Okay continuing from this
First I bought a copy of a catholic catechism called The Teaching of Christ out of curiosity. At the time I was working in the west of the city centre and my walk to the train station took me past a Catholic book shop called Pellegrini's Christian Supplies. It was unlike any book shop I had ever visited before. It had missals and bibles and theologies and statues of Jesus, Joseph, Mary and icons and jewellery and all manner of things and it was peaceful and quiet. It was not as big as many other book shops, it had no seating, no cafe. This was back in the day when books were always in paper print and no ebooks existed. I remember browsing several times before I settled on purchasing the catechism I named. The copyright date in the catechism is "1976 and 1983" being the second edition with the first very likely released in 1976. The book is 646 pages long and published by a publisher I'd never heard of - OSV (Our Sunday Visitor).
I read a single chapter from the catechism and then left it aside for a while, a year or more, and then returned to it and read two additional chapters. I took to numbering the chapters (in pencil) as I read them in the order in which I read them. I can tell you now that I was not to finish that catechism for more then twenty years and it has only 32 chapters.
As you can see, I was in no hurry to read it. And that was not because of any fault in the catechism. The truth is that the catechism was written in a very warm and friendly style, it was informative, encouraging, and all in all a complete delight to read. But life was busy and I was a professional with much to do and much to read. Besides I also had my studies (working on my second degree) and enjoying life too. Books on Catholicism simply did not rate highly for me in those years. So although I did read it it was an occasional reading and read the chapters in the sequence that seemed most relevant to me at the time I read. Thus I read the chapters in this order 1, 9. 10, 11, 2, 7, 17, 18, 21, 23, 26, 31, appendix I and II ... The chapter names are as follows:
After roughly twenty years of reading bit by bit in single chapters usually no more than one in a year and after being an atheist for seven or so years something happened. I had a gallstone. It was rather painful. I didn't know what it was at the time I got it but I called an ambulance and went to hospital (hospital and the ambulance is free here, one pays $50 or less per year for the ambulance and hospital is taken care of through taxation). It took two more incidents with gall stones before the cause was definitively identified and I was booked into hospital to have my gallbladder removed - the cause was difficult to identify in the first instance because the ambulance men, thinking it might be a heart attack because of the pain location, gave me a little pill to put under my tongue and the pain stopped almost immediately, the second episode happened in the late afternoon on my way home from work, I got a friend to take me to hospital and they thought it might be gall stones but could not find any evidence of them, the third and last attack happened on a weekend, the hospital did an ultrasound before administering any treatment and found a gallstone so they knew what was happening, treated it, and booked me in for the removal of the gallbladder).
It was while I was in hospital awaiting the gallbladder removal that I read saint Matthew's gospel, a friend had dropped off a Gideon's new testament and psalms and I was thinking about what to do with the day, so I decided to read. I always liked the bible, even when I didn't believe it. While I was reading I got to thinking about what I really thought was important and the answer was "goodness"; to me it mattered for all sorts of reasons, not least that I liked it, but none of my reasons for liking goodness was sufficient to explain to myself why I ought to go out of my way to be good or pursue goodness or even why I liked it so much.
After the surgery I went home, and thought about visiting church again. I wondered if I should go to WPC but decided I wasn't really keen on visiting Calvinism again, I didn't want to go down the intellectually rigorous doctrinal path and then I wondered about the local AoG but decided against it because speaking in tongues gets very annoying after a while and the endless enthusiasm coupled with intrusive attempts to convert people made the prospect unattractive. So I decided I'd visit the Uniting Church. I went and it was nice, the people friendly, the preaching okay, and the building was kind of attractive too. But I didn't go again. One visit was enough it seems. I hesitated for a year or more before I visited another church.
I'll pause here, I need to cook something for dinner and I am going to come back to this and see how best to continue. So if you want more then I will write some more later. Perhaps tomorrow ...
The story is of many steps again. I will not number them fully, some run into others but I will start with "first"
First I bought a copy of a catholic catechism called The Teaching of Christ out of curiosity. At the time I was working in the west of the city centre and my walk to the train station took me past a Catholic book shop called Pellegrini's Christian Supplies. It was unlike any book shop I had ever visited before. It had missals and bibles and theologies and statues of Jesus, Joseph, Mary and icons and jewellery and all manner of things and it was peaceful and quiet. It was not as big as many other book shops, it had no seating, no cafe. This was back in the day when books were always in paper print and no ebooks existed. I remember browsing several times before I settled on purchasing the catechism I named. The copyright date in the catechism is "1976 and 1983" being the second edition with the first very likely released in 1976. The book is 646 pages long and published by a publisher I'd never heard of - OSV (Our Sunday Visitor).
I read a single chapter from the catechism and then left it aside for a while, a year or more, and then returned to it and read two additional chapters. I took to numbering the chapters (in pencil) as I read them in the order in which I read them. I can tell you now that I was not to finish that catechism for more then twenty years and it has only 32 chapters.
As you can see, I was in no hurry to read it. And that was not because of any fault in the catechism. The truth is that the catechism was written in a very warm and friendly style, it was informative, encouraging, and all in all a complete delight to read. But life was busy and I was a professional with much to do and much to read. Besides I also had my studies (working on my second degree) and enjoying life too. Books on Catholicism simply did not rate highly for me in those years. So although I did read it it was an occasional reading and read the chapters in the sequence that seemed most relevant to me at the time I read. Thus I read the chapters in this order 1, 9. 10, 11, 2, 7, 17, 18, 21, 23, 26, 31, appendix I and II ... The chapter names are as follows:
It was while I was in hospital awaiting the gallbladder removal that I read saint Matthew's gospel, a friend had dropped off a Gideon's new testament and psalms and I was thinking about what to do with the day, so I decided to read. I always liked the bible, even when I didn't believe it. While I was reading I got to thinking about what I really thought was important and the answer was "goodness"; to me it mattered for all sorts of reasons, not least that I liked it, but none of my reasons for liking goodness was sufficient to explain to myself why I ought to go out of my way to be good or pursue goodness or even why I liked it so much.
After the surgery I went home, and thought about visiting church again. I wondered if I should go to WPC but decided I wasn't really keen on visiting Calvinism again, I didn't want to go down the intellectually rigorous doctrinal path and then I wondered about the local AoG but decided against it because speaking in tongues gets very annoying after a while and the endless enthusiasm coupled with intrusive attempts to convert people made the prospect unattractive. So I decided I'd visit the Uniting Church. I went and it was nice, the people friendly, the preaching okay, and the building was kind of attractive too. But I didn't go again. One visit was enough it seems. I hesitated for a year or more before I visited another church.
I'll pause here, I need to cook something for dinner and I am going to come back to this and see how best to continue. So if you want more then I will write some more later. Perhaps tomorrow ...
