If my offhand remarks about the Catholic Church were imprudent or disrespectful, I apologize. It was not my desire to cause distress to anybody, especially at Christmas. No one who knows me should fret for one second about my spiritual well-being. My faith is deep and integral to every important thing in my life, but my prayerful relationship with the Creator has little to do with traditional religion, and I came to that realization nearly twenty-five years ago. Nothing essential in my daily activity is disconnected from the heart of Christ. I have no disunity with those who equate the presence of God in their lives with a loyalty to the church of their choice or upbringing, but it’s not my personal path. I struggle with my own imperfections and unmet potential, and have no meaningful place in my life for adding to those personal challenges the travails of a flawed church structure. I would no sooner seek to improve my soul’s condition by limiting my sacred practice to the beliefs of a single religious institution than I would try to become a better swimmer by wearing my street clothes and shoes into the pool every week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If my offhand remarks about the Catholic Church were imprudent or disrespectful, I apologize. It was not my desire to cause distress to anybody, especially at Christmas. No one who knows me should fret for one second about my spiritual well-being. My faith is deep and integral to every important thing in my life, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}