Thank you for the Links!

Special thanks to Julie D, Epiphany, Martha(m2), Amy, Cacciaguida and Eve for linking to my conversion story. I also appreciate all the thoughtful comments from readers, both known and anonymous. If my story can help one person, then all this gut-spilling is worthwhile.

Reader Mail

A reader writes in response to my conversion story:

A small observation - I know exactly what you mean about confession. Can you understand why so many Catholics ignore the sacrament of reconciliation? I cannot get over it, as it is one of the most attractive parts of the Church to me. My Catholic relatives think I am crazy to go as often as I do, and I think they are making a big mistake for not turning to it more often! I was an agnostic for many years, and the idea that you can confess sin and be absolved was something I (unknowingly) was searching for.

Very perceptive. And I stand by my assertion that I have never heard a priest of my Diocese give a homily about the benefits of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The only times I have heard it mentioned from the pulpit have been by visiting priests from other Dioceses.

To me, this is sheer folly. Here we, as Catholics, have a powerful, life-altering gift, a healing that cannot be bought or sold, and the doctors who administer this treatment won't mention it to the sick for fear they might offend the sinful! It truly boggles the mind.

Bad Boy!

And I'm not talking about the dog.

Seriously, I've been hungry before, but I've never been quite that hungry.

If they change one more thing…

Sympathies and condolences to our separated brethren in the Anglican Communion.

UPDATED TO ADD:
A reader comments that this woman is not an Anglican priestess. Thank God for small favours, I suppose. But her story, linked in the comments, is rather sad.

Broken people need love too.

This post at In Our Midst is a welcome dose of honesty, and it also asks the unanswered question: Is the Church a hotel for the holy, or a hospital for those sick with sin?

Via Emily at After Abortion.

Conversion Story - in Five Vast Posts!

For anyone who's interested, but too short on time to browse through the archives, here are the links to the five parts of my Conversion Story. The Conversion Story has become a real staple of the (converted) Catholic blogosphere!

Part I: I was born in the House my Father built…

Part II: Yurodivi Goes to College

Part the Third: Conversion means more than a Change of Address

Part the Fourth: Dangerous Flirtations

Part V: What Now?

Thanks again to all who have read and commented.

My Conversion Story, Part V

The Final Chapter: Now What?

Niemand ist nutzlos! Man kann immer als schlechtes Vorbild dienen. — German folk proverb

So, if you have already read parts one through four below, you know that I am a fool. In fact, the more I think about it, the more resonance the name Yurodivi has for me, although I chose it somewhat cavalierly when I started my blog. No matter how deeply I have sunk in sin and despair, however, I have never completely ceased to believe that God existed. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep me from despair or any other sins, but perhaps it has helped to keep me from running headlong off the precipice.

Now, however, I’ve been a denizen of the blogosphere for several years, and I have learned a great deal. Availing myself of online educational resources, I am now able to have intelligent discussions (without losing my cool or resorting to name-calling) with my brothers and other Evangelicals because I know more about the Faith and what it means to live as a Catholic in a hostile world. Unfortunately, I also know what it means to be a hypocrite and to point to standards I was not then willing to live by. All told, the learning process has taken a long time, kind of like water soaking into the middle of a rock.

What’s that you say? Water doesn’t soak into rocks? Well, with a few exceptions, that’s true. But my head (and heart) are slightly more porous than quartz, thank God; and finally his words are sinking in with me.

Now, look: I know nobody ever finishes reading a sentence that begins with my therapist says… — but bear with me: because of the way certain things that happened in my childhood, I adapted by developing an unfeeling exoskeleton. like a clue-excluding force field, if you will, it kept me from ever seeing myself clearly enough to appraise my own character or personality. Now I find both sorely lacking; and I am extremely disappointed with my use of the forty-odd years I have walked this earth. I’m sure many others are disappointed with me as well; and I hope, with God’s help, to do better.

Granted, the circumstances of childhood and biochemistry are beyond my control, but that’s no excuse for the things I have done. There is even less excuse for things I have done since becoming Catholic, because I should have known better. But I guess that’s what being the Holy Fool is all about, and now my mission in life is to become more Holy, and act less like a Fool.

I find myself facing middle age, but finally getting some more aggressive treatment (drugs plus therapy) for my various mental issues, and holding down several jobs. Because of choices I made earlier in life, we have no children, and we are old to be starting; and I couldn’t blame Mrs. Yurodivi if she just decided she didn’t want to bring any more Yurodivis into the world, especially if they might be anything like me. This is the bleakest part of the story; because I have been a terrible fool all these years, I have not only damaged my own life, but I have made her terribly unhappy and cost her the best years of her life. In fact, if I lived to be a hundred, I don’t think I could begin to make up to her the things I have done wrong.

As for the mental-health issues, I suspect most people who know me have always known that something was not quite right about me. But I believe every form of madness involves an act of will, no matter how minute, and I am resolved not to go on being sick. There are lots of remedies for depression, including some chemical ones, but here is one of my personal favorites:

The Dawning

George Herbert (1593-1633)

AWAKE, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns ;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth ;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns ;
Thy Saviour comes, and with Him mirth :
Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart His comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
And feel His death, but not His victory.

Arise, sad heart ; if thou dost not withstand,
Christ’s resurrection thine may be ;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee :
Arise, Arise;
And with His burial linen drie thine eyes.
Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

So, now what?

What do I do now, now that I wake gradually from the sleep of forty years’ wrongdoing and oblivion?

The answer lies in prayer, repentance, charity, frequent confession, and trying to discern and live God's will for my life; also investing in my family life at home, and putting my talents to work outside the home. (If we can’t have children, at least our pets love us.) That said, here are some things that have finally begun to sink into my skull:

• I have gone looking for the wrong things in my relationship to God. I went looking for social acceptance, success and happiness, when I should have been offering myself to Him whole and unreservedly, and accepting whatever He gave me. (According to Saint Francis de Sales, this is a pretty common problem.)


• Just knowing the rules and the facts doesn’t make me a good Catholic, or a good Christian of any kind. After all, even the Devil can quote Scripture.


• Saying you’re sorry is not the same as living out conversion in your daily life; and if you keep repeating the same offenses, whether against God, or against your wife, or against your fellow man, you need to examine whether you’re really sorry enough, or if you’re just mouthing the words in lieu of a real apology. Are you sorry enough to quit doing whatever it is you like, and start doing what’s good and right?


• You don’t have to keep repeating your destructive behavior. If you truly surrender to Christ, you can change, and then things can be different. But until your heart is converted, it’s pointless even to try.


• Sarcasm is like arsenic: a small dose isn’t fatal, but over time it builds up. Its effects on a relationship are much the same; it builds enmity and resentment and kills trust and joy.


• And finally, to translate the motto at the top of this entry: No one is useless! You can always serve as a bad example. That’s one of the main reasons I posted this story, so that others might learn from my own foolishness and lead happier lives.

Thanks to Julie D., Epiphany, Anastasia, and all those who have read and commented on this story. I appreciate all your input and the links.

Thanks also to Amy, Mark, Eve, Cacciaguida, and all those from whose blogs I have learned these last several years. Without my palantír looking into the Catholic universe, I don't know whether I would be here today.

Profound stuff…

…from Father Tucker:

Almost everyone believes in God, in one way or another, since even the unaided human mind can discern His existence.

Go. Read. And pray for more priests like this one.

Dogs: What can't they do?

Posted without further comment:

Dog licks man's leg, saves it from amputation.

American Idol: the final two

Well, I got my wish: Bo has survived into the final round, where I imagine he will trounce Carrie. I still can't believe he sang that a capella song in the first place, much less that he sang it again.

Best of luck to both of them! And I was sorry to see Vonzell go. She seems like a very sweet Southern girl, and she has a monster talent; I hope she'll go far in her career, regardless of the order in which she finishes in this competition.

My Conversion Story, Part the Fourth

Part the Fourth: Dangerous Flirtations

In 1999, I went into therapy for the second or third time. My therapist at that time was a good man, a very serious Evangelical who taught at the local Evangelical college and also worked in the mission field. He worked on me a lot. At that time, I hadn’t been to confession in 14 years, and I was consumed with guilt. And he had me on the edge of reversion. In one session, I related a story about attending the funeral of a well-known priest, a beloved, grandfatherly figure who had received me into the Church in the 1980s.

Now, I still assumed that priests were all perfect, as in Chaucer (If Gold rust, what shall Iron do?). However, when I went to this funeral, I went into the rectory with the rest of the choir, and another well-known and beloved, grandfatherly Monsignor was weeping openly and standing at the head of the receiving line, receiving condolences from everyone. Again – I was clueless about what that meant. However, during one of the eulogies, it transpired that the Monsignors owned a cozy bungalow together and had been assigned within a stone’s throw of each other for over fifty years.

Are you getting the picture? The one that was just beyond Yurodivi’s grasp?

Well, the thing that tore it for me was the erotic inscription on Monsignor’s tombstone. Then the dawn from on high broke over my dim understanding, and I perceived what everyone else in the church already seemed to know: i Monsignori were husband and husband, so to speak; and that meant the man who had given me extensive penances for minor sins had been carrying on the whole time.

This was on top of the revelation the preceding year that a priest in the diocese had run off with his best friend’s (adult) daughter. You know the sad part about that? I was relieved that at least it was a heterosexual affair instead of ephebophilia. So at that time, I was in a tailspin with the Faith. I was coming to think the whole thing was a fraud, that nothing really mattered, and that the Eucharist was just a symbol. But I kept up my musical duties at the church, first enduring a parochial vicar who was in his eighties, then an aging-hippie priest from Out West Somewhere who was installed as pastor.

Now, this new priest was a mixed blessing: Everyone Loved Him because he was witty and affable. Those people didn’t object to the way he neutered the words of our sacred liturgy, improvising his own non-gender-specific prosody. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the way he would give announcements before saying the post-Communion prayer, basically turning the announcements into a stand-up comedy act — Father Seinfeld, as it were. Few people saw his other side — the side that screamed obscenities in the Sacristy whenever the Bishops reinforced any teaching he saw as ‘conservative;’ the side that said, ‘You know, Yurodivi, if we’re going to let women have their civil rights, it’s wrong not to ordain them. They have a right.’

On the positive side, he was pretty good with the brick and mortar side of things, and he actually read his homilies from a script — in fact, he treated them a lot better than he treated the Sacramentary. This was an improvement on the previous priests, who preached extemporaneously (that is, they didn’t bother to prepare). Unfortunately, the average Catholic in the pews would rather hear feel-good drivel delivered in a dramatically satisfactory fashion than be challenged by Christ’s teaching, just as they would rather have beetle grubs than listen to Gregorian Chant.

It was the last year of the second millennium, and I was really at the nadir of my faith in the Church. My wife and I had been going through a lot of problems, including a serious illness suffered by her mother, and the loss of two beloved pets to cancer, plus a miscarriage shortly thereafter. I trudged through my musical duties at the Catholic Church, phoning it in for some time, because my heart was truly not in the work any more. Thoughts of suicide were a continual presence, lurking like a specter in the attic of my soul.

Just then, a position opened up at a large Protestant church in town, and the position was perfect for my abilities. I began to read some of the founder’s writings, and within weeks I was right back into my Babdist mindset, believing the anti-Catholic calumnies: that the Church taught “works salvation,” that we worshiped Mary and the Saints, and that the authority of the Pope was extrabiblical, as was the rest of Catholic theology. In the state I was in at that time, it’s a wonder I didn’t revert on the spot.

Fortunately God had other ideas. God had other instruments, other servants to reach down into the miry clay and put my feet on the solid ground.

First, the protestant church rejected me. Although they didn’t cite this as a reason, I doubt they wanted a Catholic, even a nearly lapsed one, in their church leadership. Furthermore, they probably perceived my depressed mindset despite my efforts to conceal it and “put on a happy face.” So my efforts to jump Peter’s Bark came to naught, because I couldn’t just quit my job at the Catholic Church and go off on my own.

Second, I started to do some research about the foundations of the Church. One of the first places I landed on the Internet was a site called In Between Naps. One post, a post I seemed predestined to read at that time, mentioned a talk the Blogmistress had given at which she had been heckled by an older woman (maybe even a nun, if memory serves) who insisted that Amy “admit” that the Catholic Faith was not based on the Bible. Amy refused, instead demonstrating how it is based on Scripture and on Sacred Tradition.

Now, when I first became Catholic, I had been fairly comfortable with the idea that the Faith was extrabiblical; but here was an idea I had never considered: that it was both Biblical and traditional.

SO, gradually, over the course of months, I read, and read, and read, and prayed. I felt as though I had been wandering in the desert and had stumbled into the oasis of knowledge, and I was determined to drink all I could. Eventually, I even took the vital step of returning to confession after 17 years. Yes! A cicada’s age, as I said before; and I regret those years in the wilderness.

But sometimes, just as the Shepherd may break a wayward lamb’s legs to foster the bond with the Shepherd, God lets us suffer — usually, in my case, because of my own misjudgements — to draw us to Him. And I had to endure those trials to help my unbelief.

Coming tomorrow, the final chapter: What Now?

My Conversion Story, Part the Third

Conversion: it's more than just a change of address

As I wrote above, I was born into a house where Joy was only a dishwashing liquid, so you might expect that I would have some challenges not only growing up, but as an adult. And you would be right about that.

When I was received into the church, I was singing in the choir of a large Catholic Church in my small southern city. I had been singing there ever since I left the Babdist church, and all along planning to hop the Tiber and come home. In retrospect, it seems that the speed with which I was allowed to come into Full Communion with the church was a problem, because I didn’t have to go through the process with a group of catechumens and make a real self-examination to get in.

I was basically stamped and greased, so to speak, and cut loose. I was never told to continue my religious formation, and I thought that just being received was enough. Furthermore, no priest in my Diocese has ever, in my presence, given a homily about the Sacrament of Reconciliation or even mentioned it as an important part of the Faith.

No, none of that guilt and sin stuff. And every Sunday, practically the entire assembly streams forward to the altar to receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, I’m not fit to judge anyone’s disposition to receive the Eucharist, but the confession line on Saturdays, when the Sacrament of Reconciliation is offered for an hour (only an hour!) at my church, is rarely more than half a dozen souls. I have a hard time believing, as often as I sin, that all those people are really all that clean. That’s why, most Sundays, I refrain from Communion in order not to received unworthily, eating and drinking damnation to myself.

How I regret all the times I have received the Body of Christ in an unworthy state! I tremble at the thought, calling to mind Aquinas’ words:

Sumunt boni, sumunt mali:
sorte tamen inaequali,
vitae vel interitus.
Mors est malis, vita bonis:
vide paris sumptionis
quam sit dispar exitus.

(Both good and bad partake, but with unequal fates, either death or life; Death to the bad, life to the good; how different are their ends!)

And our priests never mention that Communion is not an all-you-can-eat buffet for all and sundry. No! They told me repeatedly that receiving Communion was "a matter of conscience," and it was up to me to believe or not believe in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I am thankful that even my unworthy reception can be washed away! I have struggled with my own sinfulness for many years, and I have not conquered my sinful nature; indeed, I never will, except in death. But I am thankful for the hope of salvation, the free gift which I do not and cannot merit.

That brings us back to the conclusion of Part the Second, in which our Holy Fool (mostly fool, not much Holy) had entered into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. And this post is already so vast (thanks, Eve!) and the hour so late, and I have still so much to say.

So let me put it this way: it is impossible for me to describe, even from the putative safety of pseudonymity, the things I have done wrong since I became Catholic. It calls to mind Evelyn Waugh’s pronouncement that he was, indeed, a very bad man, but would have been even worse without the Catholic Faith.

When the chance came to live up to my Baptismal promises, I said, I know Him not, and ran to do evil, again and again and again; sometimes, like Augustine, just because I could (wish I’d read his Confessions sooner; it might have made a big difference in my life). And sometimes, if I'm honest, it has been because the sinful choice is more convenient, more expedient, and more socially acceptable -- even among Catholics.

All I can say is, my Guardian Angel must have been working overtime all these years: I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I managed not to get hooked on drugs or alcohol, or even cigarettes (though I do enjoy a cigar once in a blue moon), and with my family background, I was at high risk for all those things and then some. So maybe the good doctor is right about the Guardian Angel.

They also say God watches out for fools, drunks and little kids, so maybe that’s part of it too; I’ve certainly been all three of those things, sometimes two at a time.

The saddest thing of all, though, or the most confounding, is that I wallowed in sin all those years, not going to confession once between roughly 1986 and 2003. Yes - a cicada’s age. I am reminded of John Donne’s masterpiece:

A Hymne to God the Father

WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

So, what drew me back to the Faith?

Come back tomorrow for Part the Fourth: Dangerous Flirtations.

Liveblogging American Idol

Okay, I've resisted up until now, but I just have to blog this.

First of all, Clive “the Fossil” Davis is along for the ride, questing over the fresh meat like a hungry vulture.

Vonzell's first song is I Know I'll Never Love this Way Again, but it's off pitch. Otherwise not bad. I really like Vonzell.

Next: who the heck is Bernie “Topin”? Still, Bo sold this rendition of Don't let the Sun go down on me. He’s quite versatile. Mrs. Yurodivi says it was good because it was “not like a cover,” but more like he owned the song.

Paula still doesn’t have anything useful to say.

As for Carrie — isn’t it about time for Country and Western Idol?

I can' believe Bo sang that whole song a cappella? That’s risky, but at least he’s willing to lay it on the line. That takes guts. He kept to pitch and really sold the song. Gotta love the hippie shirt.

Then: Air Supply???? Mrs. Yurodivi is singing along because she knows all the words. Takes me back to the days of big hair. The beginning is too low for her, but she makes up for it when she goes to the chorus. She’s not comfortable being “dirty” with her voice, if that makes sense. She’s got good, sound technique, but she needs some dance lessons or something to look more comfortable on stage.

Vonzell 3: On the Radio Mrs. Y says she sounds a lot like Donna Summer.
Love the sparkly top, gal. I can’t lose the mental image of life in the dojo when she dances. She has an excellent voice and she's just so darn affable.

Bo had to be uncomfortable in the courtroom for the announcement of his third song, don’t you think? I didn't care for the song; it's too talky to show off his voice – I didn’t tune in to hear Sprechgesang.

Mrs. Yurodivi: "So why exactly did Paula get to choose Bo’s song? Hmm?

Carrie 3: Okay, I have to admit I hate Man! I feel like a woman. It’s too low for her at the beginning, but she sells it anyway.

My own never-to-be-humble opinion is that Bo is the best, most seasoned, and most professional of the three. I hope he wins. But we won't know for a while, right? And no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the people.

Also at Spero News. . .

. . . is Julie D's very thoughtful and well written review of Lee Strobel's book, The Case for a Creator. Go, read, enjoy.

My Conversion Story, Part II

Part Two: Yurodivi Goes to College

When I started attending Bourgeois Babdist Church I was not very mature at all. I didn’t have a clue about how to behave in polite company, and I embarrassed both my brothers no end. My father discouraged my attendance at the church, telling me that the church was just a nest of hypocrites, that I would get the same treatment there as everywhere else, and that it was a waste of time.

He was right about the treatment I got there. Since I wasn’t especially housebroken, no one wanted to be around me any more than they did at school. But Daddy’s words were factually correct, and while I imagine he thought he was protecting me from harm, they recall (25 years later) the passage in St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Divine Life in which he instructs his young charge about the reception she will get in the world if she decides to lead the religious life:

As soon as worldly people see that you wish to follow a devout life they aim a thousand darts of mockery and even detraction at you. The most malicious of them will slander your conversion as hypocrisy, bigotry, and trickery. They will say that the world has turned against you and being rebuffed by it you have turned to God. Your friends will raise a host of objections which they consider very prudent and charitable. They will tell you that you will become depressed, lose your reputation in the world, be unbearable, and grow old before your time, and that your affairs at home will suffer. You must live in the world like one in the world. They will say that you can save your soul without going to such extremes, and a thousand similar trivialities.
Philothea, all this is mere foolish, empty babbling. These people aren't interested in your health or welfare.

My father’s protestations notwithstanding, I kept attending BBC through the first two years of college, singing in the adult choir every Sunday and Wednesday. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to get out of bed in time to attend Sunday School; now the 9:45 start seems decadently late in the day. I wrote a couple of choral pieces, but the choir director didn’t like them; when I pointed out that one of them was based on a Gregorian cantus firmus, he said, “Don’t mention that around the choir. That won’t help your case.” This might seem like foreshadowing, but if so, it was not conscious on my part. At that point I hadn’t even the vaguest inkling of an intention to become Catholic.

At the end of my freshman year in college, I took the summer chorus option to earn my ensemble credits for the music school without being tied to rehearsals during the regular season, when I should have been practicing. The piece we performed was my first serious encounter with Catholic religious thought: Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. I had no Latin at all, but I was able to make out large chunks of the text based on my knowledge of French and Italian. Since I had previously been taught the usual anti-Catholic calumnies, I was astonished to see how closely the Catholic faith mirrored the Christianity of the Bible.

In the spring of my sophomore year, the position of pianist came open at BBC, and I threw my hat into the ring. For those who are not familiar with the Babdist Church, the music used to be like this: the choir gathers in a huge raft of stalls above the pulpit (and in front of the Baptismal Pool). On one side of the stage (usually stage left) is the organ; stage right is the piano. When it’s time for the congregation to sing, the Music Minister stands in the pulpit and conducts the congregation. Mind you, not like the Catholic cantor, who merely indicates when it is time to sing, but actually beating time and giving cues.

On the other side, though, was a young woman who had an amazing gift for the piano. She was orders of magnitude better than I was. So naturally, given my thorny personality and my less distinguished technique, the church chose her over me. Within a fortnight I had secured a job at a small Babdist church in my own neighborhood, and I never went back to BBC again as a member. Instead, I moved my "letter" to the other church and played there for two years.

(Keep reading! The Catholic part is coming soon.)

In a way, leaving BBC was a very important decision, and one that was ultimately beneficial to me. I would never have gained the playing experience there that I did at other churches, and I benefitted from the closer relationship with the pastor at the new church. He was a good guy: a former college football player, not the effete type one so often sees in ministry.

In the fall of 1984, I was embarking on the first semester of my senior year at University, and I sang in the chorus for an opera production. In that chorus I met none other than my first serious girlfriend, CJ. To be fair, I have to admit: she was my first any kind of girlfriend. And she was that rarest of birds: a young, believing, practicing Roman Catholic. In order to engage her, I offered to trade her Russian lessons for German lessons. She jumped at the chance because she had been wanting to study Russian, but hadn’t been able to fit the courses into her schedule.
Now, in the years since my first fateful encounter with the Verdi Requiem in summer chorus, I had continued to learn Catholic liturgical texts through my music history courses. I had seen that, except for all that stuff about Mary, they were pretty much in line with what I had understood as the tenets of the Christian faith. On one of our dates, CJ described the Lenten season and its culmination, the Easter Vigil, in detail, explaining quite well for a layperson the significance of the parts of the liturgy. For instance, she was the first person to illustrate for me the connection between Passover and Easter (other than that they happened at the same time). For Catholics, Jesus became the Paschal sacrifice: his blood, like the blood of the lamb daubed on the lintels and doorposts of the children of Israel in Mithraim, wards off the Angel of Death so that we may have eternal life. For this reason the Paschal Lamb is no longer needed, and, in Aquinas’s words,

et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui.

The old rite (an animal sacrifice) yields to the new (Christ’s sacrifice and rising from the dead).

So I responded with the only liturgical rule I knew in the Babdist Church: Don’t play Jesus Paid It All while they’re passing the collection plate. Ba dum BUM!

Seriously – Most of my life I had been told that the Old Testament was interesting to read, but no longer relevant. How could that be true, then, if there was such a connection from the foundation of the Hebrew rite to Christianity? And besides, there was that cool movie they made about it . . . and suddenly it all made sense.

As I continued to learn more, I expressed an interest in learning more about the faith as it is practiced today (and in Catholic years, 1984 is barely further back than yesterday). CJ gave me a book called The Teaching of Christ. It was a sort of condensed Catechism. I devoured it in a single night, and I never really looked back. For me, the ultimate proposition was, if Jesus spoke not just in parables, but in real terms, what did he mean when he said all that stuff in John 6, and again in all the Passion narratives, and why does Paul repeat it in his Epistles? This is my body, which will be given up for you, and He that eateth and drinketh, discerning not the Body of the Lord, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.

And furthermore, Jesus didn’t say, I’m off to heaven, but I’m leaving you this really great Book, but rather, On this Rock I will build my church. (If you read my Reply to a Dear Friend below, you’ve already heard some of this particular line of argument.)

CJ dumped me in the spring. She had moved away for her first post-collegiate job, and she wasn’t up for the rigors of a long-distance relationship any more, and I can hardly blame the girl. But I must say, I came away with a much greater gift from her than I had to give: the Catholic faith that is still with me today. I have been through times when God seemed distant, or when I turned my back on him and on the teachings of the Church. To be honest, I have, like Peter, often denied my Lord Jesus rather than acclaim him as my Savior; but I am thankful for every grace and favor that I have received from God’s hand.

My relationship with the Church has sometimes been a troubled one. I have a certain set of gifts and abilities, and I feel compelled to use them in the Liturgy of the Church, but some pastors are not terribly in tune with what the Church has set forth as guidelines for music at Mass. They reject the Church’s teaching authority (known as the Magisterium) and set up their own tastes as a guide to right and wrong. Also, I am not terribly subtle about my opinions, and singers, pastors and members of the congregation (the more empty-headed, the more likely I am to hear from them) are frequently offended by a clear presentation of the rules. Many pastors take broad advantage of the phrase for pastoral reasons and do what they will to the Liturgy, elevating their tastes to the status of the Church’s teachings.

Coming Next: Yurodivi discovers that Conversion means more than a change of address.

Sing us a sonnnnngggg, you're the . . .

Piano Man.

Seriously. At the end of a season, with choir concerts, accompanying gigs and so on, I'm surprised I've never wound up in this situation myself!

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

It's my first published piece in the Culture-Vulture section at Spero News! I am assured that my fee of ten thousand quatloos is on its way.

Come and rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost . . .

I come to the Gar-din aaaalooooooooonnnnne . . .

. . . . while the dooooooo is stillllll on the roooooooooooo-ow-ses. . . .

I have to take this moment to pray for some peace and calm for Penni at Martha, Martha, and to praise this post, wherein she mentions God's role in tending Martha's garden. Read and consider.

Can we just have a little clarification, please?

The important distinctions are completely blurred in this story about the priest in St. Paul, Minnesota denying Communion to people who were wearing the "rainbow sash."

Okay. Deep breath. We've all read a million of these asinine pieces of reportage, so we shouldn't be surprised when we encounter the vast intellectual abyss that is modern journalism. For instance, we read that the priest said he would not give the sash-wearers "wine or bread." Well, I certainly hope not! I hope he didn't give that stuff to anybody else either!

We also encounter the idiotic outlook in which "Sister" compares living as a homosexual, living the sexually active gay lifestyle, with "being born a woman." The two are not the same, okay?

I really can't dissect this any more. It's just same old story every time.

How to Annoy your Spouse

Okay, since I've been married a long time now, I can laugh my jaded little laugh at some of these items, mainly because they're so close to home.

• Tipping clutter from coffee table on to floor to make way for TV dinner.


• Failing to replace loo roll when it is finished.


• Getting drunk despite lack of any obvious excuse. (Yurodivi: You mean you need an excuse?)


• Failing to control flatulence.


• Making any attempt to complain about any of the above.

I let a lot of these pass without comment . . . calling Dr. Popcak, please.

My Conversion Story, Part I

Part I: I was born in the house my father built…

Late have I loved you, beauty ever ancient and ever new!
– Saint Augustine, Confessions

I was born into a family of lapsed Babdists, into a house where Joy was only a dishwashing detergent. Babdists don’t normally use the term ‘lapsed’ except in reference to their Woodmen of the World Life Insurance policies. Instead, they usually say they're ‘backsliding’ Babdists.

Now, I don’t mean to poke fun by writing ‘Babdist’ instead of Baptist; that’s just the way folks talk in these here parts, and there’s no point sugar-coating it. But Babdists we were, and such most of the family remain. My early religious education consisted of Easter-season TV screenings of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. Plus I had a little King James Bible that my parents gave me for my eighth birthday; it had a zippered vinyl cover with a day-glo painting of Jesus suffering the children to come to Him on the outside. I also got religious lessons from my unlettered grandmothers, both of whom really loved the Lord and tried to pass that love on to their grandchildren.

I “got saved” several times along the way to legal majority. The first time this happened, I was 13 and attending a private school in my smallish Southern city. Surrounded by secularized liberals who looked down on Evangelicals, I decided that I was going to be a Charismatic. Problem: I wasn't very charismatic, me. I was like the seed that fell among thorns, and was quickly choked out. That lasted a few months.

Note to Evangelicals: Catholics have to get saved all the time, according to Saint James’ formula: work out your salvation daily with fear and trembling.

The second time I got saved, it was at the altar call of a Second Chapter of Acts concert (remember them? The two sisters and one brother, all with the same haircut?). I was there with my older brother, who was a very observant Babdist, and another older brother, who also got saved the same night. That lasted a while, and I started attending Bourgeois Babdist Church with my brothers. That same spring, I was baptized on Easter Sunday.

Remember I said I was a terrible geek? Well, I was also depressingly naive. Why, you might ask?

Because I thought that getting saved would mean all those other Christians would accept me for who I was, and everyone would be nice to me.

If you’ve dried your tears of jaded laughter by now, read on.

Believe me, if you actually knew me, you might be surprised that I could be that stupid, but so I was (hence my Internet handle, which means the Holy Fool in Russian, as seen in Boris Godunov). I wanted to believe the best. You know, all that stuff about koinonia, the brotherhood of believers, living together, loving one another, holding hands and singing Kumbayah. The way things actually happened, I was just as big a reject as at school. The main difference was that the people at school sneered at me openly, while the church kids whispered about me behind their hands. Hey, at least they pretended to be polite about it.

Everybody sing! "Oh they'll knoooooooooowwww we are Christians by our luvvvv, by our luvvvvv. . . . . "

In a sense I “tagged along” to baptism with my elder brother without being truly prepared. Fortunately the person receiving the Sacrament of Baptism doesn’t really have to understand it for it to be valid; otherwise it wouldn’t have been valid for the centurion and his entire household who were baptized in the book of Acts (cf. chapters 10-11), and it wouldn’t be valid for babies either. So in spite of my lack of understanding of the cleansing power of the Sacrament, it “took” in my case and I was not re-baptized when I became part of the Roman church.

While my belief was sincere, the faith never really took hold of me. I never had that emotional connection or burst of divine revelation I had heard about from so many other Christians (for instance, my paternal grandmother, may she rest in peace, described an experience of waking up in bed in the middle of the night and knowing that the Spirit had come to her). This emotional experience is a common theme among Evangelicals; at least that is a large component of the way the faith is spread. But I am glad to be a Roman Catholic, for reasons I’ll explain in greater detail later on.

I had a hard time with the anti-intellectual attitude that I encountered at Bourgeois Babdist Church. God gave me a brain for a reason (although that doesn't make me less of a fool), and my fellow Bourgeois Babdists thought anything that was learned at college was Of The Devil; that made it difficult for me as someone who has always had a hunger for knowledge. The adults in the choir were bad enough, but the other kids in my age group (the Youth Group) regarded me in much the same way the well-to-do kids at school did: geeky, fat, awkward, unattractive, not fun to be around. I was like any other reject: not good enough to be pleasing to the people I wanted to please. Frankly the whole experience reinforced my dismal outlook on the state of Fallen Man, and that appraisal hasn’t changed much over the years; if anything, I would say my view of humanity is even darker than it was then.

Coming tomorrow: Yurodivi Goes to College.

Preview • Vorschau

Dear Catholic friends, fellow bloggers,

inspired most recently by Anastasia, another Southern Catholic Convert, I will be posting my conversion story this week.

Like Wagner's Ring, it's long, so it needs to be divided over several nights in order to be digested.

So here, in order, are titles for the first parts:

1. I was born in the house my father built. . .


2. Yurodivi goes to college


3. Freshly minted, but still a long way to go

The first part will appear no later than Monday evening.