Does the Catholic Church Promote Coerced Conversions?

Today I received a letter from a husband sadly telling how he was coerced by his wife and the OCIA team to become Catholic. He says he was “lied to” by the team and threatened with divorce by his wife — or at least that is his side of the story.

It was a lengthy email, so I will not relay the whole message here since I do not want to betray a letter written privately to me or waste your time with all the details. The summary above is really all that needs to be shared.

Here is my response:

Dear Anonymous

First, I usually don’t respond to anonymous letters because I expect serious people to sign them if they expect me to take them seriously. However, I’ll make an exception in this case.
Second, the Catholic Church’s position has always been that conversion should not be forced by threat or sword (as is done in Islam) but done through convincing someone of the truth and allowing them to choose.
However, in early days, when fathers were “the head of the house,” as it was in the early Church, the whole family converted at the father’s direction. You can see this in Acts 16 with the Philippian jailer.
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The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses conversion by force:

Paragraph 160 To be human, “man’s response to God by faith must be free, and … therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act.” “God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced.… This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus.” Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. “For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom … grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself.”

Third, I do not know the whole story of the relationship between you, your wife, and the OCIA team, but from your side of the story, it appears the OCIA team did not fulfill its role properly. However, I have learned in life that there is always another side to the story. In any case, I am sorry that you were put into that position.

Fourth, I do not address anything like this in my conversion story since it is my own personal testimony and I never had coercion, nor do I know of any other situations where it has happened. I have a family member who is not Catholic, married to my very Catholic spouse, and none of us has ever coerced or pushed a conversion. We hope our example will eventually be sufficient, but not through pressure or arm-twisting.

Fifth, I hope you can join us some day for my conversion story, or watch it on-line and learn the true story of why a guy like me, raised in a very anti-Catholic Protestant world decided freely and without duress to embrace the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church.

God bless you, and you have my prayers.

Steve Ray

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