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Scott and Kimberley Hahn
Dr. Scott Hahn & Kimberly Hahn – 2014 Pilgrimage
Scott and Kimberly Hahn
1957-
“We thank God for the grace of our conversion to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church which he founded; for it is only by the most amazing grace of God that we could ever have found our way home.”
 Rome Sweet Home
Born October 28, 1957, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Scott Hahn was an ordained Presbyterian minister when he converted to Catholicism in 1986. His wife, Kimberly, born December 24, 1957, in Cincinnati, Ohio, converted four years later.  The couple became popular speakers on the lecture circuit. The best-selling story of their conversion, Rome Sweet Home, was based on talks they gave throughout the United States. Dr. Hahn is a professor of theology and Scripture at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. In 1994, he founded the Institute of Applied Biblical Studies. Scott and Kimberly Hahn have six children.
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Scott Hahn was baptized a Presbyterian, but grew up without a strong foundation in faith. During his teenage years, he was charged with delinquency and sentenced to six months’ probation. Involvement in a Christian ministry called Young Life led him to the Gospel, and although he tried to resist, Scott eventually gave his life to Christ while he was still in high school. “Within the next year, I experienced a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a personal and life-changing way,” he recalls.
In the process, he became intensely anti-Catholic. He believed that Catholics needed good Christians like himself to free them from the bondage of Rome. He worked hard to persuade his Catholic friends to leave the Church.
In 1975, Scott met Kimberly Kirk. They were both undergraduates at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Kimberly’s father was a Presbyterian minister, and faith was important to her. They graduated in May 1979 and were married the following August. That fall they entered Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminary in Boston with the hope of becoming Presbyterian ministers.
While they were in the seminary, Kimberly’s research into birth control brought her to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic position on contraception was ethically correct from a Scriptural perspective. Scott and Kimberly were both shocked that a Church they considered anti-Biblical and erroneous could be right on an issue that the mainline Protestant denominations had disregarded as irrelevant fifty years before.
In 1982, Scott graduated with a master of divinity degree, and Kimberly received a master of arts in theology. Scott took a job as associate minister at Immanuel Baptist Church in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Over the next few years, Scott’s ministry took them to Cincinnati, Wichita, and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He taught weekly Bible studies, and as questions arose, he would research the answers. “As I dug deeper in my study, a disturbing pattern began to emerge: The novel ideas I thought I had discovered had actually been anticipated by the early Church Fathers.”
He began to see that liturgy and sacramental imagery were interwoven in the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Hebrews.
“All of a sudden, the Roman Catholic Church that I opposed seemed to be coming up with the right answer on one thing after another, much to my shock and dismay. After a number of instances, it got to be chilling.”
Kimberly was disturbed by the changes she saw in Scott. By the time he began teaching at the Dominion Theological School, he was moving away from the principles of the Reformation. He began to question the idea that Scripture alone was the sale authority. He began to suggest that maybe Jesus was not talking symbolically when he instituted the Eucharist.
The more questions Scott asked, the more his answers pointed to the Catholic Church. He turned down an offer to become pastor of a large church and resigned from his teaching position. “At this point I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to have integrity,” he recalled. “I could not teach as a pastor until I had more clarity. Kimberly and I cast ourselves on the Lord and prayed to know the next step.”
In 1983, they returned to Grove City, where Scott served as assistant to the president and taught part-time in the theology department. He continued to read Catholic theology and finally admitted to Kimberly that he suspected God was drawing him toward Catholicism.
He turned to Gerry Matatics, a friend from his seminary days who was pastor of a Presbyterian church. They had long talks about theology.  “Like Cardinal Newman before us, Gerry and I could see that if the Catholic Church was wrong, it was nothing less than diabolical. On the other hand, if it was right, it must have been divinely established and preserved.”
In 1985, Scott was accepted into a doctoral program at Marquette University. Kimberly grew increasingly disturbed over his movement toward Catholicism. “By Scott’s continuing to change and my refusing to change, we were both starting not to trust one another,” she admitted.  “The foundation of trust in our marriage was being shaken tremendously.”
At Marquette, Scott discovered the truth and beauty of Catholic doctrines. He attended Mass for the first time and was astounded at the Scriptural basis of the Mass. At the consecration, he whispered, “My Lord and my God. That’s really you! And if that’s you, then I want full communion with you. I don’t want to hold anything back.”
In 1986, Scott, Gerry Matatics, and his wife, Leslie, were received into the Catholic Church. Kimberly attended the ceremony, but felt a deep sense of betrayal. She would never have dated a Catholic, and now she was married to one. “Our marriage was in the midst of the greatest challenge we ever faced,” she said.
Their conversations became strained. They would lapse into doctrinal quarrels. It was four years before Kimberly overcame the obstacles that kept her from embracing the Catholic faith. “Many major theological questions were resolved, but there was a wall, an emotional block, that took a supernatural gift of faith even to want to look over, let alone climb over,” she said.
A tubal pregnancy, the hospitalization of their daughter who had spiked a fever, and a deep desire for the unification of her family helped to break down the barriers. In 1989, she entered the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in their local parish. By early 1990, she was still waffling.
On Ash Wednesday, she was trying to decide what to give up for Lent when she sensed the Lord saying, “Why don’t you give up yourself? You know enough to trust me and to trust my work in the Church. Your heart attitude has changed from saying, ‘I don’t believe it – prove it!’ to saying, ‘Lord, I don’t understand it. Teach me.’ Why don’t you come to the table? Why don’t you give up you this Lent?”
At the Easter vigil in 1990, Kimberly Hahn was received into the Catholic Church. She came to see Catholicism as a religion that focused on the presence of the Lord. “Catholics were the ones who had Jesus physically present in churches and saw themselves as living tabernacles after receiving the Eucharist. And because Jesus is the Eucharist, keeping him in the center allows all of the rich doctrines of the Church to emanate from him, just as the beautiful gold rays stream forth from the Host in the monstrance.”
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A Century of Catholic Converts
Excerpts from: A CENTURY OF CATHOLIC CONVERTS BY LORENE HANLEY DUQUIN
Chapter 8, The Eighties: Scott and Kimberley Hahn, former Presbyterian theologians, 1986, 1990 . . . . pp. 196-199