Great Conversion Stories: Mortimer Adler

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His Socratic pedagogy of seminars based on the "great books" of the Western world aimed to educate people to understand the "great ideas" and engage in the "great conversation" of the Western humanities tradition, not merely as historical artifacts but as paths to discovering the deepest truths and highest purposes of life. He was professor at the University of Chicago, and later founded the Institute for Philosophical Research and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies (which offered seminars for business executives and professionals).

Adler's philosophical mentors were Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. He defended the objectivity of philosophical truth against scepticism and positivism. He collaborated with prominent Catholic philosophers, and his seminars helped more than a few of his students to discover the Church and become converts. Yet Mortimer Adler himself only came to Christianity slowly. The dramatic depths of his long journey from the "God of the philosophers" to Jesus Christ are unknown to us. But from his own autobiographical testimonies, and from the observations of some friends, we can glimpse signs of the gradual yet distinctive workings of grace.

The son of Jewish immigrants in Manhattan, Adler had a largely secular upbringing. It was philosophy that first introduced him to God, and at Columbia University he first encountered the "integrity, precision, and brilliance" of Thomas Aquinas. Over many decades he pursued the "philosophy of God" as a fascinating and demanding intellectual exercise, and became a convinced Thomist in many respects. But he claimed to have no interest in personal religious faith.

Nevertheless, his real life suggested otherwise. In the late 1930s he was powerfully drawn to the Catholic Church and "agonised over the question" of converting. But he felt hindered by the fear of opposition from his parents, his Episcopalian wife, and his closest friends. Years later, in his 1977 memoirs, he concluded that he didn't receive the grace of faith because he didn't want to convert, he didn't want to change his secular-liberal lifestyle and take up the challenges of Christian living. He wanted to study God, but also keep him at a distance.

Adler's first wife divorced him, and we know little of the origins or details of this relationship. His marriage to the devout Episcopalian Caroline Pring in 1963, however, seemed to represent a step forward towards a relationship with God. Caroline witnessed to the importance of her own faith, and her hope that he might share it someday. Mortimer's grave illness in 1984 finally opened up the long-awaited possibility. The pastor of Caroline's church visited him in the hospital and prayed for his recovery, and something mysterious happened. The eighty-two-year-old philosopher wept, and began saying the Lord's Prayer. For days afterwards, he continued to repeat the Our Father (the only prayer he knew). He realised that—for the first time—he was praying to the God he had studied for so long. He repented of his sins and was baptised in the Episcopalian church on 21 April 1984.

One step remained before him. He returned to the Aspen Institute seminars and a new generation of young Catholic Thomist philosophers who befriended him, along with Father Pierre DuMaine, the future Catholic bishop of San Jose, California. Mortimer and Caroline eventually retired to San Mateo (in DuMaine's diocese), where she passed away in 1998. The following year, at the age of ninety-seven, Mortimer Adler was received into the Catholic Church by his friend Bishop DuMaine, after so many years of learning from Christ's brilliant and humble disciple Saint Thomas Aquinas.