Conrad nodded me towards an interesting article today, a piece by a friend of his who used to be the LA Times' religion reporter. A profound and sincere conversion let him to pursue a dream of modeling authentic faith in the newsroom, but the day-in day-out task of working with the Church ground it out of him.

The judge ruled in the favor of Uribe, then pastor of a large parish in Whittier. After the hearing, when the priest's attorney discovered I had been there, she ran back into the courtroom and unsuccessfully tried to get the judge to seal the case. I could see why the priest's lawyer would try to cover it up. People would be shocked at how callously the church dealt with a priest's illegitimate son who needed money for food and medicine.

My problem was that none of that surprised me anymore.

As I walked into the long twilight of a Portland summer evening, I felt used up and numb.

My good friend Jeff Benson has recently stumbled into a frustratingly insular blog that fancies itself a watchdog" for the dangerous spiritual poison that is the "Emergent Church Movement." I'm skeptical of the branding of personal growth, which is what much of that movement feels like to me, but my concerns are nothing compared to the righteous anger that's splattered all over the blog.

Curiously, the blogger in question posted about Will Lobdell's slide from faith, and the results were kind of predictable. There was no real attempt to engage Will's questions, just an appeal to personal stories about a mother's answered prayer.

I can understand the power of personal experience, but such responses cheapen Will's own story. He's the first to say that he encountered profound and inspiring beauty, faith, and love while covering the religion beat. Those were matched, however, by just as monstrous sins and the willingness -- no, the eagerness -- of the body of Christ to cover them up.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

He's the opposite of the fundamentalist's platonic atheist: he didn't fight the gospel with his intellect and ignore the Holy Spirit's wooing. He held on with his head after his heart grew sick of it.

Will's story is real; to be unmoved and unaffected by it is to live in denial.