Welcome to Calling Down The Reign!

Hello!  My name is Matthew.  I have a Masters Degree in Catholic theology and worked for seven years or so in parish ministry before becoming a full-time dad.  After getting my undergraduate BA in foreign affairs, I spent a year figuring out what I was going to do with myself before landing a job as a youth minister in a small Catholic parish.  My conservative upbringing and underdeveloped understanding of the Catholic faith served me and the like-minded parents of the parish youth well enough for three years.  However, when I became pastoral associate of a small mission community, my pastor (also my boss and my friend) realized I needed a bit more education to serve adults well.  Upon beginning my classes for my master's degree, I quickly realized how inadequately the Catholic faith had been communicated to me throughout my life.  I learned about how often the Catholic hierarchy had been on the wrong side of history, science, and liberty.  I learned that there is no doctrine or dogma that is not open to reinterpretation.  I learned about the constructive role faithful dissent has played and could continue to play in the re-shaping of Roman Catholic Christianity since its inception.  I learned that my conservative politics were on the wrong side of the gospel of Jesus Christ more often than not.  You cannot un-ring a bell.  Once you learn something, you are responsible for what you have learned.  I struggled with questions of how to use what I learned.  How best could I foment for changes in doctrines, structures, and institutions which can no longer be reasonably called just and good given what the human race has discovered by way of the sciences, both "hard" and "soft?" 

I have been blogging now and then for over five years.  My blog took the form of a rather random collection of musings, pictures, links, etc.  Occasionally, I would find my faith upset by one or another pronouncement of the hierarchy or some conservative Catholic association.  I would write about it, often ineffectively, and then return to my opinions about video games, movies, politics, or whatever.  Those who might have agreed with or debated me about Catholicism were turned off by the frivolous nature of the rest of the blog, and those who enjoyed the regular "lighter fare" were often repelled by the over-harsh rhetoric I employed while railing against the latest offenses. 

I have decided therefore to locate my progressive Catholic musings and rants here on this brand-new blog, while continuing to post about my kid, wife, the weather, and so forth at my original blog.  That way, you know what you'll get when you go to either site. 

Thank you for joining me.  I hope that together we can raise up a voice as from the prophets of old!  I hope that as we speak out against those injustices and offenses against God's children and creation which persist to this day in the Roman Catholic Church, we can be a voice to reform and reinvigorate this church that we love.