There’s an interesting scene in the Return of the King. It’s during the victory party after Helm’s Deep. Aragorn and Gandalf are in a corner of the room, with merriment and celebration going on all around them.
Aragorn: No news of Frodo?
Gandalf: No word. Nothing.
Aragorn: We have time. Every day Frodo moves closer to Mordor.
Gandalf: Do we know that?
Aragorn: What does your heart tell you?
Gandalf: That Frodo is alive. Yes. Yes, he's alive.
Over the past six or seven days, I’ve gotten several e-mails that have a common theme. Each has some variation of…
“I feel drawn to the Catholic Church, but…"?
“I’d convert, but I can’t get my head around…"?
“I would dive in, but I have a knot in my gut when I consider the doctrine of…"?
Conversion is, in a very real way, an intellectual process. Eventually, you have to get your head around the teachings of the Church to accept them with real depth. However, it’s a mistake to make it an exclusively intellectual process.
A guy I know is going through a very public discernment process. He is trying to decide whether or not his family will convert to Orthodoxy (if you know of whom I am referring, please don’t say...let us give him what peace we’re able). He has a blog and has posted on the subject several times. On each of those occasions, he’s gotten lots of comments and even more e-mails. I have refrained from commenting directly as this is a very personal decision, but I did send along one piece of advice via e-mail:
How can you possibly hear the whispers of the Spirit when everyone around you is shouting advice at the top of their lungs?
The same basic idea applies to everyone. It is important to get your head around the teachings of the Church, but it is equally important to consult your heart as well. Sit quietly in prayer, and listen for the whispers of the Spirit. If you don’t hear them, don’t panic. They’ll turn up at another time, probably when you least expect it. Or maybe you’ll just be guided to your proper place. But if you go through a conversion as a primarily intellectual process, then it’s likely to turn into a sterile, dry and incomplete thing.
What do you do if confronted with a teaching that you cannot accept - when you are asking Gandalf’s question, “Do we know that"? Stop for a moment, take a break, and in answer turn to Aragorn’s question: “What does your heart tell you"? Seek the answer in stillness, quiet and humility, and eventually you will find your way.
What do you do if confronted with a teaching that you cannot accept - when you are asking Gandalf’s question, “Do we know that?� Stop for a moment, take a break, and in answer turn to Aragorn’s question: “What does your heart tell you?�
I think the acceptance of a teaching resides with the will far more than with the intellect. Faith, therefore, is an act primarily of will, and much less one of intellectual assent--the visceral choice to behave as though a certain proposition is true much more than merely giving assent to the same. Faith is virtue, doubt (at least gripped tightly and in the wrong direction) a vice. We are admonished to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." But if such belief were contigent upon our being intellectually convinced, then our salvation would be reduced merely to apprehending the logic of an argument, and salvation would therefore be for the intelligent... or gullible.
I therefore get a little nervous when I see the phrase "cannot accept" associated with any particular teaching. "Cannot accept" on the basis of what? Some deeper loyalties to higher authorities or more compelling principles? Well then, okay. But to say one "cannot accept" a teaching because one simply "unconvinced" of it is more an advertisement of moral weakness than it impugns the particular teaching.
Pontificator Al Kimel did us the service a while back of posting Cardinal Newman's
letter to Mrs William Froude: 27 June 1848, most of which centers around this very question, i.e., of belief and how one does it. Newman writes:
Mmmm... good stuff!