The rhetoric of conversion

My colleague Theodore Gill sent me the content of this post about the rhetoric of conversion spilling over into politics in the US. Anyway Theo's email is the perfect opportunity for me to urge him to start a blog - he has a great eye for the quirky story and a very dry sense of humour. So thanks for this Theo.
"The Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana is a formerly Hindu convert to Roman Catholicism. And I mean convert! His Democratic opponents are calling attention to an article he wrote for a 1996 issue of the New Oxford Review, in which he argued:
'Post-Reformation history does not reflect the unity and harmony of the "one flock" instituted by Christ, but rather a scandalous series of divisions and new denominations, including some that can hardly be called Christian. Yet Christ would not have demanded unity without providing the necessary leadership to maintain it. The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their "utterly depraved" minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin. The choice is between Catholicism's authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy.'
I've always suspected that Calvin was a little soft (or 'wet', as the British say) on the whole Magisterium thing...
The trouble is that the whole thing may backfire on the Democrats in Louisiana, which is the most Catholic state in the US. Also, the Democratic attack ads oversimplify, saying that the Republican believes that Protestants and other non-Catholics "are utterly depraved" - which is not what he wrote. (Whether he believes that is another question.) For more, see item 3 on the following web page:"
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/augustweb-only/134-41.0.html