We report, you decide

 

[W]e cannot go back; we must always go forward, always forward and whoever goes back is mistaken. We go forward on this way.

                            —Pope Francis at the parish of Ognissanti, Rome

 

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

                                                ― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

’Nuff said.

Who, Where, What, Why, and How

Here’s the quick-start guide to who I am and what I’m doing here.

• Who: I’m a convert/revert: raised in the American civil religion; an unpleasant atheist in high school; starting to take religion seriously in college; baptized in the Episcopal Church (at a very high one) at twenty-one; a Catholic at thirty-four; back to attending an Episcopal Church again at forty; married at forty-four (to a woman I met at the Episcopal parish; God does play his little tricks) a father at (almost) forty-six, forty-eight, fifty, fifty-two, and fifty-fifty-five. I worked in publishing, in almost every capacity from clerk to senior editor, for more than forty years. I call myself hans castorp after the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. I read it on the cusp of becoming a teenager, and my mother was sure it had ruined me.
• Where: An eastern city.
• What: Starting a new blog I hope I’ll be more consistent with than the last two.
• Why: I am a troubled Catholic. I find the present situation in the church profoundly unsettling, and I feel compelled to write about it, if only to put my thoughts in order And sometimes you just have to vent.
• How: On a computer, with many cups of coffee and more than  a few prayers.

I’ll be more specific about why I’m troubled in future posts, and fill in my backstory a bit. I doubt many, if any, will want to stop here. If anyone does, please, of your charity, pray for me, a sinner.

 

 

 

Where will the word be found, where will the word resound?

Not here—at least not yet. Which might very well be a good thing.