One reason for my hesitating so long before becoming a Catholic was my disappointment at some of the human elements I saw in the Catholic Church. In spite of the following letter from Mother Teresa I held back, and a number of years went by before I could make up my mind:
“You are to me like Nicodemus . . . ‘unless you become a little child . . .’ I am sure you will understand beautifully everything if you would only become a little child in God’s hands . . . The small difficulty you have regarding the Church is finite. Overcome the finite with the infinite . . .”
. . .
As Hilaire Belloc truly remarked, the Church must be in God’s hands because, seeing the people who have run it, it couldn’t possibly have gone on existing if there weren’t some help from above. I also felt unable to take completely seriously . . . the validity or permanence of any form of human authority . . . There is . . . some other process going on inside one, to do with faith which is really more important and more powerful. I can no more explain conversion intellectually than I can explain why one falls in love with someone whom one marries.. . . It was the Catholic Church’s firm stand against contraception and abortion which finally made me decide to become a Catholic. . . . The Church’s stand is absolutely correct. It is to its eternal honour that it opposed contraception, even if the opposition failed. I think, historically, people will say it was a very gallant effort to prevent a moral disaster.
