Catholic Converts and Conversion
How and why men and women become Catholic — and why so many are doing it now. Catholic Converts and Conversion dates the current revival to 1986, when Scott Hahn was received into the Church and Karl Keating launched what would become Catholic Answers. From those two “founding fathers” Armstrong traces the network — Madrid, Stravinskas, Akin, Shea, Howard, Kreeft, Grodi’s Coming Home Network, EWTN, Steubenville — that turned a trickle into a flow.
Part I addresses the conversion process from many angles: whether it’s reactionary or rational, the Marian and authority objections, hostility to convert testimony, the historical-ecclesiological case, and Augustine’s Confessions as the prototype of every modern Catholic conversion story. Part II is Armstrong’s own — his “clueless spiritual curiosity,” his evangelical years, the books that moved him, and his reception into the Church in 1991 by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Part III gathers fifteen older conversion stories now in the public domain — Anglican clergy, scholars, laymen, women — each highlighting reasons for becoming Catholic that have not aged.
Inside this book
- Why 1986 is the starting-date of the current Catholic apologetics and convert revival (Scott Hahn and Karl Keating as its two “founding fathers”)
- Replies to “101 Questions for ‘Romanist’ Converts” — the standard Protestant objections, answered
- Dave’s own conversion story at length: from non-denominational pastor’s congregation to Rome, with the books that did the work
- St. Augustine’s *Confessions* as the prototype of every modern Catholic conversion story
- Fifteen older conversion testimonies (Chapman, Britten, Kegan Paul, Ward, and others) recovered from the public domain