Hi Atticus,
I posted for a short while on Mormon threads…I never knew any Mormons in my former state, but met a wonderful small group here…don’t mean to derail…have been reading the posts here…
But I am Catholic my whole life, and will never leave because I automatically and immediately pick up what is lacking in other churches and communities. Nothing can replace the liturgy and rock solid teaching, Mary and the communion of saints, and the history of the faithful. As far as scandals go, past times are an open book; the Inquisition wasn’t opened up until this past decade for reasons I don’t know.
(A Jewish organization started doing research on Pope Pius XII, and had pretty much this negative image of him. They went to the Vatican to search documents and were surprised how open the Church is. They found out the truth about Pius, and can’t understand why the Church doesn’t do more in defending itself. But church life for the clergy is very intense as those faithful are facing Christ and living through Him every day, so they only deal with what they have to do or that what comes up.
This organization is called Pave the Way, and they work to reconcile the various religions. Considering your scope of perspective you may want to check out:
Code:
[www.pavetheway.org](www.pavetheway.org).)
When you talk about what you miss, I can understand as I saw some of that with the Mormons. The only place that consistently is fraternal and joyous and helps their young and teens is the dioceses in Apulia, Italy where St. Pd Pio came from. Apulia is the heel of Italy, and the heel in Catholicism always represents the humble little people.
You can check out my priest friend’s webpage and check out the different things they are doing with their youth and kids on
www.pacebenemondo.it.
We are lacking Christian life beyond the Mass and sacraments. We need other Christians who are separated to come back. The Mormons excel in great family and youth ministry, as well as those evangelicals who are delivering young people from drugs, sex, alcohol and waste, as well as the lay ministers of the protestant churches, who if they could understand Catholicism and its place, would be fantastic teachers and comforters and help us more to live in the present.
Alot of times Catholics do have a sense of continuity from the past to now, but we tend to be too reasonable as well, and need some emotion and expression. I think at Mass we do need to be more in the posture of Adoration…so that expressiveness would be needed more after Mass times. The more contemplative side of us tends to accept our crosses of every day life, but some times we loose discernment – our priests should help us with that especially in the confessional but many don’t make use of this sacrament, and so we end up being in the drudges of every day life expressionless and passive, and even depressed as a faith community in many parishes.
There is just too much in our country that is in need of reform of unity, but with the fractured Christian faith, I believe it is affecting everyone. We will never be a positive force in America if we remain divided.
One of the things to help unite is to bring to the light errors and fraud and abuse…wherever it may be. I pray people here will reflect on what you are saying and seek God’s will for them.