The "Decadent Path to Christ"

As a follow-up on our post, "The surprising stories of converts . . ." (Musings, Wednesday, January 31, 2007), we offer the following fascinating quotation from Joseph Pearce's Literary Giants, Literary Catholics:

"Baudelaire, Verlaine, Huysmans, Beardsley, Johnson, and Dowson had all followed the 'Decadent Path to Christ', repenting of their sins and embracing the loving forgiveness to be found in Mother Church." (p. 77)

I hadn't known about Baudelaire, which came as a bit of a surprise. One can't help think of others, too, of course -- such as Oscar Wilde whose deathbed conversion, after he had authored the penitent De Profundis in Redding Gaol for his homosexual scandal, and again relapsed and run back to his homosexual lover, Lord Alfred Douglas ('Bosie'), we hope, may have landed him in Purgatory by the back door and the skin of his teeth. But many of those mentioned by Pearce, too -- perhaps most notably Huysmans -- were notoriously degenerate before seeing the light and turning to Christ and Mother Church. One's mind turns, as well, to the tremendous ironies of the history of Redemption in the Gospels, to how even the very genealogy of our Savior includes the names of those who were once prostitutes, murderers and adulterers -- now washed clean by the blood of Him whose ancestral line they feign to honor. The Lord has amazing grace . . . and a sense of humor.