Deathbed Conversions: Finding Faith at the Finish Line
Karen Edmisten, Our Sunday Visitor, 2013
In brief (12 pages, max) stories, the author tells of the conversion of 13 famous (or notorious) people who became Catholic near the end of their lives. Not all of them are literal deathbed conversions–Gary Cooper, for example, converted two years before his death. But all of them were conversions at the end of lives that one might not have expected to end in conversion.
The whole idea of deathbed conversions is intriguing, as the back cover blurb notes. Doesn’t it seem like cheating somehow? Edemstein addresses this well in an introductory chapter; the short answer is that, while it may seem like cheating, the conversion is often the result of a long process of internal change.
Take the case of Oscar Wilde. To quote the book:
This vision of Oscar Wilde–the happily unrestrained hedonist who once told a customs agent that he had nothing to declare but his genius–is a common one. But there was infinitely more to this fascinating and complicated man who also once said that Catholicism was the only religion worth dying in. He had a lifelong romantic dalliance with the Catholic Church, and he finally succumbed to her as he lay dying.
Not all of the conversions worked that way. Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody) married a Catholic, though the marriage was a troubled one. But toward the end of his life, he wrote that in his old age, he had found God. His was truly a deathbed conversion, as he was baptized the day before he died.
Then there are the two sides of one of Hollywood’s most notorious affairs: Gary Cooper (mentioned above) and Patricia Neal. Toward the end of Neal’s life, Gary Cooper’s daughter Maria forgave her for her part in the affair with Cooper. Neal told her that she had been angry with God for some time. Maria suggested that she visit the Abbey of Regina Laudis, where she began to find healing for her anger. She visited the abbey repeatedly for many years but wasn’t ready to convert until just a few months before her death.
Here’s the complete list of people whose stories are told:
- King Charles II of England
- Oscar Wilde
- Buffalo Bill
- Dutch Schultz
- Alexis Carrel
- Wallace Stevens
- John Wayne
- Kenneth Clark
- John von Neumann
- Aubrey Beardsley
- Heywood Broun
- Patricia Neal
- Gary Cooper
You may be surprised at some of the names on that list. Certainly some of their friends, relatives, and contemporaries were surprised by their conversions.
How God chooses to deliver His mercy is not up to us. Thanks be to God that some people manage to find Him after so many years of looking, often in all the wrong places.
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Cogitans Clare 