Confessions of a Convert by Robert Hugh Benson, Part 1

Robert Hugh Benson was an Anglican priest and son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest office in the Church of England, at the end of the 19^th century.  He had brothers who were Anglican clergy as well, and so Robert caused some controversy when in 1903, at the age of thirty, converted to Roman Catholicism, and within a year was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.  Perhaps Benson is best known today as a writer, and from 1907 to his death in 1914 wrote over forty books, some of which were published posthumously.  He wrote novels in the genres of science fiction, historical fiction, and contemporary fiction.  He wrote devotionals and apologetics and religious biographies.  He wrote plays, poems, and children’s books.  He was incredibly prolific.  His best known work is the dystopian science fiction work titled, Lord of the World, a work cited by both Popes Benedict XVI and Frances as an important, prophetic work to the current state of society.  I have not read Lord of the World, but it is on my near term short list of “want-to-read.” 

Confessions of a Convert details his transition and acceptance of the Roman Catholic Church as being the one Church established by Jesus Christ.  It is his conversion story.  You can read it off the internet here,  but if reading off the computer is not your preference, you can read purchase it for Kindle for just ninety-nine cents.  It’s also here as an audio recording at LibroVox.   Here are some additional internet resources:

An article on Benson’s biography “Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914)”

Fr. Michael Keating at Crises Magazine.  

An article by Joseph Pearce, “Robert Hugh Benson: Remembering a Forgotten Giant,” at The Imaginative Conservative.  

Our Catholic Thought Book Club over at Goodreads selected it as a current book club read.  I’ll post some of my thoughts and comments on the book. 

Concerning the background:

By the way, for those that don't understand some of these terms, let me explain. Because of the Protestant/Catholic civil wars that occurred in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Church of England (otherwise known as Anglican) was a sort of synthesis of Calvinism and Catholicism. That's how they resolved the civil wars. But they never really synthesized as one theology. People were left to personally believe whichever their hearts preferred but ministered under one church. Those that preferred Catholicism were called High Church Anglicanism, because they used a sort of Catholic high liturgy. Those that preferred Calvinism were called Low Church. As you read English literature from the time, you can kind of guess who High Church was and who was low. Jane Austen I believe was High Church. The great religious poet George Herbert was high church. John Milton (of "Paradise Lost") was Low Church.

During the 19th century, this inherent theological contradiction began to make itself felt. That's when the Anglo-Catholic movement started. Calvinism and Catholicism could not be synthesized without turning yourself into a philosophic pretzel. This is from where Robert Hugh Benson is coming from in his intellectual struggles. And once the Fathers of the Church began to get studied, then even the Anglo-Catholicism alternative started to fall apart because they found that the early church was quite Catholic. That's when Blessed Cardinal Newman famously said, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."

There are eight, untitled chapters to Confessions of a Convert.  Here is what I surmise as the central thesis of each chapter.

Chapter I: Describes his upbringing and spiritual development.

Chapter II: His first doubts about the Church of England.

Chapter III: His four years at the Community of the Resurrection gave him an appreciation for Roman Catholic type of devotions.

Chapter IV: In 1902, while writing one of his books, “The Light Invisible” he began to realize the inherent contradictions within Anglican theology and began realizing the harmonious integration within the Roman Catholic Church.
Chapter V: While reading various theological treatises, and then especially finding the claims of Rome as having primacy among churches in the New Testament itself, Benson was satisfied that the Church of Rome had full authority concerning doctrine.

Chapter VI: Having come to that realization, Benson is now thrown into a state of uneasiness and tries to give the Church of England another chance at resolving his intellectual and spiritual crises. 

Chapter VII: He makes a final decision to renounce the Church of England and enters the Roman Catholic Church.

Chapter VIII: His full expression of joy in joining the Church Christ instituted and what it has meant to him.

My comments on Chapter 1:

(1)

One of the things that I couldn't understand in the first chapter was why he became an Anglican priest. He doesn't describe a childhood that was devout or passionate for Christ.

I do not think that I loved God consciously, but at least I was never frightened at the presentation of Him or terrified by the threat of hell. I think I accepted Him quite unemotionally as a universal Parental Presence and Authority. The Person of Our Lord I apprehended more from the Gospels than from spiritual experience; I thought of Him in the past and the future tenses, seldom in the present.

That doesn't strike me as someone who would become a priest. But he does seem to grow into it.

(2)

Kerstin wrote: "The English character isn't exactly exuberant :) ."

LOL, yes, perhaps he's just understating. Perhaps he was following in his father's footsteps at the beginning but then became devout. Obviously he continued and joined some devout groups as well as we see I think in the next chapter.

(3)

Irene I'll respond by putting your statement in block quotes and I'll respond below it.

I was struck by the respectful tone of this memoir. Early in chapter 1 he states that equally intelligent minds experiencing similar events will come to different conclusions. He never puts down (at least not in the part I have read) those who come to a different conclusion than he did. In a world where so little respect is shown to those who think differently, I find his voice so refreshing.

My experience with conversions mostly comes from EWTN's The Coming Home Network and reading other books. Most conversions to the Catholic Church harbor no bitterness to their previous Protestant denominations. They usually are grateful for their upbringing and learning to embrace Christianity. They usually find Roman Catholicism to be the fullness of Christianity. Benson is following in that vein. Now Catholics who convert away usually have a chip on their shoulder and can be bitter.

I wonder if he would have converted if he did not feel the marginalization he found when spending several months in the Middle East. I know he reports questioning some of the beliefs and practices of Anglicanism as a youth, but he accepts the answers he receives so easily that these don't seem to bother him as much at the time as they do after the conversion. And, what teen does not question the faith of his/her upbringing.

Of course we'll never know the outcome of something that didn't happen but I suspect he would. I don't know if Kerstin provided an overview of the historical situation in Britain in the late 19th century but quite a large number of intellectuals either left Anglicanism for Roman Catholicism or joined a subset of Anglicanism which is known as Anglo-Catholic. Off the top of my head, there was Blessed Cardinal Newman, the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins (which we read a few poems a couple of months ago here), and G.K. Chesterton, who we also read earlier. The great poet TS Eliot became an Anglo-Catholic but couldn't cross over to Roman Catholicism. Anglicanism has been disintegrating under its inherent contradictions for the past couple of hundred years. Pope Benedict XVI created a means for Anglicans clergy to become Roman Catholic clergy if they wanted to cross over. Many have. Right after Vatican II, there was an expectation that the two would re-unite, and I suspect some of the liturgy changes from Vatican II was a step to making it easier. However, during the last twenty to thirty years the Anglican Church has gone off the rails with women priests, homosexual marriage, and I even think condoning abortion. That became a non-starter in the reunification.

I also wonder if he would have converted if he had been surrounded with high Anglican priests and parishes. Had he experienced the more formal ritual of high Anglican liturgy, the traditional practices of fasting and Liturgy of the Hours , sacramental practices such as Confession promoted, would his spiritual needs have been met in the tradition of his childhood.

Perhaps you missed it. He was an Anglican priest before he converted. He said he did all that as an Anglican. In fact his father was an Anglican priest as well, though I don't recall if it was high church Anglican. High Church Anglicans have many of the same devotional practices as Catholics.

(4)

Nadine wrote: "also, i’m confused about the part where someone was evangelizing to the boys and they were horrified, why?."

Nadine you would have to show me the exact passage for me to get the context, but the British are and have been more sensitive to proselytizing than we are in the US. Actually our country in the last twenty years has been drifting toward that too. But I think we feel much more comfortable discussing religion than they do. The British probably because of the civil wars over religion developed a social taboo to bring up religion in social settings. At least that's my understanding. Again I have to look at the specific passage to see if that's what's implied.

On Chapter 2.

I found Benson's father's answer to what constituted "the Holy Catholic Church" rather interesting, if not puzzling. It's the very first two paragraphs of the chapter:

Up to the time of my father's death I do not think that a doubt had ever crossed my mind as to the claims of Catholicism. Once, I remember, in Birdcage Walk, as my father and I were riding back to Lambeth, I said to him suddenly that I did not really understand the phrase of the Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." "For instance," I said, "are the Roman Catholics a part of the Church of Christ?"

My father was silent for a moment. Then he said that God only knew for certain who were or were not within the Church: it might be perhaps that the Roman Catholics had so far erred in their doctrinal beliefs as to have forfeited their place in the Body of Christ. I suppose I was satisfied with his answer; for I do not remember having considered the subject any further at the time.

A Calvinist type Protestant or other low church Protestant would have less of a problem with this I think. For them they are so different from Christian denominations that have a liturgy that Catholicism would seem completely foreign, and so the thought would not even enter their minds. Many don't even recite the Nicene Creed. I know Baptists don't. I was friends with one (we're still friends, we just have drifted apart) who had never even heard of it. But I can see how a high church Anglican or Lutheran, especially an Anglo-Catholic like Benson and his father would really have tension with this.

Notice the answer his father provides: "it might be perhaps that the Roman Catholics had so far erred in their doctrinal beliefs as to have forfeited their place in the Body of Christ." How far are Anglo-Catholics from Roman Catholics? They are about as close as any denomination you can find. Personally I think that's self delusional unless his father did not consider himself an Anglo-Catholic.

If you want to get a sense of how close Anglo-Catholicism is to Roman Catholicism, there was an episode of The Journey Home a few weeks ago that had a convert from Anglo-Catholicism, Fr. Stephan Jones. I think you can get a good feel for where Robert Hugh Benson is coming from when you hear Fr. Jones' conversion story. Here's the episode if you want to watch.