About the Book

About the Author

Born the first of twelve children in a Roman Catholic family, I was reared with special attention to the religion inherited from my parents. Mother was a convert but my father had followed the religion of his parents, and they their parents, etc., etc. At the tender age of 21, I dutifully married a girl who had converted from Baptist to Catholic on my account, but whose relatives resented that fact fiercely and were diligent in their efforts to get her back on the "right track." Differences in our religious beliefs played a large role in the divorce that followed shortly after our first wedding anniversary.

My subsequent consultation with a parish priest revealed that to be assured of God's good graces it would be necessary for me to become celibate for the rest of my life unless my former wife happened to die before I did, in which (fortunate?) instance I would again be free to seek the natural companionship of a woman. An uncle, my godfather, strongly advised my joining a religious order, and I did consider it ------ for several minutes. Up to that time, my belief in everything I had been taught in the Catholic Church and in the Catholic schools was total. I had never questioned that the only way to avoid Hell (the desire to enter Heaven was not quite as important as staying out of Hell) was to be a practicing Catholic. I believed, as I had been taught, that Martin Luther had abandoned the priesthood solely because he had a very strong desire to marry a certain nun. I believed that it was sufficient reason for my God to damn my soul to everlasting fire if I were foolish enough to attend a religious service other than Catholic. In fact, I remember experiencing involuntary shudders whenever I passed a Lutheran church about a block from where I went to school in the eighth grade. I think I feared the unholy things that must be going on inside and that the devil might come charging out at any moment to force me to participate. And how many times had I anticipated the sudden, fatal lightning bolt because I absent-mindedly bit into a hamburger on a Friday? Or forgot to attend Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation? Or lots of other things committed or omitted unintentionally? I questioned nothing Catholic until that personal historic time when reason and religion collided head-on, when my Roman Catholic God appeared to take advantage of a position into which I had been forced and imposed conditions that seemed not only unfair, but also illogical. All I had learned became suspect. Until then, there had been no compelling necessity to establish my very own relationship with my Creator. But now there was.

I began to study. I read books, plenty of books, the Bible, histories, tomes on all manner of religious subjects. I listened to sermons in churches of many denominations, on the radio and on television. I pondered ponderous pious pronouncements and pretty platitudes from miscellaneous highly placed churchmen, all of whom claimed truth even as they differed widely. Surprisingly, the differences seemed to be the most important part. The Baptists proclaimed that if one has not been properly immersed it might be okay with God, but Baptist-wise it is absolutely unacceptable. Seventh Day Adventists advised that to observe the Sabbath on Sunday is wrong, wrong, wrong! Each denomination is founded on some difference and this peculiar characteristic extends throughout the religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all of them. There is little agreement, vast disagreement, about who God is and what He (or They) would demand. Each adherent is positive that his or her way is right and the others emphatically wrong. I spoke with people of various persuasions whose main goal in life seemed to be my swift conversion to whatever faith they happened to espouse, rather than providing believable answers to my earnest questions. Indeed, had it been permitted, for my lack of blind acceptance of their convoluted statements some of them would have cheerfully punched me if they thought they could get away with it. The more I questioned, the more I needed to question. Ideas and facts were written down, and I puzzled and continued to seek an authority I could believe.

In all honesty, I heard that it might be possible to obtain a dispensation or something from Rome that would excuse the previous ill-starred nuptials and allow me to do it again with church blessings. I also heard that it would be quite expensive and time consuming. Perhaps the seeds of some kind of discontent already existed in me for it had often crossed my mind that God's alleged affinity for money was curious, to say the least. At any rate, in due course I married again, this time to a Lutheran girl in a Lutheran church after a course of instruction from a Lutheran minister. That marriage lasted 25 years. Lutheran devotions were not as nefarious as I had been led to believe. They were not nefarious at all. However, it was interesting to observe that some Lutherans were most suspicious about activities of other religions, Catholics in particular. Unlike the Catholic, Lutheran leadership did not prohibit the flock from attendance at other brands of services. Rather, there was an air of optimism that we wouldn't like it anyway.

Experience and reason notwithstanding, those mind conditionings one receives as a child are not easy to dismiss. It continued to periodically worry me that I had abandoned the faith that God had caused me to be born into. One dark night in 1979 on Interstate 75 between Dayton and Cincinnati, I drove along mentally reviewing this belief and that, wondering about the fate of my immortal soul. I felt very alone. There did not even seem to be any other cars on the road. Suddenly, the sense of "aloneness" vanished. There was, apparently, no actual sound, but a forceful yet kindly voice seemed to saturate my whole self while the words appeared in my head as though displayed on a neon sign. "GOD IS YOUR FRIEND." It was not a blinding or earth-shattering experience, nor an occasion of unseemly ecstasy. It was merely impressive. The more I thought about it the more my concerns abated. Anxieties were replaced by appreciation. My belief in God took a whole new slant. The exploration of what man believes was encouraged by the reason and logic with which these were now interpreted in my mind, often with a humor quite at odds with the austerity and solemnity commonly exhibited by those who would tell me what God wants me to do.

At one time, I would have feared that daring to question, having the courage to make up my own mind, were machinations of Satan. No more! I am now satisfied about my relationship with God. It could be said that I have found my "religion." Although, over the centuries, millions may have believed as I do now, I am and will always be the only member of my "church."

Reader, I must mention to you in advance that I do firmly believe in the Creator of the Universe and I believe also that one can have a personal relationship with that entity. Further, I am convinced that Almighty God has arranged a life after this one. A personal experience has a lot to do with that conviction. In 1969, I was hospitalized for surgery. I had been ailing for more than two years and had become quite emaciated. My physician had been treating me for the wrong malady. When I changed doctors, it was quickly discovered that cancer was the problem. After the operation, there was doubt that I would make it through the night. Even before I became ill, I was quite fearful of death and the possibility of total extinction, or of having to face a sternly judgmental God to be punished for all sorts of infractions. When I returned to consciousness the following day in intensive care, all that fear was gone, replaced by a sense of anticipation that the next life is something to look forward t