I just wonder what church he went back to, and what church Christ revealed to him would lead to his salvation. He didn't mention a specific one, only that he was raised Catholic. It's hard to tell which stories are true, but I can't say that there's anything noticeably against the faith in this one. I think it's a good story to listen to over and over to meditate on God's love, mercy, and justice.

Yeah, I was hesitant about posting it not being a conversion to the the one true faith in particular, but still a relevant topic especially these days, and a good thing for us to think about. I say take whatever good you can from things as long as you stay on track in the true faith.


What I like about the first one, and what's common in many conversion stories is how a person either starts by losing the faith they had or either way ends up rebuilding it from the ground up so they know why they believe what they believe, and not just what they were taught growing up. Ideally we should be taught the true faith from the start, and believe it, but these days it helps for each individual to be well grounded in a firm foundation that they built in an honest search for the truth. A foundation that stands on it's own in a way, unaffected by bias, and impervious to doubt and deceit as much as possible. Because many people lose the faith because a lack of knowledge leaves them open to doubt, when information is presented to them that they don't fully understand.

It would be surely be impractical to post the whole chapter here, but I am moved by Rev. Francis Blunt's treatment of Huysmans' conversion in his book Great Penitents. Below is an excerpt, and I've added a link to where you can read the rest for free:

A strange being was Huysmans. A lashing critic, with a tongue like a two-edged sword even after his conversion, a man who had plumbed the depths of iniquity and who afterwards aimed at the peaks of sanctity, who consorted with demons and then with mystics, and at last biting the dust in penitence gave his body a willing victim to the most excruciating pain — no wonder this most individual man, even apart from his literary genius, is still regarded as an enigma. One can understand how the disciples of the world regard his life as a puzzle; it is hard, however, to see how Catholics, many of them, still look on him as suspect. For to study the man is to come face to face with sincerity if ever there was such a thing. One of Huysmans’ biographers says that the Church has not failed to make a great racket about his conversion. Not such a racket as might have been made, as should have been made; for Huysmans, strange apologist though he is, is nevertheless one of the greatest of modern apologists. Full of faults he is, with many a line in his apologetics that might well have been eliminated; but there is no use complaining about that, you must take Huysmans as he is. A petty critic he is at times; your convert is very apt to be hypercritical. These are but flimsy clouds before the sun. And underneath all one finds the burning heart of the great penitent who with Augustine could cry out — “Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, so ancient and so new.”

https://www.huysmans.org/criticism/blunt.htm.