AUTHORITY

The Church demanded of me a decision, before she would take me in. I don't mean to say there was a ceremony at church where I had to assent to something, or a session in RCIA where I had to sign something. Though those things happened. What I mean is that in my reading and thinking and praying about whether to become one with the Church, it was made plain to me, by God, not by interior locution or handwriting on the wall, but by the natural processes of human reason confronted with divine truth, that I was forced to decide the question of authority.

I was fortunate. I had lived long enough under my own authority to be absolutely sick of it. Despite the fact that I had the disadvantages, philosophically speaking, of growing up in latter 20th century America, I was more than ready to cede that one asset that most of us hold on to so dearly that it can cost us our souls: self-determination.