Originally published at crisis magazine
I’ve been meeting for lunch with a Lutheran friend of mine who is contemplating a conversion to Catholicism. We talk through his frustrations with Protestantism, as well as his lingering objections to Catholic doctrines, such as Purgatory. I, in turn, share from my own conversion experience and explain how I worked through similar objections fifteen years ago, as I began studying my way toward Rome.
After Pope Francis, in September, was reported to have declared: Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio: “All religions are path[way]s to reach God,” my friend sent me a text. “Hard to consider coming into the Catholic Church when the Pope makes these kinds of statements,” he wrote. It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like this from a Protestant considering the claims of Catholicism. Indeed, I’ve been told by several Protestants over the last decade that Francis is the single greatest obstacle to their conversion.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t hear this kind of thing when Benedict XVI was pope. During his pontificate, many of my once-Protestant compatriots traveling into the Church explicitly cited the German theologian as influencing their conversion. They appreciated his theological and scholarly
