Dr. Newman’s guide to being a good convert

The Vatican announcement that Pope Leo has approved a motion to make St. John Henry Newman the thirty-eighth Doctor of the Church elicited great joy in many Catholics, especially those who attribute their conversions, under God, at least in part to the witness and writings of this great saint. I am in this camp, but it’s important to say that Newman not only helped me into the Church; he taught me about being a good convert after I had entered.

Although I read Newman in a British literature course even before thinking about conversion, reading his classic 1864 religious memoir, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, in the months before reception into the Church, made me love him. His critical analysis of Protestant (particularly Evangelical) claims and forms of thought often gave words and concepts to my own intuitions.

So, too, his grateful account of how much Catholic truth he had gained from other Christians and from Protestant books helped me. As I would later discover in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, he believed that true conversion: “consists in addition and increase chiefly, not in destruction. True religion is the summit and perfection of false religions; it combines in one whatever there is of good and true separately remaining in each.” True Catholic conversion is positive and not merely negative. I was rejecting parts of my Protestant past, but not the true and good ones. Newman taught me to exercise a prayerful gratitude for those who, under God’s providence, had helped lead me to the Church even if they had not intended it.

After being received into the Church, I read much more Newman, eventually writing a doctoral thesis on his thought about divine judgment and Hell. I have taught and written about him continuously since. It was no mere professional decision. His writing about how a Catholic convert ought to think and act has shaped and often corrected me.

Most good guidance stresses both the positive (do!) and the negative (do not!). Newman provides an abundance of both. Let’s start with the positive.

One of the greatest discoveries Newman made was of the great good of the abiding presence of Christ in the tabernacle at Catholic churches. He took great advantage of this gift and testified to the power of prayer done before Jesus in this humble and veiled appearance. He encouraged converts to take advantage of this marvelous offering.

In a letter to a friend, he explained how Christ’s Eucharistic presence in ordinary Churches had solidified his sense of the catholicity and indeed coziness of the Church by showing him Christ’s presence everywhere: “There is nothing which has brought home to me so much the Unity of the Church, as the Presence of its Divine Founder and Life wherever I go—All places are, as it were, one—while the friends I have left enjoy his Presence and adore him at Mary Vale, He is here also.”

Along with meeting our Lord under the light of the tabernacle lamp, Newman also encouraged converts to talk with lifelong Catholics, who could help those newly Catholic since “they might tell you things which are not found in books.” As old and big as the Church is, she will have plenty of customs and practices not written down.

And though converts have particular gifts (see “Some gifts of being a convert” in the November 2023 Catholic Servant), so too, do those who have been in the Church since the cradle. Two of these gifts are patience with the frail and human side of the Church and confidence in God’s work to correct it. Newman thought learning them from those whose lives were dedicated to prayer was best. In 1866, he advised the young convert Gerard Manley Hopkins that “a recent convert should pass some time in a religious house, to get into Catholic ways—though a week is not long enough for that purpose.”

In fact, Newman advised generally that converts remember always that they are still learning. He advised listening more than talking and going slowly before committing oneself to some large ecclesial task or role. He himself asked the Lord whether the Catholic priesthood was God’s will after he entered the Church. (It was!) He encouraged others to the same patient and prayerful discernment. He urged a very talented man named William Maskell: “[to] pledge yourself to nothing in a hurry. A hundred plans of usefulness will be laid before you—but your inexperience in the Church will be a sufficient apology for your doing nothing just now. Look about, and get a clear view of the lie of things; before you commit yourself.”

The key, he told another convert, is that a Catholic is under his bishop. Individual converts need to have the bishop’s approval (or at least toleration) before starting new projects since the bishop harmonizes the faithful in his diocese.

Some converts, of course, are less prone to err on the side of overweening pride and more likely to be overwhelmed by the magnificent but frightening call to holiness. They feel failures when their new Catholic self is not instantly transformed. Newman consoled a convert friend worried he was not producing enough spiritual fruit by observing that “every serious mind feels in its own case just what you say about yourself.” It’s a good sign if a convert is not cocky. Besides, Newman wrote, “works are a matter of degree: recollect, a cup of cold water has its reward. On the other hand, had we the merit of St. Peter or St. Paul, we must after all, each of us throw ourselves on the mercy and merits of our Lord.”

So what are some negatives or “do not” commands?

The first is not to lecture and publish right away about the Faith—not only because of the dangers of pride, but also because of the liability of making mistakes. Newman was himself very loath to start publishing anything after conversion. He only did so at the instigation of others, and he released no theological treatises until well into his Catholic period. Even of conversion stories, he was a bit skeptical. There is nothing wrong with an account of one’s journey, but it should be humble and short. He especially advised saving entry into theological or Church controversy for when one knows much more. There is a great danger to converts, who can get stuck on their own obsessions about certain Catholic devotions or aspects of the Church’s thought while ignoring the fullness and breadth of her teaching and practice.

Converts, he said, should also beware of a certain hardness and pride. Writing to his friend Emily Bowles in 1866, he lamented the tendency of some to look down on the clay feet of cradle Catholics. “It is grievous that people are so hard,” he told her. “In converts it is inexcusable; it is a miserable spirit in them.” Fully aware of the weaknesses of the Catholic body in England, he nevertheless urged converts not to dwell on those weaknesses. Concerning the mediocrity of some homilies, he advised a Mrs. Wilson, “I do not think that needless carping at the language used in the pulpit is the way to gain from God clearness and certainty of faith.”

Some allow the disappointments to wear away at the faith they have, experiencing a sort of reversal after the shock and awe of becoming a Catholic has worn off. The intense feelings are gone, and the colors of the marvelous pageantry of tradition and the closeness to Christ and his Spirit seem to have worn off. One can be tempted by this ordinariness to begin to doubt. Newman the realist told people not to panic and act precipitously—this life is always going to be a shadowy place where we don’t feel what we should feel. “The Church,” he wrote to one convert, “gives the rhythm and meaning to every feeling and thought of her children, though they do not recognize it as their own.” The faith might be more certain than math, he said, “but who realizes this in his experience?”

Writing to another young convert who was experiencing doubts now that he encountered questions about the faith he hadn’t previously considered, Newman again urged calm, writing that: “as to your doubts, it is wonderful if they had not come upon you. I have expected they would all along. It is impossible that a young and opening mind, such as yours, should not have them sooner or later. There are large questions which cannot be taken in at once—and they must come as questions before they admit of answer.”

St. John Henry Newman advised people to a calm, prayerful, realistic consideration of the Church’s claims before they entered. He encouraged the same attitude afterward. He wanted Catholics to respond to Christ with willing hearts and thoughtful minds so that they might enter the Church and demonstrate the obedience of faith as a reasonable act of worship. He is the doctor of converts both pre- and post-conversion.

(Editor’s note: This article first appeared, in a slightly different form, in The Catholic Servant and is reposted here with kind permission.)