A theme I constantly refer to is the evidence around us for what works in building the Church and what does not work. I try to always base this on facts and evidence, but the basic conviction that there is a right and a wrong way to do things comes from my own experience growing up Catholic. The lack of instruction I received and the ensuing confusion about what it meant to be Catholic, coupled with a growing sense of meaninglessness based on the platitudes of niceness which constituted most of that experience. Why believe in something that is meaningless? Why argue about ancient truths is they don't matter in application in any case? If they merely constitute a 'nice' way of looking at things? There had to be more to this Christian thing than that! Didn't lots of people die rather than renounce these beliefs once?
Discovering that being Christian was important, that it had a real, powerful effect on the choices you make, was somewhat of a dynamic revelation to me. An…