Safe Haven

One of the reasons why it's not terribly hard to feel joy during a recovery like mine is that you get to spend some time with yourself. You get to imagine what it would be like if you weren't here. There is a great joy in knowing and seeing that you have something utterly unique to bring to the world. There is a goodness in the soul that is Jason Kettinger. I might make all manner of mistakes and sins in the next hour, say, but those aren't the essence of me.  I don't understand death, really, but because I've had a brush with it, I know that death won't change what makes us, well, us. I didn't have any cause to doubt the Church's teaching about our eternal souls, but I have less reason now. I'm not even sure I can explain how I know. I think I understand why most sinners should be able to say that what makes them sinners isn't intrinsically part of who they are, at least who they are supposed to be. It's simply that my worst day as a moral...

I have never believed that it's good to change your mind about big things quickly, or without reason. Even in my Reformed days, I did not leave a church (parish) on a whim, or for a trivial reason. Some people out there seem to think that I suddenly and arbitrarily decided to hate my Reformed heritage, and that I hate and misrepresent it to this day. That's false. The story of becoming Catholic is the story of remaining where I was, knowing what I knew, until the triune God made a way for me to do what he called me to do: seek full communion with the Catholic Church. If you cannot even imagine that the only true God might be calling all people into the Catholic Church, then don't dialogue with real Catholics, because that's what Catholics are supposed to believe. At a minimum, this means that the faith professed by Catholics is the true faith, and that anything distinct from this is in that respect, false. There are gentler, and more open, inviting ways to live this or...