The Pull of Rome and the Promise of Grace

A member of your small group confesses, seemingly out of the blue, that he’s been attending Mass. Next, you hear a deacon wonder aloud if we really needed to break with Rome. Then a family member announces that she has “crossed the Tiber,” meaning she has converted to Roman Catholicism.

Such conversations seem to be happening with greater frequency in Protestant circles. But why?

Ask around, and you’ll get a dozen different answers: a hunger for apostolic authority, textured liturgy, historical rootedness, and tangible grace. Also, a distaste for consumerism, hyper-individualism, and a fragmented and culturally irrelevant church. It’s usually a pull and a push, and almost always a long time in the making.

As we consider the specific factors animating Romeward journeys, it’s helpful to understand the dynamics that motivate the process of conversion — in both directions.

Vortex of Vulnerability

Lewis Rambo, in his seminal work Understanding Religious Conversion, suggests that conversion begins with a destabilizing event. The crisis could be the loss of a loved one, career disappointment, cultural upheaval, or a sense that life no longer coheres. All it takes is one crisis to create “vulnerability,” an existential openness to a new way of living. Several arriving together, though, create an emotional and intellectual current (a vortex, in Rambo’s nomenclature), pulling one toward a new perception of reality.

A few years back, I enjoyed a public dialogue at Hillsdale College with a Roman Catholic scholar who had been raised evangelical Protestant. As a young man studying the classics, he saw a cleavage (or perhaps a yawning chasm) between the early church and the faith of his own congregation. For such a precocious young man, this was a genuine crisis that prompted his departure from Protestantism. His decision, however, wasn’t limited to his ecclesial angst. It unfolded gradually and involved a host of experiences that deepened his discontent and piqued his desire for what Rome offered.

Of course, this vortex works in both directions — conversion to Rome or from it. Consider my story. I was raised in an Italian Roman Catholic family and worked professionally in Catholic dioceses across the country. Growing up on Long Island, all my friends were Roman Catholic (or Jewish). Protestantism was foreign to me, and I had no interest in it. If you own a set of Big Bertha golf clubs, why bother with the imitation knockoffs? But then I had a crisis.

“This vortex works in both directions — conversion to Rome or from it.”

The story is long and complicated, but an illness brought me to my knees. I feared for my life and my soul. I lacked assurance — if I died, would I open my eyes to see God’s smile? It was then, suddenly, that several Protestant friends walked into my life, all with the same message: “By yourself, Chris, there’s no hope. Turn from your sin and embrace Christ alone for salvation, as the Savior who died for you, who rose, and who now lives.” I believed, and everything changed — including my church. And as with my Catholic friend at Hillsdale, all of this took time, unfolding through months of questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What can I trust?

Current Trends

Research today suggests more people are leaving the Roman Catholic Church than are joining it. Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, the latest one available, finds that for every convert Catholicism receives, roughly eight adults raised Catholic no longer identify as such, and about 15 percent of those raised Catholic now identify with a Protestant tradition. The data do not yet capture the reverse flow, that is, how many Protestants become Catholic. Several US dioceses have reported notable increases in adult converts since 2024, though it’s too early to know whether this represents a lasting shift.

To many, though, the dominant movement seems to be toward Rome, especially if you follow the issue online. Spend an evening on YouTube and you’ll find an entire ecosystem devoted to Catholic apologetics: conversion testimonies, debates, former evangelical pastors narrating how they crossed the Tiber. At eleven o’clock on a restless night, a young man searches for an answer about why there are so many denominations; the recommendation engine does the rest. The convert-testimony genre promotes the vortex, presenting religious migration as the natural way to resolve one’s discontent.

Watch enough of these testimonies and you begin to see a pattern. A frustration such as “interpretive vertigo” (thirty thousand denominations, your reading of Scripture against mine) comes up against Rome’s claim of magisterial authority. The anxiety that emerges from this vertigo meets the assertion of unbroken succession. Disenchantment meets kneelers and grace you can touch. The cumulative force of these vulnerabilities creates a discernibly Romeward movement.

Restless Heart

This brings me back to Hillsdale. My friend’s conversion was carried along by a current of concerns. So was mine. Both of us were drawn into the vortex, albeit in opposite directions, finding in our new traditions the solution for our personal angst.

For him, Rome answered in stone: The Vatican’s Via della Conciliazione (the “way of conciliation”) led to an embrace in the arms of Bernini’s colonnade around St. Peter’s Square. On the other hand, I found the Father of prodigals running to meet me with arms outstretched, not because I had earned it, but because his Son had died in my place. This was an utterly new understanding of God for me. I had always imagined God with his arms folded, tapping his toe, waiting for me to get my religious act together. But now I looked heavenward and received mercy.

This same gift animated the Reformers, each caught in his own vortex, each drawn not into the arms of an institution but into the arms of a gracious God. Consider Luther, poring over Romans in search of this mercy; Calvin, struck by what he called a “sudden conversion”; Vermigli, opening Scripture and finding the “greater light of God’s truth.” Each was driven by a different angst but led to the same cross.

The Father Who Runs

The Reformation recovered this blessed vortex of unmerited grace, and our tradition carries it still. The longings that lead one to Rome — apostolic authority, textured liturgy, historical rootedness, tangible grace — the Reformation heritage offers, along with the one thing no institution can manufacture: a Father who runs.

How can we serve our friends and loved ones on the threshold of Protestantism? More than a sharper apologetic, they need to encounter a living faith. When my own crisis arrived, a handful of friends surrounded me with this gift. They showed compassion and loved me enough to speak the truth. Indeed, this is our calling, to be trustworthy friends and guides who ask the question on which everything turns: Does the communion you are considering proclaim the gospel that alone can justify a sinner before God?

On this Reformation Day, the invitation remains: not to find the right communion, but to be found in Christ.