Can I still be Catholic if I don’t necessarily believe in everything the church teaches?

  • Thread starter Thread starter NurseZia
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
CilladeRoma said:
One needs to be Baptized. That’s all.
Click to expand...
Please bare with my ignorance but if such were the case then should I be baptized by a Sikh, Gnostic Mandanaean, Mormon, any Protestant or Jehovah’s Witness, all of which believe in some form of baptism then by your estimation I would become a proper Catholic. Perhaps not in good standing but Catholic none the less.
 
Now what pray tell is voluntary doubt and how does one go about doing it?
 
Please look into what St. Faustina, The children of Fatima, and Sister Mary of Saint Peter had to say about Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.
 
AgejevDominik said:
In Heaven you are one with God, in Hell you are away from him, in Purgatory you are being purified to become worthy of Heaven.
Click to expand...
If we become one with God do we not become as God is? How is it possible to be away from God when there is no place that God is not? How can you be IN purgatory if there is no place that IS purgatory? If purgatory is merely a state of my soul which is no place then by what method does the state of my soul change from being in purgatory? How is it purified? Is it that I am changing from what I am to what I am not? And if so then who enters heaven? Me or whatever else I change into which is not me? Then what’s the point of my own salvation if the person saved/purified is not the same person entering heaven? Why save the frog if the toad is the one who gets to go to heaven?
 
They all said the same thing/conceptions their Church fed to them about heaven, hell, and purgatory. Is this revelatory?
 
Please can you indulge me, What is that definition as you understand it to mean?
 
Did you read what they said? In fact it’s not what they said but what they saw. And the Church almost rejected St. Faustina’s claims but nonetheless they have been approved. Sister Mary of St. Peter had horrifying visions of Hell.
 
Last edited:
The Church could have rejected St. Faustina’s claims but didn’t because they determined they fell in line with what the Church had taught. All these persons had personal visions and nuanced descriptions of each but not outside what framework of what the Church told them to believe in. Also considering these visions were personal, of what purpose are they in general? Those who believe in their accurate descriptions are already believers and those who aren’t already believers are not furthered towards believing because the visions were person. Its ridiculous not to consider that not all fanatics who claim to see visions given to them by God are not really seeing visions given to them by God. Where there is no objective exchange of information there is no purpose to the message.
 
Ah I see you wish to avoid becoming personally involved in revealing your understanding of Church teaching. Fair enough. I personally don’t believe Jesus meant us to simply repeat verbatim Church teaching without involving ourselves in personal reflection and reasoning concerning those teachings. Like discussing the spirit of the thing.
 
You are getting too worked up over a definition.
 
Last edited:
Not worked up at all. Just discussing things. Its your prerogative not to. Some prefer to research and simply present what they’ve found without commenting on or discussing it. No problem.
Gods blessings be upon you always.
 
Have you tried Natural Family Planning?
My teenage years had a lot of periods that had 2 or 3 months of space between, then there was always the unexpected surprise when they finally showed up. When I learned natural family planning in my 20’s, I was very annoyed that it was not taught with the other sex ed stuff in schools. Wow. I could tell when I did not ovulate, I could tell when I did because my period started on the day it was supposed to. This was really awesome! Great information. So WHY didn’t our teenage girls get to learn this? I don’t know. It’s information, it’s helpful. I hope you look into it and give it a few months to get the hang of it.
 
Wait. So they would be more believable or credible to you if they deterred from Church teaching? Your argument isn’t making sense to me.

As a Catholic are we to practice or believe claims that go against what the Church teaches? That’sa form of relativism friend.
 
Last edited:
Someone can say “Of course the law says not to murder people because the state doesn’t want people to kill other people” and then shrug it off as if it isn’t truth because killing people hasn’t been a negative experience in their life. That’s a twisted way to think. Either the truth is that killing someone is wrong, or it’s right. It’s not based off whether you feel it’s right based on one’s experience of killing people not being a bad thing.
 
Last edited:
If one is Baptized with water and the words …In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yes, they are indeed “catholic”, because as Christians we believe and profess “one Baptism”

Now, that said, to be a “Captial “C” Catholic”, as in the Roman Catholic Church or any of the sui juris Eastern Rites, one must be Baptized in one of those particular Churches.

But, then anyone who was Baptized, using water and the Trinitarian formula in another Christian denomination (such as Methodist or Lutheran), would not need, nor be granted another Baptism if they chose to convert to Catholicism.

Does this help?
 
This is a pretty personal topic for me, as the Church’s teaching on contraception was a big roadblock for me coming back into the Church. Yet, it seemed to me that if I were going to accept the Church’s authority to consecrate the Eucharist through the Mass, I should also accept her authority to say under what circumstances we ought to receive it and when we ought to refrain.

I finally asked God to open my eyes to the truth about contraception, whether it was what I wanted to hear or not. I then re-read Humanae Vitae and began to find wisdom there that I had never been able to see before, such as the fact that St. Pope Paul VI’s predictions about what would happen if contraception were widely accepted seemed counterintuitive, yet they all played out. Now I have come to see contraception as a self-contradictory act that says, “I give myself to you fully, accept this part,” or, “I accept you completely, accept that part of you.” It is a bit like when we receive the Eucharist while in a state of mortal sin – we say to Jesus, “I accept you completely and completely give myself to you, accept in this area of my life.”

I don’t know if that helps, but that’s how I came to accept this Church teaching that I now consider a tremendous blessing.

Regarding purgatory, I never had a problem with that, but going through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius helped me understand it in a new way. St. Ignatius taught about spiritual indifference and detaching ourselves from the world, but this is tremendously difficult to do. It seems likely to me that many of us will still be hanging on to certain things when we die – sins we are not completely ready to let go of. It seems perfectly in keeping with God’s mercy that he would give us the time we need to work through this, so long as our ultimate desire is to do so and to spend eternity with him. Purgatory, like everything else that comes from God, is a blessing.
 
I believe you will find that being approved for reading by Catholics who wish to do so is not the same as approving all or any particular vision as actually true.
 
NurseZia said:
The title basically says it all. I have been a cradle Catholic my entire life and have always been very active in the church. However, I thought it was ok if I didn’t 100% agree with the Church in some regards as long as I still followed the majority of it. My main issues are that I question the existence of Purgatory and I don’t believe in the Church’s stance on birth control. I have tried to convince myself to believe in these things, but I just can’t justify it. I still do believe in the sacraments, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the angels and saints, and the significance of Mary. But the more I look into it, the Internet states that this is viewed as being a “cafeteria Catholic” and is an unacceptable practice. Can anyone provide insight into this? I only ask because I’m newly engaged and trying to decide my faith path by determining if I should(am allowed to) stay Catholic or follow my fiancé down a Protestant path.
Click to expand...
You can certainly reject any number of church doctrines and still call yourself a Catholic; I suspect that would describe any number of those currently in the pews. The real question, however, is why would you want to?

If you believe the church’s doctrines are in error then clearly she cannot be what she claims to be, and there is no reason to believe what she says in one area if you believe she is wrong in another. Why would you align with an organization about which the best that can be said is that it is sometimes right?

This is the problem with “cafeteria Catholicism”. It is irrational. Either you accept that the church is what she claims to be or you don’t, but if you don’t then what reason is there to stay with her? I have known people who have left the church because she “has too many rules” prohibiting this or that action, and that would certainly be a valid reason for leaving…if one believed her rules were simply the opinions of her hierarchy. What she claims, however, is not that she invents these doctrines but that she merely passes on to us what God has given to her.

If her doctrines are her opinions they are really no more valid than your opinion or mine. If they are God’s rules, however, that’s a different matter. You have to decide which it is.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top