A quick but important life update toward the end of the year: In March, when announcing my return to writing, I revealed that not only was I no longer an atheist, but that I had returned to a Christian framework and specifically had joined the Orthodox Church. In a rather awkward and fast-moving turn of events—after discussions with my wife and many long nights staying awake in conversation with good godly friends—I have made the decision to “cross the Tiber” and become Catholic.

This is not a “major conversion” in the same sense my conversion from atheism back to theism was, nor would it be as dramatic as a conversion of someone from mainstream Christianity to, say, Mormonism. In perspective, the “leap” from Orthodoxy to Catholicism is like leaping a puddle not a lake. In fact, I’m reluctant to even use the word “conversion” to describe my switchover, and feel like what I’m doing is more of a simple transfer. (Not too much unlike an American student announcing they want to try foreign exchange, but the country is Canada.)

I also acknowledge that a statement like the one that I’m making betrays a Western privilege. Persecuted Christians in the Middle East who are Orthodox and Eastern Catholic living under Islamic regimes frequently worship together, partake of the sacraments together, and are martyred together in towns and villages where there often is only one hidden secret church. Nobody argues about the Filioque in an ISIS torture cell. It must seem a strange luxury, then, for brethren like me under more comfortable circumstances to make decisions about religion based on learning and not on survival. With this privilege acknowledged (and God thanked for it), the differences between the Orthodox and Catholic churches are significant enough to me—in doctrine and in practice—that I’ve come to conclude that my relationship to Christ as my King and Lord depends upon my participation in the latter church and not the former.

The three big reasons for darkening the doors of a Catholic parish after a brief stint in Orthodoxy were:

Reexamining the history of the 1054 Schism (wherein the Orthodox and Catholic churches split into the Orthodox and Catholic churches and were no longer one church), as well as reexamining certain moments in church history before 1054 that confirm the Catholic “side” of arguments.
The power of the rosary. For the past three months, I accepted a friend’s encouragement to pray the rosary daily, and since then have felt a deep spiritual peace taking root in my chest and bones (literally, not being poetic) that has caused me to better resist temptations and overcome habitual sins. Seeing as how the rosary is exclusively Catholic, the efficacy of the rosary confirms (for me) the truth of the Catholic faith.
During my time praying the rosary, I’ve also dived deeper into the writings of Thomas Aquinas. It’s become apparent to me—in reading large sections of the saint’s Summa Theologiae—that Aquinas was touched by God in his work. I’m not claiming that the Summa was inspired, but I am saying that it’s obvious God showered blessing-upon-blessing on the intellect of the Dominican friar to a greater extent than He may have blessed any other theologian. Though this statement itself could be an entire essay, for the sake of brevity I would simply recommend Aquinas’ summas on “The Human Good”, “Divine Simplicity”, and “Law & Natural Law” to get an idea of why I believe his brilliance was an intentional divine gift. As an Orthodox Christian, however, I knew I could not be a convicted Thomist without also becoming a convicted Catholic. (And in fact, a lot of Orthodox apologists and theologians oppose most of Thomas Aquinas—especially his metaphysics—without offering alternative “eastern” ideas in response).

Yet while a more thorough knowledge of church disputes, praying the rosary, and becoming better acquainted with the theology/philosophy of Aquinas are the three main reasons for my switching, it would be dishonest to omit other peripheral contributing factors: There seems to be no clear unified teaching in Orthodoxy on eschatology; there seems to be no clear unified teaching on marriage, divorce, and remarriage; there seems to be no clear unified teaching on contraception; there seems to be no clear unified teaching on baptism, re-baptism, and chrismation; and there seems to be no clear unified teaching on whether the priest absolves sin during confession or if he’s merely a witness. Moreover, I’ve been reading several of the ecumenical councils and the heresies that were dealt with in each (Orthodoxy acknowledges the first seven councils, while Catholicism recognizes twenty-one), and two things have immediately stood out:

At the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680-81, St. Agatho (who is venerated by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches) makes several explicit statements in support of papal infallibility (further referring to Rome as the “Mother of the Apostolic Church”), and at no point do the eastern bishops object (which they should have done, easily, if papal primacy was a later heretical invention as the Orthodox claim). Then at the Second Council of Lyon in 1272, a full 590 years later (and 218 years after the 1054 schism), eastern bishops again affirmed the authority of the papacy as well as the disputed Filioque in the Nicene Creed. Both of these events critically undermine the Orthodox case for being the true church for the last thousand years.
Has the Orthodox Church even been capable of calling an ecumenical council for the last thousand years? Due to its rejection of the primacy of any one bishop, and due to the fact that in the absence of primacy any one bishop can simply claim not to recognize a council (thereby invalidating the entire undertaking), it’s hard to see how—in the event of a serious heresy or cultural falsehood arising—Orthodoxy could authoritatively address any issue.

The question of Orthodoxy’s capability to call ecumenical councils has led to a deeper issue concerning the church’s alleged unity: If “the Orthodox Church is one” (as catechumens are frequently told), what are we to make of the division between the patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople? What to make of the doctrinal and liturgical spats between Greek, Antiochian, and ROCOR parishes within the United States? What to make of the exclusion and non-recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church by the rest of the Orthodox world? What to make of the autocephalists, “old calendarists”, and starovery?

As one could expect, all of the divisions mentioned above lead to an even deeper issue: which is how an Orthodox Christian can determine what doctrines the (hundred plus) early church fathers shared overwhelming consensus on, when there is no central catechism or magisterium to synthesize and reaffirm said doctrines? What you’re left with instead is a game of “pick a favorite church father” to base your theology and interpretation of scripture off of. For example, one Orthodox Christian may like Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching on hell as a purifying fire through which all must ultimately pass to be redeemed (apokeostasis), while another Orthodox Christian may find such a view heretical and appeal to Ignatius of Antioch’s teaching on hell as a place of eternal punishment. Both Gregory and Ignatius are early church fathers, and there are passages in scripture which appear to support the positions of both, so absent a magisterium and absent a living authority, what exactly is supposed to be the doctrinal tiebreaker? If there is no tiebreaker, and both Orthodox Christians can cling to their “patristic view” as The Orthodox Position (insisting on the heterodoxy of the other), then essentially what we’re dealing with is just a very early version of Protestantism.

During a discussion I had with a close friend who mulled Orthodoxy for a time prior to becoming Catholic, I was also confronted with additional inconvenient history that I think rarely gets brought up in the East vs. West debate (perhaps because apologists from both sides deem it “uncharitable”, even though the information makes all the difference and therefore should be mentioned):

How, in the years 726-730, the Emperor of Byzantium Leo III of Isaurius (who, by being Emperor of Byzantium, was expected to occupy an important leadership role in the eastern church) adopted the iconoclast position and had to be formally rebuked by Rome (under Pope Gregory III)—who faithfully defended the use of icons—until at last Leo died in 741 unrepentant. And yet the church in the east still did not renounce the iconoclast heresy of their late emperor, as evidenced by the Council of Hieria, where over 300 eastern bishops reaffirmed the stance that depictions of Christ, Mary, and the saints were idolatrous. This conclusion of the council would not be reversed until the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 under the reign of Constantine VI and regency of his mother Irene. (You can read more about that whole event here, and even though Wikipedia should not be used as a source, it does provide a good general summary here)
There were several periods in Islamic history—especially Ottoman history—where Orthodox bishops did the bidding of their Muslim rulers and acted as mouthpieces for the caliphate. In many cases this was because patriarchal seats were sold to the highest bidder, and those who could even “qualify” for bidding were handpicked by the sultans. Hence there’s a very real problem that presents itself to the Orthodox Christian: can a church led by the Holy Spirit also be puppeteered by rulers following an entirely different religion? (You can read more on that here and here)
That the Fourth Crusade’s sacking of Constantinople in 1204—a key grievance the eastern church holds against Rome to this day—was NOT a premeditated play motivated by greed and power, but instead an act of preservation resulting from economic blunder and poor strategy. To give a brief rundown: The goal of the united French and Venetian armies was to take the city of Alexandria, which had been a Muslim stronghold for 600 years. But Venice overestimated the number of troops France actually had at its disposal, and spent an entire year building enough ships to carry 30,000 soldiers… when, once the time arrived for the French to show up, only 12,000 appeared. This sent the Venetians into a panic, as having all these excess ships with no sailors could spell financial ruin if Alexandria was not taken. Upon hearing of the Venetians’ predicament, the Greek prince Alexios Angelos—son of the recently deposed Emperor of Byzantium Isaac the Second—offered the Venetians 10,000 of his own troops to board their boats and assist with the crusade IF they would make a small pit stop along the way to reinstall him on the throne of Constantinople. Unsurprisingly this was a very unpopular solution to the Fourth Crusade’s problem. Notably, Pope Innocent III (who was the one that called for the Fourth Crusade in the first place) vigorously protested any diversion of forces to be used against other Christian lands, and Simon de Montfort (who would later lead the Albigensian Crusade) also objected. Regardless, the Venetians did not view the Byzantine coups against Prince Alexios as legitimate, and thus did not see their reinstalling him as “warring against other Christians”; they decided that reinstalling the son of Isaac the Second was worth the effort if it meant taking Alexandria thereafter. And indeed they did capture Constantinople very quickly and put Alexios back on the throne… the only problem was, everybody that lived in Constantinople hated Alexios and murdered him in the palace less than six months after his coronation. The leader of the second rebellion—Murzuphlus—then refused to honor the agreement made by his fallen enemy, and began raising an army to kill the crusaders. This put the Fourth Crusade in a very bad spot. With no money, dwindling supplies, their benefactor slain, and a new ruler agitating for their slaughter, not only would the mission of Alexandria have to be completely forgotten about, but the crusaders would also need to fight Constantinople just to survive and would need the wealth of Constantinople to pay their way back home. Hence, Constantinople was not the victim of cold calculated predation. Constantinople—due to its own myopic, factional, dysfunctional, and murderous politics—brought their plunder upon themselves. (You can watch a thorough video on this subject here)

While so far I’ve given multiple reasons—doctrinal and historical—for leaving Orthodoxy after only a year, I wouldn’t be entirely honest if I didn’t confess some reluctance in doing so in favor of the Catholic Church:

There’s a masculinity crisis taking place across every Christian denomination in the West, where female church attendees vastly outnumber males. In nearly all of these churches, the language and melodies of the hymns are very feminine (which is my polite way of saying that, for men, they sound GAY and make us feel like we’re forced to relate to God in a weird gay way), and the content of most sermons tend to center around the gentleness of Jesus and how much He loved the little children - not the Jesus who called the Pharisees “vipers” and wielded a whip. The only exception to the Christian masculinity crisis in the West has been the Orthodox Church, where parish attendees are comprised of as many men as women, and the homilies do not shy away from telling about the Jesus who will return to earth as a blood-soaked warrior (Revelation 19:13). Orthodoxy is great at keeping men engaged. And while I’m glad to see that American Catholicism is making a concerted effort to reengage men—with books being published in recent years like The Catholic Gentleman and Blessed Is He Who—Western Catholicism post-Vatican II still tends to produce artwork and iconography of saints, angels, and Christ that is syrupy, floral, and well… gay. Hence, there needs to be an even more concerted and intense effort to celebrate the forgotten masculine treasures of the Church: its crusader history, its stories of saints battling dragons and other monsters, etc. Oh… and beards need to be encouraged for priests and deacons who can grow them. (In a time where the world teaches that gender is fluid, that men are not “good” until they become more like women, and that masculinity is inherently toxic, shouldn’t the Christian man see the beard as a sign of resistance? If you have the ability to develop a feature that identifies you more as a man, why choose to forego that feature with a razor? What message does the intentional softening of your skin convey?)
It’s very difficult leaving a church that—seemingly—“has it all together” on culture war issues, to join a church that appears to be struggling to address those same issues in a unified fashion. The Orthodox Church has taken a bold and admirable stand against the spirits of our age, ranging from consumerism to transgenderism to anti-human technologies to the corrupting influence of Hollywood, that the Catholic Church in recent years has failed to take a stand against with equal fervor. To wax sociological for a bit, a major part of Orthodox custom and demography is Balkan, and Balkan people—generally speaking—tend not to care about how their opinions cause them to be perceived, nor do they wish to be shielded from the harsh truths of life like we Westerners often do. This is their strength and our weakness, and it definitely feeds into why the Orthodox are a lot more aggressive in taking on cultural degeneracy than Catholicism in Western countries, and hence why a lot of devoted followers of Christ in America wind up becoming Orthodox.
I’m not a fan of the Francis pontificate. I think Pope Francis is weak and liberal, and I convert to Catholicism despite him not because of him. His vindictive and petty suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, his ill-concealed disdain for American conservatives and conservative clergy, his surrender of the Chinese Catholic Church to the Chinese Communist Party, and his refusal to excommunicate Jesuits and German bishops who are going absolutely wild in defiance of sacred scripture and tradition, reveals a man who—on his own—lacks wisdom and courage. Further, Francis’ constant emphasis on the importance of tackling climate change, eating less meat, open borders, and ending the death penalty for society’s most abominable criminals, while giving speeches at the World Economic Forum and downplaying what he terms “below the belt sins” like abortion and gender ideology, reveals that he is a man who wants to be seen as “on the right side” by all the wrong people. He is no Leo XIII, he is no Pius X, he is no John Paul II, and he is certainly no Benedict XVI, and his upcoming “Synod on Synodality” is very likely to be a Sinod of Sinodality. At the same time, I do trust the Holy Spirit, and know from scripture and history that God works in mysterious ways using bad, good, and mediocre people to do His will; and also believe that the Spirit will never allow a pope—no matter how clueless, reckless, or wicked—to utter heresy while speaking ex cathedra (which is the only mode of speaking from a pope that matters).

To conclude, I want to express gratitude to brethren living and dead who led me—through their examples, their intercessions, their writings, their podcasts, and online presences—to what I now believe to be the one true faith.

Living brethren:

Peter Kreeft, the greatest Catholic philosopher of the 21st century.
Scott Hahn, the greatest Catholic theologian of the 21st century.
Jimmy Akin, who discusses how Catholicism relates to interesting and eccentric topics like obscure mythologies, Bigfoot, cults, conspiracies, and comic books; demonstrating that becoming Catholic does not mean one has to become stuffy or unpleasant, but can in fact make one’s life richer and more colorful.
Erick Ybarra, whose research on the East-West divide and knowledge of the 1054 Schism is matched by no one. If you’re looking for a Catholic apologist whose specific focus is Orthodoxy, Erick is your #1 destination.
Joe Heschmeyer, who provides compelling arguments time and time again for the legitimacy of the papacy. (Mainly through podcasting and YouTube, but also through a great book titled Pope Peter.)

Departed brethren:

Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, whose presence I felt upon returning for a third time to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and entered for the first time this year as a believer. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was the site of his coronation as king in 1174.
St. Thomas Aquinas, for showing me that medieval ideas and opinions often contain more honest and accurate information about human nature and how the world works than the nonsense that passes for wisdom in our “more enlightened” time.
St. Theresa of Lisieux, who sent me a rose as a sign that the Catholic Church is the true church and the one I should join (as she has done for thousands of others who have inquired into the Catholic faith).

In the coming months, at some yet-to-be-determined date, I will be formally received into the Church and confirmed in the Hebrew Rite. A lot of people are surprised to find that the Catholic Church has more than the Latin Rite, but it does. There is not only Roman Catholicism but Byzantine Catholicism, Maronite Catholicism, Armenian Catholicism, Syriac Catholicism, and—for people of Jewish heritage that don’t want to disconnect from their Jewish roots in the course of their Christian practice—Hebrew Catholicism. All of these “Catholicisms”, of course, are part of the the one true universal Catholic faith and fall under the guidance of the Vatican and are obedient to the magisterium.

As far as any “housekeeping” in terms of my writing life and as far as this website:

I’m still working on my next nonfiction book The Epiphanies: a two-volume-in-one account of my conversion(s) from atheism to Christianity and from democratic socialism to cultural conservatism that took place between 2020-2023. As the date of the book’s release gets closer, I will definitely be doing more promotion and advertising. Until then, just know that I’m working on it (along with another fiction novel), and enjoy my upcoming essays in the meantime.