David Warren. Friday, December 31, My confessor had been patient with me over a few months. He was Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory in Toronto, and when I told him I wished to become a Catholic, he looked relieved, as if I had decided to give up on a life of crime.
I was just an Anglican, and had been one since earlier in my adulthood. When Father Robinson heard that I had said this to someone, he found me on a telephone.
I was invited to tea. Over the next several months, our weekly meetings were an entertainment. Father Robinson was not an entertainer but had the gift of making Catholic teaching sparkle intellectually, just where one was expecting dullness. The most obvious propositions seemed the least obvious; the most difficult and often vexatious things, like a piece of cake.
It helped that we both could appreciate paradox. When, at last, it occurred to me that my paradox was an involuntary lapse, it was almost the season of Christmas. Advent was far advanced. That was precisely eighteen years ago.
I had a Confession to make, to this Confessor, that was challenging, for I had to disencumber myself of fifty years of sin and error. I got little sleep the night before, rehearsing the unmanageable list. Enough of this reprise; for neither personal guilt nor continuing anger was useful to me anymore. Part of my thrust into the Catholic Church had indeed been guilt, and anger, yet, I had already largely overcome it.
