Scott Hahn - Conversion To Catholicism

Conversion To Catholicism

Hahn started out as a Presbyterian minister and theologian with years of ministry experience in congregations of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America or PC(USA), and Professor of Theology at Chesapeake Theological Seminary.

As a young theologian, Scott Hahn was convinced that the Catholic Church was in error, and boasted of having converted some Catholics into embracing a purer Christianity. His conversion began when he and his wife became convinced that contraception was contrary to God's law. He was also bothered that the Catholic Church was the only Christian church tradition that upheld the ancient teaching of prohibiting contraception that Protestants abandoned in the 1930s. Hahn continued to study various issues relating to salvation, faith, and good works, as well as the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.

According to his book Rome Sweet Home, a key factor behind his conversion is his research on what he saw as the key to the Bible: the covenant. This is a sacred kinship bond that brought people into a family relationship. God established a series of covenants and the new covenant established by Jesus Christ is an establishment of a worldwide family. He believes that Jesus and the apostles used family based language to describe his work of salvation: God is Father, Christ is Son and the firstborn among brethren, heaven as a marriage feast, the Church is the spouse of God, Christians as children of God.

This new family, according to Hahn, is headed by Christ and the Pope is his "prime minister" to whom he has given the keys of the kingdom, a process that he believes is also present in the Old Testament. Hahn tries to show that the Catholic Church, whose head is called "Holy Father", is the worldwide family described by the Bible and that the Protestant doctrines of sola fide and sola scriptura are not biblical because they are not found in the Bible. In his view, the Bible stresses charity and works as necessary for saving faith (i.e., justification) and therefore salvation. He also points to the Church as "the pillar and the bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15 RSV).

Scott Hahn converted to Catholicism at Easter 1986 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Many people, using his wife's words, have started to call him "Luther in reverse", since a large number of Protestant pastors and Bible scholars have followed suit in converting to Catholicism.

Hahn's wife, Kimberly, had a similar conversion at a slightly later date, entering the Catholic Church at Easter 1990 in Joliet, Illinois. Rome Sweet Home describes their process of conversion together.

In Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace, he narrated the influence of Opus Dei in his conversion, and what made him feel that Opus Dei was his specific calling within the Catholic Church: (1) its members' devotion to the Bible, (2) its ecumenism, since Opus Dei was the first Catholic institution to welcome non-Catholics as cooperators, (3) the upright lives of its members, (4) they were ordinary people, who lived theology, (5) holy ambition: "a devout work ethic", (6) the practice of hospitality in answering his questions, (7) prayer: "They made time for intimate prayer every day."