This leads me to imagine a new function for this blog, as a forum for those moving in and out of Catholic Land, a sort of virtual brochure rack for those waiting for the ferry, in either direction: “Vatican City on $25 a Day,” “The Papacy for Dummies,” and so on. (Don’t know about you, but I can imagine this movie poster thumb-tacked to the wall of the ferryman’s shack.)YIM Catholic began last August as a personal soapbox for yours truly. I was uncomfortable standing outside my church shouting conversion stories, so I took my soapbox on-line. If anyone wants a good summary of why I converted, it’s right here. Frank joined up in November, and his personal story of trying to prove the Catholic Church wrong—only to find that it is right—continues to unfold in the series “To Be Frank.” Chapter 1 starts in the oddest of places, the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf of Books. Most recently, Chapter 7 credits a more common conversion link, Thomas Merton’s The Seven-Storey Mountain. For Frank’s story, click on “2BFrank” in the list of topics to the right.
By the time Frank was on board, I had begun to develop a new phase in my own YIMC writing. I was moving beyond answers to “Why RU Catholic?” (I mean, how many reasons do you want from me?!) to an ongoing meditation on my daily life as a Catholic: what I heard at Mass this morning, the crazy things guys said at men’s group, the innocence and eagerness of my fourth-graders in CCD, books I’m reading, stuff I want to share—always through the lens of the fundamental question, why Catholicism makes sense.
To go through your day, every day, pondering just why you are Catholic is a blessed exercise, as I am finding.
But now a third chapter in the life of this blog suggests itself: While remaining a double-wide soapbox for Frank and me, it can be a forum for you as well. At least, that’s the message I take from yesterday. Your comments suggest so many interesting questions that concern and sometimes plague “Tiberians.” So, beginning right here and right now, I’m going to begin tweezing out some of these questions and posing them to the YIMC community at large (we few, we happy few).
Michael Halbrook wrote:
I'm intrigued by a question you didn't mention, that I see my father (born, raised, and still Southern Baptist) wrestling with as he considers coming into the Church: How do you finally discern ‘THE CALL’? That's his biggest hangup right now. He feels he WANTS to be in the Church, and he is at peace with the doctrinal and liturgical questions, but he says he's still waiting for a bolt-of-lightning-like call. Did one or both of you have that moment when you really felt the call? Or was it a slow evolution that eventually made the need for the bolt of lightning less important? How did your discernment impact you, and vice-versa?
I’ve got to run to early Mass, so I’m going to resist the temptation to answer this question now. (You know I could.) I will comment later today. As I hope Frank will. And you . . . ?
