THE MIND ANSWERS THE BELL LIKE A SERVANT: A quick, necessary postscript to my recent long post about conversion–and I meant to say this earlier but got blown off-course by events! Anyway it would be easy to think that if you can become Catholic for reasons as intellectual as the ones I describe in that post, your faith would remain a papery husk, a bunch of moral laws rather than a passionate relationship with Jesus Christ. That kind of faith is certainly not what I was advocating. I think people generally move beyond their initial reasons and motives for conversion; and it’s necessary to do so, as we begin to step into the areas of Catholic faith and practice which initially felt the most remote to us. People who accept Catholicism as a groundwork for morality can, I hope, now revisit the music, the prayer practices, the ascetic practices, and the corporal works of mercy, and love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, and strength.

Post title is a nod to this.