Among the noises of London with which I am most familiar are the grinding of brakes and the critical comments of motorists who have just avoided running over me. My wife never allows me to leave the house without a final exhortation, “Look both ways.”
This traditional formula was not omitted when I left for Oxford to be received by Father Ronald Knox into the Catholic Church. I was glad to be able to respond with quiet dignity that it was precisely because I had looked both ways that I had found the right road at last.
Theologians distinguish between the light of divine faith, which is a gift supernaturally bestowed upon the understanding, and that “bare faith,” which is nothing more than the assent of the intellect to a strong case. Now at the time of my conversion the only brand of faith to which I myself lay claim was this very inferior variety, and I was much depressed by the unfavorable verdict of theologians on the weedy growth of belief that I had saved with such difficulty from extinction. My kind of faith was, it seemed, a “purely intellectual habit,” and as such was “dry and barren.” Worse still, it had not “the true character of a moral virtue.” It was not even “a source of merit.” There are times when one feels that theology is not exactly a cheerful science.
I wondered whether this low-grade faith of mine justified me in seeking admission to the Catholic Church, and my perplexities were not relieved by the conflicting advice that I received from different quarters. On the one hand I was assured that I ought not to become a Catholic until I felt that I could not possibly remain outside the Church another moment. I must have a hundred percent certainty. On the other hand, a priest who had read my controversy with Mr. Joad, in which I had defended every Catholic doctrine that Joad attacked, warned me earnestly against the dangers of delay. “I cannot understand how you can sit outside the door of the Catholic Church and invite everybody else to enter. Some doors have been known to swing to.”
It was all very puzzling. You see, I had arrived at the position when I should certainly have backed Catholicism against the field had I been forced to bet; but was I forced to bet? Was a strong preference for the Catholic brief sufficient reason for taking so momentous a step? I fell back in my perplexity on what my brother, Hugh Kingsmill, has described as the boiling oil test of religious sincerity. If one were cross-examined as to one’s beliefs, and if immersion in boiling oil were the penalty of professing a belief which was not true or for denying a belief which was true, one would weigh one’s answers with considerable care. No question here of martyrdom for one’s convictions, for immersion in boiling oil would be the penalty alike for the sincere Christian who believed in Christianity if Christianity were not true, and for the atheist who denied Christianity if Christianity were true.
I thought of this test as I traveled down to Oxford.
“Does God exist?” That question at least I could answer with an unhesitating affirmative and with no fears for the results. If, however, I were asked, “Is the Pope infallible when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals?” I should have been tempted to have backed reply, “Will you please give me notice of that question, as I should like to review once more Catholicism the arguments which have convinced me on this point, but if you insist on an immediate reply, I against t e can only answer, ‘Yes, I believe the Pope to be field had I been infallible.'”
I am inclined to think that this attitude is more common among converts than is usually believed. “You must make a venture,” said Newman. “Faith is a venture before a man is a Catholic. You approach the Church in the way of reason. You enter it in the light of the spirit.” A letter from another convert lies before me as I write: “I have no doubt at all that God exists, from which two things follow. Either he wishes us to worship him as Catholics, in which case it is clearly right to become a Catholic, or he doesn’t mind whether we are Catholics or not, in which case one may as well be a Catholic as anything else.” . . .
I have never been a great believer in the reasons of the heart; it is for the head to reason and for the heart to affirm. Those who have done what they could to justify at the bar of reason the credo with which they enter the Church may perhaps be forgiven if some years later they confess not only their faith but their love. Two years is a short period of probation, but it is long enough for the convert to discover a whol1y personal significance in those words which the Mass has borrowed from the psalms: Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae et locum habitationis gloria tuae.