I'm Catholic.

In a recent Facebook message, I realized that it was past time that I come clean to whoever reads this that I reverted to Catholicism in January of this year. It was a long time coming. Married to a United Methodist pastor for 45 years, having attended weekly services and Adult Sunday school the whole time, having taught Disciple Bible Study I, II and III, having Walked to Emmaus, and putting in eight years as a Kairos volunteer has not been an obstacle to my gradual slide back to the religion of my roots. There, I've said it.

What brought me back? Well, it was a lot of things. First, I was repulsed by the United Methodist church's continual compromise with the culture. I've been a supporter of Mark Tooley's Institute of Religion and Democracy for many years. Go here for more. I tried to color inside the lines and stay in the Methodist church, even though my wife frequently remarked that I was "still" Roman Catholic, after all these years. So, I decided to read the official Catechism of the Catholic Church about two years ago. At that time I also began attending the Denver Chesterton Society, where I rubbed intellectual elbows with a bunch of Catholics. Chesterton was a hoot. I dragged my wife to the dedication of the Chesterton Reading Room at St. John Vianney Seminary at JP II center where we listened to Dale Ahlquist, the founder of the American Chesterton Society hold forth and were treated to a theatrical appearance of "himself" in the person of an actor in Ahlquist's entourage.

My wife is not amused by Catholicism. She is a life-long Methodist, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution with deep, did I say deep, roots in Methodist churches founded by her ancestors across the country. She grew up in the house next to the Methodist church in Windsor, Colorado. Her Methodism is solid, yet troubled. A political conservative, raised by rural, agricultural, Republican parents in Weld County, Colorado. Her growing up church was often influenced by clergy from Iliff, the Colorado Methodist seminary that no longer uses the name of Christ on its billboards in Denver. Glenda Gay and I lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland (just outside the District of Columbia) when she felt called to seminary.  A great student, she loved seminary, graduating Summa Cum Laude with her M.Div. class from Wesley Seminary in DC.

Today, I attend mass daily, work in a rosary each day, use the sign of the cross when praying and wear a 2 inch pectoral cross on my chest that my brother bought for me in the Four Corners area. It is decidedly Navajo in form and style. I'm not. I'm the Irish Catholic Urban Democrat I was raised to be, no longer Democrat, but Conservative. God, help me with the transition. Before my reversion I felt like a Catholic in a Protestant life. Now I feel like a Protestant in a peripheral Catholic life.