The Church, Lost and Found: My First Concise, Complete Conversion Narrative

Hi! No, I haven’t abandoned my blog. Real life has been keeping me pretty busy, but I do have some ideas in pots boiling for articles to share. A few months ago, I friend asked me to tell my conversion story. On the fly, I came up with what I thought was a pretty good, …

Why I am a Catholic: the Short Version

This came out of the blue, off the cuff, just as you read it, when a friend on Facebook asked me to sum up in one point why I converted to Catholicism. This is probably the most succinct account you’ll ever read from me. It’s hard to narrow down to just one. But I’ll give …

Twelve Reasons I Love Resurrection Chapel

This is a post I’ve been thinking of for a little while. Here are a few reasons why I love my new parish, Resurrection Chapel: My connection: The sudden revelation of a deep, historical connection with the church here — one that God knew I would appreciate and be attracted by — lit my path …

Expression vs. Impression in Liturgy and Worship

This is my 100th post here, apparently. Time flies, and the counter runs up quickly, when I post every day like I have been this month! Brad posted this video, and I’ve seen it floating around the Twittersphere — and it’s excellent: a short but very powerful piece on liturgical reform by the Catholic News …

Christ-centric, not Man-centric

One of the many things I love about Catholicism is that in our liturgy, in our worship, in our Sacraments, the focus is on Christ, not on the man at the front of the church. In evangelical Christianity especially, there’s such a tendency to build up a cult of personality around a popular and well-liked …

Community and Communion

In the year or so before I moved to University, I began making an earnest, systematic effort to find and join a church. I wrote a lot of lists to myself about what I was looking for in a church (I am a maker of lists). And always near the top of the list was …

Peace

As Kristen said, I am now in the “Countdown to Catholic.” 21 days to Easter… Something major that I intended to write about as I set out, but have thus far neglected to, is the “affinities” — those beautiful and glorious aspects of Catholicism that have drawn me. Tonight I thought I would begin with …

Motion and Emotion

My posts here, after starting so strong and frequent last semester, have slowed to a trickle now, it seems. I regret that. The troubles and stresses and demands of school have dogpiled on. And, more significantly, I am grappling with serious depression. Growing up, I always heard that “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and …

A Musical Journey

I’ve already written a little about my first flirtations with liturgy: how I began listening to Mozart’s Requiem as “mood music,” at a time when I was feeling morbidly depressed. I listened to it repeatedly, reflecting on failure and death and loss; recalling the sad end of Mozart’s life, and the idea that he was …

Authority and the Magisterium

I just read a wonderful piece by Bryan Cross that Kristen shared from Called to Communion (a blog I have never read before, but which I think will now become a favorite), addressing the necessity of the Church’s Magisterium and its authority through all the ages of Christian history. It very much underscores everything I believe …