27 Jun 2012
Leah Libresco has caused something of a stir in the US. Most of us in Ireland and England probably never heard of her, but she’s all over CNN at the moment. In the course of her regular atheist blog, ‘Unequally Yoked: a geeky atheist picks fights with her Catholic boyfriend,’ Libresco announced that she is in the process of becoming Catholic. For Libresco this journey of faith has been about finding one’s moral compass and exploring questions of morality.
“I had one thing that I was most certain of, which is that morality is something we have a duty to,” Libresco told CNN in an interview this week, a small cross dangling from her neck. “And it is external from us. And when push came to shove, that is the belief I wouldn’t let go of. And that is something I can’t prove.” “There was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth,” Libresco wrote about Catholicism in her conversion announcement post, which has been shared over 18,000 times on Facebook.
Such a road to Damascus experience has been equally lauded by churches and pilloried by atheists. For some this is an opportunity to crow about the unassailable truth found in religion in general and Catholicism in particular. For others it marks a phase or an illogical shift into the world of self delusion.
For ourselves though it represents a reminder of the richness of the tradition we have in the Church and, most importantly, the compassion of Christ in reaching out to all people. This mustn’t be simply a case of one-upmanship, because I suspect that the number of Christians becoming atheists is greater than the reverse. We need to be able to enter into reasoned and faithful dialogue with others. Above all we need to follow Peter’s command to be “prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have within in you ( 1 Peter 3:15 ).” It’s more about spreading Good News than winning converts. Above all it’s about helping others discover the vocation that God has for each one of us.
Additional reporting available from CNN