The Next Leg of the Journey

A few years have passed since my last post here.  Wanting to "start" a blog about my decision to follow the call to priesthood, after browsing different blog sites and struggling to come up with a new title, I decided to simply return to my old blog, change up some of the main page info, and get to blogging again.

I'm leaving all the past posts in place.  Dark Magnet has had a couple different legs.  The first group of posts was like a normal blog, sharing my thoughts and life events now and then. Then I neglected it for awhile, and came back briefly to write book reviews.

And now, I have a reason to write a blog.  Anyone who knows me well is aware I've had a long struggle with my cradle church, Roman Catholicism.  Last fall/winter I formally joined Christ the King Old Catholic Church parish in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It's part of the North American Catholic Ecumenical church.  I've put links on the left side of this page (not sure where it would show up on mobile devices) if you're interested in learning more.

Or hey, let's make it easy:

https://christthekingoldcatholicchurch.weebly.com/
https://www.northamericancatholicecumenicalchurch.org/

The church's home page states: "Christ the King Old Catholic Church is a Welcoming, Open and Affirming Church in the Catholic Tradition.  We welcome diversity and do not discriminate with clergy or laity in gender, age, marital status, employment, or sexual orientation.  The lgbtq community has a friend in Christ the King."

While I love and honor the Metropolitan Community Churches, and the MCC church in Albuquerque is vibrant, alive, and brilliantly Christian, I need the liturgical aspects.  My most powerful religious experiences have been rooted in liturgical paths: Catholicism, Wicca, Orthodox Christianity.  I had some powerful connections to God in Islam as well, but that was short-lived for other reasons.

I'm going to write a lot here, much about my own path, but also looking out at the greater church, both the Roman church and Christianity at large.  But I do consider myself a member of the Old Catholic tradition now, and I don't feel like I will "go back" no matter what changes happen in the Roman church.  As long as its members are expected to follow what they are told, and as long as that church refuses sacraments to people for refusing to live in accordance with its ridiculous dictates on perrsonal matters such as sexuality, health, and even the variety of possible religious expressions, then I consider the heirarchical and institutional Roman church to be a useless husk.

I went to a couple daily Masses a couple weeks ago, because the only folks who do Masses every day here are Roman Catholics.  It was helpful to my spirituality, but I was constantly reminded by that inner voice that I don't belong there.  Pope Ratzinger sealed that in by changing the words of certain prayers and responses to more clunky language.  But that's just a trapping.  I felt I was somehow doing it wrong when I slipped "It is right to give God thanks and praise." And then the voice. You don't belong here.

I will always love the Roman Church.  I no longer belong there.  

So hey, I'm openly gay, a Catholic, and have had a calling to be a religious since at least college, and probably much earlier than that.  To be an Old Catholic priest here is to be a working priest, with a day job.  And I have a ways to go.  I have a history of religious struggle, and I want to stay true to this calling.  Please pray for me.