text: 1/ I never claimed to be an orthodox Catholic; quite the contrary. I'm a cradle Catholic who left the church as a teenager and was atheist for the better part of my life. Some years ago I had some religious experiences. (Pretty stock religious experiences, as it turns out.) So I reconsidered atheism and after much vacillation and with many reservations I returned to the church. I was raised to think it was the desire to follow Jesus that foremost defines a Christian. I was always a Christ-lover (whoever He was). Of course the church doesn't approve of arriving at Christianity through mysticism, because there's no inevitability between theism and Christianity. Fair enough.