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lak611
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Isn’t the Serenity Prayer Catholic?
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Bennie_P
Guest
There is attack against Christianity all through our society. AA started off as a Quasi-Chirsitian fellowship, but many thought that would be a turn off to agnostics and those that had a bad experience in the church’s they grew up in. which I cannot say that was good or bad decission at the time.
AA has done good for a multituded of people over the decades. The program is suppose to be a program of honesty, but when I attend an AA meeting I fill dishonest, for I feel I’m being censored.
I’m unable to tell my story in the rooms of AA. For to do so would be my conversion story, how Chirst put all the right Christian and Catholic people into my life and how I submitted to his calling, how I use the sacraments to grow in faith, how I have a devotion to Mary, St Teresa, St Therse, John Paul II and Matt Talbot. How I used confession for my fifth step and the power I receive from going to confession on a regular basis, how I go to Daily Mass often as well as on Sundays. How I use the rosery when I pray for my brothers and sisters in recovery and others in need. This is were I get Grace not only stay sober, but walk in the glow of the Holy Spirit. You are allowed to praise AA, Bill W and god as I understand him, but you cannot share Christ by name, or someone will call foul, and start quoting from the 12 and 12 about controversy issues. Yet they have a separate advertised meetings for the Lamda’s GLBT group? And the orginized Church bashing, paricularly from “Catholics” seems to pop up at just about ever AA meeting I go to. Nowadays I only pop into an AA meeting from time to time to check up on new comers I reffer to AA that aren’t comfortable going to CR, or those newcomers that need that precious 90 in 90 days of early recovery.
My home group is a CR group, there I’m am allowed to share the name of Jesus and when we pray the Our Father at the end of the meetings I know the majority at least believe in Christ, yet I’m still stiffled about my Catholicism some, but all that know me know I’m Catholic and when I talk about my walk and mention some of my Catholic aspects of my recovery, no one calls me on it.
It has been in my heart that there needs to be a Catholic Christ centerd group to be bridge, and once again because of my experience, it needs to be a fellowship to bridge the Church community to those in recovery and vice versa. I’m not calling for Catholics to stop using AA, though personally I see many problems with AA.
One of the problems go against Bill W’s own ideas from *As Bill Sees it *page 21: “However, sooner or later most of us are presented with other obligations - --to family, freinds, and country.” …“I just know that you are expected, at some point, to do more than carry the message of AA to other alcoholics. In AA we aim not only for sobriety–we try to become citizens of world we rejected, and of the world that once rejected us. This is the ultimate demonstration toward which Twelfth Step work is but not the final step.”
AS Catholics our world is our Church community, our obligation is to spread and live the truth of Chirst. I have it in my heart that a bridge is needed to spread the word of recovery, and we need a place within our Church Community to bring back those that left the Church in need of recovery and be a place for the Church Community to seek help of recovery, and not just in the area of alcoholism. This is not a call to do away with nor not use AA. But it is very dishearting to go to an AA meeting and see the same people there, with multi-years of recovery, still telling the same old stories, over and over, offering no more hope then sobriety, but not salvation. To die sober without the Hope Chirst is nothing. I don’t think that is what Bill W had in mind. AA for too many has become a way station to nowhere.
Example: I can go to any noon meeting and my ex-sponsor(a Catholic) with more then 25 years of sobriety will come sit down, listen, eat his lunch, sometimes share how AA helped him, then rush back to work. Yet he finds it hard to, though he goes, to Mass once a week. He is a good man, but nobody in his parish knows his story. Who is going to reach out to him for help? If they don’t know his story? Why stand around waiting, when you can go ahead and be a witness for Christ?
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, having on the breast plate of faith and charity and, for a helmet, the hope of salvation. :grouphug:
:heaven:
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Bennie_P
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No it is envagelical. AA got it off someone’s obit/tombstone
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lak611
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I never knew that leads were censored.
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lak611
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Actually, the Doxology does not have its origins in Protestantism. See this thread that I am giving the link for here. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=150008
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PapaSquash
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Wow. Then it HAS gotten bad where you are. With experiences like this, I understand your misgivings.
Happily not all of AA is not like this. When I share I always mention that the Big Book tells us that the men of religion are often right and that we should learn from them. I always point out that in the Big Book there are very few things it says we MUST do. One of them is that, if our religious denomination (His word) requires it, that we give our confession to “the properly appointed authority whose duty it is to receive it” (Pg 74)
Nobody is going to shout me down. I remind them they can tell their story when it is thier turn.
in my home group (an open meeting.) We open and close with prayer on our knees. We end with the Prayer of St Francis.
A Neo-pagan walks out about once a month. Sometimes they come back after a little more research.
When somebody says they are a “recovering Catholic” I always go over and introduce myself and tell them that’s great to meet another Catholic in recovery, and I ask about their parish. Some don’t even realize I knew what they meant, and look at me like I’m hopelessly clueless. But EVERY TIME, some other Catholic will come up to me and introduce them selves and I can trell them about Calix.
Calix, I think, is supposed to be just what you are looking for. That bridge from early sobriety to active, sacramental life in a parsh. It’s just way too small right now.
I think of AA as medicine and the Church as food. I need maintenance doses of my medication (and I need to help administer it to others) but I can’t survive on penicillin. I would not want to replace AA with something that “resembles food” and interferes with participation in my Parish (my kids don’t need AA, and I pray they never do, they need my wife and I to keep them grounded in the Parish.)
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PapaSquash
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I didn’t mean to come off as saying that I do this thing right.
More to point out that a Christ friendly atmosphere can exist in AA today.
I think also that, as you said, Christ is under attack everywhere and we have to fight back.
More to point out that a Christ friendly atmosphere can exist in AA today.
I think also that, as you said, Christ is under attack everywhere and we have to fight back.
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Bennie_P
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Fortunately I don’t need AA, I have a program which is centered on the sacraments. My recovery started with me seeking out help from Christ. Then God brought an old friend and Christian brother back into my into my life I hadn’t seen or heard from for over 25 years. This brother was living in California and I was living half-way across the country. He connected me with a friend of his that moved to my city to run a CR group at a local church. I didn’t even set foot into an AA meeting room until I was sober 60 days. I attended 100 plus meetings during my 60 - 90 day period just to have place not to be alone during a short time of being unemployed and going through early days of alcoholic pcychosis, At about 100 days of sobriety I went to confession, did a general confession and did the penance the priest assigned me.
During this time I was doing a CR 12 step group I had joined when I was only four days sober and continued with that until I finished it a year later. (15 months total with 11 other men)
I go to 4 - 5 CR meetings a month (two different groups) and attend Daily Mass often and of course Sunday Mass. Not to forget regular confession.
Somewhere around 75 days of sobriety I picked an AA sponsor but fired him later on when we disagreed on me putting Church commitments and CR over AA. He was Catholic. We also disagreed on me doing my fifth step through the confessional, but I needed not only to admit to my sins, I needed the absolution only Chirst can give. His sponsor finally told him that would be OK, but by that time I saw I couldn’t serve two masters, I choose Christ and His Church.
The idea of a Catholic Chirst Centered program is not something I need personally, I have a personal program, but the Church is community and I see the need for others. And not just for alcoholics.
I go to AA meetings every once in a while just to see people I need to check up on as noted before.
Before this time of sobriety I had another long period of sobriety, almost nine years. It had nothing to do with AA, but I started it off in counseling and attending church. I wasn’t Catholic at the time. Over the years, though my counselors convinced me that I didn’t need church, then during a very stressful time I had no Church community to support me and I relapsed. I’m always, with God’s Grace, going to be active in the Church and I’m not going to hide my past to my Church Community. Being anonymous is having secret sins, which brings guilt, which brings reason to …
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LSK
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They are not…this is Bennie’s experience. I have spoken at a variety of AA conferences all over the United States, always talk about being able to return to the Catholic Church because of AA and have no problem talking about being a Catholic in an AA meeting when it is appropriate. I follow the traditions of AA in that I make sure my name in the bulletin as the ‘go to’ person for the AA meetings there at the JPII Hall lists my first name only. Anyone who comes to an AA meeting or conference where I speak hears my story and it includes the Catholic Church.
There are an incredible number of active, loyal and outspoken Catholics in AA. If you want to PM me I will give you the name of a taper and specific names of speakers you can hear that are sober, Catholic and have no problem speaking about Jesus being their higher power in AA.
I firmly believe that if a person feels as though they are discriminated against in an AA meeting they need to go somewhere else for their sobriety. This is not about which is better or worse. I am not impressed with Celebrate Recovery and Bennie is - I found my sobriety and was reunited with the Holy Mother Church through AA. He has found himself put down and discriminated against. He thinks addicts and alcoholics are the same. I do not. It is a difference of opinion only and is NOT something to fight about - AA welcomes anyone who thinks they are an alcoholic, and does not require a religious affiliation.
HOWEVER - if you have had a horrible experience in AA and cannot find your sobriety there YOU NEED TO LEAVE and go to another place for help. This is not about being right or wrong…this is about YOUR LIFE.
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Trelow
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Wow. I thought necromancy was forbidden by the Church.
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Bennie_P
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I haven’t said I have had a horrible experience in AA, I said I think the Church needs to have a recovery program that is Christ Centered.
The name of my Chirst that I follow is Jesus and not Bill W. and just becuase many Catholics, well known or not, have taken the easier and wide road of spirituality in AA does not make it of God.
God will use anybody’s experience for his Glory, but Catholics are getting sidetracked in AA. They are feed the Big Book when the Church as the Word.
How long does it take to find Mother Church in AA, After 6 months of sobriety, 6 years? 10 years? 20 years?
Bill W rejected Mother Church and he had a Catholic Spiritual Advisor and a regular audience with Fulton Sheen.
Luke 12:8-9 And I say to you: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God. But he that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.
I don’t know the state of grace that Bill W was in when he died but he had a chance to send the most important message to the world, but in public with the world as an audience he rejected it, because he thought AA was more important then Chirst.
Again I said I think the Church needs to have a recovery program that is Christ Centered. We have the Grace to heal, for we have Christ.
AA is a fishing hole, but we need not to throw our broken hearted into it in order for them to find healing.
And yes I believe alcoholism and addictions have the same basic cause, self-centerness without a relationship with God. AKA - pride
Oh yes I think any Catholic in a 12-step program should have a Catholic or at least a Christian, sponsor that is faithful to the Church teachings on the importance of the Cross.
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LSK
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No one said YOU had a horrible experience in AA.
You have not had a good experience in AA.
If anyone has ever had a not-so-good experience in AA, a horrible experience in AA, a sad experience in AA or a less-than-successful experience in AA they should NOT stay in AA. If they feel discriminated against because of their religion, sex, orientation, language skills, hair color or choice of a Higher Power, they should not be a part of AA. If they have been sidetracked from their religion they should reevaluate that and find why they have had that problem - if the fault lies with AA they should leave AA and devote themselves to whatever helps them to stay sober. They should find another source of help for their recovery. AA is very up front in the literature about not being the ONLY way for an alcoholic to recover from alcoholism.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT BEING RIGHT OR WRONG - IT IS ABOUT YOUR LIFE. Find whatever works for you and do it.
You have not had a good experience in AA.
If anyone has ever had a not-so-good experience in AA, a horrible experience in AA, a sad experience in AA or a less-than-successful experience in AA they should NOT stay in AA. If they feel discriminated against because of their religion, sex, orientation, language skills, hair color or choice of a Higher Power, they should not be a part of AA. If they have been sidetracked from their religion they should reevaluate that and find why they have had that problem - if the fault lies with AA they should leave AA and devote themselves to whatever helps them to stay sober. They should find another source of help for their recovery. AA is very up front in the literature about not being the ONLY way for an alcoholic to recover from alcoholism.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT BEING RIGHT OR WRONG - IT IS ABOUT YOUR LIFE. Find whatever works for you and do it.
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jblair
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**There are certainly people who have recovered from an addiction solely through Christ working in their lives apart from AA or another recovery approach. Yet, for the one who recovers this way, most “real” alcoholics find AA an effective recovery program. And who is to say that God is not leading these people to AA as opposed to another recovery way?
A person can certainly choose a practicing Catholic who has some years in working a good AA program. And some groups who may or may not be listed with AA Headquarters clearly state at the outset of a meeting who their Higher Power is.
Catholics have been involved in the development of AA going back to the beginning. For example, Fr. John Ford, S.J. edited the 12 & 12 and another AA text for Bill Wilson.
jblair
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A person can certainly choose a practicing Catholic who has some years in working a good AA program. And some groups who may or may not be listed with AA Headquarters clearly state at the outset of a meeting who their Higher Power is.
Catholics have been involved in the development of AA going back to the beginning. For example, Fr. John Ford, S.J. edited the 12 & 12 and another AA text for Bill Wilson.
jblair
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Catherine_Grant
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Thank you for your participation.
This thread is now closed.
This thread is now closed.
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