Ed, I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. I started regular attendence at Mas at 3yo, as best memory serves. I attended Roman Catholic schools taught by clergy from grade three through twelve. During that time I had clergry as friends, as did the family, as we often had visitng priests as guests. I often went on retreats both as a part of school functions and as a free agent. I regualarly did novenas and was actually mentioned in one of them given by a Redemptorist Father. I regularly met and talked with my friends about the Catholic Church and was very active in proselytizing. I excelled in catechism, and in high school was part of a small team the won a rather large trophy for knowledge of Catholic theology “against” larger teams. I was knowledgeable to the point that I was invited once to a conference that excluded me only on discovery that I was not ordained. I was considering, for some time, going to seminary. Until their passing, a number of well respected priests were close firends. The last one that died had a crowd so large at his funeral the large school gym where it was held couldn’t hold them. I dearly loved him as a teacher and Mentor through the many years of our asociation. I was also an altar boy and often volunteered to do maintainance work at our Church. I was in a Church Choir, as was my Dad, who was very acitve in Catholic and other social justice activities. My Mother is a devoted and prayerful person who still goes to Mass at 86yo, and somtimes it is I who take her there. I have been from my early youth to this day a student of religion and philosophy both academically and on my own, having as well met with and talked with clerics of both Catholic and other faiths for many years, some whose names I believe you would easily recognize. I have read and considered everything regarding the Catholic faith that has come to me since childhood. I have been as well graced by several mystical experiences of various magnitudes.
I tell you all this because I do not take invlovement in a faith lightly. But I have a conscience, and I have to deal with what comes to me by my best lights. For you and many, that would be faith in the Church. That is well and good, as it was for me. Yet as it happens, experiences come into our lives that make re-evaluations necessary. I had one such that litterally pulled the underpinnings of who and what I thought I was completly out from under me, both underemoniously and without warning. It was an experience of a very particular nature, but I didn’t know that at the time. Because of my ignorance, I did my level best to discover, within the faith, answers for the questions that arose from that experience. They were genuine and sincere questions based on the nature of the state of awareness that came to me in that sudden and, I think, uninvited way, unless what happened was the answer to years of intense prayer. Perhaps it was.
Suffice it to say that there were no answers forthcoming within the persons and literature of the Church that I had access to. Eventually, because of my research, I started to find things that matched part of what I had come to in my assesment of my newfound knowledge, or lack of it. Whereas I was dismissed or even scoffed at within the Church for having the questions I did, I discovered that what I had experienced had a rather ancient and profound history. In fact, it corresponded to the hidden teachings behind even Catholic mysticism, especially as put forth by Meister Eckhart, the highly regarded monk.
I was fortunate, incredibly lucky, actually, to find a living proponent of the teaching I speak from and which is at the same time my experience. My Mentor was a man of astounding accomplishment in the area of metaphysics. such that Jesuit scholars, the very learned of many churches, and even the teachers of Eastern and other systems came to him and found that impasses they had reache disolved under his analysis. He was talented, as appearently I am not so much, in explicating in their own terms how things were seen from another level. I only wish I had the loftiness of his ability, But the fact is, as I saw repeatedly, there is a more esoteric Understanding of the matters we usually attribute to simple faith. My own experience had simply been a sudden and unprepared for incident easily explainable in a more fundamental system that has been around since before Abraham and is yet alive today.
That Understanding is ancient, and is even at the root of Christianity, but is obscured due to certain unfortunate events at the begining of the records of Church teaching. And it is real, despite detracotors who wish ot classify it as something it isn’t. I have alluded to those events and teachings, with little avail. as I have often stated, as well as being a bouy and an anchor, faith can as well be a prophylactic. Once it is clear what that Understanding I refer to is about, the teachings of Jesus open in and entirley more wonderful, glorious, practical, and meaningful way.
So all that is to say that I am not here talking through my hat, or blowing smoke. I know that I know what I know, and what I offer is a apossibility of education and familiarity with ideas not commonly addresed in the popular versions of world faiths. Yet it is experientiallly demonstrable that it is at the root of these faiths, if but one is willing to see. For that reason, despite opposition from some on here, I speak my piece in case someone actually can slip through the door.
That has no negative connotation on Catholicism, it just offers another step that is available if one so chooses. For the vast majority, their faith is excellent, save that in fact it is incomplete in the crunch, as it is exactly that: faith. It is not knowledge, despite being even deep and profound knowledge about a system.
