“Love Itself is Knowledge”: Melinda Selmys Comes to Patheos!

“Love Itself is Knowledge”: Melinda Selmys Comes to Patheos! June 10, 2015

melinda-headshot-SquareWe’ll be rolling out several new bloggers over the course of the summer, and we’re very happy to get started by introducing you to the busy writer Melinda Selmys. We’re sure she will enliven the conversation on faith here in the Catholic channel!

Melinda describes her life as “the Divine equivalent of a Monty Python sketch,” and once you get to know her you will appreciate the line and the sentiment. Given the title of her well received book, Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism and her other blog, it is no surprise that she decided to call this blog:

Selmys banner

Melinda jumps in with some an entry into the Why I Am/Remain Catholic project that is continuing to draw attention around here, and such a writer, she is…:

Confronted with the truth about what belief in God is, what it entails, and why a person might believe I realized that my atheism was a text-book case of mal fois. I was an atheist because I craved absolute autonomy, complete independence and ultimate authority over my own life. Yet none of these desires were rational or justifiable given the manifest limitations of the human condition. Fundamentally, my existentialism itself was inauthentic. So being a good existentialist, I had no option but to honestly investigate the God hypothesis in good faith.

My approach was simple and experimental: if there really was a being on the other side of the chasm, and that being really did want to be known, then surely if I asked Him to reveal Himself He would.

Read the whole thing.

The nation is being roiled by questions of love and sexuality, the church challenged by people who neither know nor care that there is such a thing as a real Theology of the Body or that it is found within Catholicism. I think Melinda’s thoughtful, prayerful take will be a terrifically valuable addition to the channel as we engage in the inevitable conversations and confrontations headed our way, via the world.

Please make her welcome! You can subscribe to her feed, and also follow Melinda on Twitter, where her comments will very likely leave you thinking.


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