Project Gutenberg 2025-06-15 Public domain in the USA. 248 Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) 1874 1936 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Gilbert K. (Gilbert Keith) Belloc, Hilaire 1870 1953 Belloc, Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc, H. 26020535 The Catholic Church and conversion $aNew York :$bThe Macmillan Company, $c1926. The Calvert series Tim Lindell, Matthew Everett and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) "The Catholic Church and conversion" by G. K. Chesterton is a religious apologetic treatise written in the early 20th century. It contends that Catholicism appears in the modern world as a fresh, disruptive reality rather than a mere survival, and examines conversion as the Church’s distinctive mark. Chesterton clears away popular anti-Catholic myths, contrasts national loyalties with the Church’s universal claim, and maps the inner journey from curiosity to resistance to assent. The opening of the treatise begins with an editor’s note stressing how converts, coming from every sort of background and by innumerable paths, powerfully witness to the Faith’s reality. Chesterton then argues that Catholicism functions today like a “new religion,” a living force that attracts where other traditions have grown stale; the Church’s true stamp is conversion, not mere tradition. He dismisses stock slanders (about Scripture, priests, and Jesuits), contrasts narrow patriotism with the Church’s prior and wider human solidarity, and identifies the real hurdles as fear of the Faith’s demanding virtues—especially the honesty and responsibility of confession—rather than the vices others allege. He outlines three stages of conversion (defending the Church from injustice, discovering its ideas, then trying to flee the final step) and finally flips the perspective: the Church is not one sect among many but the vast cathedral that contains them, while modern movements are partial exaggerations of Catholic truths; conversion, he insists, enlarges thought and freedom rather than confining them. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/catholicchurchco0000ches/page/n5/mode/2up 20220120005940chesterton 1926 US Reading ease score: 62.3 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. en Conversion -- Catholic Church BX Text Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches Category: Religion/Spirituality 178528 2025-07-30T07:32:31.449575 text/html 153727 2025-06-15T04:52:36 text/html 257367 2025-07-30T07:32:35.186535 application/epub+zip 259290 2025-07-30T07:32:32.594552 application/epub+zip 135633 2025-07-30T07:32:31.988562 application/epub+zip 468239 2025-07-30T07:32:37.417511 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 447790 2025-07-30T07:32:34.761543 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 163744 2025-07-30T07:32:31.208585 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 143774 2025-06-15T04:52:36 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 14841 2025-07-30T07:32:37.570550 application/rdf+xml 9805 2025-07-30T07:32:32.230538 image/jpeg 1853 2025-07-30T07:32:32.109539 image/jpeg 495400 2025-07-30T07:32:31.470608 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia en.wikipedia