LaBailey,
I believe you are trying hard to understand your boyfriend and his Church. I think you are finding out that while both your Church and the Catholic Church believe that Jesus Christ is the one that leads us to salvation, there are considerable differences in the way that this plays out in worship and day to day life. As someone with 50 years of life experience I think I can tell you that whether you are talking about family life, work, leisure time, or religious practice you ***should ***care about the day to day issues.
You’ve actually gotten some good information here. I know that you’ve been rather put-off by the writing style of some of the posters here. Many of us are very direct to the point of being blunt instruments.
But that is because we believe facts trump feelings when it comes to our Faith. Our Church is rather like a musical symphony. We think it is beautiful. We may play different instruments and be tasked with different harmonies. But we have to take direction about which notes to play and at which time to play them.
If I could address a few of your points:
He tells me that as long as we love each other, things will work themselves out. He’s very supportive.
I’m glad he’s supportive. But I don’t know if he’s very wise. He sounds like a big picture guy. You’re probably the one who he depends on to handle the details because you care about them.
We will go (together) to Saturday evening mass and then go to my second service Sunday morning. When we decide to have kids, they’ll come with us to both and decide for themselves later what they want to do permanently.
You certainly
CAN do that. But it will probably get old going to two services each weekend. And as others have told you, your boyfriend will be expected to sign a paper that states his intention to raise his children as Catholics.
There are so many things I don’t understand about the Catholic Church that causes me to dislike it. There are many traditions I don’t understand and can’t find anything that says to do them in the Bible.
I think others have covered some of these traditions. Many of them are practices that evolved from Jewish forms of liturgy. Some parts of the original Catholic Mass were not recorded in the Bible, probably because everyone already knew about them and took them for granted. There are non-biblical writings that do tell us what early liturgies were like.
I was raised to believe that it’s what’s in your heart that counts.
If by “in your heart” you mean we must love Jesus, invite Him into our lives, and follow our conscience then we Catholics believe that too. But we believe that we must form our conscience according to the doctrines of the Church and submit to Her authority in matters of discipline. We do not believe “Once saved, always saved.”
I also believe that, even if you’re not a member, or maybe not even baptized, you shouldn’t be turned away from communion if you really want to take it.
We Catholics believe that we call it “Communion” because we share a common belief. We have rules about who may receive (for both Catholics and non-Catholics) to protect those who don’t share our belief from erroneously making a false statement of unity with us. I know that it feels like we are shutting you out. But we believe that those who receive communion as Catholics will be judged by God according to their adherence to Catholic beliefs and laws. Are you ready for this?
Sit, stand, kneel, speak, sing, what have you. Everything is exactly the same. Even the books already have the entire year planned out. It’s like you wouldn’t even have to come to church because you already know what it’s going to be. I like to come to church not only for communion, but to hear the MESSAGE that I would miss otherwise. I also like spontaneity.
We Catholics are a liturgical community. That means we follow prescribed formats in our communal worship. This is how the early Christian communities worshiped. This is how we interpret the worship described in the Book of Revelation. It’s the way God told us to worship him. We can still pray, listen to talks, study the Scriptures, fellowship, etc. on our own time. But communal worship is done according to ancient rites.
Also… I am very confused about the Pope. I just really don’t get it. He’s not God, he’s not Jesus, he doesn’t have a secret telephone line to communicate with God.
No, the Pope is not God. But we believe he is ordained to the ministerial priesthood along with other bishops, priests, and deacons. The ministerial priesthood is set apart unlike those of us in the priesthood of the people. The ministerial priesthood was given the power to bind and loose in heaven and to confer the sacraments.
So many things that Catholics respect so much seem to be meaningless to me
… like the communion wafers… they’re just wafers, why kneel to them? I have so much to learn.
They are meaningless because you haven’t yet recognized them for what they truly are. We wouldn’t kneel to a mere piece of bread either. (Or at least we shouldn’t. Not all Catholics understand their Faith well.) But we kneel to Jesus. And at Mass, what was once a mere piece of bread becomes Jesus, through the words and actions of the priest. This is true whether or not we believe it.
Quite frankly very sad.