From the "Confessions" to Conversion: Elizabeth Breunig's path to Catholicism
This week’s podcast features Elizabeth Bruenig, a contributing writer for America. Her recent article is called “How Augustine's Confessions and left politics inspired my conversion to Catholicism.”
“I was always interested in Christianity. Even as a kid I was active in my church,” Bruenig said. But what was lacking in her Protestant upbringing was the “interpretive tradition that accompanies Scripture.” This desire for theological conversation was one reason Bruenig later converted to Catholicism.
Bruenig began reading the works of St. Augustine at university. “I was reading Confessions and I liked his thinking about how God permeates the world, like light through water.”
Modern scriptural interpretation presented Breunig with a problem. “There are blinders on us that we can’t see. We think about words in a particular way. We think about people, about the self, in a particular way because we happen to be liberal subjects born after the Enlightenment,” she said. “That’s going to transform how you think about the world.”