08.10.07
Crossed the Tiber
http://crossed-the-tiber.blogspot.com/2006/10/my-personal-conversion-story.html Just click on the link to get the story. This is another very long story by someone who has obviously put a lot of work into his faith and to whom his faith has always been of prime importance. One thing that is very interesting is the circuitous path his faith journey took and how he wound up right back in the same Catholic religion of his upbringing. However, you can see he is now participating at a much deeper level and in a much more real way than that called for in his youth.
Of course, any comments I put down here are mere speculation. But I would say that most likely, when this man first joined the fundamentalist sect as a young teen, that was a stage two conversion. The chaos of “much sin and bad life choices” ended as soon as he joined this group. (he went from stage one to stage two.)
Then of course the story meanders and it is very hard to tell if he ever went through a real stage three - but I think the time when his first wife was dying, and he so desperately wanted to be able to realistically discusss her situation might have been a sort of stage three thing. (he wanted truth/everyone else wanted a miracle.) Also, shortly after his second marriage, when he “was moving away from charismatic theology and outward emotionaly manifestations” (of the religion he was in before that) may have been a stage three time. But you really can’t tell by what is written.
I am still guessing of course, but I think the conversion back to Catholicism, was a movement to a solid stage four faith. (Again, we are not doing this to judge where this person is currently. The only reason for going through all this is to note that these changes in belief do happen, and to try to understand that they usually do represent growth.)
I am not able to comment much on the phenomenon of full-blown stage four faith of this sort. I find it fascinating but it is clearly above my level of understanding. While it is not necessary that we understand how this exists, I do think any stage three readers should be able to see the amazing complexity of this man’s faith and the tremendous amount of work he put into it. You can see this is a really solid person and surely his faith as he describes it is too real to dismiss as explainable by science or any type of rationality.
Likewise, any stage two readers can see that the point at which this person arrived was not obtainable by any sudden “born again” experience. There are no easy pat answers about what this man believes. It took most of a lifetime for him to arrive at this stage and as you can see, it was not an easy path.
I strongly feel it is worth trying to understand this type of phenomenon - mainly in the interest of gaining respect for what others believe, no matter how different from our own faith or lack thereof.