Veritas: Part II
Conversions at Harvard
Credit: Meihe Chen
Testimonies of two professors and a top student who converted to Catholicism while at Harvard.
By Chris and the Editorial Staff
Professor Karin Öberg, Professor Roy Schoeman, and LyLena Estabine experienced profound spiritual conversions at Harvard during the prime of their lives. But aside from this commonality, their stories could not be more different.
Credit: TED
Karin Öberg (b. 1982)
Professor of Astronomy at Harvard and former agnostic.
Karin Ingegerd Öberg is a Swedish astrochemist. She earned her BS in Chemistry at Caltech and obtained a PhD at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she observed the chemistry and dynamics of interstellar ice. Currently serving as a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and leader of the Öberg Astrochemistry Group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Öberg has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and has been cited over 21,000 times (Google Scholar).
Öberg’s research centers on star and planet formation, stellar evolution in relation to organic molecules, and the origin of life. In 2015, her Öberg Astrochemistry Group discovered the first complex organic molecule in a protoplanetary disk (an infant star system)—a groundbreaking discovery hinting that the building blocks of the chemistry of life are universal. The study was published in Nature and was featured in the Washington Post and LA Times.
Despite—or, perhaps, because of—her outstanding intellectual background and its rigorous emphasis on science, Öberg’s pursuit of answers led her on an extensive journey to examine and explore how faith fit into her life. Much of the following biography comes from Öberg’s 2022 interview with the Eternal Word Television Network’s Journey Home program, where she describes the process of discovering Catholicism.
Living a Good Life
In her youth, Öberg and her family belonged to the Church of Sweden, which was Lutheran. Growing up, Öberg noticed most people who belonged to the church did not really have a personal relationship with Jesus. Her grandmother was devout; for many of Öberg’s peers and other family members, however, Christianity was more a part of their cultural heritage rather than a driving force in their spiritual lives.
When Öberg attended a church retreat, the Lutheran faith was presented as a set of morals for living a good life and being nice to people. Jesus and the Bible felt like add-ons. In light of this, Öberg decided Christianity must not be necessary for living a good life. By the time she moved to the U.S. to study at Caltech, she found herself veering toward agnosticism.
While there, however, Öberg made some friends who fully embraced their Christianity—and their way of life inexplicably tugged at her. Though she never attended church during her undergraduate studies, she did wear her confirmation cross throughout her senior year. For her, it was a declaration of loyalty to her non-atheist side. She had no firm parameters about what her faith looked like, but she began to consider herself at least a deist (someone who believes in God). And while she recognized agnosticism was “the norm among the intellectual elite,” Öberg’s scientific focus never obstructed her desire to deepen her faith. Astronomy is, after all, interested in the big questions that people universally pose: What is our place in the universe? How did this all begin? Is there life on other planets?
Karin Öberg with the ALMA telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. (Credit: Karin Öberg)
The Path to Christianity
Agnosticism wasn’t quite fulfilling. It didn’t provide all the answers. In her mid-twenties, having moved back to Sweden, Öberg began reading philosophy and musing over the meaning of life. Being an avid reader, she found herself devouring books that seemed to promise answers: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which she describes as a very religious book; C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, a satirical novel involving a senior demon’s instructions to his minions and how to claim human souls for damnation; The Abolition of Man, Lewis’s defense of natural law and moral realism; and his Mere Christianity, which she called, during her lecture on Cosmology and Religion, “a dangerous book to read if you want to remain agnostic.” Lewis’s arguments energized Öberg so much that she had to walk around the room while reading it.
I think I was about halfway through [the book], so one or two hours into it, when I realized I thought what C.S. Lewis was saying was very reasonable [...] I had just been convinced by purely intellectual arguments into accepting Christianity as true.
While pursuing her PhD studies in Astronomy at Leiden University, Öberg decided to visit the nearest English-speaking church (Anglican, the same religious faction Lewis belonged to) and ended up attending for the next three years, gradually transitioning beyond communal prayer to intimate personal prayer. Thus, within the secular society of academia, Öberg began to reconcile science and faith, natural laws and miracles, and astronomy and Christianity.
I never jumped all the way into atheism, really for two philosophical reasons. One was that I had a very strong sense of moral realism, and the other was the belief that my will exists and is free, and both of those are hard to explain and understand in a purely materialistic universe. [...] It makes sense to me that God respects the regularity of the universe that makes it understandable and predictable for the rational beings He has made. And it seems that miracles are very rare for precisely this reason: to respect the intelligibility of the universe to us.
Relocating back to the U.S., Öberg completed her postdoctoral work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble Fellow and joined the Harvard Astronomy faculty in 2013. Initially, she transferred over to the local Anglican/Episcopalian church. Something felt off, though. Since the Church of England split from Rome in the 16th century, it had kept all the liturgy, but the magisterium downplayed the need for the faithful to believe all of the Church’s teachings.
This realization left her feeling spiritually isolated.
That dissonance—and G.K. Chesterson’s Orthodoxy, a classic work of Christian apologetics—nudged Öberg toward Catholicism. She googled the local Catholic Church to ask how she could join. She remembers the initiation process as spiritually easy but also difficult because the program required her to wait for two years of study before formally entering the Church. When she was finally welcomed in, she described the ceremony as “a beautiful experience.”
When I walked into a Catholic church and went to Mass for the first time after I moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, it was an incredible sense of homecoming, which really reminded me of what I had been reading in Chesterton—the sense of adventure and homecoming all at once. I think that was ultimately what cemented it, that combination of intellectual conversion through reading Chesterton and others with that very strong sense of peace and homecoming when I actually did go into a Catholic church.
A Harmony of Science and Faith
Although Öberg was thrilled to become Catholic, she struggled with handling some opposition from her family members, who considered her conversion a betrayal of her Swedish heritage. Still, Öberg did not encounter the prominent tug-of-war that intellectuals often experience between science and religion. She says her scientific background helped her trust her ability to reason, and she offers advice for speaking with youth about the harmony of science and faith:
I trust that the skills and the logical reasoning that I apply to science also work when I think about metaphysical things. I think Caltech especially trained me how to think, how to really honor reason, and how to apply it to many different kinds of problems, including those that have to do with the church and with God. I think what would be very important going forward is to figure out ways to talk to teenagers, especially about science and religion. Don’t let them hear that there are just two ways: either you are a creationist or you’re an atheist. Both of those are wrong, and there is a very healthy middle way, where you’re just as “science-y” as the atheist scientist and as Christian as the creationist. That is to say, you take the right parts of both.
Today Öberg exemplifies how intellect and faith may not just coexist, but even complement each other. Her research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy. As a board member of the Society of Catholic Scientists, she is passionate about encouraging Catholic students in the sciences, and she is vocal about the compatibility between her faith and her work as a scientist.
Credit: Jewish Voice
Roy Schoeman (b. 1951)
Author, management consultant, former Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School, graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School (MBA, DBA, Baker Scholar), and former atheist.
Roy Schoeman was born and raised Jewish. His parents fled Nazi Germany, immigrated to New York, met and married, and raised their son to be a pious and devout Jew. Influenced by the teachings of local non-Orthodox rabbis, Schoeman felt from his youngest years that God had a purpose for him. He eagerly awaited its discovery.
He hoped this purpose would manifest during his bar mitzvah, when he turned 13. When no obvious sign appeared—no voice from heaven, no white doves bursting into the building, no trumpets to be heard—he was crushed. Schoeman said in his conversion testimony in 2019 that this pinnacle moment was “one of the saddest days of [my] life.”
Still, he waited. Perhaps when he got his driver’s license, or maybe when he graduated high school, he would feel God’s direction and purpose, he hoped.
After graduation, Schoeman followed a charismatic rabbi to Israel, where he considered abandoning his dreams of attending MIT to study scripture in the birthplace of Judaism. He did not feel an intimacy with God there, however, so he returned to the U.S. to pursue a degree at MIT. There, though he gained academic acumen, he lost his way—and his faith. As he explains:
My religiosity soon became mixed up in the drug and ‘free love’ culture which was rampant, and soon degenerated into the immoral, vague hippie ‘spirituality’ of the time. My thirst for God became, for a long while, sated by the false consolations and delusional spirituality of that environment.
After MIT, Schoeman enrolled at Harvard Business School, where he obtained an MBA and DBA and graduated as a Baker Scholar (the highest academic distinction at HBS, conferred to the top 5% of the class). He was invited back to the HBS faculty, becoming a Professor of Marketing at age 29.
But his abandonment of faith and his immersion in a materialistic worldview resulted in Schoeman’s chronic inner turmoil.
He sought purpose as an engineer and a downhill skier who lived for the adrenaline. He even moved to Poland temporarily, hoping a culture which prioritized family would also provoke a spiritual awakening. As a young Harvard professor with a steady career and prestige, he should have felt on top of the world. His article in Shalom Tidings had him admitting otherwise:
I always thought there was something out there that would give my life real meaning [...] I thought it would be when I began my career, but I was already more successful in a worldly career than I had ever anticipated, being a professor at Harvard. But there was still no meaning or purpose to life, and therefore I fell into the darkest despair.
The Veil Is Lifted
Schoeman felt he couldn’t settle for long on a career, relationship, or faith. His only moments of true solace came when taking nature walks. One day, when walking around Cape Cod, he encountered something extraordinary. He described how the physical scenery around him became like sheer gauze—a veil through which he could see the spiritual world, which appeared more concrete and tangible than anything he could imagine. In this hyperreality, he was infused with a distinct knowledge of things he did not previously comprehend.
Recounting the vision, Schoeman said he saw his life rewinding, as if he had died and was experiencing his soul’s judgment. He became certain of several things. He was in the presence of a loving God. He knew that souls live forever. He realized every action has a moral content. He also realized his biggest regrets in life.
As I was walking, lost in my thoughts, I found myself in the immediate presence of God. It is as though I ‘fell into Heaven.’ Everything changed from one moment to the next, but in such a smooth and subtle way that I was not aware of any discontinuity. I felt myself in the immediate presence of God. I was aware of His infinite exaltedness, and of His infinite and personal love for me. [...] I saw that every action I had ever done mattered, for good or for evil. I saw that everything which had ever happened in my life had been perfectly designed for my own good from the infinitely wise and loving hand of God, not only including but especially those things which I at the time I thought had been the greatest catastrophes.
I saw that my two greatest regrets after I died would be, number one, all of the time and energy I had wasted worrying about not being loved when every moment of my existence I was held in an ocean of love greater than I ever imagined could exist, coming from this all-knowing, all-loving God, and the other great regret would be every hour I had wasted doing nothing of value in the eyes of heaven.
I saw that here I had been so worried about life having no meaning when, in fact, it has an infinite depth of meaning because every moment contains the possibility of doing something of value in the eyes of Heaven, and every time we take advantage of that opportunity, we will very truly be rewarded for it for all eternity, and every opportunity we let slip and don’t take advantage of will be a lost opportunity for all eternity.
In a more detailed witness testimony in 2020, Schoeman elaborated further on how he’d been leading a misguided life that prioritized the wrong kind of “selfishness.”
You know, a Harvard MBA is kind of graduate training in selfishness […] what I saw was that I had been stupidly selfish because I had been putting all of my time and energy into accumulating things that wouldn’t be doing me any good at all even a hundred years later after I died. When, if I wanted to be smart and selfish, the only thing that made sense would be to try to essentially accumulate as much treasure in heaven as possible.
I actually saw in this experience that if I wanted to be smart and selfish, the only thing that made sense would be to try to be as great a saint as possible. The image that came to my mind in this experience was, it was a picture of like a child playing—or actually the child was me—playing Monopoly and greedily accumulating these big piles of brightly colored paper Monopoly money when right next to it, there was a huge stack of gold coins that he was ignoring. And what I was doing was putting all my time and energy into the Monopoly money and ignoring the gold coins.
By far, the most profoundly changing aspect of this experience was coming into the knowledge that God Himself, the God who not only created everything that exists but actually created existence itself, not only knew me by name, which was more than I ever hoped for, not only knew me by name but cared about me, had been controlling absolutely everything that happened to me at every moment, but also watching over me and caring about how I felt at every moment as though I were the only creature He had ever created.
Realizing God’s infinite love for him filled Schoeman with happiness—and a purpose: to discover His name. Schoeman wouldn’t have minded if the god had revealed himself as Buddha, Krishna, or Apollo, but he did not wish it to be Jesus Christ, for he felt he’d be betraying his Jewish upbringing. Schoeman prayed every night for a year, reciting the short prayer: May I know the name of my lord, god, and master who has revealed himself to me.
After one year, he received his answer.
Roy Schoeman at an Israel pilgrimage, which he led in May 2023 (Credit: Charlie Corulli)
A Second Visitor and the Path to Communion
On the night of his first vision’s anniversary, Schoeman had another vision. This time, he encountered a beautiful woman who revealed herself to be the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was in awe. All he wanted was to fall to her feet and honor her. She offered to answer Schoeman’s questions, and he tried to decipher through her the name of his god.
I knew without being told that it was the Blessed Virgin Mary, and when I found myself in her presence, all I wanted to do was fall on my knees and honor her somehow appropriately. Just being in her presence, in the presence of the purity and the intensity of the love that flowed from her, lifted me into a state of ecstasy greater than I ever imagined could exist. I think that is very related to the bliss of Heaven. All I wanted was to fall on my knees and honor her somehow. The first thing she said to me was that she offered to answer any questions I might have for her. […]
I thought I’d ask her what her favorite prayer to her was. Her initial answer was a little bit coy; she said, ‘I love all prayers to me.’ But I was a little pushy—maybe because I’m from New York, maybe not—and I said, ‘You must love some prayers more than others.’ She relented and recited a prayer, but it was in Portuguese, and I didn’t know any Portuguese, so all I could do was make the effort to remember the first few syllables phonetically. The next morning when I woke up, I immediately wrote them down phonetically, and later, when I met a Portuguese Catholic woman, I asked her to recite a million prayers in Portuguese so I could identify it. To the best of my ability, I identified it as, ‘O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.’ […]
So at one point, I asked her, and it was more of an exclamation than a question, but I kind of stammered out, ‘How can it be? How is it possible? How can it be that you’re so glorious, that you’re so magnificent, that you’re so exalted? How can it be?’ And her response was to look down at me almost with pity and shake her head gently and say, ‘Oh no, you don’t understand. I’m nothing. I’m a creature. I’m a created thing. He’s everything.’ And then again, out of the desire to honor her somehow, I asked her what title she liked best for herself, and her response was, ‘I am the beloved daughter of the Father, mother of the Son, and spouse of the Spirit.’
By now, of course, I had figured out that if this is the Blessed Virgin Mary, it had been Christ in that earlier experience, and it’s all about Christianity, and I had better get up to speed pretty quick.
Schoeman set out to become a follower of Christ. He began visiting many Marian shrines. Naturally, near each shrine, there would be a Catholic church. He would often watch the Mass ceremony and be filled with a strong desire to receive Communion—the wafer of bread that Catholics believe is transformed into Christ’s body during the consecration. Drawn thus to Catholicism, Schoeman was surprised to feel more Jewish than ever. He explained, “I understood Judaism as a pre-messianic form of Catholicism and Catholicism as a post-messianic form of Judaism.”
However, becoming Catholic came at a heavy cost: Schoeman was shunned by his own Jewish family, though his parents experienced their own conversions on their deathbeds, finally sharing his belief in Christ as the Messiah.
Flourishing with purpose at last, Schoeman gave up his academic career and devoted himself to his new Catholic mission. He authored Salvation Is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming. He also published Honey from the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ, containing the testimonies of Jewish converts to Catholicism, including his own.
In 2003, Schoeman contributed the following note in the Harvard Business School Bulletin:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" runs the famous quote from Shakespeare, and by the grace of God, I found this out for myself by way of a rather extraordinary, miraculous experience some years back, which resulted in the total reorientation of my life. From one moment to the next I learned (among other things) that God is for real, that He knows and loves us personally, that we live forever, and that everything we do matters for good or evil, for all eternity. (You can stop laughing now, Rob. As for any others who might actually be interested, more details can be found in my book or on the associated Web site.) The experience turned me hyper-religious, and although I continued (and still continue) mgt. consulting, my heart was elsewhere, in prayer and getting to know God.
Credit: LyLena Estabine
LyLena Estabine (b. 2002)
Harvard A.B. (Senior 48), policy researcher, former Protestant.
LyLena Estabine graduated from Harvard in 2024 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society. She was also honored as one of the top 48 seniors based on her academic performance as well as the difficulty and intellectual coherence of her curriculum. Estabine concentrated in sociology with a track in data analytics, and her senior thesis, “Shaping Chicago: How Ownership and Trust Influence Engagement in Building the City,” was awarded highest departmental honors, a Hoopes Prize, and the 3 Minute Thesis prize.
Withdrawal and Healing
Growing up as a Protestant in Kansas, Estabine recounts how she always had a relationship with Christ. She felt his presence right at her side, to the point that she would even ask her mom to buckle Jesus in beside her when riding in the car. She sought intellectual discussions with Protestant peers but had difficulty finding people willing to engage in conversations about the faith. This lack of interaction caused her to withdraw inside of herself.
Her emotional isolation, coupled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, soon led to devastating anxiety and depression. Estabine tried changing her diet and attended therapy, yet nothing seemed to curb her negative thoughts. Seeking solace, she remembered the importance of the Living Word that had consoled her during her early childhood, and she vowed to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. She made a deal with God: She would read every word of His Word, and He needed to give her a reason to stay faithful to His Church.
It took her a year. By the end, Estabine felt like herself again: healed, rejuvenated, and focused. In an interview with Catholic News Agency, she recalls:
As I began reading [the Bible], and as I began basically pouring out my entire self to God and just laying my life at his feet, he healed me completely of all my depression and anxiety.
In Pursuit of Objective Truth
With this fresh encouragement in her faith, Estabine began engaging in the discussions she had formerly longed for. Soon these discussions turned into a heated debate with a Catholic friend over theology. Estabine, knowing there must be an objective truth somewhere, grappled with the arguments for Catholicism. When her friend sent her a video on the Eucharist, Estabine was troubled; her intellect agreed with the evidence for the Real Presence, yet her heart hesitated to embrace them.
The turning point manifested as a nightmare. One night, Estabine dreamed of being in school and surrounded by darkness. On a foggy window of the school, she tried to write “God” with her finger but couldn’t form the letters. She tried to cast the darkness away, but it remained. Then a Catholic priest entered the dream. He spoke, and the darkness fled under his authority.
This dream inspired Estabine to continue seeking the truth, and encouraged her to visit various Catholic churches. One fear lingered: as a former non-Catholic, would this mean her previous experiences of Christianity were inauthentic? Verse 16 from the Gospel of John’s 10th chapter helped her understand she had been outside Christ’s fold, yet she could still hear His voice:
And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Sensing she was on the brink of something potentially life-changing, Estabine texted her Catholic friend: “Hey, I don’t really know what’s going on, but I really think I need to examine this deeper, and I don’t think I can do it by myself.” Her friend gifted her a rosary, brought her to Eucharistic adoration (an occasion of silent prayer before the Eucharist), and introduced her to Father Fiorillo, a Catholic priest who answered many of Estabine’s questions and situated her in catechesis classes.
And so her catechesis journey began.
The Key to her Heart
While she began to feel more fulfilled spiritually, Estabine hesitated. Didn’t she need to have all the answers before truly becoming Catholic? She’d always prioritized the pursuit of excellence, and how could someone claim excellence if things felt half-finished? Veritas—truth—is also Harvard University’s motto.
Then something powerful changed her mind. During Eucharistic adoration, she heard Jesus ask her: “Since when has the key to your heart been through your intellect?”
Humbled, she moved forward with her journey, deciding to consecrate herself to Mary and meditate on the Rosary mysteries daily, winning the admiration of her Catholic community and finding peace within herself. She joined 32 candidates in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults program at St. Paul Church in Cambridge and was officially confirmed into the Catholic Church in Easter 2023.
At Harvard and beyond, Estabine has proven herself to be a multidimensional, multi-talented force for good. She led the initiative to implement a more inclusive student government, and as its co-president she initiated the Crimson Career Closet and Concentration Declaration Day. Today she’s already become a policy researcher, analyst, singer, songwriter, founder of a Catholic literary journal and conservative publishing house, and volunteer voice-over artist for Learning Ally.
In light of her journey, she advises other students and young people to follow their dreams irrespective of their background and predilections:
Be fully who you are and don’t struggle to fit yourself into one box fully. You can change always, and you should.
LyLena Estabine (front right) with fellow members of the Harvard Catholic Center (Credit: @harvardcatholiccenter)
Veritas
O’Dorney, Schoeman, Öberg, and Estabine have much in common despite their divergent life stories, cultures, and academic backgrounds. They are rational to the point of brilliance—“lazy thinking” is utterly foreign to them.
And, aside from possessing these extraordinary intellects, they have all embraced Catholicism. Not because it’s fun, convenient, or fashionable—but because they recognized that it’s true.