Though not exactly a “Chesterton convert”, I certainly read Chesterton before my conversion, and it was a mark of how I was changing that I initially found him a bit offputting (for being, as I thought then, somewhat distastefully polemical) and then gradually found myself coming to enjoy him more and more. I read his famous work “The Catholic Church and Conversion” a few years before actually becoming Catholic, and then tried to forget about it because I was slightly repulsed, for reasons I couldn’t quite explain at the time. I think it was mainly because the essay made conversion sound so unpleasant, whereas I wanted it to be more like a joyous, gradual enlightenment. And maybe for some people it is like that, but in my case, Chesterton must be having a good laugh (good-naturedly, I’m sure), because his description was quite fair. He famously describes the “final stage” before conversion, in which the person suddenly realizes what’s happened to him, has a powerful desire to flee, frantically tries all the fire doors and finally realizes that everything is locked. That bit sounded preposterous to me when I read it a few years ago, but oh, yes, I definitely passed through that stage.

I wonder sometimes why - when people can believe that a mom saved her baby from a car accident by blocking the car with her own body, then, didn’t even get a little scratch, or they can so easily believe a newpaper saying that in India somewhere some spiritual guru lifted himself up in the air - can they not manage to believe that a Person performed the miracles which were ‘written’ by the ‘witnesses’ who were all actually with Him.