This is the story of fourteen con-

verts who found spiritual peace in

the Catholic Church. It dramatically

illustrates that Catholics played an

important role in starting most of

them toward their conversions.

Catholics safely at home in Christ’s

Church know little of the spiritual

suffering and uncertainty that afflict

many who have not found Christ.

Catholics can help them and many

of the millions of others who wan-

der aimlessly outside the Church.

A friendly word, a little act of kind-
ness, the giving of a pamphlet such

as this, may bring them to the haven

of Christ’s Church and the certainty

of His teachings.



Finding Christ

The Story of Fourteen Noted Converts

By

John A. O’Brien, Ph.D.

Ave Maria Press

Notre Dame, Indiana



NIHIL OBSTAT—Felix D. Duffey, C.S.C.
Censor Deputatus

IMPRIMATUR—^ Most Rev. John F. Noll, D.D.

Archbishop-Bishop of Fort Wayne

August 15, 1950

Fourth Printing, 1954

All rights reserved. This pamphlet may not

be reproduced by any means in whole or

in part without permission of the publisher.

Copyright, 1950, AVE MARIA PRESS

Deackmxf



“TT THERE can I find peace of mind, con-

VV tentment and happiness?” asked Jo-
seph Smith as he glanced nervously out the

windows of the train speeding into New York.

Tall buildings rising in the distance told

him that soon he would be one with the

maddening throng, pushing into subways

and hurrying along the crowded streets.

Desperately he hungered for the answer.

“You will find them when you find

Christ,” replied Father Cronin who was

sharing the seat with his chance acquaint-

ance. “And you will find them nowhere

else,” he added with finality.

Smith was silent as he pondered the

priest’s unexpected reply.

“I haven’t had much time for religion,”

he remarked. “Have always been too busy.

Guess I’ve missed something.”

“Something!” smiled Father Cronin.

“That’s putting it mildly. You’ve missed the

greatest thing in life.”

“You mean,” said Smith, “that I’ve missed

the bus?”

“Yes,” agreed the priest, “you’ve missed it

completely. For life without religion, with-

out God, without the spiritual values, bless-

ings and joys which come only from living

with Him according to His plan is scarcely
living at all. I’d call it vegetating.”

3



“Lots of Company”

“I’m afraid I have lots of company,” said

Smith, “for there’re about 70 million other

churchless people who are just vegetating

also. It’s a good term, Father Cronin. When

we have no spiritual life, nothing to give

meaning and purpose to our existence, we

don’t differ too much from vegetables or ani-

mals—is that it?”
“Christ,” continued Father Cronin, “is the

way, the truth and the life. He is the light

of the world and all who follow Him walk

not in darkness but in the light that never

fails.”

As the train pulled into Grand Central

Terminal, Smith reached for his bags.

“This little talk,” he said, “has meant

much to me, Father Cronin, and I’m going

to try to find Christ and walk in His light.

He will fill a void in my life.”

“And in every life,” broke in Father Cron-

in, “of which He has not been a part. Look

up any priest and he will be glad to show

you how you can find Christ and thus find

the peace and happiness which all crave.”

“Thanks, Father,” said Smith. “I’ll do

that. Pray that I succeed.”

Symbol of Millions

Smith is a living symbol of the millions of

men and women who feel a void in their

lives and who are hungering wistfully for

Christ but do not know where to find Him.

4



With a view to helping these millions find

Christ we shall tell how fourteen noted men

and women found their Lord and thus found

meaning and purpose in life and peace and

happiness as well. Scholars, philosophers,

professors, lecturers, journalists, historians,

artists and authors of best-sellers, they lay

bare the anxieties and anguish of their souls

until at last they found Christ and His

Church and then only began really to live.

Their gripping narratives are told in their

own words in Where 1 Found Christ which

we have been privileged to edit; it will richly

repay reading by yourself and your friends.

If you have already found Christ, the book

will help you to show others how they too

may find Him. If you have not found Him,

their story will be invaluable in pointing out

the way to you.

KATHERINE BURTON

Among the biographers of our day Kath-

erine Burton has won a high place. She

served as associate editor of McCalVs Maga-

zine and later of Redbook; at present she

conducts a woman’s page in The Sign. She

is a contributor to the leading magazines and

has written Sorrow Built A Bridge, the bio-
graphy of Sister Rose Hawthorne, and about

ten other widely known biographies.

“There are two things,” blurted out Kath-

1 Where I Found Christ, edited by John A.

O’Brien, Doubleday & Co., N. Y., $2.50.

5



erine Burton to her Catholic friend, Patricia

Jackson, “fixed firmly in the Roman mind:
the Pope in heaven and Henry VIII in hell.”

Irritated at the persistent manner in which

Patricia kept insisting that she track down

the origin of Anglicanism and compare it

with the far more ancient origin of Catho-

licism, Katherine had found in the explosion

a temporary emotional release but she knew

it was no real answer to her friend’s argu-

ment.

The Catholics, with whom she discussed
religion, had one beginning and one end to

every argument: the everlastingness of their

Church. It was the first Church established

by Our Lord, and there was no other and

would be no other. Then one day a Catholic

friend showed her a list of the various Chris-

tian Churches with their founders: Martin

Luther, the Lutheran Church; Wesley, the

Methodist; Henry VIII, the Anglican.

Though irritated by the disclosure, she could

not escape the stark simplicity of the record

which boiled down the relevant facts of his-

tory to a single telling page.

In her perplexity she consulted Dr. De-

laney, the assistant rector at her parish

church, St. Mary the Virgin. To her utter

amazement he told her he was leaving the

Episcopal Church to become a Catholic:

more than that, he was leaving soon for

Rome to study for the Catholic priesthood.

He handed her the manuscript of a book,

Why Rome ?—all but the last chapter.
b



At St. Patrick’s Cathedral she attended

the ceremony of Dr. Delaney’s reception into

the Church; then she looked up the priest,

Msgr. Joseph McMahon, who had received

her friend into the fold and secured instruc-

tions from him. Under the guidance of this

scholarly priest and with the assistance of

Newman’s Difficulties of Anglicans, all doubt

vanished from her mind: the divine estab-

lishment of the Catholic Church stood out

crystal clear.

It was not the work of man but of God;

into that Church she came with joyful heart.

The outstretched arms of the statue of Christ

on the altar before her seemed to symbolize

the welcome the Master extended to her;

it was as if He was saying: “Welcome home,

my child.” Supplementing the primary con-

sideration just mentioned, were the beauty

of the Church’s services, the devotion and

piety of the faithful, the edifying example of

her Catholic friends and the missionary zeal

of a few of them in helping her to find her

way.

BISHOP HUNT

Duane G. Hunt first began to experience

disgruntlement with the Protestant religion

in which he had been reared when as a col-

lege student he was subjected to the riotous

emotionalism of the Evangelistic Revivals

common in the first quarter of the century.

The crude and sensational emotionalism

aroused by these affairs proved thoroughly

7



distasteful to him; next he found himself out

of sympathy with the puritanical code which

condemned innocent forms of amusement.

After reading The Faith of Our Fathers

,

he became intrigued with the Catholic chain

of reasoning. There was the Divinity of

Christ, the establishment of a Church by

Him, and the conclusion that the Church so

founded could never disappear and could not

teach error. He tried hard to break the chain

which would logically compel him to enter

a Church which had been so alien to him.

The more he studied and read, the more

unbreakable the links became.

Sketching the premises which he came to

find undebatable, he arrived at the following

analysis: “I believe in God; I need to be

taught the truths which He wishes me to

believe; since Christ is God and came on

earth to teach me this truth, it is to Him I

must look. But how does Christ teach me?

There were only three possible ways: 1. By

direct and personal revelation; 2. Through a

written record (the Sacred Scripture); 3.

Through the agency of men, that is, through

an organization commissioned by Him for

that purpose.”

Reflection showed that he received no. di-

rect personal revelation from God. But a

written record needs a living agency to vouch

for its authenticity and to interpret it cor-

rectly, otherwise divergent interpretations

would lead to the anarchy and strife he ob-



served among the bickering sects. The third

method, he perceived, was the only logical

manner whereby the divine deposit of reve-

lation would be passed on in its integrity

and unity to all generations. After entering

the Church he became a priest and later on

the Bishop of Salt Lake City, Utah, where

he labors with Pauline zeal to spread the

faith of Christ.

LUCILE HASLEY

Lucile Hasley is a contributor to many

magazines and won the first prize in the

Catholic Press Association short-story contest

with her, “The Little Girls.” A collection of
her articles, chiefly from The Sign, has re-

cently been published in book form under

the title, Reproachfully Yours.

Lucile was impressed by the deep faith and

practical piety of her college roommate,

McCarthy. She would slip quietly away in

the middle of a risque story; she would get

down on her knees at night and say her ro-

sary; she would tiptoe off to Mass on a week-

day morning, rain or shine. If Lucile were

upset over something, she would say casually,

“Don’t worry. I offered up my Communion

for you this morning.”

During an illness, Lucile promised God

that if she recovered, she would investigate

religion and the duties which it claimed

creatures owed the Almighty. Accordingly

upon recovery she went to a Catholic priest

9



—she had never even talked with one before
—and began the course of instructions which
led to her baptism.

Commenting on her conversion, she says,

“In a very literal sense, I can say the words

of Bloy: ‘For my part, I declare that I never

sought or found anything unless one wishes

to describe as a discovery the fact of tripping

blindly over a threshold and being thrown

flat on one’s stomach into the House of

Light’.” God’s ways are indeed mysterious

and beyond our power to trace; but to the

writer it looks as though one McCarthy

served as a sweet channel of His grace and

should be credited by the recording angel

with what in baseball would be called no

small “assist.”

AVERY ROBERT DULLES

Avery Robert Dulles is a graduate of Har-

vard and is the author of A Testimony to

Grace. From history courses in the Middle

Ages and the Renaissance, Avery seems to

have gotten interested in mediaeval philoso-

phy; this led to a study of Plato and Aris-

totle. The inadequacies of the philosophy of

these thinkers, profound as they were, were

missing in the philosophical systems of St.

Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Under

their guidance he came to see that the God

of philosophy could be none other than the

God of the Christian revelation.

This led to a diligent reading of the New

10



Testament to learn more about Christ and

the teachings He commissioned His followers

to transmit to all generations. Desiring to be

incorporated into the living Christ, he turned

more and more to Catholicism. He became

aware that the Catholic Church was not a

fossil of the Middle Ages but a living force

in the world today: a force drawing open

minds to her as the magnet draws the steel.

Reading, pondering and praying, he spent

his last year in college: he had now begun to

realize that on one’s knees one comes best to

know God and to love Him. Knowing no

priest, he arranged through a Catholic book-

store to meet one and receive instructions.

Convinced of the Divinity of Christ, the ex-

istence of a visible Church founded by Him,

and the identity of that Church with the

Catholic Church, he entered the fold and is

now studying for the priesthood in the So-

ciety of Jesus.

ELIZABETH LAURA ADAMS

Elizabeth Laura Adams is a Negro author

of distinction. Her talents have found ex-

pression in music, drama, poetry and prose.

Her book, Dark Symphony
,
stamps her as a

writer of originality and power. She is a

member of the Third Order of St. Francis

and of the Gallery of Living Catholic Au-

thors
;
she plans to specialize in writing plays

on Negro life.

Elizabeth was greatly impressed by reading

11



a book, Wonder Work of Lourdes

,

which re-

lated the story of the many miracles wrought

at that famous shrine. Then one day she met

in the public library a nun who invited her

to her convent; taking her into the chapel

she told Elizabeth about our Eucharistic

Lord in the tabernacle, always ready to com-

fort and help her.

As a Negress she had suffered from the

prejudice and discriminations of the whites,

and so she was touched by the kindness of

the nun. Following this, she sought to learn

more about Christ and His Church from a

priest; he showed her that God was no re-

specter of persons and that the Church, like

her Divine Founder, opened wide her arms

to embrace people of every race and color.

“Remember, child,” he said to her, “though

the world may segregate you to a hilltop,

God can lift you to mountain heights.” The

kindly interest of the nun in an unknown

Negro girl, encountered by chance in a li-

brary, started Elizabeth on the path that led

to Christ and to His universal Church.

EDWARD O. DODSON

While at Carleton College, Edward O.

Dodson won many scholastic honors, includ-

ing the Elliott Prize in Greek, was elected to

Phi Beta Kappa and also to associate mem-

bership in the Society of Sigma Xi, honor-

ary scientific society. He was graduated in

1939 magna cum laude with honors in Greek

12



and zoology. He received his Ph.D. in zoolo-

gy from the University of California and has

contributed to scientific journals. After teach-

ing at the University of California he trans-

ferred in 1947 to the University of Notre

Dame.

Edward took a great interest in the work

of his Church (Congregationalist) and even

thought of studying for the ministry. While

attending Carleton College he began to be

disturbed by the wide differences of belief

manifested in the sermons and lectures of

Congregationalist ministers. Some believed in

the Virgin Birth, in the miracles and in the

Resurrection of Jesus; but most viewed these

as myths designed merely to create so-called

“value judgments.” The common viewpoint

in regard to the communion service was that

the bread and wine were not the true Body

and Blood of Our Lord but merely a me-

morial of Him.

Here was a watering down of the histori-

cal content of the Christian Faith so that

little more than its ethical precepts remained

intact. The climax of this discarding of his-

toric Christianity was reached in an address

delivered by the president of the college, an

ordained minister. His God was an im-

personal one: a sort of summation of the

vital forces of the universe. As to the Divin-

ity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrec-

tion and the miracles of Jesus along with

the dogmas which differentiate Christianity

from other religions which teach a good

13



morality, he said, “Rather than anything else

in the world would I have you get rid of

these ideas.”

In contrast to this crumbling of belief in

the distinctive doctrines of historic Christian-

ity, Edward observed, was the unwavering

adherence of the Catholic Church to all that

Christ taught. Here was no trimming of sails

to fit the latest winds of fashion: here was a

Church which preached Jesus Christ yester-

day, today and the same forever. For more

than nineteen centuries she had been ful-

filling the mission entrusted to her by Christ

to “teach all nations all things whatsoever I

have commanded you.”

It was the indefectibility of the Church,

combined with her catholicity of doctrine in

all climes and ages, which enabled Edward

to see in her the imprint of the divine. After

completing a course of instruction, he was

intellectually satisfied on all points of Cath-

olic doctrine. “But conversion,” he observes,

“is not only of the mind but also of the heart.

I needed the nourishment of the Blessed

Sacrament before I could ever grow in emo-

tional and spiritual appreciation of the

Church.”

At last came the day when he knelt at the

communion rail and received the Body of

Our Lord: the Real Presence. “In my own

life,” he reports, “the reception of the Eu-

charist has been the climax of a spiritual

pilgrimage which commanded my interests

and energies, both intellectual and emotional,

14



for a period of about eight years. Now that
pilgrimage is over: I have come home, and

I have found rest in the house of my Holy

Mother.” Now a brilliant young scientist
at Notre Dame, Dr. Dodson is penetrating

deeper into the secrets of nature and in the

knowledge of nature’s God.

DOROTHY DAY

Outstanding in the apostolate of charity

and social justice is Dorothy Day, lecturer,

editor and author. She is a co-founder with

Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Move-

ment and of the Houses of Hospitality. Busy

contributing to many newspapers and maga-

zines, she is the author of From Union

Square to Rome and House of Hospitality,
and these two books tell the story of her life

and work.

Dorothy grew up in a home in which the

name of God was rarely if ever mentioned.

While not actually a Communist, she was ac-

tive in all the radical left-wing movements

which they supported; genuine and deep,

however, was her compassion for the poor

whose lot she struggled ceaselessly to im-

prove. Returning from all night sessions in

taverns or dance halls, she would see people

going to an early week-day Mass; the spec-

tacle stirred her and caused her to long for

their Faith. She would enter and, kneeling

in a back pew, murmur, “God, be merciful

to me, a sinner.”

15



The deep faith and piety of a couple of

Catholic girl friends made a deep impression

on her and gave her an insight into the

powerful help they derived from the practice

of their religion. She read The Imitation of
Christ and the New Testament and hunger-
ed wistfully for closer union with Jesus.

While working in New Orleans, she con-
tinued to make visits to the Church; she did

not meet a single Catholic or at least none

of her acquaintances disclosed their Catho-

licity. Among them were undoubtedly some

Catholics in so Catholic a city and it is a

pity that they did not manifest their Faith;

for she was then close to the Church and

apparently needed but a friendly hand to

bring her in. It offers an interesting side-

light upon the strange reticence of so many

Catholics regarding their religion and their

blindness to many opportunities to share

their Faith with churchless people and thus

fill an aching void in their lives.

In her visits to the Church, she prayed:

“God, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.

Take away my heart of stone and give me

a heart of flesh.” When her baby came, she

was determined to have her baptized a Cath-

olic, cost what it may. “I knew,” she writes,

“that I was not going to have her flounder-

ing through many years, as I had done, doubt-

ing ana nesitatmg, undisciplined and amoral.

I felt it was the greatest thing I could do

for a child. For myself, I prayed for the gift

of Faith.”

16



One afternoon she got up courage enough

to stop a Sister of Charity and ask her how

she could get her infant baptized. The nun

not only arranged for that but also proceeded

to instruct the mother in the teachings of

our holy Faith. A year after her baptism she
was confirmed and Pentecost never passes

without a renewed sense of happiness and

thanksgiving.

“It was human love/’ she observes, “that

helped me to understand Divine love. Hu-

man love at its best, unselfish, glowing, illu-

minating our days, gives us a glimpse of the

love of God for man. ... I pray that all who

are groping for the truth will be led by the

Holy Ghost from darkness into light. I could

not breathe or live without that light which

I have now—the light of Faith which has
been given to me by a merciful God who Is

the Light of the World.” For years she has

been carrying on her apostolate of charity,

bringing Christ and His love to the poor, the

underprivileged and the “down and outers.”

DAVID GOLDSTEIN

Widely known as a street preacher, lec-

turer, columnist, lay apostle, labor leader,

and author is David Goldstein. For many

years he was active in the Socialist labor

party and has remained a champion of la-

bor. With the collaboration of Mrs. Martha

Moore Avery, he wrote Socialism—The Na-
tion of Fatherless Children

;
he is also the

17



author of Bolshevism: Its Cure. He has

spoken to large crowds in parks and street

corners on a street preaching campaign that

took him from coast to coast. He is the au-

thor of a half dozen books and a recognized

authority on labor problems and on the

apostolate to the Jews.

A Jew and a Socialist, David Goldstein
was greatly impressed by the Church’s un-

wavering stand in defense of the sanctity of

the home and the permanence of the mar-

riage bond. This led him to study the en-

cylical of Pope Leo XIII on The Condition

of the Working Class; the compassion of the

Church for the poor and her insistence on

the priority of human rights over property

rights made a great appeal to this champion

of labor.

He was assisted in his study of Catholicism

by Mrs. Martha Avery, a convert from

Marxism. He found in Catholicism the

fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Tes-

tament and the full flowering of Judaism. He

found the Church to be as superior to the

Temple as Jesus is to Moses. He discovered

that the means instituted by Christ for the

attainment of salvation were greater and

more efficacious than were those recorded

by Moses.

“I found the beauty which abided poten-

tially in Judaism full-blossomed in Chris-

tianity, just as the potential beauty in the

caterpillar is unfolded in the butterfly.

18



Therefore, when a Jew becomes a Catholic,

he no more denies the faith of his fathers of

the days when Judaism was the Mosaic re-

ligion in its fullness than the butterfly, if it

had the power of reasoning, could rightly

deny the caterpillar from which its beauty

evolved.”

Approaching the baptismal font, he re-

ceived the sacrament instituted by the Mes-

siah for Jews and others to be incorporated

into His Mystical Body—the Church. The
44 years which have passed since that event

have been for him years of ever-growing

understanding and love of Jesus and the

Catholic Church which He established. With

Pauline zeal he has labored to share his dis-

covery with the children of Israel. His daily

prayer is:

Thou art the Way, the Truth, and the Life;

Grant Israel that Way to know,

That Truth to keep, that Life to win,

Whose joys eternal flow.

JOCELYN M. C. TOYNBEE

Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, sister of the noted

historian Arnold Toynbee, is a professor of

classics at Cambridge University, England.

Reared as an Anglican, she became disturb-

ed by the frequent controversies between the

clergy and the bishops of the Church of

England. In such conflicts the clergy not in-

frequently appealed behind a bishop to

Catholic authority.

19



But where was Catholic authority, if not

in the Anglican episcopate? It was no longer

possible to think of it as existing vaguely in a

nebulous Catholic Church composed of mu-

tually exclusive communions or branches. It

must be located precisely, if it existed any-

where; so she set out on her journey of in-

quiry with one all-important question in the

forefront of her mind: On whom was I ul-
timately relying for all that I believed and

did?

Her search led her to investigate the Cath-

olic Church. Here was a Church, founded by

Christ, she discovered, and clothed by Him

with infallible authority to teach all man-

kind in His name. For more than nineteen

centuries she has been discharging that di-

vinely appointed mission. After making a

novena to the Holy Ghost, every vestige of

doubt vanished; she applied to a priest for

systematic instruction in the Faith and a

month later was received into the fold of

Christ.

“To the convert from Anglo-Catholicism,”

she writes, “the Catholic Church is, in a spe-

cial sense, a place of liberation. Here is free-

dom from the tyranny of private judgment

as the criterion of what one may, and may

not, believe; freedom from the stifling task

of trying to reconcile Anglican formularies

with the Catholic doctrines which these for-

mularies explicity deny; freedom from the

paradox of relying on Rome’s authority for

what one has selected of Catholic Faith and

20



practice while being committed to the belief

that Rome has erred. Here is freedom from

the limiting notion of a ‘Catholicism’ special-

ly adapted to the English-speaking race;

freedom from the dilemma of having to re-

gard as ‘Catholic’ bishops and clergy who

would repudiate the name and have no in-

tention whatsoever, when they celebrate the

Anglican Communion- Service, of offering

Mass.’’

On the firm foundation of certain knowl-

edge of God’s revelation and of knowledge

imparted by the lips of a Living Church, she

has been able to build that spiritual life of

worship and service of God which is the es-

sence of perfect liberty for man. Ending the

story of her spiritual Odyssey, she says: “By

the gift of faith in the Catholic Church the

soul is released, as it were, from a cage and

can explore at v/ill all the manifold streets

and mansions of the City of God.”

DANIEL SARGEANT

Daniel Sargeant is a poet, historian and

biographer of note and is the author of more

than a dozen books. Reared as a Unitarian

and educated at Harvard, he later became a

teacher at that university. His interest in the

Catholic Church was aroused by a course in

the traditions of European literature under

Barrett Wendell of Harvard. This was fol-

lowed by a course in Dante where he came

to perceive something of the magnificent cul-

21



ture which the Church had brought to a rich

blossoming in the Middle Ages. “Since I

have read Dante,” he remarked, “I cannot

help thinking that someday I will become

a Catholic.”

During his service in World War I he was

brought face to face with the universality of

the Church: in every country it loomed up

as the central fact in the history of Europe.

The work of the Catholic chaplains made a

deep impression upon him.

“They went about their work unself-

consciously,” he writes, “bringing with them

not their virtues but God’s sacraments. They

did not stand with their own personalities

between the dying men and God. I had

caught sight of the divinity of the Church,

not in a book, but in a drama of which I

was a part. From then on the Catholic

Church became vivid and living about me.”

The reading of The Voyage of the Cen-

turion by Ernest Psichari and a volume of

Selected Verse by Charles Peguy further

deepened his insight into the Church and

enhanced the impression first made by Dan-

te. He attended midnight Mass on Christmas

eve in a little chapel in Monastir and dis-

covered then and theie that this sacrifice is

no invention of man but is God’s own act

—

Christ offering Himself as the Victim for

the sins of man.

Returning to this country after the war,

he applied at a priest’s office for instruction

only to learn he was out. Later he circled

22



twice around another Catholic rectory but

couldn’t quite screw up enough courage to

knock at the door. When finally he began

his instructions under Father Martin Scott,

S.J., he was asked: “State your reasons for

thinking that Jesus Christ is God.”

Taken unawares Sargeant felt tongue-tied

and confused. “Certainly I was stupid,” he

remarks, “but one reason for this particular

stupidity was that I had not come to the

Church by first learning that Christ was

God. I had begun by finding the Church to

be divine, and inferred that its founder must

be divine. I had never put to myself the

question that Father Scott put to me. That

Christ was divine was self-evident.”

Daniel Sargeant refers to the Faith which

he embraced on Palm Sunday in 1919 as

“the pearl of great price” and declares that

it has brought him a joy which no words can

describe. Something of that joy finds its way

into his writings, especially those which re-

cord the life and deeds of some of God’s

great heroes.

DALE FRANCIS

Dale Francis, a journalist, editor, lecturer

and free-lance writer, is director of the Uni-

versity Press at Notre Dame. After graduat-

ing from a Mennonite college, Dale entered

the ministry in the Methodist Church. He

experienced an aversion to the shouting type

of fundamentalist religious services and

23



doubts about the Divinity of Christ bit into

him. His service in the army brought him

for the first time into sustained contact with

Catholics, particularly with Catholic priests.

Little things helped him move toward the

Church: a soldier making the sign of the

Cross in a mess hall, the Catholic Digest on

newsstands and the pamphlets in the army

chapel. More important was the wholesome

influence and the edifying example of the

Catholic girl whom he married.

“Marrying Barbara explains a lot,” he

observes. “She is a good Catholic. During the

years when my decision was being made,

hers was the major influence. She knew her

Faith and it was of prime importance. She

attended daily Mass and she lived a good

Catholic life.”

Further study convinced Dale of the Di-

vinity of Christ and that He must have

provided some effective means for the trans-

mission of His revealed truth to all genera-

tions. It could not be through revelation to

each individual since persons claiming such

revelation contradicted one another. Neither

could it be through the medium of churches

which disagreed with one another as to the

meaning of Christ’s teachings. Therefore it

must be through a Church which for more

than 1900 years had been teaching the

truths revealed to her by Christ, her Founder.

“I had through my studies,” he says,

“made out the dim outlines of the True

24



Church, but the light of grace had brought

the truth of the Church into blazing clarity.

. . . On the day I knelt in an army chapel

and became a Catholic I was certain that

mine was an intellectual conversion. I’d

come to the Church through pure reason,

I would have said, and believed what I said.

Now, five years later, I know how small a

role my intellect played, how great was the

role of grace.”

JACQUES AND RAISSA MARITAIN

Jacques Maritain is one of the leading

Thomistic scholars of our day and one of

the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth

century. He has lectured at the leading uni-

versities of Europe and in America and is the

author of about twenty scholarly books. His

wife, Raissa, is a scholar in her own name,

a graduate of the Sorbonne, and is the au-

thor of several works.

Raissa was born of Jewish parents but,

like Jacques, came under the influence of the

skepticism prevailing at the Sorbonne in their

day. After a considerable period of wander-

ing in the No Man’s Land of agnosticism,

they came under the influence of a brilliant

and forceful writer, Leon Bloy. A devout
Catholic, Bloy brought them for the first time

face to face with the reality of Christianity.

He startled them by saying: “There is but

one sadness: not to belong to the saints.”

His book, Salvation Through the Jews, dis-

25



closed to them the love of Christ and of His

Church for the chosen people of Israel. He

placed before them the fact of sanctity. He

read to them the lives of the saints and

kindled within them a spark of love for these

noble heroes of God; he did not engage in

dialectical discussions but bade them to read

deeply into the lives of the saints. This begot

in them a burning desire for the happiness

and holiness of the saints and led them to

make a careful study of the religion which

had produced them.

When Raissa was seriously ill, Bloy wrote

to her: “This morning at early Mass I wept

for you, my friend, I asked Jesus and Mary

to take whatever might be meritorious in

my tormented past and to apply it merci-

fully for your recovery, to impute it to you

with strength and power, for the peace of

your body and the glory of your soul.”

Later, after both Jacques and Raissa had

removed every vestige of doubt concerning

the truth of the Catholic religion, they were

baptized, with Bloy acting as godfather. “An

immense peace descended upon us,” says

Raissa, “bringing with it the treasures of

Faith. There were no more questions, no

more trials— there was only the infinite
answer of God. The Church kept her prom-

ises. And it was she whom we first loved. It

is through her that we have known Christ.”

God used Leon Bloy as the channel through

which He sent the grace of Faith to the

Maritains; serving as that channel brought

26



him one of the greatest joys in his life. Writ-

ing of their conversion, he says: “It is some-

thing to think that when I die I shall leave,

kneeling beside me and weeping from love,

people who knew nothing of such an atti-

tude [of Faith] before they met me.”

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS

Christopher Hollis, historian, educator,

economist, member of Parliament and author

of more than a dozen books, was educated at

Eton and Oxford and reared in the Episco-

pal Church. While at Oxford, he made a

careful study of the miracles recorded in the

New Testament. These miracles, especially

the Resurrection, convinced him of the Divi-

nity of Christ. They are wrought in testi-

mony of the truth of His teachings and of

His claim to be the Son of God.

The record of such miracles was clearly

recorded in the Scriptures which were prov-

en by historical evidence to be authentic

records of the events about which they pur-

ported to treat. The Apostles were witnesses

of these events and proved the sincerity of

their belief in Christ and in His teachings by

laying down their lives in testimony of their

divine Master. The most painstaking re-

search had failed to find any loop-hole

through which one could escape from the

conclusion that Christ had climaxed the evi-

dence of His Divinity by the Resurrection.

Once Hollis had satisfied himself on this

27



central truth of the Christian religion, he

was not long in finding the answer to the

question: “Which is Christ’s true Church?”

The “churches” were all agreed, he noted,

that Christ founded a Church, but none ven-

tured to assert that He had founded the

present variety of “churches.” All were

agreed, too, that His Church was imperish-

able, that the gates of hell would not pre-

vail against it. That being so, the “one, holy,

Catholic and Apostolic Church,” of which

the Creed speaks, must be in existence some-

where today, and must have been in exis-

tence continuously ever since the times of the

Apostles.

“There seemed to me,” he concluded, “to

be nowhere that this Church could be found

save in the obedience to Rome. The very

definitions of the Church, as given by those

outside this obedience, are a denial of her

unity. She alone is Catholic. And, if she be

not apostolic, certainly no other is, for all

others can trace their ancestry back to the

Apostles only through her. If Christ was God,

the Church must exist, and if the Church

exists, the Church of Rome cannot but be

the true Church.”

THOMAS MERTON

Few writers of our day have been cata-

pulted so suddenly into fame as has Thomas

Merton, the author of Seven Storey Moun-

tain and other best-sellers. The son of two

artists, Thomas was educated in France,

28



England and the United States, and traveled

widely in Europe. The Catholic culture of

the Middle Ages stared at him from all the

countries of the Old World and awakened

his interest in the Church; this was further

deepened by his reading of Maritain, Thom-

as Aquinas and other masters of Christian

thought.

After his reception into the Church, his

supreme ambition in life became the achieve-

ment of holiness: the perfect love of God

and man. Emerging from a period of an-

guished searching and prolonged prayer,

Thomas entered the Cistercian monastery at

Gethsemani, Kentucky, and was clothed with

the white robe of a Trappist novice. In the

spring of 1949, he reached the goal of the

priesthood and is known in religion as Father

M. Louis.

Like Augustine he had sought for happi-

ness in the pleasures of the world only to

find a vast void which God alone could fill.

The yearning for holiness and truth had

turned his footsteps to the Church: in her

sacramental system he found the means of

nourishing his soul with divine grace and of

achieving closer union with God. His life of

prayer, contemplation and work as a Trap-

pist monk are devoted to the one end of

making himself a more perfect member of

the Mystical Body of Christ.

“Baptism implies a responsibility,” he

writes, “to develop one’s supernatural life,

to nourish it by love of God, to reproduce

29



and spread it by love for other men. All

this is ordered to the final perfection of a

plan that extends far beyond our own indi-

vidual salvation: a plan for God’s glory

which lies at the very heart of the universe.”

Baptism then implies a distinct individual

vocation, a peculiar function in the building

up of the Mystical Body.

One of the most basic laws of life is the

need to multiply itself
;

this law applies

equally to the supernatural life. “The grace

that is given to me
”
he says, “must pour out

into your heart through works of love,

through prayer, through sacrifice. The more

fully one enters into the Christian life, the

more he feels the necessity of communicating

that life to others, if not by word, then by

prayer and by the deep, sweet anguish of

desire, the craving for souls that burns in

the depths of the heart of the priest.”

In his long hours of prayer before His

Eucharistic Lord in the tabernacle of the al-

tar, in his work in the fields, in his aposto-

late of the pen, in his daily acts of self-

denial and sacrifice and in his unbroken

silence within the Trappist monastery Thom-

as Merton is finding a peace and happiness

which the world could not give. Like a pure

white candle on the altar of the Lord, he is

aflame with love for God and man, while he

proclaims to the world with a silent elo-

quence the mighty truth : “Not in bread

alone doth man live, but in every word that

proceedeth from the mouth of God.”

30



Through Many Gates

In examining the considerations which led

these fourteen pilgrims to Christ and to His

Church, one notices how varied they are.

With many it was the double-barrelled evi-

dence of the Divinity of Christ and His es-

tablishment of the Church. With others it

was the good example of Catholics, the

beauty of the Church’s liturgical services;

with some it was the miracles wrought in

testimony of the truth of Christ’s teachings,

the infallible teaching authority of the

Church and her unfaltering adherence to the

teachings of Christ and the Apostles.

Some were attracted by the holiness of the

saints and the desire to achieve closer union

with Christ through incorporation into His

Mystical Body; still others were drawn by

the unbroken succession of pontiffs from

Peter to the present day. The Church’s de-

fense of the sanctity of the home and the

permanence of the matrimonial bond, her

championship of social justice and the rights

of labor attracted others. In short, her unity,

sanctity, Catholicity and Apostolicity stood

out as the marks distinguishing Christ’s

Church from all its human counterfeits.

It is to be noted, too, how important were

the little acts of kindness by which Catho-

lics helped these pilgrims find their way

home. It was not argument which won Jac-
ques and Raissa Maritain: it was kindness

and prayer. Indeed it might well be wonder-

ed if virtually every conversion doesn’t have

31



its beginning in some act of kindness by a

Catholic friend.

Friendship and kindness constitute a kind

of pulling force toward the Church and

through that channel Christ frequently sends

the grace of Faith. God does not normally

work through a vacuum but rather through

human agents. We are Christ’s ambassadors
in spreading His truth among the seventy

million churchless people of America. If you

love your churchless neighbor won’t you try

to share with him your most precious treas-

ure, your holy Catholic Faith?

By loaning a non-Catholic a pamphlet or

book, by inviting him to Mass, by explaining

to him the beauty and helpfulness of your

religion in all the trials of life, by bringing

him to a priest for systematic instruction,

you can often be instrumental in winning a

soul for God. “Everyone therefore that shall

confess Me before men,” said Christ, “I will
also confess him before My Father who is in
Heaven.” Yes, such an act of loving kind-

ness will often enable one to save not only

the soul of a stranger but his own as well.

Practical Resolution

It is well to end the reading of these lines

with a definite resolution, a clear commit-

ment, a specific promise to try each year to

win a convert. Otherwise, your good inten-

tion someday to do something about this

matter is apt to evaporate into thin air. What

is needed is action, not tomorrow but today,

right now.

32



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