Joans played an important role in my becoming a Catholic. The biography of Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville West opened my eyes in the 1970s. Next came Joan of Arcadia, the teen who talked to God in prime time from 2003 to 2005. But just as important was Joan of Beverly, a seventy-something mother of seven who was my sponsor in RCIA. I entered RCIA in the fall of 2007 and found, along with about eight students, another eight... Read more

For the first 56 years of my life, not one member of my family died, other than grandparents. In March 2008, I was received into the Catholic Church, and six months to the day afterward, my father died. Dad had become my best male friend, so I lost that too. You might say the Catholic Church didn’t bring me the best of luck. As we move from All Saints to All Souls, from the brightness of an autumn Sunday in... Read more

I arrived at men’s group Saturday in blue blazer, fresh shirt, gray slacks, brown Oxford shoes. I was on my way to an interview with an important man about an important project, and my clothes were important to match. I was pretty puffed up. By the time I left men’s group, I felt cut down to size. Men’s group may be the butt of jokes, at least among some women in the parish, and I have made light fun of... Read more

This morning, by chance, by grace, I remembered again why I am a Catholic. I can hear the chorus: More than 80 posts in 10 weeks about YIM Catholic and you can’t remember? Dear Webster, Are you losing your mind?! The short answer to which is, there’s remembering and there’s remembering. Jesus tells us that unless we become like little children, we’re going to have trouble storming the gates of heaven. Problem is, we all become “adults” in the faith... Read more

There is a moment in season 1, episode 9 of “Joan of Arcadia” that chills me to the bone. Joan is in history class; the subject is the Hundred Years War; the teacher flashes an image of Joan of Arc on the screen. Joan Girardi, typical teen, looks up with a sudden shock of recognition: Me—a saint—the same?! This moment gets at the essence of this show and why we care about saints, too. For this moment, a saint is... Read more

Thanks to Karen for forwarding this list of Catholic fiction from Amazon, in response to my post earlier today. Your further comments are welcome here or there. Read more

A few weeks back I asked readers to cite poems that have inspired them. The results, summarized a few days later, sent me off in search of verse by Donne, Thompson, Yeats, and Auden. Next, I asked for hymns, and because my knowledge of music is even poorer than my knowledge of poetry, I let the comments at the bottom of this post serve for summary. It’s time for Catholic fiction. Having explained why I found Kristin Lavransdatter moving and... Read more

I was really, seriously thinking about throwing this blog overboard a couple of days ago. It’s a long story, but I wrote the short form to a friend last night: I have been trying to navigate past shoals inner and outer. It is hard to avoid capsizing a tiny vessel like this. You want to keep it real, but you have to keep it confidential as well, all the while holding your inner demons at bay. We all have them,... Read more

During my 40 years in the wilderness, reading was a mostly desultory pursuit. I went through a Dickens kick, a Civil War period, a David Foster Wallace frenzy, and a time of pure adoration for Norman Maclean. But there was no aim, no theme to my reading. It was like belonging to a Book-of-the-Month Club in which each season’s selections are chosen at random. By contrast, in the two years since I entered RCIA, I have read almost nothing but... Read more

Katie and I rarely go to the movies, so when I proposed a movie date Saturday night and she counterproposed the new Coen Brothers movie, “A Serious Man,” I jumped at the chance. I know it’s hardly the latest film to open, but I no longer imagine I’m in the cultural avant garde. Thank God. Spoiler alert: It’s hard to talk about this film without discussing the ending, exactly the way you can’t look seriously at your life without thinking... Read more