Becoming Catholic in the Church of Francis

I have few memories of the Church before Pope Francis. There were some conspiratorial warnings at a Baptist summer camp; the First Communion of a family friend was, for him, an important milestone; and I watched as the Catholic church across town put up an ugly rectory. I also knew that most of my ancestors were Catholics, but living in Delaware, a few miles away from the oldest Methodist chapel in America, I attended Sunday school at a red-brick church waving the cross and flame of the UMC. At some point, my family stopped going to the church and an Argentine became pope. I didn’t notice. But as I grew older, as college approached, I had a feeling that the world was off-kilter. Something was missing and the Catholics had answers. And so, without an articulable intention, I added some Catholic schools to my application list.

I enrolled in Saint Anselm College in 2020 and became a Catholic in April of 2023, the Sunday after Easter—it was a nighttime Mass, designed for late-waking college students, and the dark of the Abbey Church added great drama, even if it ruined family photos afterward. 

With my conversion came a full immersion into Catholic media: Bishop Barron’s Catholicism TV series and his Sunday sermons; Pints with Aquinas, Shameless Popery, Breaking in the Habit; America, Catholic Answers, Trent Horn, and Scott Hahn. I also developed an unfortunate interest in the more salacious corners of internet commentary: the schizophrenic theories of sedevacantists, the scandalous and the scandal mongers. 

I felt I had to form an opinion on everything. Is guitar appropriate at Mass? Were there statues of pagan goddesses at the Amazon Synod? Is the German church schismatic? Is SSPX?

I have since seen would-be converts warned away from such an engagement with Catholic media: Online commentary can foster a disordered enthusiasm for noticing motes. Just as politics can ruin a holiday dinner, Church politics can intrude upon the Lord’s Supper. Knowing this, in my circles, we pass back and forth a refrain: “One can cultivate a sort of medieval piety by not knowing what His Holiness in Rome is up to.” Unfortunately, the refrain has been made especially relevant by the particular deficiencies of Francis’s pontificate. Catholics familiar with prior popes refer constantly to an ambiguity unique to Pope Francis. As a consequence of this ambiguity, every letter to the bishops, synodal document, and apostolic exhortation demands a debate to establish its orthodoxy. These debates are particularly dangerous for curious converts.

Take, for example, Fiducia Supplicans, released a few months after I entered the Church. As I understand it, the document is exoterically uncontroversial, recognizing the truth that “one who asks for a blessing show[s] himself to be in need of God’s saving presence in his life.” Thinking in this vein, many pastors would come to express shock at the storm the document sowed. 

But the day after the declaration’s release, media-savvy priests were posing for photos as they blessed gay couples, violating the text if not the spirit of Fiducia Supplicans. Theologian Jason Steidl Jack, whose civil union was blessed by Fr. James Martin, S.J., said, at a parish lecture on LGBT Catholics held near tony Gramercy Park, that while the text of the declaration was limited, “We know it means more.” Conservatives agreed. Fiducia Supplicans provoked hundreds of responses (this journal not excluded) and several Vatican walk-backs. It was noise, and one example of many such incidents during this pontificate: confusing for the faithful and damaging to the faith. 

But when Catholics, especially converts, complain about the ill effects of ambiguity, they are often met with bile. Today’s left-wing ultramontanists, commentators like Gloria Purvis and Austen Ivereigh, have been sneering at converts’ concerns for years. The subtext is clear: “Why complain about the pope? You chose this.” Well, we chose this—in my case, entering the Catholic Church during the pontificate of Pope Francis—because we believe it to be true. And the truth of the faith far overrides any hang-ups over the person of the pontiff. Of the converts I’ve met and spoken with, I cannot recall one who has converted because of Pope Francis. Many have converted in spite of him.

There is every reason to believe that conversions are increasing and will continue to increase. Converts will make up an ever-greater proportion of the Church: in America, Africa, and Europe, too. These new Catholics are sensitive to scandals and confusions that might not have disturbed one with “a certain medieval piety” but are very much a problem for someone with a smartphone. I hope the ongoing conclave takes us into account.

These past months, as news updates about the pope’s health filtered out, I was surprised by the depth of feeling I had for the Holy Father. Praying for him, I experienced a palpable distress at the prospect of a Catholic Church without Francis. His passing signifies the end of the only Church I’ve ever known.

I pray he rests in peace. But I also pray that Catholics be granted the peace we were denied during his pontificate. A peace born of clarity and fruitful for faith.