Catholic Church

On August 20, 2005, I made a formal request for my family to be released from our membership vows to Christ Church Searcy (CREC). On November 22, 2005, the session of Christ Church released us from those membership vows.

On December 3, 2005, my family was formally received into the Catholic Church by our local parish.

We are in the process of seeking full communion with the Catholic Church, and Lord willing, we will receive the sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil Mass this year. Officially, we are considered "candidates" by the Church now and we are fully under the pastoral care of our parish priest.

We consider this a testimony to God's continued mercy in pouring out sanctifying grace upon us, and so in response to the question, "When did this come about?", I would tend to say that many things over the whole of our lives have prepared us for this decision. But more particularly, it has been roughly nine to ten months since I first pondered whether or not the Catholic Church was rightly owed our submission.

Please know that I am planning to reserve most "religious" commentary for a separate blog. If you have an interest in the goings-on of my family but would generally prefer to avoid a "Catholic" blog, I am hopeful that you will be comfortable continuing to check in here at this blog.

This is a very significant step for our family and we are very happy. We praise the Lord for His abundant lovingkindness and we give Him the glory.

For those of you who have (or would tend to) explicitly or implicitly state that this move is a "step away from Christ" or an "abandoning of Christ" or that I am "leading my family to hell" or that we are embracing a "false gospel, full of idolatry and blasphemy", while I know that you would not request it or accept it, you have my forgiveness. I have, in my past, harboured similar sentiments and I know how strong the feelings can be on this topic, even if misguided.

September 2007 Postscript: Above, I claim to be starting a separate blog for religious matters. If you have followed this blog recently, you know that I no longer reserve religious matters for a separate blog. I explain this in a post HERE. But since some of you are new and would have missed that explanation, I thought I should come back and insert the link for your general benefit.