The discovery that there was Evil loose in the world was a great shock to me. How could God, I asked myself, if he is God, permit such wickedness?
At the time, I was troubled by the recurrent thought that the universe was mad. In my darkest moments during the abortion campaign, it seemed to me that I was simply flotsam in an endless sea of chance and happenstance. I could discern no governing intelligence, no larger pattern of meaning, no ultimate purpose to life—only a world of blind brutality and casual viciousness without end. So be it. Nor did it help that I was behaving as though I was firmly in the camp of the atheists, daily living out the bedlam of their beliefs. Like them, I ate, drank, fornicated, and made merry. It all made it that much harder to avoid the conviction that tomorrow, like the poor naked godless apes that the atheists imagined us to be, we would all fall stone dead.
And yet from the time I was a boy I had felt the tug of something infinitely greater than myself. Now it urged me onward, prompting me to consider whether there might exist a countervailing good to the evil I had witnessed.
Pro-Life Agnostic
The words "pro-life" set off alarm bells in my head. I had been taught at Stanford that pro-lifers were all fetus-loving fanatics who were only too ready to burn down abortion clinics and assault abortionists. Such slanders nearly kept me from accepting Father Marx’ invitation.
What changed my mind was a visit to the National Organization of Women. I had convinced myself that the news that millions of their sisters in China were being forcibly aborted and sterilized would finally be received with the gravity and determination that such outrages deserved. After all, women in China were being denied what NOW leaders regularly declared was the most sacrosanct right of all women, their right to choose. I met with two senior leaders and shared the horrors I had witnessed. The more senior of the two declared with an ineffable rectitude in her voice that will stay with me forever, "I’m personally opposed to forced abortion. But China does have a population problem." And that was that.
I resolved to speak at Fr. Marx’s conference, pro-life or no. Around this time I stumbled upon the work of Thomas Aquinas, which for me was something akin to finding the Dead Sea scrolls. For just as the scrolls demonstrated the authenticity of the Scriptures, so did the Summa teach me the validity of reasoning one’s way to the Truth, which is God. In reading Aquinas the scales fell from my eyes. Here was a philosophical edifice that not only encompassed all of creation, but also reached up to the very heavens, including proofs for the existence of God.
The End of the String
I was insensible to these prayers floating heavenward, and she had the good sense not to tell me.
Then came the day we were walking across the plaza in front of the old Spanish mission church in San Luis Obispo, California. Suddenly the bells began to peal, summoning one and all to Mass. It turned out that they were pealing for me as well, for Vera suggested, in that gentle, loving way of hers, that we go to services together. I agreed to attend my first Mass.
It wasn’t until the fall of 1990, after we had resettled in Southern California, that I was finally able to embark upon the nine-month course that would lead to my entry into the Church.
On Easter Sunday 1991, I came into full communion with the Catholic Church. It was a glorious spring day, as I recall, but there was no less glory in the tabernacle of my heart, for I received the great grace of Holy Communion with our Lord for the first time.
And there were years of pro-life work with Fr. Marx that would take us to six continents. But this time did perhaps mark the end of the beginning, a beginning that dated back to March 1980, when I firmly g.asped the golden string for the first time. In the meantime I journey on, determined to keep rolling it up into a ball until I arrive safely at the gate of the heavenly Jerusalem. Home at last.