TRIP MY TRIGGERS: A Lutheran pastor asks a question, or a set of questions. Let’s see what I answer! (I should note–all intriguing or provocative points are the result of Pr. Frontz’s excellent questions; all sidelong glances, misdirections, and crapulent theological claims are my own!)

Greetings. Your blog was one of the first I began to read, and appreciate your comments and the diversity of your interests.

You made an interesting comment–“I know many Catholics can’t get enough of conversion stories, so I imagine you’ll want to read this if you haven’t read it already.” As a convert to Catholicism, do you get tired of people asking you about your conversion story? Do you feel as if you have to conform to other people’s expectations of your conversion experience, or be a “perfect” convert with no doubts in order to keep your listener satisfied?

I have no hidden agenda in asking this question; the comment merely piqued my interest.

BTW, as my sig. will no doubt imply, I am not Roman Catholic, so I am not personally invested in this, aside from the fact that as a Christian, I rejoice whenever one comes into a saving relationship with Christ through the Church. But I do get concerned that “converts” can be used and abused, especially regarding the sexual orientation issue. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks for your consideration,
God bless you.

Chip Frontz
Veni creator Spiritus

Well. I don’t know what people expect from me. I’ve never yet failed to disappoint, so… feel free to hang expectations on someone who can actually support them. (Look! A whole book of possibilities!) But let me see if I have anything interesting to say about conversion stories.

1. I don’t believe you ever leave your hometown. I will never be a cradle Catholic, and I’m not sorry. I believe in loyalty. There is no way to have it all–to say yes and no with one voice, to be not-Catholic with some people and Catholic with others–but I would rather be divided than disloyal.

2. I think people want to hear conversion stories in order to know more about their own faith. That’s perhaps especially true of a sensual faith like Catholicism, which works itself so deeply into the veins that it’s hard to know what it would be like to live without it. What did it feel like to live without it? Ah, it was all… very confusing. I don’t know that I can give a good description in non-fiction.

It was very lonely–especially so because I was (…actually) loved by family and reasonably popular at school. And so one is forced back onto the thought that They only accept you because they don’t know. One of my recurring paranoias is that people near me can hear what I’m thinking; but the converse of that, of course, is that none of us can fully know another person, and so none of us can know if we would really be loved by someone who could hear what we were thinking. No matter how vulnerable I might seem, it’s quite likely I’m holding something back. (And in my case, I can think of things I’ve spent over a decade trying not to say; and, to my great relief, succeeding.) At any rate, the point is that only faith convinces me that we–each of us, me too, not just you sweet and solvent citizens–are made in the image of God.

3. Queer; and useful. Of course, I know that these days it is exceptionally useful to the Church to gain converts who have roots in Queer Nation. I knew that when I signed up (and it did not make me especially thrilled with my decision). Here are a few scattered thoughts:
a. I was lucky in that I never expected to view myself as “virtually normal.” No one on this earth is virtually normal. Phyllis Schlafly is as far from that ideal as… well. As I am.
b. If you have felt, as I have, a terrifying and soul-shaping sense of alienation from the majority culture, from very early in your life; and if this sense of alienation was at some point hooked on to your understanding of your sexuality; it might be worth considering the Catholic explanation as well as the queer-liberationist one. The latter says that our alienation is the product of cultural forces which we can somehow, by harnessing our internal (and uncultured?) drives, control. The former says that our alienation is the product of the Fall of Man, and only God’s obsessive, relentless grace can bring us to the home we have always known we missed. The latter says queerness is a historical anomaly, a burp, to be gotten over; the former says queerness is a potential source of insight into the alienation that every human soul feels, from the Living God.
c. I hate being useful. If you’re useful you’ll get used. Therefore, I try not to be used. God will know if all my strenuous efforts at irony were worth it.

Your replies, remonstrances, and rebuttals more than welcome.