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CONVERSION

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TRADITION AND CONVERSION
IN MODERN ENGLISH
LITERATURE
    A NYONE WISHING TO UNDERSTAND the relationship between tradition and conversion is confronted at the very outset with an inescapable paradox. Tradition, of its very nature, requires the tacit acceptance by those in the present of the ideas, beliefs and customs of the past. Tradition seems to require conformity. Conversion, on the other hand, requires the conscious rejection of the ideas, beliefs and customs that have been tacitly accepted in the past in order to embrace the creed to which one is converting in the present. Conversion seems to require nonconformity. Yet, in spite of this apparent contradiction, tradition and conversion are far from mutually exclusive. On the contrary, and as we shall see, they are ultimately in harmony.
    A paradox, as G. K. Chesterton never tired of reminding us, is not simply a contradiction, but only an apparent contradiction signifying a deeper unity. At its deepest level, every conversion is not merely a rejection of a tradition to which one had previously subscribed but is, at the same time, the acceptance of another tradition that seems to make more sense than the one rejected. Conversion is, therefore, the acceptance of a tradition perceived as authentic in contradistinction to one perceived as false.
    This is not simply a question of semantics. Since the Reformation, the received tradition of the majority of people in non-Catholic countries has been at loggerheads with the authentic tradition of the Church. In consequence, every conversion to Catholicism is a conscious rejection of the traditions of the non-Catholic majority in favor of the traditions of a minority. It is the rejection of prevailing fashion in the name of providential faith. As such, and contrary to the assumptions of many “progressive” thinkers, authentic tradition’s relationship with the modern world is both radical and revolutionary. It is radical in the sense that it counters the accretions of post-Reformation tradition in order to remain in communion with the roots of Christendom, that is, the apostolic tradition of the Church. It is revolutionary in the sense that it seeks the repentance of post-Reformation society and its return to the faith of its fathers. All revolution, properly and radically understood, requires a return by definition. It is this understanding of the word that Chesterton must have had in mind when he wrote that evolution is what happens when everyone is asleep, whereas revolution is what happens when everyone is awake. Many so-called revolutions in the past have been, in reality, either iconoclastic revolts against the status quo or else violent reformations of it. Neither are revolutionary in the true sense of the word. True revolution requires a return to basic truths, a return to authentic tradition. This revolution, in individuals and societies alike, is normally called conversion. Thus, authentic tradition and conversion are seen to be in sublime harmony.
    Writing of the Victorians, Chesterton spoke of “the abrupt abyss of the things they do not know”. This “abrupt abyss” was the result of chronological snobbery, the assumption, at least implicitly, that the age in which the Victorians lived was more advanced and enlightened than any preceding era in history. With unquestioning faith in the concept of inexorable progress, the Victorians equated the wisdom of the ages with the superstition of the past. Thus, medievalism was mere barbarism, scholastic philosophy was dismissed as being little more than an obsession with counting angels on the point of a needle, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass was mere hocus-pocus.
    The poetic counterstance to this cold rationalism and its supercilious religious scepticism emerged several decades before the dawn of the Victorian era with the publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads , coedited by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In this ground-breaking