a shining, perfectly balanced system, an intricately worked clock where the cosmos turns to tell the time and the cuckoo comes out singing every Sunday. An outsider sees the Church as a dreamy compound of incense and impossibility, and, overglamorizing its pretensions, underrates its adaptability. A Frenchman or an Italian, even a devout one, can see the Catholic Church as a normally bureaucratic human institution, the way patriotic Americans see the post office, recognizing the frailty and even the occasional psychosis of its employees without doubting its necessity or its ability to deliver the message. Chesterton writing about the Church is like someone who has just made his first trip to the post office. Look, it delivers letters for the tiny price of a stamp! You write an address on a label, and they will send it anywhere, literally anywhere you like, across a continent and an ocean, in any weather! The fact that the post office attracts time-servers, or has produced an occasional gun massacre, is only proof of the mystical enthusiasm that the post office alone provides! Glorifying the postman beyond what the postman can bear is what you do only if you're new to mail.

Boy, does this feel familiar to me, and I can see now (from my own experience) why converts tend to wear on cradle believers (and vice versa: little exasperates a convert more than a cradle believer's apparent inability to get excited about the Amazing Wonderful Church). Again, I can't discern the justice of Gopnik's judgment re: Chesterton's writing, because I've never read enough of his apologetics to know. But this feels right to me. It also gives me insight into why I don't have and never had that convert's glow about Orthodoxy. I didn't believe when I left it that Catholicism was a jury-rigged makeshift system, nor did I believe that Orthodoxy was a uniquely fabulous thing. I'm glad not to have those illusions about either faith, but it does take some of the romance out of the thing.

I really wonder when Catholics are complaining about what they see in Catholic Converts if the above is a little of what is going on. It is not really PC to talk bad about converts but I do wonder what I see in the VOX Nova comment section and other sites are people letting off steam.

No doubt this is a constant theme in the 2000 year life of the Church. Especially when the Church had massive wave of Converts. I can see people saying in the 300's "can't these people be quiet and what is all this messiness they are bring in". No doubt some cradle Catholics back then very much wished perhaps that St Augustine would hush up some. I would not be shocked if at times people thought Cardinal Newman was annoying.

Second, as to another theme I wish to hit on that is in that comment section and countless other places. I think again we need to realize there is no one perfect version of a Catholic. Now we should know this really and the Church tries to shows us this through the lives of the Saints.

A few days ago I posted a very insightful post by Amy Wellborn whose in Rome right now, Here is a part of what she said at The right kind of Catholic after mentioning related thoughts by Pope Benedict:

That is not a call to paper over differences, to pretend that is all is well as we join hands around the campfire. It is not a call to abandon mutual fraternal correction. It is simply, as a first step, to look to Christ and open ourselves to him, together. And to go from there, dependent on the Spirit to bind us together, to reveal the truth to us, and to empower us to bring the Gospel to a world that thirsts and hungers.
What is true is that this unity is indeed not uniformity, as St. Paul notes and as only one who is blind to history can deny. The diversity within the Body of Christ runs deep, and is complex - as complex as life itself.
One sometimes reads, not only in Catholic sources, but non-Catholic sources as well, as sort of wistfulness for the right sort of Catholic. “If only all Catholics were like….I might be more open to it. Too bad the other ones have to be around to ruin it.” Fill in the blank: Mother Angelica. Thomas Merton. King Louis IX. Dorothy Day. Take your pick.
It’s too bad, the implication lurks, that there are those other sort of Catholics who mess up the pretty picture, the perfect embodiment of the Gospel.

That is so true and no doubt this balance of being one and being diverse drives many Catholics up the wall. Finding the right balance between needed uniformity and diversity is not a easy trick. Somehow though the Church thinks there are places and needed places for the Latin Mass Catholics, and the Charismatics. The Church and the Popes recognize that there are places for the Dorothy Day Catholics and the Catholics that serve in the Armed Forces. That there is a place for the Conservative George Weigel and a person like Morning Minion at Vox Nova .

No doubt many of these Catholics , and I include myself in this bunch, think that the Church would be going gangbusters if they only had my Catholic view on life. But in reality if that occurred it would be a disaster. The internet while showing the Catholic diiversity in all it's glory also has the sometimes unfortunate side effect of allowing us hang with our version of the perfect Catholics only. Which is one reason the internet cannot and should not take the place of your Parish

Now this does not mean everything goes of course. There are several Catholic items that must be believed by all. But is truly a miracle, despite some big moments of people leaving, that pretty much all these different diverse thoughts and people in the Church are still together. Which shows me at times the Lord knew what he was doing that day when set the foundations of the Papacy up that has been and still is as ones of its function a unifying force.

RELATED-

As to converts David Armstrong has thoughts on Converts and some of the complaints about them here

On Irrational Hostility to Catholic Conversion Stories (Particularly Scott Hahn's) (Dave Armstrong vs. John Lowell)

Am I a "Protestantizing" Catholic Now Or Was I Formerly a "Catholicizing" Protestant? (+ Discussion)

Gratefulness For My Evangelical Protestant Background and the Wonderful Teachings and Blessings Obtained Therefrom (Rev. Dick Bieber et al)