The Catholic Church saw incredible growth in the United States this past year, especially among young people (men, in particular). If you’re tuned into the online discourse about this trend, you’ll be familiar with the tradition-oriented, conservative kind of Catholic who might look down his nose at new, inexperienced converts or those who aren’t as orthodox in their faith. There is nothing wrong with a preference for tradition and the piety that often goes with it. In fact, I would say Catholics the world over would do well to be more reverent. But, at the same time, the Church is and ought to be a home for all. It is, of course, a hospital for sinners.
Melanie McDonagh’s new book, Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century, offers a well-researched story of several prominent—and sometimes scandalous—figures who found their way to Rome. Each entry includes snippets of personal letters or diary entries by the converts and quotations from people who knew them in life.
You may even know some of the stories already, like those of Oscar Wilde and G.K. Chesterton. Others, such as that of decorated World War I veteran and acclaimed poet Siegfried Sassoon, were entirely unknown to me before reading this book. I am reminded of Archbishop Fulton Sheen saying, “There will be three surprises in Heaven. First of all, I will see some people whom I never expected to see. Second, there will be a number whom I expected who will not be there. And—even relying on God’s mercy—the biggest surprise of all may be that I will be there.”
Consider that “gross indecency” landed Oscar Wilde in prison doing hard labor, where his health deteriorated. After his release into what amounted to exile, Wilde asked the Jesuits for their permission to go on a retreat, “if not actually entering a monastery,” according to McDonagh, “but the priests’ response made him cry.” He was turned away, but persisted. McDonagh writes of how Wilde “returned to the themes of salvation, sin, forgiveness and Christ, again and again” in his writings until his death. Wilde, on his very deathbed in 1900, was received into the Catholic Church.
“What is more remarkable,” McDonagh writes, “is that so many of his circle had, or were to, become Catholics too.”
Wilde’s illustrator, Aubrey Beardsley, before dying of consumption at age 25, also became a Catholic. His work was often sexual and indeed “arrestingly pornographic.” Yet, in the last year of his life, Beardsley took “the most important step in [his] life” by joining the Catholic Church. He died “clutching a crucifix and a rosary.”
John Gray, considered by some to be a partial inspiration for Wilde’s Dorian Gray character, eventually became a Catholic priest. Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s lover, came to the Church for “purely intellectual reasons” and later in life wrote that “as a Christian and a Catholic I naturally and inevitably disapprove deeply of homosexuality.” Douglas, unfortunately, also espoused deeply antisemitic views and advertised an edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his weekly magazine Plain English.
Other converts mentioned in McDonagh’s book, such as G.K. Chesterton, also came to the Church for intellectual reasons. Chesterton was a longtime Catholic apologist before he submitted to Rome in 1922 at the age of 48. McDonagh writes, “There can be few converts who so obviously signalled their sympathies in advance.” Chesterton put the reason for his conversion very well in a French newspaper, saying, “Catholicism gives us a doctrine, puts logic into our life. … To be a Catholic is to put all at rest!”
The Church for Wilde and others of his time—as it was for saints like Augustine, Paul, and Matthew—provided an answer for a life of sin. The book’s introduction notes that a “striking element of this narrative is that many converts here were homosexual.” For these converts, McDonagh suggests “the idea of transgression and redemption, of grace and atonement,” and indeed “the confession of sin” were appealing to those reproached by society for their romantic preferences.
People today are often drawn to the Church for a similar reason: They are reproached for their traditional and conservative beliefs. The Church offers sanctuary for those who pursue tradition and truth. As Chesterton wrote, “We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.”
The throughline of Converts is that the Church provided what each person in the book was looking for, even if they were not all looking for the same thing or searching for it in the same way. Some came for refuge. Some sought the truth, while others were convinced by the unbroken traditions the Church offers. Catholicism is simultaneously both traditional and countercultural. The sinner can find forgiveness. The scrupulous man can cling to tradition. If the scandalous, problematic people discussed in McDonagh’s book could find a home in the Church, so can anyone.
As Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”
Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century
by Melanie McDonagh
Yale University Press