Without the Incredible Hulk, I Wouldn’t be Catholic

And now he's married, with nine children, writing about his conversion. I love conversion stories! I told mine here several years ago.

From Aleteia

By Tom Hoopes

I had no religious faith, no real direction in life, and generally no clue whatsoever. I was a slob. Friendship formed over a TV series was the start of a change.

When I read what the Polish Holy Father wrote about the Apostles to the Slavs, I think of two Polish apostles to the slob, the “slob” being me.

Pope John Paul II’s encyclical tells the stories of Cyril and Methodius, two talented brothers who retired early to “one of the monasteries at the foot of Mount Olympus” until they were sent to Slavic people who needed “a bishop and teacher … able to explain to them the true Christian faith in their own language.”

They did, by gaining “a good grasp on the interior world of those to whom they intended to proclaim the word of God.”

That’s what the fraternal twins Hannah and Lisa did for me, thanks to their dad.

I had already lost my faith when we carpooled across Tucson, Arizona, to a junior orchestra.

That was fine; we didn’t talk about the faith. We talked about The Incredible Hulk.

Their Polish father allowed them to watch one hour of television per week — provided they wrote a paragraph beforehand justifying their choice, and another afterwards explaining what benefit they got from it.  Each week, Hannah and Lisa chose what happened to be my favorite show as well: The Incredible Hulk.

Since they wrote about it each week, they had a lot to say about it, and since they always had to write even more, they had a keen interest in my thoughts about it. 

A friendship was born. 

A decade later, when I saw Hannah in the University of Arizona library, we started talking right away — about The Incredible Hulk.

I had no religious faith, no real direction in life, and generally no clue whatsoever. I was a slob. Hannah asked what I was studying and I said I wouldn’t be at the university for long. I was transferring out.

“Where to?” She asked

“I don’t know,” I said. 

I didn’t. My sister was sending my transcript and SAT scores here and there, and I couldn’t remember where. She was in charge of that.

Then, suddenly one college name occurred to me — a school in San Francisco. When Hannah heard the name, a light went on in her eyes. She began to talk in an animated way about a great books program she longed to attend there called the St. Ignatius Institute,  and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with her to talk about it.  

I said, Yes, I wanted to go to lunch with her.

So, at lunch that week she asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a writer, I said.

“You have to read the Great Books to be a writer, don’t you?” she asked.

“You sure do,” I agreed. “I guess?”

Before her, Hannah saw a young man with no direction in life who was apparently willing to accept one from any comer. And she happened to have a direction to offer.

She had forms for the program with her and had even started to fill them out. I helped finish them, and signed where she said to. Then, knowing the reliability of college-age guys, or the one in front of her at any rate, she addressed and stamped the envelopes for me.

She walked me to a mailbox, and I think she gave me the agency of dropping the letter in myself.

The next school year, I found myself in a full-immersion Catholicism program founded by Ignatius Press founder Father Joseph Fessio, and supported by the future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

And not long after, thanks to my classmates, I found myself back in church.

Many years and nine children later, though, I ask myself, What would my life be like if those two sisters had unfettered access to TV? Would our conversations have been as intense? Would Hannah have fallen in love with the Great Books?

But, having read Apostles to the Slavs, I ask another question, too: What if that dad had banned media altogether? 

What if he had made them their own Mount Olympus, and they had never learned the language of the slob? Would those two have been able to communicate and connect with me at all?

And then, where would I be?