The foreward was written by Marcus Grodi, a contributor to the first book. Grodi’s foreward is very inspirational and explains how he and his wife were moved by conversion stories during their own search for the truth. “Conversion—whether to Jesus Christ or subsequently to His Church—happens when a crack forms in this wall of emotional and intellectual defenses. Those cracks can occur at any time. The Spirit uses crises or success, pain or pleasure, temptation or inspiration to make these cracks. Since we often grasp the first thing that penetrates through them, evangelization involves, not making those cracks—that’s God’s business—but surrounding those defenses with Truth in anticipation of the cracks that will form.” As Grodi points out, we need to be prepared to present the truth, and be available when the “cracks” appear. If someone has questions about the faith, we must answer them, or find the answers if we do not know them. If someone says something we know to be incorrect about the Church, we should be ready to correct him charitably. We must always be ready to plant the seed of truth, even though we may not ever see it blossom. Of course, there is always the chance that we will see those seeds blossom, and see someone turn (or return) to the Church.

Many, if not most converts, especially those from Protestant backgrounds have not been taught the truth about the Catholic Church, but a crude distortion. It certainly is interesting to read about the anti-Catholic rhetoric that many of these converts were taught. It just goes to show that Fulton Sheen was right when he said that there are many people who hate what they think of as the Catholic Church, but hardly any who actually hates the Catholic Church. In addition to not learning the truth about the Church, some Protestants are raised to automatically disregard any claim of the Church as unfounded, and without authority, while accepting the claims of their own denominations.

Mary Beth Kremski, a Pentecostal convert, points out one of the fallacies of the Protestant viewpoint: Although they would be unwilling to accept papal infallibility, “[w]e held that each and every Christian could know the truth for himself with the Bible alone. This is individual infallibility!”

Many of these stories include interesting bits of background on their former denominations/religions. Laura Johnson, a Methodist convert learned that the founding father of her denomination (as those of others) believed things that the denomination no longer teaches, which were in fact Catholic beliefs: “Two things that shocked me were Wesley’s belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary and his assertion that birth control is a sin.”

It is interesting how different people come to the truths of the Catholic Faith in different ways. Kremski points out that a turning point for her was the question that occured to her about the Eucharist: “Can’t God be present in the form of bread and wine?” She describes what happened next as a “curtain” opening before her eyes.

Another convert, Eric Pavlat, came to the truth of the Catholic Church after coming to embrace the pro-life position. He was a moral relativist until his future wife challenged his beliefs with well-thought arguments. By reading Catholic encyclicals, he came to understand the Church’s view on the sanctity of human life. From that point, he continued to study until he decided to join the Church.

With the wide array of conversion stories included in the book, most likely there will be something in at least one of these stories that will strike home with each reader, convert or not. Perhaps most will relate to Patrick Madrid’s own story, under the chapter title “Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander,” not as a conversion story, but as a “reversion” story, coming to embrace the whole truth of the Catholic Church.