Am I Catholic?

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Seeking_Christ

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I would be interested in your views (as it is personal I shall probably refrain from entering debate, but I would appreciate your views anyway).

The question is, reading my position below, do you think I belong in the Catholic Church?

For me the Church is not about “authority” (no one can tell me what I must believe about God any more than they can try to tell me the colour of the sky). My beliefs/faiths have never rested on the authority of anyone else or any one body - my brain just isn’t wired that way. I know that’s different to some others. Perhaps my experience of coming to faith outside of the Catholic Church has affected my view (as my experience of faith in Christ was/is not linked to any particular Church).

But what I have found in the Catholic Church is a great deal of wisdom - sometimes in the official teachings of the Church and many times just in the personal writings of great Catholics. What we have is 2,000 years experience of wise and pious people grappling with the complexities of faith. We also have tradition, though I think we have to look at the core of tradition - for example I have faith in the Eucharist as being the real presence of Christ (body, blood, soul and divinity), though I believe “transubstantiation” is just one philosophical approach to trying to understand/explain it further.

I am always open to the possibility that (1) I could be wrong and (2) the Church’s official teaching could be wrong. In fact about the only thing I am certain about is that I will have got some things wrong and the Church also will have got some things wrong. Theology and doctrine is often speculative and often we’re just trying to find human ways of explaining something that is essentially just too big and too complex to grasp. For me “authoritative” Church teaching is a stamp that says “with our best understanding at this time, this is what we think…”.
 
Seeking_Christ said:
I am always open to the possibility that (1) I could be wrong and (2) the Church’s official teaching could be wrong. In fact about the only thing I am certain about is that I will have got some things wrong and the Church also will have got some things wrong.
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This is where you will find yourself un-Catholic. Regarding matters of faith or morals, the Church cannot teach without error. For we believe it is the Holy Spirit who speaks through the Church, and the Holy Spirit cannot err.
 
Seeking_Christ said:
I would be interested in your views (as it is personal I shall probably refrain from entering debate, but I would appreciate your views anyway).

The question is, reading my position below, do you think I belong in the Catholic Church?

For me the Church is not about “authority” (no one can tell me what I must believe about God any more than they can try to tell me the colour of the sky). My beliefs/faiths have never rested on the authority of anyone else or any one body - my brain just isn’t wired that way. I know that’s different to some others. Perhaps my experience of coming to faith outside of the Catholic Church has affected my view (as my experience of faith in Christ was/is not linked to any particular Church).

But what I have found in the Catholic Church is a great deal of wisdom - sometimes in the official teachings of the Church and many times just in the personal writings of great Catholics. What we have is 2,000 years experience of wise and pious people grappling with the complexities of faith. We also have tradition, though I think we have to look at the core of tradition - for example I have faith in the Eucharist as being the real presence of Christ (body, blood, soul and divinity), though I believe “transubstantiation” is just one philosophical approach to trying to understand/explain it further.

I am always open to the possibility that (1) I could be wrong and (2) the Church’s official teaching could be wrong. In fact about the only thing I am certain about is that I will have got some things wrong and the Church also will have got some things wrong. Theology and doctrine is often speculative and often we’re just trying to find human ways of explaining something that is essentially just too big and too complex to grasp. For me “authoritative” Church teaching is a stamp that says “with our best understanding at this time, this is what we think…”.
Click to expand...
Well the Church is about authority. Jesus said to his disciples “I give you authority.” Everything is about authority. Your boss has authority, our government, our teachers, our police, our judges. So why wouldn’t there be authority in God’s Kingdom? If Jesus did not give his disciples authority such as “he who hears you hears me” the consequence would be endless confusion, splintering, arguing about who is right about God (perfect example: protestantism).
  • For me “authoritative” Church teaching is a stamp that says “with our best understanding at this time, this is what we think…”.*
Thats half-true, its more like "with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the promise of
Christ to speak through us (His Catholic Church), we are ever developing our understanding of the infinite God, and our development will continue forever, and in 2,000 years we have never retracted what we previously believed to be true, and this is evidence that Christ’s promise is solid that the “Spirit of truth will lead you into all truth.”
 
MarcoPolo said:
This is where you will find yourself un-Catholic. Regarding matters of faith or morals, the Church cannot teach without error. For we believe it is the Holy Spirit who speaks through the Church, and the Holy Spirit cannot err.
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What is the matter with you? Don’t reply this “Regarding matters of faith or morals, the Church cannot teach without error.”
 
the Church’s official teaching could be wrong. In fact about the only thing I am certain about is that I will have got some things wrong and the Church also will have got some things wrong.
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Think about it like this. The Church received it’s deposit of faith from Jesus Christ. The Church doesn’t formulate and speculate the faith. It guards and defends and grows in understanding of the faith Christ gave to her. This is evident when we read the faith of the earliest Church fathers and see that it is the same faith as today.
 
Unwillingness to accept an authority outside of yourself will make it impossible to be a good Catholic.

Without humility, one cannot be in union the Church (the Body of Christ), nor with God.
 
SimonArizona said:
What is the matter with you? Don’t reply this “Regarding matters of faith or morals, the Church cannot teach without error.”
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Simon, I believe MarcoPolo simply made a typographical error. The rest of his post indicates that he believes that the Holy Spirit will NOT lead the Church into error.

As for the OP: Seeking Christ, if you truly do believe that the Church that Jesus Christ founded is capable of teaching error, then you are not ready to become Catholic yet. Keep reading, keep discerning. I believe you are on the right track, but you have to come into the Church believing (or at the very least assenting to) what she teaches. Like I said, keep discerning. I believe you will get there.
 
Seeking_Christ said:
No one can tell me what I must believe about God any more than they can try to tell me the colour of the sky.
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If I were blind, I hope someone would try to tell me the colour of the sky. If I had lived my whole life indoors, perhaps in Plato’s Cave, I hope someone would venture outside and come back to tell me of the wondrous blue sky. If I suffered from a neurological disorder that caused me to think the sky green, I hope someone would be kind enough to correct me.

In short, I don’t see your point.

The answer to your direct question: if you were baptised a Catholic in good faith, you are a Catholic, no matter what. You may, based on your dissent, be a Catholic whose soul is in peril. You are almost certainly not in communion with the Church.

So the answer is: yes, maybe, and no, all at once.
 
juno24 said:
Simon, I believe MarcoPolo simply made a typographical error. The rest of his post indicates that he believes that the Holy Spirit will NOT lead the Church into error.
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Yes, you are correct, thank you. The Church’s teaching is without error.
:o
 
I am thinking that one is told as a Catholic that there are things one “should” believe. If one does not, then one needs to pray for the grace needed to accept and believe. To say one “must” believe is hardly going to lead one to belief. It is not unusual to struggle with one thing or another, but to be defiant and resistant to learning what one should believe is not a good thing. It is also true that being able to accept authority is to accept a certain freedom from the slavery of deviant ideas and behaviors; which most often end one up in blind alleys.👍
 
Seeking_Christ said:
I would be interested in your views (as it is personal I shall probably refrain from entering debate, but I would appreciate your views anyway).

The question is, reading my position below, do you think I belong in the Catholic Church?

For me the Church is not about “authority” (no one can tell me what I must believe about God any more than they can try to tell me the colour of the sky). My beliefs/faiths have never rested on the authority of anyone else or any one body - my brain just isn’t wired that way. I know that’s different to some others. Perhaps my experience of coming to faith outside of the Catholic Church has affected my view (as my experience of faith in Christ was/is not linked to any particular Church).

But what I have found in the Catholic Church is a great deal of wisdom - sometimes in the official teachings of the Church and many times just in the personal writings of great Catholics. What we have is 2,000 years experience of wise and pious people grappling with the complexities of faith. We also have tradition, though I think we have to look at the core of tradition - for example I have faith in the Eucharist as being the real presence of Christ (body, blood, soul and divinity), though I believe “transubstantiation” is just one philosophical approach to trying to understand/explain it further.

I am always open to the possibility that (1) I could be wrong and (2) the Church’s official teaching could be wrong. In fact about the only thing I am certain about is that I will have got some things wrong and the Church also will have got some things wrong. Theology and doctrine is often speculative and often we’re just trying to find human ways of explaining something that is essentially just too big and too complex to grasp. For me “authoritative” Church teaching is a stamp that says “with our best understanding at this time, this is what we think…”.
Click to expand...
Because you do not give any of your specific beliefs, its hard to say. But if you can honestly say the Profession of Faith, I find nothing in this post that is inconsistent with being Catholic. As you can already see from the previous posters, many would disagree with me, but I don’t think the Church would.
 
It’s not a matter of “The Church is telling me what to think about God.”

It’s more like, “Jesus Christ told me what to think about God, and He told the Church to teach me that. I’m glad to have a reliable revelation and a reliable set of teachers!” 🙂

Authority isn’t something meant to beat people with. It’s supposed to be a guarantee of truth that you can trust.

But don’t take my word for it. Take that guarantee and try it before you buy it, as they say. Does the Church teach things that ring true and test out, so far as they can be tested? Is it like Jesus, who notoriously taught with authority – or is it more like some twit on the Internet talking out of his donkey? 🙂

I think that the longer you spend time listening to the Church, the more sense you’ll find and the more you’ll feel able to trust her. And then authority won’t be any kind of issue to you at all. At that point, you’ll know exactly where you belong – home with us!
 
If you are convinced of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, there is nowhere else to go. You are already way ahead of many “Catholics” in this regard. Other churches claim as much, but their claims do not stand up to scrutiny by either scripture or history. As to everything else, God gave us our lives, so He makes the rules, not us. Christ taught us that to follow Him, we must do three things in order:
  1. Deny yourself. This means your ego, your wants, your desires, your preferences, your comforts, even your current beliefs in many cases.
  2. Take up your cross daily. This is whatever you are struggling with: temptations, infirmities, weaknesses, ego, whatever you are burdened with.
  3. Follow Him. Until you accomplish points 1 and 2, you are not fully ready.
We often try to take the shortcut around this, but the only shortcut is through it. He taught us this for the good of our eternal souls. I had to give up many deep-seated and long-held beliefs. You may have the same concerns here. I advise you not to consider the price of obedience, but rather the reward of obedience. I have no regrets at all.

The more you love the Lord, the more you will be attracted to the Catholic Church. 1,976 years of converts attest to this. Consider those who converted, and why. It is illuminating.

Christ’s peace be with you on your journey.
 
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