Catastrophic loss of faith

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the entourage of those who progress in the virtues, will certainly notice these advances. It’s impossible to live in society and make progress in the virtues that are not visible.
Tis_Bearself said:
Many if not most priests I know are also very holy and are living visibly virtuous lives. Visibly because they are in the public eye of their parishes.
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i can also talk about a lot of atheists, Protestants, Muslims etc who have a very virtuous life. The fact that priests take the Eucharist every day should put them at a level of virtue, well above average
 
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Just to note - I care about your loss of faith too, although I’m not Mary or a saint or an angel.

I don’t want to be harsh on people who are suffering a loss of faith.

At the same time, I have difficulty understanding how the sins of clergy or other people can affect one’s personal faith, except perhaps in the case of people who have been victimized or had a close friend/ family member victimized and now are struggling with negative emotional associations every time they might think about the Church or religion.

My own faith doesn’t get affected when other people or even the priest on the altar sin. I may have concerns about getting him into custody before he hurts anyone, if he’s a danger to society, but it doesn’t affect my faith. That’s just me.
 
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Who is the “our” in “our experience”? Sorry, that’s not my experience or the experience of literally countless saints and holy people throughout the centuries who have stayed close to the sacraments as a means of healing and grace. I can see that you’ve lost your faith mboo, and I pray you also stay close to the sacraments and regain faith and hope in their efficacy. God Himself gave them to us for a reason.
 
I don’t think the initial point was that prayer and the sacraments increased your virtue anyway - it was that they increased your faith / made it easier to believe in God
 
I will be more specific. The grace of the sacraments is not effective all the time and for everyone. Indeed, if the Eucharist was effective against sin all the time and in almost everyone, in the same way that the vaccine is effective against polyomelites it should be visible in almost all catholics , and the whole world would notice the very virtuous life of almost all the catholics, let’s be honest !!!
The graces that God gives us (through the sacraments or by any other means) are either sufficient or efficacious. If this has had any effect on the saints, it is because they were efficacious for them, and if it does not produce effects in others it is because it is not efficacious for them.
As its effectiveness is not universal and it is selective, I say that it is not effective, it may be an exaggeration of my language.
 
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Our future holiness in this life and our salvation in the future life, are not certainties, whatever the means of santification that we can currently take (sacraments, prayers, good works, etc.). Taking all these means of sanctification, we can at most hope to be holy, without absolute certainty. God wanted that, to keep us constantly in a true humility, as long as we are still in this life
 
Much better now that you’ve worked to refine your point. Yes, the grace of the sacraments is not effective for everyone in all situations, but it is enormously effective for those with a heart open to receiving God’s graces. The sacraments for such people lead to holiness.

As to your point about never knowing on this earth whether we are holy, there’s at least one recent big exception. St. Therese of Lisieux stated in her lifetime in a conversation with her fellow nuns that she was a “little” saint!
 
If we had a special revelation of God on our salvation, then we can know with certainty, if we will be saved, it is the only exception
Then, if St. Teresa said this without having had a special revelation of God then she was mistaken in saying it
 
Limoncello4021 said:
Yes, the grace of the sacraments is not effective for everyone in all situations, but it is enormously effective for those with a heart open to receiving God’s graces
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the efficacy of a grace depends only on God, we can do nothing ourselves so that the grace that we receive from the sacraments is effecacious for us
 
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Not a crisis of faith. Just a crisis of motivation. My motivation to do anything, including get out of bed and feed myself, is non-existent. How about we pray for each other.
 
I’ve gone through periods of dryness and come close to despair, but I’ve never jumped over the cliff and given up on faith. I choose to believe, I choose God and I choose the Church. I’d be nothing without my faith.
 
Exactly. My Faith is in God, not other human beings., Not even clergy. Thomas a Kempis has much to say about that in Book I of The Imitation of Christ.
 
One thing I keep reminding myself of is Dante’s Inferno. In the circle which contains sodomites he puts many clergy. I keep telling myself that this has always been a problem, it’s not some new thing that only happened in the last 50 years.
 
Actually works mercy, good works, living a life of virtue, growing in Faith through prayer, all of these things allow us to “enlarge our vessel” so to speak. Our capacity for grace expands.
 
Religious people are not necessarily better than non religious people, but for any given person, it’s better for them to be religious than not
 
It’s not really just about clergy who have sinned. It’s the current pontificate that has failed to address these issues and has swept any connection to homosexuality under the rug. But the abuse scandal is just a small part of it. Amoris Laetitia, “inadmissibility” of the death penalty, “who am I to judge?”, entertaining the possibility of female deacons, joint statements with Muslims, encouraging youth to “make a mess,” punishing traditional clergy while those advocating sexual license go free, just to name a few more, have proven to me that this Church is just a man-made venture with no divine guidance.

The way the sins of the clergy factor in for me is that it has made it too difficult to defend the Church. Isn’t the Church / faith in a way supposed to be a source of comfort and refuge? Instead, it had become a headache for me trying to defend it and praying that it would get better. The Church should be comfort to the faithful; to me, it does not make sense that the faithful should be the ones guiding and comforting the Church. Yet we are told to “pray for the Church,” etc. Too much work. So is the Church our path to salvation, or are the faithful supposed to somehow rescue it through prayer? It seems more and more like a game that God plays with people. None of us asked to be here, yet we’re told to follow these rules and teachings of the Church. And oh by the way, when the Church begins to falter, well hey, that’s also on us to pray for its survival and correction. Sorry, there are more things to do in life than to waste time praying for some institution that can’t get its act together and really doesn’t seem to know its purpose any more.
 
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St. Therese had a very deep trial of faith. And it lasted a long time. Maybe reading about it would help you.

Also, I think it’s important to look at the possible reasons your faith seems to be absent, at least right now. …the things that have been happening in your life, what you’ve done differently or that may have happened to you since your faith has taken a downward turn.

When I was like you are now, I needed to ask myself WHY am I thinking like this now? What is the rationale for it? It doesn’t just come out of no where and crush your belief.
 
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JamalChristophr said:
Also, I think it’s important to look at the possible reasons your faith seems to be absent, at lest right now. …the things that have been happening in your life, what you’ve done differently or that may have happened to you since your faith has taken a downward turn.

When I was like you are now, I needed to ask myself WHY am I thinking like this now? What is the rationale for it? It doesn’t just come out of no where and crush your belief.
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I’m sorry to disagree with you. It almost sounds like you are blaming the victim here?

And, yes it can come out of nowhere…mine did. He might very well have some issues that contributed to his loss of faith but he may also have not. When I lost my faith I had so many people try to tell me that I must have had something happen to lose it. They were trying to understand as I was trying to understand. In my case, faith just left and to this day I don’t know why. I’d gladly welcome it back but I finally just had to accept it. I still am interested in others faith. I’m still trying to figure out why so many believe with such certainty…and I don’t.

I’d recommend not giving up. Keep praying and going to church. Faith is worth keeping and it very well might come back…quickly or slowly. At some point, you’ll either find faith again or come to accept the loss but give yourself every chance to find it again.
 
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