Beleiver in the church catholic…

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Hi Again Shibboleth. Can I ask a question, and I apologize if it is impertinent, I don’t mean it as such. But I believe that there appears to be a misunderstanding somewhere and I’m not sure on whose part or parts. But in your conversion to Lutheranism, may I ask what denomination you are converting from? It doesn’t sound to me as though you are converting from Catholicism, but rather to Lutheranism almost as a stepping stone, hearing the call but being, afraid would be too strong a word, to make the full committment to the Catholic Church. So I am curious as to what your background is if you would share it.
 
Just out of curiosity…what does the Lutheran church have that the Catholic Church does not? I have always been under the impression that Lutherans were very similar to Catholics, with exceptions such as the leadership of the Pope, the Sacrament of Penance, and the intercession of the saints. Do your “problems with the Catholic Church” lie within one of these differences? Or is there something I’m missing?
 
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Shibboleth:
Sparky relax, I only need to be told once and I listen - when dealing with Catholic edicts and beleifs I know that the people on this board are more informed than I. I realized my error.
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Sorry. Didn’t realize you were corrected.
Try not to be angry at the misinformed it will only lead to them closing their ears not opening them.
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Again, sorry. After a while one gets tired of hearing the anti-catholic propeganda that many spew. And maybe I haven’t had enough sleep since my baby was born. I think I’ll go take a nap. It might help. :o
–Ann
 
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Shibboleth:
I think people are taking the words “ears” and “hear” a bit literally.

Ask yourself, do you think God would say, “Well I would help him but only 14 people are praying and I need 17 to listen to the plea” or “I cannot quite understand what is being said, could you get more people to say it so I can hear.”…

So if he is aware of our needs why do we pray?..

So if we only pray for ourselves, we only align God’s work through us to ourselves. We need to align our limitations to each other. This is what I mean by when we pray it is for our own ears to hear, for God already knows are needs but we do not until we voice them to God.

Clear as mud?
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Shibboleth, I rather enjoy your posts…you’re a thinker!
Your point about why we pray is problematic by way of scripture. You are right that God in his own nature does not need us to pray, but the thing we need to understand is that God wants us to pray. He knows our hearts but he wants us to confess with our lips. He knows our hearts but he wants us to say “thy will be done.”

None of your reasons for praying explain why Jesus prayed to the Father. And if Jesus prayed for reasons that go beyond your reasoned explanations, then we need to understand prayer as Jesus did. When we follow God’s will and pray, we do something that pleases God. God doesn’t need it, but it pleases Him none the less.

I’m not saying that what you are saying is incorrect; I’m only suggesting that it is incomplete. Read the book of Job and notice how God would listen only to Job’s prayer. Also note in the book of James that “the prayer of a righteous man has great power.” There are elements in these and other passages of scripture that are not accounted for in your view of prayer.
 
I am not converting from Catholic really. I was baptized Catholic and attended Mass in a Catholic Church for the first few years of my life. When my mother married my father he had been divorced, the current priest when this happened did not say much about it, but when he left the new priest demanded that he get an annulment before either could take part in the Eucharist amongst other things. My parents were very poor at the time so paying for an annulment was not an option. Since my father grew up Methodist we started attending that church. I am sure there is more to the story than that but that is what they are giving me. The only Mass I remember going to was Palm Sunday – I must have kept that palm branch on my wall for 10 years.

I attended the Methodist Church but did not much like it. When it came time for me to take confirmation classes I declined saying that it was not for me. At that time I did not realize that it was the Methodist Faith that I was disillusioned with and not God. So I went on a spiritual search, reading about Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, and the like but I never really found anything that caught my eye.

When I went to college I started reading the British Empiricist Philosophers and simply called myself an Agnostic. Many of my fiends that I made in college were homosexuals and I got upset at the Bible “Bangers” using the Bible to attack my friends so I started researching it and reading it. I used it to fight these people for quite some time and very effectively, but then all of the sudden instead of reading the words I started listening to them. I was in a Lutheran chat room one night arguing about gay rights when everything finally hit me.

Perhaps it is as someone said, that it is just part of my growth right now and I will find my way back to the Catholic Church, I don’t know. I have some problems with the Catholic Church that would not make me welcome that I do not feel like voicing at this time. That is why I am here and I am listening, I have already found out that some of my problems with the Church never really existed in the first place.

God Bless
Mat
 
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Shibboleth:
I am not converting from Catholic really. I was baptized Catholic and attended Mass in a Catholic Church for the first few years of my life. When my mother married my father he had been divorced, the current priest when this happened did not say much about it, but when he left the new priest demanded that he get an annulment before either could take part in the Eucharist amongst other things. My parents were very poor at the time so paying for an annulment was not an option. God Bless
Mat
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Mat: I am so sorry for your parents sake that the annulment process was withheld from them because they could not pay. One should pay for the services if they can, but not for the annulment. I could not afford to pay when I was blessed with a decree of nullity, and if your mother and father could not pay they should have been helped. The Church does not charge for things like this, however there are times when we people get in the way of God’s will through the Church. I will pray for them both.

Another thing I hope you dont mind that some of us are so interested in you and your journey. I believe from the first post and many others that you have written that you are already Catholic, just short of being home. We need good men like you so and I look forward to the day when I am blessed to know you are home.

Until then for many of us it is not judgeing you it is that we see you as a diamond and look forward to what you will share with us all in the future.

God Bless and may he give you and yours His Peace.

By the way are you maried?

If so any Children?

Scott
 
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Shibboleth:
I have some problems with the Catholic Church that would not make me welcome that I do not feel like voicing at this time. That is why I am here and I am listening, I have already found out that some of my problems with the Church never really existed in the first place.

God Bless
Mat
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God Bless you Mat. I can understand not feeling like the Church would welcome one… we didn’t even start attending Mass until after mom and dad were divorced, and I searched all over in my twenties for another church because as the daughter of a priest who had not gotten a dispensation from Rome, the last place I ever felt welcome was in the Catholic church. But I had to overcome my own discomfort because I didn’t have a choice. I never felt at home anywhere else because this was home. Forgive me for using the following words, but truly I felt like the church believed me to be an outcast, a bastard, “leper, unclean” and would throw me out on my ear if anyone found out my pedigree. So the day that God sat on my heart like a lead weight and told me I had to do this, I sat in the pew and bawled. After my first RCIA inquiry meeting I came home and threw things and broke things and stomped around the house and wrote nasty e-mails to the friend who had been so supportive. And your issues with the church may even feel worse than that. But I have discovered that I am in fact welcome, and I have such joy now that it is important to go back and revisit that pain to remember that it wasn’t always this clear, but that God always knew where He wanted me, and that all those years He was patient but there came a time when He was ready and He knew I was strong enough to handle the process…

I know the pain of feeling as though the church has made a judgment against you for reasons that you had no control over, and I know the relief that comes from realizing that the people who made those judgments were merely men, mistaken and not representative of the whole. I am praying for you every day every time I pray because I sense that you are seeking truth and so close to God. God Bless you and keep you.
 
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Shibboleth:
Divorced, and two wonderful boys.
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I had two boys in the marriage that I was blessed with a decree of nulity on. 14 and 9 now. We have been given a third and they are with out a doubt the most wonderful gifts I could have been given.

Someday I hope to learn to forgive the way they do, as adults we offer forgivness yet keep the offence in our mental book, when children forgive they forget to.
 
Matt 18:3
"Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
 
Shibboleth,

Thought I’d add something here. You say your background would not make you welcome. Think about this: it was a home to a drunken fornicator and adulterer (St. Augustine), a unmarried mother who lived with her boyfriend (St. Margaret of Cortona) and many other sinners who discovered Christ and turned to him. Truth is, the Church is the place for sinners to find healing. And in that, everyone is welcome. Including you and me.
–Ann
(a poor sinner with a short fuse…)
 
Maggie be careful how you read and interpret, saying people have to know that the CAtholc Church is the true Church and if they don’t then salvation is open to them so long as they live a life according ot natural law/search for God.

In reality just about everyone who leaves the CAtholic Church does so becasue they no longer think it to be the true Church, those Christians who don’t join the Church , refuse to join becasue they do not believe it is the right church. Allowances to those who are outside the Catholic Faith so to speak must be very small.

People do not use enough reason, mainly though too much pride when working out these matters.

People should read more of the very ealry Church, say first 500 years and then we would see the requirements for joining the catholic Church.

Either it is extremely important to join the Catholic Church for the purpose of salvation. The more “allowances” one makes for all those outside the Catholic Fatih to be saved then in reality lessens the need for anyone to be catholic.

It can’t be both ways.
 
Shibboleth,

I like to think of Grace with this analogy. I have to get from building A (Earth) to Building B (Heaven). It is raining (sin) outside. I can get into Building B if I am not wet. Jesus is standing at the door of Building A with an umbrella (Grace). He offers the umbrella to me freely, I don’t have to pay for it, Jesus paid the price for all of the umbrellas. However, I have several choices. I can refuse the umbrella; I can accept the umbrella but not open it (my “good works” if you will); I can accept the umbrella, open it, and then throw it away during my trip to Building B. Or, I can accept the umbrella, open it, and hold on to it until I get to Building B. Only in the last case, will I get into Building B.

So as Catholics, we believe that we are saved by Grace alone (kept dry by the umbrella) but we have the free will to reject or accept that Grace.

With the Peace of Christ,
ILO
 
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