Did CAF help to bring any atheists into the Church?

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mathematoons said:
You’re only proving Reggie’s point.
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So rather than having them here where you can help to point out their errors, you would prefer that they spread those errors elsewhere. So as long as they don’t misrepresent Catholicism in your presence then you’re perfectly fine with it. How admirably Catholic of you.
 
Thanks, friend.

I do have a spiritual director; he is a good man, and I am blessed to have his counsel.

He’s also a very busy man, so we don’t talk often – and also I think that one of the ingredients God has lately been cooking me with is time alone to wrestle with my problems without others to lean on. I haven’t sought alone-ness on purpose, but a chain of real-life circumstances aligned to leave me struggling alone to a point that was so comical that even my spiritual director laughed when he finally heard about it.

I place my hope in God. Life is an adventure and I’m sure the new year will bring more new steps on my walk with God. My hope is that God will bring me home again more fully formed than I was the first time around. I don’t know specifically what God has in store for me but one thing I realized lately is that who I am when I break is who I am. I’m spending plenty of time in my brokenness now, so perhaps God intends me to know myself better through this experience.

I would appreciate your prayers. 🙏
 
Thanks Patty, I appreciate it.

From here, the journey continues offline!

I hope the new year brings you great happiness and peace.
 
Your hateful, angry speech does more to turn people away from the faith than some goofball who thinks Catholicism is a few things he learned in Catechism class. That, more than anything, was my point. How admirably Catholic of you to abandon charity.
 
I’m already praying for you. At a time like this, it may be that the most important thing to do is follow your spiritual director’s advice.
 
mathematoons said:
Your hateful, angry speech does more to turn people away from the faith than some goofball who thinks Catholicism is a few things he learned in Catechism class.
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I guess you can only push that “Explain and Defend” motto so far, huh. Heaven forbid that it might actually be hard.
mathematoons said:
How admirably Catholic of you to abandon charity.
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And here I thought that my forty years of ministering to the homeless might actually be counted as charity. I guess I was wrong. Then again, I’m not a Catholic, so what can I possibly know about charity.
 
I think there were enough atheists in the Church even before CAF came along. Nevertheless, it matters not that CAF, or you or I brought anyone into the Church. What matters is that we spoke the truth with Charity. The burden then is upon the hearers. Yet, as we have come to know, truth is far easier than charity. God knew this before creation, and so instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
 
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The part about aloneness sounds similar (from what I can remember, so I may get some details wrong) to some advice I’ve heard on the issue of some extroverts being afraid of silence unlike introverts - stemming from fear of not knowing how to think things through on their own when they are left to their own devices, so their introvert friends should help them cope by pointing out how they too can handle things with more confidence by trusting or developing their analytical abilities more. Not saying this necessarily applies to you though, just something it reminded me of, and heck, maybe you can even find something helpful in that too.

And don’t worry about your brokenness, throughout it all you’re always valued and worthwhile to God who wants you back home clean and safe. Our brokenness should only help us trust more in God’s love for us!
 
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If you knew the slightest bit about what my life is like right now (I’d rather not go into details), and just how much I sacrifice for what God has called me to do (again, the details are unnecessary), you would not label me as one to shy away from hard things. “For the sake of the words of thy lips, I have kept hard ways.” Just because God has not called me to the same fight as He has called you to, doesn’t mean He hasn’t called me to another, possibly more difficult, fight.

Still, we could both stand to learn to be nicer to others. The board’s about to close, let’s quit arguing.
 
mathematoons said:
If you knew the slightest bit about what my life is like right now (I’d rather not go into details), and just how much I sacrifice for what God has called me to do (again, the details are unnecessary), you would not label me as one to shy away from hard things.
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I have no doubt that your life has hardships, most of ours do. Lives that look easy, seldom are.

Years ago my mother took us kids to the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend Iowa. And I remember being awestruck by the patience and perseverance that it must have taken to build it. Year after year of doing nothing more impressive than simply stacking rocks. All because of a promise. And I remember thinking that that’s something that I could do, I could stack rocks. I’d be really good at stacking rocks.

But alas, life had other plans, and I had my own promises to keep. So there was no stacking rocks and building Grotto’s for me. But what took me far too many years to appreciate, is that we’re not all given rocks, but that doesn’t mean that if we simply persevere with whatever we’re given, that we can’t build something just as impressive.

So here I am all these years later, and I have my Grotto. It’s not made of stone, it’s not nearly that enduring, but it is perhaps the only thing of value that I’ve ever done. And it was simply my version of stacking rocks.

But hey, I’m a nuisance, right. Better done away with and ignored. But I can’t help but wonder just how many Grotto’s are out there, that I’ve failed to appreciate, because I wasn’t seeing people’s Grotto’s, I was seeing their rocks. I was seeing their faults. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise, that I found them.

So the powers that be think that CAF isn’t a benefit to Catholicism, but maybe they’ve just failed to recognize what it is that they’re building, and they’re judging the rocks and not the Grotto. Sure they’re just rocks, some of them are ugly, and some of them are abrasive…but what are they building?
 
As an encouragement to both of you, remember always that God will make up to each of us with more than what is lost in each sacrifice to him - we won’t lose anything in the end, but gain… The death of a forum like Catholic Answers can’t outwit God’s providence - God is not wringing His hands thinking what He should do now. He has foreseen this from all eternity and knows how to bring greater good out of any evil.
 
As an encouragement to both of you, remember always that God will make up to each of us with more than what is lost in each sacrifice to him - we won’t lose anything in the end, but gain. The death of a forum like Catholic Answers can’t outwit God’s providence - God is not wringing His hands thinking what He should do now. He has foreseen this from all eternity and knows how to bring greater good out of any evil.
 
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NormalBeliever said:
As an encouragement to both of you, remember always that God will make up to each of us with more than what is lost in each sacrifice to him
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Just to be clear, I have never, ever considered anything that I have done to be a sacrifice. In spite of any hardships, it was an honor.
 
It’s an interesting question.

I have created more than 5000 posts over the years I was here.

I cannot say that I have entirely favorable memories of this forum. There are certainly favorable memories.

My corollary to the question about who may have been brought in is: How many were driven away?

It is not meant as a negative statement but a genuine concern that people will have to answer for in eternity, to the Lord who said in the Gospel who said that we must account for every word. People who read these posts are real live flesh and blood people. There are so many people that I have read who came to “The Catholic Answer Forum” but what they received was neither a proper Catholic answer nor was it pastoral care.

Those are the ones I most think of as these hours pass…and with great concern and solicitude.
 
I have a slightly different take on the question. I was an atheist and had been for many years. For reasons I won’t bore you all with I became pretty convinced I was wrong, there is a God and I should join His Church.

As you can imagine I didn’t know any Catholics and was confused about the whole thing.

I stumbled across this forum and people here were really kind, encouraging and pointed me in the right direction. So strictly speaking I wasn’t an atheist at the point of joining CAF but was very much trying to find the place to dip my toe in. Maybe this board made the difference for me, who knows.
 
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