Can you be a Catholic and fundamentally disagree with any teaching?

[Richca]

You are Catholic by virtue of your baptism if you were baptized in the Catholic Church. You can be a heterodox Catholic or an orthodox Catholic but you are still Catholic.

This is true. Another way of stating this is that once someone is baptized into the Church he/she can be either a living member (one in the state of sanctifying grace) or a dead member ( one in the state of mortal sin).

 

[rmills1]

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”

We can only acclaim “yes” or “no” to the truth of God, no maybes or kindas.

 

[Pug]

If that’s the case and I agree it is, it’s interesting then that a forum calling itself “Catholic Answers” would give a different answer than the parish or Church on who is or can call themselves a Catholic. I kinda think it’s sad that the poll is running 2:1 against what the Church would say. Maybe there are more “cafeteria” Catholics than I realized.

I think that a person can feel a strong desire to express their gladness that they are no longer as they once were. Perhaps even one sees a divide of before and after in one’s thinking and wants to recognize this divide. But that can spill over on accident into seeing a divide in other people.

Even this above that I just wrote is colored by my experience of having time when I experienced one thing and then later another about dividing moments in my life. I now make a divide about how I perceive divides…

Pug sinks into the familiar mire of convolution and obscurity.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

Not exactly. Excommunicated Catholics are told they can not receive the Sacraments or hold a parish role. But this does not mean they can never be reconciled. And they are still encouraged for instance to attend the Mass to my knowledge. Using the 2 distinctions the bishop expressed to me, practicing/non practicing, neither a practicing nor non practicing Catholic can know the heart of a person at the moment of their last breath. Only God knows that. Unless their experiences have driven them further away and make them so discouraged that they may never return, and even then God can work miracles, there is always a point of return until one draws their last breath. Peace.

Reconciliatiojn necessarily requires that the one needing to reconcile with the Church repent. Of course they are encouraged to attend Mass so that they receive the grace to repent of their error. But the fact remains that when one is proven to be in open error against the Church’s teachings(heresy) and/or authority(scism), that they cannot hide behind some vague notion of innocent ignorance.

Again, the Church always offers reconciliation, that is true, but when one is in willful disobedience against the Church, and refuses reconciliation and would rather pick and choose their own beliefs, then you have abrogated any claim to the title “Catholic Christian.”

 

[Tony_the_mad]

Yikes! What a horrible poll. The first option “Yes, if you follow most of the teachings” is not even remotely possible.

A simple “yes” and “no” would have sufficed and would give much better results.

It is not the amount of agreement that is important but the quality of the agreement and how you act and think accordingly. Some teachings are more important than others. Some have greater authority than others. One person can disagree with humility and awe before the Church. Another can agree 100% with the Church and be arrogant about it, even finding the Church wanting. I myself would choose the first every time before the second as being a true Catholic. (Unless you think, I am being hypothetical only, I see plenty of both on this forum with way too many of the latter in my opinion.)

Personally, I don’t think it is possible for a thinking person to agree 100% with anything. Only those who accept with blind faith can agree 100%.

 

[Tony_the_mad]

If that’s the case and I agree it is, it’s interesting then that a forum calling itself “Catholic Answers” would give a different answer than the parish or Church on who is or can call themselves a Catholic. I kinda think it’s sad that the poll is running 2:1 against what the Church would say. Maybe there are more “cafeteria” Catholics than I realized.

The poll itself is poorly designed with no good answer for those of us who want to say ‘yes’. Plus the poll itself has a lot of uncertainty due to the small numbers.

Too, this forum itself is extremely unrepresentative of either the Catholic populace nor the Catholic hierarchy. Too many members of this forum have a self-righteous form of conservatism (as opposed to the humble conservatism of most of the hierarchy). They are the chosen few who accept everything unquestioning unlike the cafeteria liberals.

Unfortunately, their belief in their own righteousness, has led many to not be able to see that there is any truth in the beliefs of others, in particular liberals. They refuse to eat anything that the liberals eat or deem it less important and therefore become cafeteria Catholics in the opposite sense.

The Church is neither liberal nor conservative; it is orthodox. (Which to some extent means that is is BOTH liberal and conservative.)

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

Yikes! What a horrible poll. The first option “Yes, if you follow most of the teachings” is not even remotely possible.

A simple “yes” and “no” would have sufficed and would give much better results.

It is not the amount of agreement that is important but the quality of the agreement and how you act and think accordingly. Some teachings are more important than others. Some have greater authority than others. One person can disagree with humility and awe before the Church. Another can agree 100% with the Church and be arrogant about it, even finding the Church wanting. I myself would choose the first every time before the second as being a true Catholic. (Unless you think, I am being hypothetical only, I see plenty of both on this forum with way too many of the latter in my opinion.)

Personally, I don’t think it is possible for a thinking person to agree 100% with anything. Only those who accept with blind faith can agree 100%.

I accept Catholic teachings 100% and I take it as an insult the suggestion that I take them “blindly”. I am a convert from atheism and took great lengths to examine the Church’s teachings on faith and morals and I found them logical, consistent, and reasonable as well as beautiful and enlightening. Anything that I might have not at any given time understood I otherwise accepted in faith with the belief that God would enlighten me at a later time when i was better disposed.

Regardless, the poll options are extremely lacking.

Christianity, I agree, is too dynamic to be confined to these sort of modern political labels like “liberal” or “conservative.”

Both sides think in absolute terms and “forget” the value of the other. Liberals often correctly see Love as an absolute but they wrongly forget that Truth is also absolute. They have soft hearts(which is good) yet they also have soft heads(which is bad). They wrongly love sins in order to correctly love sinners.

Conservatives often (correctly)see Truth as an absolute but they (wrongly) forget that Love is an absolute as well. They have hard heads for truth(which is good), but they often also have hard hearts as well(which is bad). They (correctly) hate sin, but not without the inevitable consequence of (wrongly)hating the sinner as well.

Both sides must remember and respect and accept the absolute that the other side recognizes and affirms. Because Jesus IS both absolute Truth and absolute Love.

 

[Michael_Francis]

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