Bill Cork's Blog has a number of posts detailing the recent developments the conversion story of Patty Bonds, who happens to be the sister of anti-Catholic apologist James White. I linked to Bill Cork's Blog back in July, and you can find the jump cite to the Adobe full article of Patty Bonds' story at that link. At the time, I wrote that Bonds' account was fascinating for two reasons: (a) it was shocking for detailing a degree of casual anti-Catholic bigotry that I believed had died out well before the election of Kennedy and (b) it was a fascinating account of the unfathomable (at least to me) drive that causes people to convert even thought it disrupts the convert's social network.
Bill Cork thinks the story is a tacky game of "gotcha" by the Catholic apologetics establishment. It may be, but as an outside observer, it didn't seem that way to me. Reading Patty Bonds' story I didn't note any particular shots at James White. Admittedly, White was depicted as a true heir of the Reformation who could be expected to show no mercy to anyone apostasizing toward "Rome." But that information is contained in no more than a paragraph, and is used to support Bonds' tesimonial that she "crossed the Tiber at the widest point." The White connection is important because it shows the weltanschauing that Bonds inherited. As she notes:
Even before he had grown prominent, I had listened attentively to the post-debate conversations James had with our parents at family dinners. I heard from him how this or that Catholic had attempted to defend the Catholic Church’s teachings from the Bible. Theologically, I agreed with his arguments against the Catholic Church, but I didn’t enjoy the intensity and rancor of those debates. I found them to be an occasion of sin for those on both sides. Tempers flared easily, and I just didn’t see that arguing changed hearts. I preferred to spread my anti-Catholic beliefs by sharing my version of the Gospel with my children and my friends, and by living my life in love of God and in obedience to Him.
Certainly, listening to James White in such informal situations would have some tendency to precondition an anti-Catholic attitude.
A further question is whether this conversion story is "newsworthy." I think it is. Diverse conversion stories are useful because, frankly, they are at the sword point of faith. Tim Drake's book "There We Stood" did more to teach me about the contours of the debate over justification by faith than any number of apologetics briefs because those converts were wrestling with real issues and had to own the answer. Bill Cork's story is likewise noteworthy for the same reasons. [In all of these stories, I find it interesting that there is not a trace of bitterness or resentment toward the prior denomination. I have yet to hear a Protestant convert to Catholicism call his previous church "the whore of Babylon" or aligned with the "anti-Christ." Certainly, they will say the prior church was wrong, but they don't say it was wilfully evil or malicious. Am I wrong here? And, if not, why is that the case?]
I certainly didn't notice any smug shots at James White. On which point, let me add that our faith - anyone's faith - is not dependent on any person's conversion. St. Augustine ran the gamut of faiths during his lifetime. He knew that he couldn't guarantee that, although today he was Catholic, tomorrow he would not be somewhere else. All he could do was pray for grace because justification is by God's grace, not our own. Even so with Mrs. Bonds.
On the other hand, the worst bit of anti-James White polemics comes from James White himself. Here is James White's response to his sister's conversion story. Read it and tell me if it is not a most graceless document. From his initial shots at "Rome" and the "Roman system" to referring to his sister as "Mrs. Bonds," if any single document would convince me to avoid the Reformed church this is it. [By the way, is White deliberately trying to reinvent all of the cliches of the Thirty Years War?] I particularly found his ad hominem attacks on her mental stability - for the last twenty years she has converted four times and is prone to "emotionalism" - to be unworthy of anyone who claims an adherence to logic and reasoned argument. Her gracious reply wins the point.
It may be hard to believe this in this context, but I am not a partisan. I am professionally interested in ethos, logos and pathos as elements of persuasion. I find those elements singularly lacking in James White's response. He could have done so much more with a simple statement that he wished his sister well, that this was a private matter, and that his sister was not at this time receptive to his arguments. In short, if he had had the wisdom of a certain unnamed Bishop in Northern Africa in the Fourth Century, he would have remembered the following:
Thou gavest her then another answer, by a Priest of Thine, a certain Bishop brought up in Thy Church, and well studied in Thy books. Whom when this woman had entreated to vouchsafe to converse with me, refute my errors, unteach me ill things, and teach me good things (for this he was wont to do, when he found persons fitted to receive it), he refused, wisely, as I afterwards perceived. For he answered, that I was yet unteachable, being puffed up with the novelty of that heresy, and had already perplexed divers unskilful persons with captious questions, as she had told him: "but let him alone a while" (saith he)....
Advantage, Augustine across a span of one thousand six hundred years. [ You can learn something from the lives of our elder Brothers and Sisters who are still members of the Church and part of the Communion of Saints.]
But this kind of approach would have required White to demonstrate all three of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which may be difficult to do when your focus is only on faith.
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