Welcome Dave and Contemplating Christian

Check out Dave's blog Love and do what you will.

I'm a former Episcopalian. Tidbits about my turn toward Catholicism and the Church can be found in my comments on confirmation names under the name Antonio449. I do not say "conversion", for though we may use this term to appeal to non-Catholic sensibilities we all know we are in a constant state and need of conversion. Am I 100 converted yet? To be honest: not really. We too often depend on emotional security in this regard. This comes from William of Occam empiricist approach I think, accentuated by Luther and others later on. The Evangelical turn comes in the 19th century from what I gather from Newman's description in Apologia pro vita sua. Such a position assumes that if only we experience pleasant feelings then we have it all together. As for me "I am still working out my salvation with fear and trembling" along with the entire Church whose head is Christ.

Dave brings up a very good point here. We must not allow ourselves to fall into this trap of, "well I've converted and now I'm finished." Quite the contrary. On my other blog Calling Rome Home my header reads, "Conversion is but the start of the journey." Maybe that should read, "Conversion to the Catholic Faith is but the next step in the journey." We are all called to life-long conversion. Being fallen creatures in an imperfect world we can never obtain full conversion while here on Earth. We are called to a continual process of conversion and an always just out of reach goal of perfection. It is God who is our guide in the process. And as the stories that have been shared here recently show, that process didn't start when we entered the Catholic Church. For many this process has taken years before we even got to that point.

Let us be reminded that even though perfection is always just out of our reach it must always be our goal.

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