Late last year I converted to Catholicism out of a firm belief in its truth. As such, I will below outline the logical basis for this conclusion.

Introduction

But first, a disclaimer: I only seriously began considering this field two years ago and have no particular expertise in Christian or Catholic apologetics. In evaluating the truth claims of Catholicism, as opposed to this post, it would be more instructive to read the works of those who have studied this field for decades. To this end, at the bottom of the post, I will list those books that tangentially influenced my conversion; directly influenced my conversion; and provided spiritual as well as intellectual guidance during the conversion and immediate aftermath.

This want of expert knowledge is why in parts below, rather than bungling intricate theological concepts, I simply refer to the works of expert authors for a more comprehensive explanation. This is only a personal account of what convinced a recent convert; by no means is it a claimed authority on all the good reasons in support of Catholic truth.

Also and to be sure, unaided reason is insufficient by itself for inducing a conversion. Rather, to accept the succeeding arguments, at least two preconditions must be fulfilled. The first of these is an open heart; the second, an understanding that Catholicism (or religious belief more generally) can bring tangible life benefits. Absent the fulfillment of these conditions in any atheist reader, the below arguments will be most certainly dismissed. 

Overview

There are three grounds on which I came to believe in the truth of Catholicism. These include:

1. There exists a monotheistic God who is the ultimate cause of all things.

2. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Christianity is true.

3. Catholicism is the true expression of Christianity.

Below, I will set out the main points in support of these three grounds. It is submitted that these points, considered *cumulatively*, prove the truth of each ground beyond reasonable doubt. Meaning, that when all of the points under each respective ground are considered together, their collective explanatory value renders each ground true. From the fulfillment of grounds 1, 2 and 3, logical necessity dictates Catholicism to be the truth.

Ground one: There exists a monotheistic God who is the ultimate cause of all things

1. The Five Ways:

Set out by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, the Five Ways demonstrate the philosophical necessity of God’s existence. From a personal perspective, the First Way (from motion) and the Third Way (from the contingency of the world) were most persuasive. However, any one of the Five Ways serve as ample proof for the existence of God.

For a fitting explanation of why these arguments remain as true today as in the 13th century, I would refer to A Beginner’s Guide to Aquinas and The Last Superstition, both by Edward Feser.

2. The natural immorality of the human soul:

By way of reason, St. Thomas Aquinas was also able to establish the natural immortality of the human soul. The soul possessed this natural immortality, argued Aquinas, because the human intellect and will were immaterial–they could not be entirely accounted for in material terms. Given this, when we die, our souls persist through the destruction of our bodies, facilitating a transition into eternal life.

The immortality of the human soul was crucial in practically understanding part of how, after physical death, we continue on with existence–be it into heaven, hell, or purgatory.

For an explanation of why the human intellect and will are immaterial, again, I would refer to A Beginner’s Guide to Aquinas and The Last Superstition.

3. A wisdom beyond physical facts:

From human existential fears can be drawn a certain ‘wisdom beyond physical facts’, an intuitive grasp of our immortality. As I wrote back in November 2019:

Fear of death as we have found out, cannot be comforted by liberal ideology, utilitarian decision making or medicine. Absent religious influence, the fact that people resolve concerns over death by simply avoiding the subject, suggests our annihilation is an intrinsically unacceptable end… So, perhaps there is a reason death–at the personal level–is viewed as incomprehensible and causes humans unique and unceasing despair. Namely, the truth about physical death is far more consonant with our intuitively known nature. The destruction of our bodies does not mean the destruction of our souls: we continue beyond this life, whether consciously understood or not.

It is worth adding that in these existential fears, humans stand alone among all animals. The most plausible explanation of this being, that we are unique in having existential fears because we are unique in having immortal souls and eternal destinies.

4. Materialism is insufficient:

As outlined in March 2020, liberalism and its close corollary in materialism cannot satisfy the full range of human needs. It is clear that we need to attach ourselves to transcendental causes; whenever fulfillment is sought through material means such as comforts or base pleasures, we quickly grow demoralised.

The inadequacy of materialism shows that when we try to live without God and simply for ourselves, we fail before sinking into unhappiness, despair, and nihilism. This outcome arises because when the true purpose of life is ignored–to know, love and serve God so we can be happy with Him forever in the next world–it is impossible to find a satisfactory substitute.

5. Secularism fails the most basic test:

The most basic welfare of any human society is its ability to sustain itself, in demographic terms. Yet, as wrote Patrick Buchanan in the Death of the West, “wherever secularism triumphs, populations begin to shrink and die.”

These below replacement birth rates across the post-Christian West belie the popular notion of “living your best life.” For without God, we are not even able to live. When people turn away from faith, God uses this problem of survival to demonstrate His practical necessity, a further indication of His existence.

6. Evolution cannot explain the nature of human life:

The idea of evolution explaining away everything is the most common cited excuse for disbelieving in God. So this case goes: humans have evolved from single-celled organisms, accordingly, God is not needed to explain why we or our world exists.

Now the principles of variation and natural selection set out by Charles Darwin, it is true, form a rational basis for understanding how some evolution–especially the accumulation and preservation of adaptations–likely transpired.

However, as it applies to the most important of animals, humans, Darwinism has virtually no explanatory value. Darwinism is, in the words of David Stove, “a ridiculous slander on human beings.”

This assessment holds true for many reasons. But most notably, it is because the fundamental and defining aspects of human behaviour are absolutely incompatible with a Darwinian conception of life; thus contradicting the dictum of Darwin that “any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.” These aspects of human behaviour–completely inexplicable in Darwinian theory–include altruism, heroism, honour, our love of truth, our need for communication, hospitals, the military, the state itself, and our aspirations to intellectual activity. In short, all the higher parts of human nature are utterly inconsistent with our being subjected to and emerging from a Darwinian process of selection.

For a more thorough explanation of these issues with evolution, as regards humans, I would refer to Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove.

7. Humans are the representatives of God on Earth:

Chapter 1:27-28, 31 of Genesis provides:

And God created man in his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth”… And God saw all the things he had made, and they were very good (my emphasis).

Have these divine instructions not been reflected in the conduct of human life, from all recorded history up until the present? In establishing our rule over the Earth, there has been no intelligent competitor to mankind. This is plainly because humans have been granted a certain dominion over the Earth, to govern it as God’s representative.

8. The world is not an accident:

When considering its unity and extraordinary complexities, our world cannot possibly be an accident–bereft of any founding intentionality. In understanding this, find extracted below an extended passage from page 11 of Lessons in the Catholic Faith, approved by Rev. Edward B. Brueggeman, S.J.:

As you are walking, suppose that you find a watch on the sidewalk. You pick it up and look at it. You see that it gives you the correct time. You open it up and look at the wheels and springs which keep the watch running. You see that dozens of tiny cogs, wheels and springs are set up very accurately so that one wheel moves the other, so that one spring acts on another spring, so that one cog rotates another. What a marvelous and complicated piece of machinery. You know that you would not dare to take it all apart unless you knew how to repair watches. You know that you could not possibly put all the hundreds of pieces back together so that the watch would tell time again.

Imagine, that as you are thinking of all of this, a friend comes up and says to you: “Do you know who made that watch?” You might say: “I don’t know his name. But I do know that it was someone who knew a lot more about watches than I do. He had a fine mind to be able to arrange hundreds of tiny pieces together, so that they give the correct time of the day. It took a lot of intelligence, planning and labor to plan that watch.” Your friend looks at you and scoffs: “Why that watch made itself. No one planned it or designed it. No one made it. It just happened that way; the wheels and cogs came together by themselves.” You would tell your friend that he was joking. How could any sane man talk such nonsense. Only a fool would say that the watch had no maker (my emphasis).

The author goes on to describe:

• the rotation speed of the earth (and its unfailing regularity);
• the Earth’s distance from the sun; and
• the atmospheric conditions enabling the consumption of oxygen,

all of which are absolutely necessary for human life to be possible. The author then concludes:

As you can see, the watch is a simple toy compared to our world. Yet no one would admit that the watch did not have a maker. Then how can anyone say the order and harmony of the world in which we live is a mere accident–that the earth, the sun and the moon have no Maker. Common sense tells you that if a watch requires a maker, a world that is billions of times larger and more complicated must have a Maker… The Maker of our universe, and the one who preserves the order and harmony of the universe, is God (my emphasis).

Ground two: Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Christianity is true

1. Christianity relies on a specific miracle:

Christianity is unique among all religions, definitively hinging on a specific, historic and objective miracle. Which is, after he asserted to be God and was crucified on claims of Jewish heresy, did Jesus Christ rise from the dead? Christianity rises or falls on the answer to that question; in 1 Corinthians 15:14, St. Paul says as much:

And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain: and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have given testimony against God, that he hath raised up Christ, whom he hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again.

As a religion, the truth of Christianity is readily capable of comprehension. If Jesus Christ rose from the dead–an event unequivocally pointing to divine intervention–then He is in fact the Son of God. And if He is the Son of God, necessarily, everything He said was true and remains so to this day.

2. Jesus Christ rose from the dead:

Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead, vindicating his divine assertions to be the Son of God. As described by William Lane Craig on page 360 of a Reasonable Faith, the historical basis for this event proceeds as follows:

The inductive grounds for the inference of this explanation (the Resurrection) consist primarily in the evidence of three independently established facts: (1) the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers on the first day of the week following his crucifixion, (2) various individuals and groups thereafter experienced on different occasions and under varying circumstances appearances of Jesus alive, and (3) the first disciples came sincerely to believe in Jesus’ resurrection in the absence of sufficient antecedent historical influences from either Judaism or pagan religions.

For the full explanation, I would obviously refer to a Reasonable Faith, a book broadly held to comprise the best case yet on the historicity of the Resurrection.

3. The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit:

The history of the Jewish people very much supports the Christian hope. They were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ: as Pontius Pilate washed his hands on delivering the verdict that He be crucified, the Jews responded by declaring: “His blood be upon us and our children” (Matthew 27:25).

By consequence of their rejecting God in the worst conceivable way, the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit emerged, which has been transmitted through all generations from the Crucifixion up until the present. As a group, the Jews have been forsaken by God, a state which will persist so long as they continue in their rejection of Christ. The consequences of this desolation can be seen from the succeeding examples:

1. The destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD, in accord with the prophecy of Christ (Matthew 25:1-22). Then, in the 4th century attempt by Julian the Apostate to rebuild the Temple, accounts are unanimous in describing fire as emerging from the building source, causing this reconstruction to be called off. For instance, Ammianus Marcellinus, Julian’s pagan biographer wrote that “frightful balls of flame kept bursting forth near the foundations of the Temple.” This historical record is palpably demonstrative of a divine wrath directed at the people who killed Jesus Christ.

2. Since the Crucifixion, Jews have constantly sought to bring about a heaven on Earth through revolutionary, utopian politics. These efforts have ultimately been to no avail because temporal glory is fleeting; nations, peoples and ideologies which come into being must also go out of existence.

3. Jewish identity has morphed into the antithesis of Christ and by consequence, the antithesis of reason. This is seen in the Jewish phenomenon of ‘Chutzpah’, by which excessive confidence brings about an absence of breaks in their behaviour. Such Chutzpah invariably leads to disaster when overextensions of Jewish influence invoke native backlashes, including but not limited to their expulsion from 109 different locations. To give one example of this Chutzpah, in our era of unparalleled Jewish hegemony and during his visits to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu literally dumps suitcases of dirty laundry on American officials. This is exactly the type of arrogant, irrational behaviour which has always preceded disaster for the Jewish people. In behaving this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu echoes the words of Christ: “For judgement I am come into this world that they who see not may see; and they who see may become blind” (John 9:39).

4. Because the Jews rejected the true messiah who had been keenly anticipated, since the time of Christ, they have proceeded to follow a score of false prophets. These have included Simon Bar Kokhba (2nd century), Sabbatai Zevi (17th century), Napoleon (19th century), and various others. In response to this string of false messiahs, many Jews abandoned their religious expectations, instead appointing themselves their own messiah through Zionism and a belief in racial superiority.

For a more thorough explanation of the above, I would refer to the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit by E. Michael Jones.

4. The Bible is the truth:

In a large part, the Old and New Testament themselves bear witness to the truth of Christianity. Regarding our sense of conscience; the role of suffering; the need for humility, honesty, charity; the natural hierarchy between the genders; and countless other matters–the Bible is an unparalleled work of truth in explaining the true nature of and reasons for the human condition.

It being filled with such truths, the Bible vindicates the Christian claim that we have identified the one true God, who exists in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost–whose divine inspiration is contained therein.

To gain a better understanding of these timeless truths, obviously, I would refer to the Douay Rheims Holy Bible.

5. The context in which Jesus Christ came:

Assuming there was a God, if He were to come down to Earth, you would expect there to be a lengthy tradition to appropriately pave the way for His coming.

This is the case with Christianity, as the origins of the Old Testament and its recorded events date back many thousands of years. The Old Testament also contains a countless number of figures that found their fulfillment in the New Testament, demonstrating a continuity in the Christian religion.

If God were to come down to Earth, moreover, you would expect there to be clear signs given in advance. So that when such signs were fulfilled, we could accurately discern His coming.

As above, this is precisely what occurred in the earthly life of Jesus Christ. He fulfilled a countless score of prophecies set out in the Old Testament, to demonstrate He was the messiah whom God had promised.

For a better understanding of the context in which Jesus Christ came, again, I would refer to the Douay Rheims Holy Bible.

6. The existence of evil:

(Warning: some of the following links contain distressing images and material). There exists true, objective evil in the world. Some prominent examples of this include:

• The Franklin scandal of the 1980’s, in which attempts to investigate satanic rituals and child trafficking at the highest level of the US government were thwarted by the Deep State.

• The Finders, a CIA front group organisation involved in child trafficking and satanic rituals during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

• In more recent times, the dark practices, connections and inexplicable ‘suicide’ of Jeffrey Epstein–which the mainstream media patently avoided investigating or bringing attention to.

• The annual Bohemian Grove gathering, in which global leaders of finance, politics, culture, and media gather to perform ancient occult rituals before a giant statue–which is widely regarded to represent the demon Moloch. Alex Jones was able to record a documentary containing (albeit poor quality) footage of these rituals. The opening for episode 8, season 5 in House of Cards also makes reference to Bohemian Grove–through the actor of Kevin Spacey, who in his own life, is well connected to the global child trafficking elite.

• The inversion agenda, which has upended virtually all good and natural pre-existing notions of race, sex, gender, family, and beauty.

• The overbearing multitude of references to ‘666’: the number of the beast. See here, here, here, and here for some recent instances of this in relation to both coronavirus and abortion.

• The horrifying satanic curses intended for the death of President Trump when he contracted coronavirus in October 2020. (Which, the mainstream media saw no problem with or need to raise awareness of).

• The reality of demonic influence arising from occult practices, such as seance rooms and Ouija boards. (For more on this subject, see the ‘John Dee’ chapter in the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit).

• Lil’ Wayne’s ‘Love me’, a music video completely littered with satanic imagery. In Lil’ Wayne’s own words, “these h*** love me like Satan.”

• The inexhaustible lies of the mainstream media and Big Tech on all issues. But perhaps most strikingly, their role in facilitating the US election coup of 2020.

From the existence of evil, there are two crucial corollaries which reinforce the truth of Christianity.

In the first place, if there is true evil, there must be true good in order to oppose it: from which our sense of evil derives and from which evil draws its driving purpose. And who do the forces of darkness most ardently oppose? Christ, as witnessed by their vicious attacks on Him and His followers–which demonstrate He is the source of all goodness.

In the second place, the presence of evil in the world vindicates the Christian position on the matter; conversely, many atheists deny that objective evil even exists.

7. The sexual revolution and its consequences:

Fifty years or so on from the sexual revolution, the practices emanating from it–casual and premarital sex, contraception, abortion–are indicative of our rebelling against a divinely ordained natural law. This is evidenced by the abhorrent outcomes flowing from these practices, including:

• The positive correlation between premarital sexual partners and broken families.

• The reality of contemporary life growing more ennobled and undignified. In a free sexual marketplace, people become viscerally debased down to their animal nature in the proper sense of that term.

Anyone in Perth unsure or doubtful of these problems attending the sexual revolution, should visit the Fremantle Magistrates Court or King Edward Memorial Hospital. By observing the general quality of people in these places, this point will become all the clearer.

8. Pascal’s wager:

Even in the absence of all the aforementioned arguments accounting for God and Christianity, it would remain rational to hold the Christian faith. That is, by operation of Pascal’s wager, which pertains to the differing practical consequences of being wrong about believing and disbelieving.

The believer who is wrong about Christianity loses relatively nothing at death. He lived a fulfilling, honourable Christian life; albeit constricted in the gratification of certain hedonistic pleasures. If Christianity is false, he ceases to exist: he simply dies before being forgotten along with everyone else.

The unbeliever who is wrong about Christianity, however, loses everything at death. If he actively rejects God and is mistaken, he will be cast into eternal damnation: a final state from which there can be no appeal, respite or consolation.

On these practical grounds, it is rational and sensible to accept the Christian faith; it is irrational and foolish to reject the Christian faith.

As summarised by William Lane Craig on page 68 of a Reasonable Faith,

For given the human predicament of being cast into existence and facing either eternal annihilation or eternal wrath, the only reasonable course of action is to believe in God: “for if you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”

Ground three: Catholicism is the true expression of Christianity

1. The true Christian faith must have authority:

As outlined by Russell Kirk on pages 246-7 of The Conservative Mind,

Protestantism descends through three states: first, the subjection of religion to the charge of the civil government; second, the rejection of the authority of the temporal government; third, individualism, which “leaves religion entirely to the control of the individual, who selects his own creed, or makes a creed to suit himself, devises his own worship and self-discipline, and submits to no restraints but such as are self-imposed.” When this last stage is reached, disintegration of the religious spirit is imminent; for man is not sufficient unto himself, reason unaided cannot sustain faith, and Authority is required to preserve Christianity from degenerating into a congeries of fanatic sects and egotistical professions. Under Protestantism, the sect governs religion, rather than submitting to governance; the congregation bully their ministers and insist upon palatable sermons, flattering to their vanity; Protestantism cannot sustain popular liberty because “it is itself subject to popular control, and must follow in all things the modern will, passion, interest, prejudice, or caprice” (my emphasis).

The hundreds of modern Christian sects bear witness to the above, including the 150 Lutheran Churches. Evidently, authority is necessary to sustain religious dogma; or else the eternal, unchanging truths about God will be sacrificed to the passing whims and sensibilities of men.

Because of this problem, if we are to claim God left us without an authority to protect, interpret and explain the sacred deposit of faith handed down by the Apostles–we would be effectively accusing God of being unreasonable. As God is the source of all wisdom and truth, He cannot have been unreasonable. Therefore, He must have established an institutional authority for the advancement of His faith on the Earth.

This point is only underscored when one considers the parables in which Jesus Christ commonly spoke. Simply leaving these parables for each individual to privately interpret would inevitably result in chaos–as has ensued since the Reformation.

2. The Catholic Church was instituted by Jesus Christ:

In Matthew 16:18-19, after Simon-Peter confessed the divinity of Jesus Christ, he was rewarded by appointment as leader of the new Church:

Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven (my emphasis).

Later in Luke 22:31, Jesus assures Peter:

Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.

Then, after the Resurrection in John 21:16-18, Jesus says to Peter:

Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He said to him: yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my lambs… He said to him: Feed my sheep.

Finally, in Matthew 28:19, Jesus instructs the Apostles:

Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (my emphasis).

While many other related quotes could be added from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, these are sufficient to demonstrate:

• Jesus Christ is establishing a single Church–he speaks of “my Church,” not “my Churches.”

• Because it was established by Jesus Christ, the true Church must have existed from the first century.

• The Church must have powers to make laws for the Christian community, as “binding and loosing” referred to pre-existing rabbinical terms which meant forbidding and permitting.

• The true Church must be built in a special way on the spiritual supremacy of Peter. For after the Apostles, the Church was to continue the evangelist mission until the end of time, with the successor of Peter to serve as its visible head on earth.

• The true Church must be universal, as Jesus instructs the Apostles to teach “all nations.”

The Catholic Church is the only Church which fulfills all of the above criteria. For this reason, it is the true Church of and was founded by Jesus Christ.

3. The gates of hell have not prevailed against it:

The Catholic Church has existed for more than 2000 years, persisting through challenges from without, challenges from within, and heretical sects; despite the rise and fall of countless empires, nations and religions during this time. No other contemporary institution has survived for so long.

All the while, the Church has preserved the same deposit of faith initially handed down by the Apostles. (In terms of the continuity between the teaching of the Apostles and the Catholic Church, I would refer to The Faith of Our Fathers by James Cardinal Gibbons).

This succession of the Catholic Church for over 2000 years, in a literal and doctrinal sense, vindicates the above cited words of Jesus Christ: the “gates of hell” cannot prevail against His Church.

4. The Catholic Church defined the books of Scripture:

In the period immediately after Christ, the books now composing the New Testament were written. Yet during this period, various other books were also penned by heretics, which some people took to be the word of God.

This problem was not fully resolved until the Council of Rome in 382. At this time, Pope Damasus I defined the current books of the Old and New Testament, declaring what constituted the true Scripture and word of God. Much later, at the Council of Trent and in response to the Reformation, these books of the Old and New Testament were infallibly affirmed. However, the important point is this: during the 4th century, the Catholic Church discerned the true Scripture from the false Scripture, books which have since gone out of existence.

In this process, for it to have correctly discerned the books of true Scripture, the Catholic Church *must* have been guided by the Holy Ghost. This is the only available conclusion to draw, if we are to have complete confidence in the existing Scripture comprising the true word of God.

As put by St Augustine,

Indeed, I would not believe in the gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.

If the Catholic Church was guided by the Holy Ghost in authoritatively defining the books of true Scripture, there is no reason to believe that God would cease protecting His Church from error until the end of time.

5. Sola Scriptura is a false teaching:

Catholicism is often criticised by the doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura’, which claims the source of Christian revelation must exclusively come from Scripture.

But, as pointed out on page 127 of The Bible is a Catholic Book, there are no such verses in the New Testament establishing this doctrine, which would have to make clear that

“We apostles have agreed to ensure that everything authoritative gets written down in Scripture, so once we are gone, don’t treat anything else as authoritative.”

On the contrary, in 2 Thessalonians 15, St. Paul refers to the importance of holding onto traditions “which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle.”

Even more to the point, tradition predates Scripture. As explained by Archbishop Lefebvre on page 126 of Open Letter to Confused Catholics:

In order to break down Tradition they confront it with Holy Scripture, after the manner of the Protestants, with the assertion that the Gospel is the only book that counts. But Tradition came before the Gospel! Although the Synoptic Gospels were not written nearly as late as some would have us believe, a number of years had passed before the Four Evangelists had completed their writing; but the Church already existed, Pentecost had taken place and brought numerous conversions, three thousand on the very day the Apostles came out of the Upper Room. What did they believe just at that moment? How was Revelation transmitted if not by oral tradition? One cannot subordinate Tradition to Holy Scripture, still less reject it.

6. The human need for truth:

The coronavirus pandemic has manifested our inherent disposition towards truth and ultimate authority. Despite the collapse of religious belief, people continue to place complete trust in perceived truths and sources of authority higher than their subjective selves. But rather than a priest as the source, this authority is now sought out from the mainstream media, the trending page on Twitter, along with compliant politicians and medical ‘experts’.

While this phenomenon is not an argument directly in favour of Catholicism, it does imply the truth is real and can be found in something specific. This specific truth, in my submission, exists in the Catholic faith.

Book list

1. Tangential influences on my conversion:

• How the Reformation Happened by Hilaire Belloc.
• Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones.
• The Catholic Church and Conversion by G.K Chesterton.
• The Death of the West by Patrick Buchanan.
• The True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch.
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen.

2. Direct influences on my conversion:

• A Beginner’s Guide to Aquinas by Edward Feser.
• A Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig.
• The Bible is a Catholic Book by Jimmy Akin.
• The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.
• The Douay-Rheims Holy Bible.
• The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit by E. Michael Jones.
• The Last Superstition by Edward Feser.

3. Further intellectual and spiritual sources of guidance:

• A Song for Nagasaki: Scientist, Convert, Survivor of the Atomic Bomb by Paul Glynn.
• Lessons in the Catholic Faith, approved by Rev. Edward B Brueggeman, S.J.
• Light and Peace: Instructions For Devout Souls to Dispel Their Doubts and Allay Their Fears by R.P. Quadrupani.
• My Way of Life: Pocket Edition of St. Thomas: The Summa Simplified for Everyone by Walter Farrell, O.P., S.T.M and Martin J. Healy, S.T.D.
• Open Letter to Confused Catholics by Archbishop Lefebvre.
• The Dogma of Hell by F.X. Schouppe S.J.
• The Faith of Our Fathers by James Cardinal Gibbons.
• With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek. S.J.