As a former cradle Catholic, I have found many Protestant churches much more welcomin

  • Thread starter Thread starter Traveller1534
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

Traveller1534

Guest
I have to say that one of the many reasons why I left the Catholic church wasn’t so much the Catholic teachings but the way in which the Catholic church really fails to reach out in fellowship not only to its own parishioners, but to others as well. I have been received into the Anglican church for a few years now along with my wife and my son and I must say that our teachings and Liturgy is about 90% the same as Roman Catholics and the way we are close to Christ and really share that with our parishioners and others is something I really missed out on for many years. Why does the Roman Catholic church really lack that zeal for fellowship and out reach?
 
Traveller1534 said:
I have to say that one of the many reasons why I left the Catholic church wasn’t so much the Catholic teachings but the way in which the Catholic church really fails to reach out in fellowship not only to its own parishioners, but to others as well. I have been received into the Anglican church for a few years now along with my wife and my son and I must say that our teachings and Liturgy is about 90% the same as Roman Catholics and the way we are close to Christ and really share that with our parishioners and others is something I really missed out on for many years. Why does the Roman Catholic church really lack that zeal for fellowship and out reach?
Click to expand...
Yeah but it’s that 10% the Anglicans lack that is critical.

As for fellowship and outreach - more Catholics than all other Christian denominations combined! No other faith has more followers, though some come close.

We’re certainly reaching further out than any other!

Next question - you WERE the Catholic Church when you were in it, you know - what did you personally do in terms of reaching out to your fellow Catholics??
 
I don’t know why some churches have better fellowship than others. However, I do know that I attend Mass to worship God and not for the social aspect. Having friendly, welcoming people at church may make it more “fun” and appealing, but I don’t think that is the point of church. I find that there seems to be a disturbing trend - especially in mega-churches - of God as entertainment. The whole notion of creating a community by having a church with a coffee shop, bookstore and video game lounge seems to try to fit God into our idea of a good time. I’m not saying this happens at your church but it seems to be more common nowadays. I think we should be focused on what God wants of us, not what we want from God.
 
Honestly, as a former Protestant…

When I realized I was welcome at the Lord’s banquet every Mass, I no longer needed the welcoming committee on Sunday. I needed Mass every day. My parish is VERY involved with it’s famly and vice versa…but besides the usual greeters and ushers, you will only find people who are there to be with Him.

I feel it’s like this: Protestant churches worry about being welcoming…you have always been welcomed at His church.
 
I would have to say quite alot to be effective. For years in my Catholic church I didn’t know at least half of the names of the parishioners, not because I didn’t make an effort to, but because the folks were just come to mass and then go home. A very cold feeling that didn’t ever resemble Christianity much. We tried out reach type groups like The Sons of Joseph and such but never any interest. My father and I tried a couple of fellowship groups which the priest really frowned upon. Nothing ever worked. I gave up and turned Anglican. Now I am a Vestry member and my son is a stand out in his worship center groups. He goes to campouts and overnight felowships and such. My wife and I are going to attend Cursillo soon and my wife is more involved in the church than I ever thought she would be. This was never possible before.
 
Just because a few parishes are not welcoming does not mean none of them are. Its so incredibly silly to leave the Church just because of ONE parish. Merely an excuse to go the easy route to avoid following Christ fully, and obviously you have no idea what you have left. I’m sorry you never knew Catholicism fully and were led astray.
 
Traveller1534 said:
I have to say that one of the many reasons why I left the Catholic church wasn’t so much the Catholic teachings but the way in which the Catholic church really fails to reach out in fellowship not only to its own parishioners, but to others as well. I have been received into the Anglican church for a few years now along with my wife and my son and I must say that our teachings and Liturgy is about 90% the same as Roman Catholics and the way we are close to Christ and really share that with our parishioners and others is something I really missed out on for many years. Why does the Roman Catholic church really lack that zeal for fellowship and out reach?
Click to expand...
Hi Traveller and welcome to the forums -

I must say that my experience is quite different from yours. For instance, every Wednesday my parish has an ecumenical service. Ministers from several different christian persuasions join together to worship. The service is moved to a different church each week and is performed by a different minister.

This is something occuring diocese wide. At least one church in a given area or town must participate per direction of the bishop. Every priest must partake in some type of ecumenical service regardless of whether his particular church is in the program.

Every parish I know of makes space available for special goups not necessarily affiliated with the Catholic Church. Some are: AA; NA; interfaith bible study; public school band or orchestra.

Here is a listing of our diocese’s community involvement activities…

dioceseofprovidence.com/serving_one_another/

Please tell us about where you come from and some particulars about what it is you have experienced.

Subrosa
 
What did Jesus give as the criteria on which people are judged? Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, look after the sick and imprisoned … Catholics do all of these par excellence - none better.

Nothing in there about ‘make people feel welcome’ ‘campouts’ ‘fellowship’ or ‘outreach’ or other similarly warm and fuzzy concepts.

I fear you’ve substituted the meat and potatoes of Catholicism for the attractive but ultimately unnourishing junk of Anglicanism. I have a friend who’s extremely active in her Baptist church, and have been around her enough to see the ultimately empty core that this activity masks.
 
I take offense to one referring to Anglicanism as junk or containing junk. I didn’t enter here in a fury about all the wrongs of Catholicism but yet this is what I am being faced with. There are many reasons why I left Catholicism and social behavior is just merely one of the smaller reasons. True tradition and doctrine would be two much larger ones.
 
homewardbound said:
Just because a few parishes are not welcoming does not mean none of them are. Its so incredibly silly to leave the Church just because of ONE parish. Merely an excuse to go the easy route to avoid following Christ fully, and obviously you have no idea what you have left. I’m sorry you never knew Catholicism fully and were led astray.
Click to expand...
Just want to address this to you homewardbound. 🙂 but I guess to others too 😉
Do you realize how blessing you are to recognize the Catholic Church as the Church with fullness of true. It is heart-breaking to have someone with the blessing of being born as Catholic and finally left for something else just because it wasn’t welcoming at his church. There are a lot to lose when ones leaves the Church.
 
Traveller1534 said:
I take offense to one referring to Anglicanism as junk or containing junk. I didn’t enter here in a fury about all the wrongs of Catholicism but yet this is what I am being faced with. There are many reasons why I left Catholicism and social behavior is just merely one of the smaller reasons. True tradition and doctrine would be two much larger ones.
Click to expand...
Hi Trav -

I apologize for the other poster’s lack of manners.

Anyhow, you have mentioned the “meat and potatoes” of why you left the church (True tradition and doctrine would be two much larger ones). Care to elaborate?

Sub
 
water said:
Just want to address this to you homewardbound. 🙂 but I guess to others too 😉
Do you realize how blessing you are to recognize the Catholic Church as the Church with fullness of true. It is heart-breaking to have someone with the blessing of being born as Catholic and finally left for something else just because it wasn’t welcoming at his church. There are a lot to lose when ones leaves the Church.
Click to expand...
I agree definitely. Those who were born Catholic are so very blessed. I wish I had had the opportunity to know God so closely and be raised in His Truth as a child.
 
I’ve also attended fairly regularly a Protestant Church that was indeed very welcoming. The people were nice, there was always a lot of ‘stuff’ to do, the music was a lot better.

But when you come right down to it, are we in church on Sunday (come to that, do we live our lives at any time, any day) for God, or for ourselves, mainly? Think about it.

If I’m only concerned with ‘doing things’, even if I tell myself, “I’m doing them for GOD”, is that really right? Am I so concerned with how I appear to others, and interact with others, because I want to please GOD–or do I want to have the ‘good feelings’ of doing ‘important churchy work’, so it doesn’t matter that the particular ‘church’ doesn’t teach 100% of the truth. Hey, a subjective 90% is good enough because, look at me, I’m ‘involved’ in this group of ‘nice’ people instead of stuck in that 100% truth church where everybody was ‘cold’ and ‘unChristian’ and it was boring and we couldn’t get as involved as we wanted to be. . .

You know, I just wonder how much people really try with those ‘cold’ and ‘unChristian’ people and that 100% truth church that they think they know so well because they’ve always been there, in body if not in mind. . .I wonder if they tried as hard as they do when exposed to the '90% truth church that to them would be new, offering new excitement and new “opportunity”.

Because for every “former Catholic” who extols the bliss of the ‘welcoming protestant church’ I have seen a half-dozen former protestants, now Catholics, who may now and then miss a particular friend, or a particular activity, who may not see that kind of activity at their new Catholic church, but who wouldn’t change 100% truth for any ‘ministry’ offered, anywhere.
 
Subrosa said:
Hi Trav -

I apologize for the other poster’s lack of manners.

Anyhow, you have mentioned the “meat and potatoes” of why you left the church (True tradition and doctrine would be two much larger ones). Care to elaborate?

Sub
Click to expand...
 
There is a very encompassing notion when you are a Catholic to only accept that which comes from the magisterium if it is not written in scripture and sometimes accept what the magisterium says even in contradiction to scripture. This is much more focused to one that has been out of the Catholic realm for quite some time. Why do you believe that mary was taken into heaven body and soul? First, I do not believe this at all, but you must in order to be Catholic. What is the belief built upon?? Certainly not scripture, you won’t find a hint of this. It was a pope who declared this as dogma. This disproves your belief of the truth as never changing. If you believed this to be true before the pope of this time declared it as dogma you would have been involved in heresey. If you didn’t believe it after the pope declared it dogma, again you would be in heresey. How can the truth change all in one person?? Scripture does not speak to that ever!
 
Traveller1534 said:
I take offense to one referring to Anglicanism as junk or containing junk. I didn’t enter here in a fury about all the wrongs of Catholicism but yet this is what I am being faced with. There are many reasons why I left Catholicism and social behavior is just merely one of the smaller reasons. True tradition and doctrine would be two much larger ones.
Click to expand...
My sincere apologies - I retract the ‘junk’ remark unreservedly.

Interesting that you would bring up what you yourself perceive to be a ‘smaller’ reason first rather than jumping straight in with the more weighty issues … glad you decided to bring the Assumption on!!!

As you can imagine it is a topic that has been canvassed a lot around these forums. You might want to plug the word ‘assumption’ into the search feature here and see what’s already been said about it.
 
There is a very encompassing notion when you are a Catholic to only accept that which comes from the magisterium if it is not written in scripture and sometimes accept what the magisterium says even in contradiction to scripture. This is much more focused to one that has been out of the Catholic realm for quite some time. Why do you believe that mary was taken into heaven body and soul? First, I do not believe this at all, but you must in order to be Catholic. What is the belief built upon?? Certainly not scripture, you won’t find a hint of this. It was a pope who declared this as dogma. This disproves your belief of the truth as never changing. If you believed this to be true before the pope of this time declared it as dogma you would have been involved in heresey. If you didn’t believe it after the pope declared it dogma, again you would be in heresey. How can the truth change all in one person?? Scripture does not speak to that ever!
Click to expand...
Trav–a friendly word here.

This thread is about welcoming Protestant churches. So it should pretty much STAY about ‘welcoming Protestant churches.’

All the above is not only off topic, but kind of a ‘scattershot’ tactic of “this, this, this, this, and this, not this, you got this, how, you’re this, this, yadda”.

So what I’ll do for you is start a separate thread on “questions on Mary’s assumption”. I’ll link to this thread and you can follow up there. It will make things easier for you, to deal with one topic at a time.

God bless.
 
It’s odd that you would say this because the Protestant church I attended before converting was actually pretty cold. Everyone had their little ‘clique’ that they hung out with at Youth Group, and at Sunday everyone had their little ‘clique’ again. Even the adults. It’s not like I was a total stranger to the church either, I attended the youth group every Wednesday, I spoke to the youth group a few times, I attended extra ‘seminars’ on chastity and my cousin was a VERY active Pastor at the church. But nobody ever introduced themselves, invited me to things outside church, or would sit by you and chit-chat before or after service. After all, they had their own clique.

That’s not why I left Protestantism, or even that church. That’d be for another thread. But at the same time did that one church make me think that every other Protestant church was cold and unfriendly? No.
 
Traveller1534 said:
I would have to say quite alot to be effective. For years in my Catholic church I didn’t know at least half of the names of the parishioners, not because I didn’t make an effort to, but because the folks were just come to mass and then go home. A very cold feeling that didn’t ever resemble Christianity much. We tried out reach type groups like The Sons of Joseph and such but never any interest. My father and I tried a couple of fellowship groups which the priest really frowned upon. Nothing ever worked. I gave up and turned Anglican. Now I am a Vestry member and my son is a stand out in his worship center groups. He goes to campouts and overnight felowships and such. My wife and I are going to attend Cursillo soon and my wife is more involved in the church than I ever thought she would be. This was never possible before.
Click to expand...
Does being involved in so many groups make you feel close to God?

Does God look at quantity or the quality of our service to our fellow man?

I would rather be in one little group and give all my Christianly love to it, than accumulate a mass of titles, clubs, fellowship groups, committees, and campouts.

You can never be as close to God as what Catholics are, as we receive God through His Body and Blood.

The number of people you associate with does not make you a better Christian.

Jesus calls us to be humble in our worship.

I fail to see how being a stand out in a worship group fulfills the wishes of Jesus.

Attending the Catholic Mass is exactly what Jesus asked us to do.

He also asked us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, give welcome to strangers, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead.

None of these can be done by hanging around in the foyer at church after Mass.
They are done by Catholics through hospitals, St Vincent de Paul Societies, charities, outreach groups and so on.

We are told at the end of every Mass to go forth and spread the Good News.
That can’t be done standing in the foyer talking to fellow Catholics.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top