There and back again

A hearty greetings to one and all! I would first like to thank our gracious hosts for allowing me the opportunity to post on what is sure to be a great site. In thanks I will comply with their request to post a little bit about myself. I am my favorite topic so I try to avoid writing about myself unless it seems relevant to a given topic.

My name is Colin Gormley, as it says in the author section. I am currently employed as a software developer with the Texas Legislature Council in Austin. My wife is Hyewon Byun who is a Phd currently working as a posts-doc for the University of Texas.

For the most part I was raised a Catholic. My mother comes from a lukewarm Methodist family but converted when my family moved to Texas from New York eons ago. My father is Catholic but it is fair to say that the driving force behind the family’s faith life is my Mom.

It was not until I went to college that I encountered my first real challenge to living the faith. Even during my struggles I always held on to my Faith. My main challenge was more about how to live that life faithfully when the world seemed to reject everything I believed. It was during this time that I experienced a horrible depression and was a functioning agnostic.

Towards my final days in college I moved to another location within the dorms and encountered an Evangelical group with a small faith community. I admired their enthusiasm for Christ and for all intensive purposes was a functioning Evangelical. But even then the truth of the Catholic Faith compelled me to hold on even as I searched for how to live a life true to Christ and His Church.

It was during this time that I developed an interest in apologetics and logical defense of the Catholic Faith. My Evangelical friends had a lot of questions and I needed answers. So I turned to the Internet, that bastion of reliable information. By God’s grace I found Dave Armstrong, Catholic Answers, and an host of other orthodox information.

Eventually it was time for me to leave my Evangelical friends, though that wasn’t entirely my choice at the time. But God again stepped in and through a friend brought me to the University Catholic Center and the University Graduates and Professionals group. Through them and the grace of God I have now come full circle and made the Faith I was raised with my own.

So that is the long and the short of it. I look forward to my fellow contributors’ writings and cannot wait to see this site take off. I hope to offer what I can and I hope you enjoy what I write.

God bless and let’s get rolling…

Colin Gormley

Colin Gormley

Colin Gormley is a 30 something Catholic who is married. By day he is a contract worker for the state of Texas. By night, or whenever he’s trapped with his wife in her biology lab, he blogs about the Catholic faith from an apologetics perspective. He often strays into politics given the current debates in the country, but he tries to see all issues with the eyes of the Church. His website is Signs and Shadows.

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2 thoughts on “There and back again”

  1. You’re right, there are a lot of similarities between our faith stories! Though I’m not sure whether or not I’d say I ever was a functioning agnostic. Funny, too, that it was your mother who was the driving force in your Catholicism: mine too! My dad is actually a convert, and the conversion happened over the strong objections of most of his side of the family (as well as a few of his colleagues, including perhaps even his boss). He told me at some point that he felt like he was “kicking and screaming” every step of the way, until very near the end of it.

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