Historic Catholic Converts

Host – Fr. Charles Connor, Ph.D

Fr. Charles Connor, Ph.D. brings to life historic Catholic converts with an in-depth, scholarly approach to biography. See what attracted them to Rome, who helped them over their doctrinal objections, and the price many paid for their conversion. Fr. Connor places these converts into their historical context, explaining what was going on in Christianity that made them want to become Catholic.

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Historic Catholic Converts

1.Elizabeth Bayley Seton was the first native born American saint. After the untimely death of her husband William, she befriended some Catholic neighbors. She converted to Catholicism after witnessing these friends devotion while receiving the Holy Eucharist. After converting to Catholicism, she went on to found the American Sisters of Charity and began the first Parochial school in the United States.

2.The Oxford Movement  began in the 1830ʼs and was championed by John Henry Cardinal Newman. The Movement was begun by Anglican theologians who attempted to trace the Apostolic succession from St. Peter to the existing Anglican High Church. The more they studied, the more these theologians realized that they were unable to do this. These people began to examine the Anglican faith and found that it lacked the full deposit of faith found only in the Catholic Church.

3. John Henry Cardinal Newman saw in the Oxford movement the opportunity to fight against “liberalism” in religion. This liberal thought was teaching that there was no truth, that we are not more acceptable to God by believing this or that, that our merit lies in seeking not in possessing, that belief belongs only to the intellect and not to the heart as well. As Newman studied the early church fathers he came to understand that the Catholic Church was the only church that contained the complete deposit of faith that had been passed down from Christ to the apostles and their successors.

4. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Daughter of famous American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop converted to Catholicism and began the “Hawthorne Dominican” sisters. Her order was the first to provide hospice care and spiritual ministry for those diagnosed with terminal cancer.

5. Cornelia Peacock Connelly After their conversion to Catholicism, Cornelia Peacock Connelly and her husband separated. While he went on to join the priesthood and then leave it and the Catholic Church, she became and remained a nun and founded the order of the Sisters of the Holy Child.

6.Ignatius Spenser and Fidelis Kent Stone Two Passionist priests.

7.Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker

8. Robert Benson and C.C. Martindale

9. G. K. Chesterton

10. Jacques Maritain

11. Karl Sterne

12. Converts from British and French Literature

13. Msgr. Ronald Knox

14. Dorothy Day

15. Converts of Archbishop Fulton Sheen

16. Malcolm Muggeridge

17.Edith Stein: Part I

18. Edith Stein: Part II

19. American and European Converts of Note

Please click on this link for access programs: http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/seriessearchprog.asp?seriesID=7110&T1=Connor