A Question for both Catholics and Protestants

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Sepharad said:
I hate the ACLU too, but the Jews in it are the antireligious and secular ones anyway.

And yes, I have noticed that the Orthodox (Christians) are more antisemitic…maybe because they tend to be ethnically-identified, and usually with ethnicities that never liked Jews anyway. Though that might not be the only reason for it.
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Oh, I meant Othodox Jews. (Joking, Joking)😛 😛 😛 😃
 
Sepharad said:
Do you guys (Catholics or Protestants, either one) have to deal with anything like this? :rolleyes:

realjewnews.com/

(BTW this guy is not an anomaly by any means…historically there have been other Jews who converted to other religions, then turned around and did things like this.)
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Haha! I knew plenty of traditionalists who swear Jews run the world and intend to destroy the Catholic Church.
 
ralphinal said:
True. I should have mentioned that. There seems to be two reasons for this. In the case of the JWs, they are prevented from a lot of things, like education. In both cases, they feel lied to about God. More importantly, and you mentioned this, they are abandoned by friends and family, some even forced to move to start a new life. How tragic.
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Many years ago, my husband and I knew a guy who had been raised Old Order Amish, and converted to Seventh Day Adventist. You don’t know shunning until you’ve experienced an Old Order Amish shunning, let me tell you.

Because he had violated the Amish Ordnung, his wife was forbidden from talking to him, even handing anything to him, he lost his business because all his clients had been other Amish, and now they were forbidden from buying from him or selling to him, he had to leave their community with just an 8th grade education (Amish children only go to school till 8th grade, then work on the family farm.)

He lost his entire family and community, as well as his livelihood, but he was amazingly serene and peaceful about it. I think the more you sacrifice for your faith, the more you appreciate it.

But I shouldn’t talk…in some circles of very Orthodox Judaism, a Jew who converts to another faith is regarded as dead; the family will even “sit shiva” for them (mourn for them as if they had actually died.) And when asked “how is your son”, they will respond, “I have no son, he died.”
 
Sepharad said:
Many years ago, my husband and I knew a guy who had been raised Old Order Amish, and converted to Seventh Day Adventist. You don’t know shunning until you’ve experienced an Old Order Amish shunning, let me tell you.

Because he ahd violated the Amish Ordnung, his wife was forbidden from talking to him, even handing anything to him, he lost his business because all his clients had been other Amish, and now they were forbidden from buying from him or selling to him, he had to leave their community with just an 8th grade education (Amish children only go to school till 8th grade, then work on the family farm.)

He lost his entire family and community, as well as his livelihood, but he was amazingly serene and peaceful about it. I think the more you sacrifice for your faith, the more you appreciate it.
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True, true. I like to point out to the 10th grade CCD class that I teach, which is the Confirmation Class in my parish, that the Faith that they would leave for a girl or boy is the faith that people DIED to protect. What an insult! I see the same thing in Judaism. It is one reason that I am so harsh towards irreligious, secualr Jews. People DIED for your faith, some related to you, and you can’t see fit in your heart to honor that which they died for?

I wonder if your friend was so peaceful about it because of his Amish background. They are wonderful models of acceptance and leaving things to God.
 
Jonathan_Cid said:
Haha! I knew plenty of traditionalists who swear Jews run the world and intend to destroy the Catholic Church.
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Ah, yes…the “Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to destroy the church”…the Omni Book Club/Hutton Gibson/Maurice Pinay/Charles Coughlin/Denis Fahey/Leonard Feeney crowd! How could I forget?:rolleyes:

(not to mention Most Holy Family Monastery/Brother Dimond and that ilk…:eek: )
 
ralphinal said:
**I have never met someone who converted into Catholicism and held anything but love for his former faith. They always see it as bringing them as far as it could, then the Catholic Church carries them the rest of the way. **.
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I too have had the same experience with converts to Catholicism. They seem to go out of their way to express love for their former faiths. (except JW’s and Mormons, probably becaue they are more cultic).

For some reason, Catholic and apparently Jewish converts to other Christian religions feel a need to bash their former faiths in order to justify themeselves. Once in the new community, they feel obligated to convert others from their former faiths.

That’s the reason you see them here on CAF.

I am active in RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) in our parish. Last year we had a woman in become Catholic. Her husband is still Baptist. She is not trying to convert him. He comes to mass with her, and even came to a few RCIA classes with her. There are many married couples in our parish where one is Catholic and the other is not. At some point, often after 25+ years of marriage, the non Catholic spouse decides to convert.

My ex-husband calls himself Catholic, but you wouldn’t fine a more rabid anti-Catholic than he.

The only reason I can fathom this anger is deep inner guilt. They must know somewhere deep down they are wrong. For some reason they don’t want to live their former faith. Often it’s a divorce and remarriage issue.
 
Jonathan_Cid said:
I felt something similar in my traditionalist Roman Catholic parish when I had to go because of my “heretical” beliefs, despite how quiet I was about them so as to not “disturb the peace”. I had to leave while practitioners of Santeria prayed in strange ways that even disturbed Father, slept in the Church, etc. They were never told anything, I was outright asked to leave. I think it’s a resentment when it hits “closer to home”.
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Who asked you to leave? A parishioner, or the pastor?
 
I was very quiet about everything, so none of the parishioners ever even really said much to me. My best friend and a very nice lady who I met there through him spent time together and sat together at Mass. I served there a few times. None of the parishioners ever even suggested I should leave, although I did get the impression I wasn’t “one of them”.

The pastor there I should say was, I think, a very good priest, just very set in his beliefs. He asked, maybe even demanded, I leave, when I let him know I was a seminarian. He said I would “bring demons” into the parish.
 
I think some of this has to do with why the person in question converted. When I converted to Catholicism there was a Jewish lady who went through RCIA with me. She seemed to carry no anger with her past religion. However, she converted not because there was something she didn’t like in the Jewish faith but because she really admired the Catholics she had come to know and her husband was Catholic and she admired his moral beliefs and actions. So for her I think it was more that she wanted to be part of that (Catholic) community not because of some anger at former theology or anything. Her family was also supportive so that probably helps things too.

Highly restrictive religions seem to generate a lot of anger and people who were abused under these systems often hold anger. When one is chained down their entire lives and then suddenly come to a realization that the system that held them down was wrong all along then they are likely to be enraged.

Tragically even the most philosophically enlightened religions can become abusive if approached as a system of laws to break people’s spirits instead of as a pathway to love and fuller understanding of God.

Of course you were really asking more about how those still within a faith treat those that convert out. I guess it all depends on the reasons behind why they left and how they now react to their former brothers and sisters. Many try to come back and convert more people out. This always raises anger as often times these converts actually have a very weak grasp of their former religion’s theology. This is usually because these people didn’t leave because they had a theological problem they left because for one reason or another they resent their former religion. More times than not that resent is based on the fact that they were not exposed to the positive aspects of their faiths.
 
Sepharad said:
IOW why are they treated nicer if they were never part of your religion at all, than if they once were and joined another?
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I think this is more than just a religious impulse and it certainly isn’t unique to Christianity. Islam looks upon apostates in a much more … negative… light than Christians.

It’d be the same gut reaction if I met a lifelong Yankees fan versus a guy who used to root for the Mets, then got all pinstripey for some Godforsaken reason. 😛

There’s a sense (fair or not) that those that “switch” are a kind of traitor. Especially if they start attacking the old team after they switch. And no one likes a traitor. (Again, I’m not saying that’s how I feel about it, but that’s how it can be seen)
 
Sepharad said:
I think its wrong for anyone to assume that just because someone used to be a Catholic, that they automatically “knew the truth”. What if they were baptized as a baby but it ended there?
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Sepharad, people like yourself who has left the church were not true Catholic to begin. That is true it is not good to assume that they automatically know the Truth. Had they/you known the truth they/you would have never left the Catholic Church.

Though you have left the Catholic Church, Yet you are still here at this Catholic Forum and it is by the Power of the Holy Spirit that has you here, and it is the Holy Spirit that wants you to come back home.

God Bless you on your Journey home

Ufamtobie
 
Sepharad said:
This is a question that I’ve had over the years, and have noticed this time and time again.

Let’s say someone comes to this forum, or any Christian forum for that matter, and says, “I am a Jew/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu, whatever”. They are usually treated far nicer and with more respect than if they were to come to a religious Christian forum and say, “I am a Jew/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu” but I used to be a born again Christian/Catholic".

IOW why are they treated nicer if they were never part of your religion at all, than if they once were and joined another?
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Because, if they were Catholic, unless and until they repent, they are committing what is most likely mortal sin… Apostasy. It’s grievous matter, and if they were confirmed Catholic, they were most likely taught that, and they made their choice willingly in the vast majority of cases.

Further, most of those former catholics seem to come specifically to covert others away from the church. They are worse than a wolf in the sheep… their eternal fate is described as being better were they to tie an anchor stone about their neck and dive in the dead sea than take one from the fold.

Me, I try to pray for them. But they usually come specifically to violate the rules. And I can’t speak for others, but I usually try to avoid responding, and instead, when they start the anti-catholic polemic, report them.

For the other ex-christians, the fate is similar, and the rationale, usually, as well. If they accept and then reject Christ, until they repent that, they go straight to hell at death, or so it is taught.

Still, even they are in dire need of reconversion. If they come in search, we truly must do what we can to aid them back to Truth.

The lifelong non-Christian, however, has a slim glimmer of possibility of heaven, due to invincible ignorance, or unconquerable obstacles. (Being a woman in a muslim village, for example, is likely an unconquerable obstacle, and they can hope only for the baptism of desire. If they found enough to know the formula, they could even baptize.)
 
As a convert to Catholicism from the mainstream Protestant denomination into which I was born, I am glad to confirm what Raphinal and others have said: I bear no ill will towards my former denomination. In the 7 or 8 years I spent in the desert between faiths, I foolishly nutured a lot of hurt feelings, resentments, and bitterness towards specific people in my former church. I recognize how wrong that was now, and how much time I wasted, but thankfully much prayer and honest soul searching eventually helped me to see the error of my ways, and what I had really been searching for - hence, my new life in Catholicism! 🙂

Now when I think back on my time in Protestantism, I don’t see the people who hurt me, but the people who raised me with a serious love of God and nutured me to have the strong faith that I now have. I see my own mother, most of her friends and most of mine, all of my relatives on one side of my family…how could I ever bear any ill will towards any of these people? They are wonderful people. I love them all so much.

If I had to guess, I would think that converts away from Catholicism must trigger a mix of anger and contempt coming from the view that aggressive anti-Catholic converts have two strikes against them: 1) having left the one true Church, 2) having the audacity to then come back to Catholic areas and rail against them as though they still retain some sort of “proprietary” right to it by virtue of having been involved in it at some point. Being a convert to Catholicism myself I would hopefully not attempt to claim any sort of superiority over such people, but I do think the second rationale carries with it quite a bit of truth. Choosing to abandon one’s faith, however unadvisable a move it may be, is entirely within a person’s right to exercise their God-given free will. However, to come back after the fact and decry what you have left…well, that’s just terrible. You have left your faith, and yet return to it to defame it in front of those who resolutely remain? …And this is supposed to convert people how?

I have always taken it as a given that a strong faith never needs to be placated or justified to itself. If others are convinced they know better than you, fine. As long as you remain convinced and rightly guided, others cannot harm you. In this point, the converts from Catholicism show themselves to be very insecure in their new faiths with every word they speak against their old ways. Disagreements with some aspects of the old faith are (hopefully) the impetus behind such conversions, so why come back and enumerate those disagreements in the most offensive ways possible for the benefit of no one? We knew you had left when you left! (…Ouch, that last sentence…my brain…!)
 
ufamtobie said:
Sepharad, people like yourself who has left the church were not true Catholic to begin. That is true it is not good to assume that they automatically know the Truth. Had they/you known the truth they/you would have never left the Catholic Church.

Though you have left the Catholic Church, Yet you are still here at this Catholic Forum and it is by the Power of the Holy Spirit that has you here, and it is the Holy Spirit that wants you to come back home.

God Bless you on your Journey home

Ufamtobie
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Excuse me???

I lurk at and/or post to MANY various religious forums…Jewish, Catholic, evangelical, Buddhist, even a humanist one.

Does that mean I want to join their religions? If so, I’d be a very busy, not to mention contradictory religious person!
 
Sepharad said:
Excuse me???

I lurk at and/or post to MANY various religious forums…Jewish, Catholic, evangelical, Buddhist, even a humanist one.

Does that mean I want to join their religions? If so, I’d be a very busy, not to mention contradictory religious person!
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Sepharad,

Yes you can be excused for the time being, for you don’t know what you Want you are like the wind blowing everywhere. If you did know, what you wanted you would be like the man in the “Parable of the Pearl” (Matt 13: 46) WHEN HE FOUND ONE VALUABLE PEAR, HE WENT BACK AND PUT UP FOR SELL ALL THAT HE HAD AND BOUGHT IT.…now this man would never have to search for another. As for the Grace given to me, never will I search for another Church than the Catholic Church, again through the Grace of Jesus Christ I found my Pearl, My home, which is the Catholic Church.

Sepharad, You can argue all you want, Lie to yourself all you want, but the Truth is Jesus Christ has you here at this Catholic forum to convert back to Catholism. Now when you “Lurk” elsewhere at other forums, now you are on your own.

Many a time does the Holy Spirit reveal the Truth about a person with the choice of words he/she uses.

Sepharad, you mentioned the word “LURK”, poor choice of a word to use. This tells me you are defining who you really are look up the word “Lurk” in the dictionary. The Word 'Lurk" is always used in the negative and not the positive. Such as the “Wolf Lurks for its prey.” Now is that why you are here as a wolf in Shepards clothing, trying to change peoples minds from being Catholic?

If so, Jesus Christ still wants you here to convert, look at Saul, whom the Lord, changed his Name to Paul.

Definition of “Lurk”= to hide or remain secretly in or near a place: The burglar 'LURKED" in the bushes untill the watchman had passed.

God Bless you on your Journey home

Ufamtobie
 
Ufamtobie,

I am ALREADY “home”. Judaism is my home, the religion I was born and raised in.

And I have not once tried to convert anyone here who is not Jewish away from Catholicism. Judaism does not seek converts, I have only said that a million times.

And my handle is not “Shepherd” but SEPHARAD. Look it up.
 
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