Converting to Catholicism (background; small details)

[mdbaumert]

Hi James83,

On a similar road of discovery as you are, albeit from a reformed Christian perspective which, ironically, has been paving the road towards the Catholic Church.

One piece of advice that I would recommend that I’ve found particularly helpful is to make sure you are including in your discernment sources from a Catholic perspective of explaining what the Church actually teaches, particularly the words of the early church fathers.

Relative to the homily you are referencing, the only text that I see online is the text from the Midnight Mass homily from Pope Francis which you can find via an *easy google search (I can’t post links yet for some reason)

I think, reading his actual words, the homily was extraordinarily Christocentric and quite moving. Is anyone aware of the homily that is being criticized re: hyper focus on immigration in the article James linked?

Thanks to all

 

[James83]

Thanks. I have some books of the early church fathers etc, but I’m sure it doesn’t constitute anywhere near the extent of a well-versed Catholic.

The current Pope pushing liberation theology is partly concerning i.e the immigration issue; cultures are slowly vanishing in the West (sometimes rapidly), and crime etc are very, very bad i.e huge rise in gang-rape etc.

Thus I appreciate the mention of facing problems head-on, and this being an issue within Baptist faith (head-in-the-sand, all is well etc). These problems are only going to get worse. And with immigration in the US, I believe you will start to feel similar problems.

Being welcome/charitable - yes, of course. But when out own children are being raped/trafficked, we need to look the issue head-on and discover the source of the problems. The Pope, in wishing to import these cultures, is part of the source of these problems.

My concerns with Catholicism are with the possible abuse of power due to the very hierarchical structure. This structure in and of itself I see as a positive - unless it is being abused.

Jude 4 occasionally comes to mind.

 

[mdbaumert]

James83, as someone on the likely road from Protestantism to Catholicism, I understand all too well the fear of the possible abuse of power in a very hierarchical structure. I’m largely reconciled with it because there’s a fundamental truth that needs to be acknowledged; there are and will continue to be abuses of power in hierarchies. One thing I want to highlight however, is that I didn’t say that it was abuses DUE to hierarchy itself which I think is a key distinction.

All of us within the Christian tradition (and within society at large) participate in some form of a hierarchy. It may be small or it may be of a universal-scale like the Catholic Church. Hierarchy isn’t implicitly or objectively bad, but people within a hierarchy (whether large or small) can certainly be and have shown that they can do very bad things on account of sin. Two very different things.

I think a lot of the mistrust is due to issues we’ve all seen, no doubt. Underlying all of that, however, are the implicit biases that we all have, particularly people of the western world who are highly influenced by post-enlightenment rational humanism in it’s many forms: individualism, manifest destiny and self-determinism. We are at a point in western society that we implicitly distrust social structures and are embarking on a never-ending quest of deconstructionism without it’s even-more important counterpart, reconstruction into something good. The results of this are not convincingly good.

There have been abuses of power within the Catholic Church (and in ALL institutions) throughout history; you will not ever love the Church by being blind to that or pretending that past abuses wasn’t all that bad. As the people of God, we are called to be faithful and to act and pray towards healing and re-invigoration when these things occur.

Relative to immigration from a Christian and specifically Catholic perspective, that’s another topic that can be discussed further if you’d like.