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A Note on Conversion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Yves Congar O.P.
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Extract

CONVERSION means by and large changing the main principle which governs the shape and direction of a human life. As such it may be for better or for worse; a man may commit himself to evil, he may decide against God, he can adopt Marxism, if he is a Catholic he may turn to Greek Orthodoxy or to Protestantism, if he is a Christian he may become a Jew or join a religion alien to our tradition. In short, what a psychologist may call a conversion, a moralist or canonist may call an apostasy.

Moreover, a distinction can be drawn between a religious conversion and a moral conversion. The first is a matter of our ideas concerning God and the economy of salvation, a change of mind and an intellectual conviction which usually leads to the acceptance of the teaching of a religious body, and agreement with its practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 14 , Issue 158-159 , September 1959 , pp. 62 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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Footnotes

1

This article first appeared, in a different translation, in the American Jesuit Quarterly Thought, for the spring of 1958, and is published here by kind permission of the editors.

References

2 Mark, i, 15; vi, 12. Matt. xii, 41, Luke, v. 32; xxiv, 47. Acts xx, 21, xxvi, 20. Matt. iii, 8. Luke, xv, 7.

3 cf. Deut, xxx, 10. Jer. iii, 14. Osee xiv, 2. Amos iv, 8. Is. vi, 10; lv, 7. Jonas ii, 13 Matt. xiii, 15. Mark iv, 12. Luke xxii, 32. Acts iii, 19; xxvi, 18; xxviii, 27.1 Peter ii, 25.

4 St Thomas. Summa Theologica, Ia-2ae. cxiii. Council of Trent, Sess. vi, especially c.5 of 6. cf. R. Aubert, Le problime de I'acte de foi. Louvain, 1945. p. 76.

5 H. Bouillard. Conversion etgrice chez S. Thomas d'Aquin. Paris, 1944.