The delicate email conversations with my fundamentalist Christian missionary friend in Mexico have concluded. The finding is:

Anti-Catholicism is the unacknowledged elephant in the protestant living room, hotly denied as all such elephants are who dwell in living rooms. Eventually, by feeding on that denial, these elephants become so enormous they explode, making denial no longer possible. As historic Christianity’s (Catholic) anti-Semitism elephant became so enormous by feeding on denial, the Holocaust became possible. Crucial to an understanding of the Church’s connection to that horror (and to the definition of conversion) is to recognize that it wasn’t the Church that caused it or played any part in it. But God bless our beloved Pius XII, and God bless John Paul II—who perceived the contribution of historic Christianity to the hatred of Jews that helped to make the horror possible—and begged forgiveness for the Church.

And that’s what conversion is. That’s the definition of the term. It’s the translation of metanoia, which means “a change of mind, repentance”.

And isn’t that exactly what he said? “Repent and be saved.” There is no conversion without repentance. The very meaning of the word makes it impossible.

To repent means to stop denying the truth. Recovering alcoholics say that sobriety can only begin when the alcoholic stops denying his addiction. Conversion can begin only when one stops denying the truth—when one stops lying—to oneself, to the world. Who is “the father of all lies”? Until one stops lying, one has not changed one’s allegiance, one has not confronted the truth and changed one’s mind.

I once knew a would-have-been convert who went through RCIA, but when she was told that she must go to confession before receiving the Eucharist, she withdrew. She could not accept that requirement, and fortunately, the priest would not let her enter the Church without it. He told her she was not “converted”. Now she’s an anti-Catholic protestant—though she denies it, of course. Only the Catholic Church has that requirement, she says, and she’s right.

To convert means to stop denying the truth, to look at it (him), to see him, and to acknowledge him. “Look on him whom you have pierced”. He is the Truth. Repent. That is the meaning of conversion. And just as my almost-converted friend said, that’s required only by the Catholic Church.

And today is the feast day of Sts Cyprian and Cornelius, saints from the third century. At today’s Mass, there were two quotes from them; I don’t remember which of the saints is responsible for which quotation:

“There is one God, one Christ, and one Chair of Peter.”

“He who has not the Church for his mother has not God for his father.”

And today the Holy Father arrives in Britain.