Don't know any faithful Catholics

[fin]

my mom asked me if I’m planning to enter religious life. I said no, and that there are many lay Catholics who are into their faith, and I happen to no nobody like that. as much as i don’t want to be annoyed, I am.

It’s frustrating because almost everyone around me is nominal. They totally don’t know probably faithful Catholics, thus concluding that if you go to daily Mass, (or even just Sunday mass), into Catholic news, praying and all,you must be signing up for religious life.

THey totally don’t understand that religious life is not for everyone, but having a spiritual life is a must for everyone.

I really try to overcome what some people think of me, ignoring them and just doing what I want to do in my spiritual life.

I really feel that I am located in the wrong place. The mindset of the people around me are just totally out of my league. If I were in an environment of religious Catholics, I wouldn’t get comments like being too religious, you should enter religious life and all.

i’m glad there’s CAF so I can get to read about like-minded people.
I just really want to have faithful Catholics to have fellowship with.

 

[lyrikal]

2* God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have demolished thy altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4* But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

Romans 11:2-4

 

[SuscipeMeDomine]

I really try to overcome what some people think of me, ignoring them and just doing what I want to do in my spiritual life.

Perhaps rather than ignoring them you could use the opportunity to evangelize. If you’re going to Mass or a prayer service, why not invite them along? If you’re helping prepare sandwiches for the homeless or collecting clothes for the Catholic Charities thrift shop, invite them to help too. Jesus didn’t say to ignore those who aren’t fervent, he said to go out and make disciples.

You might also think of helping with children’s religious education or RCIA as ways of passing your knowledge and faith on to others.

 

[Highwayhound]

First, you stated you are located in the wrong place. In what general area of the world are you? Was your statement more along the lines of your situation?

my mom asked me if I’m planning to enter religious life. I said no, and that there are many lay Catholics who are into their faith, and I happen to no nobody like that. as much as i don’t want to be annoyed, I am.

Try to understand that they are God’s creatures just like you or me. They have faults as we all do.

I really try to overcome what some people think of me, ignoring them and just doing what I want to do in my spiritual life.

To this I would suggest that you not put too much weight on the opinions of other people about you. You have no control over your reputation. You do control your actions. The action best for this case would to love these people as God loves you. Are all these people relatives? It might be harder if they are relatives. It is difficult for me with my brothers.

The mindset of the people around me are just totally out of my league. If I were in an environment of religious Catholics, I wouldn’t get comments like being too religious, you should enter religious life and all.

If you, I and all these people were lost in a dark cave not each of us would need to carry a light. It might be that you are the light to lead these people out of their darkness, just a thought.

i’m glad there’s CAF so I can get to read about like-minded people.
I just really want to have faithful Catholics to have fellowship with.

God bless

 

[Trishie]

I don’t think we can assume everyone around us isn’t more deeply spiritual than we think.

“The depths of a person can only be known by his own spirit, not by any other person.” [1Corinthians 2:1]

Take St Therese, who has also been declared a Doctor tf the Church. Knowing she would die soon, one of the nuns commented that she didn’t think there was anything worth putting into the requiem circular that would be sent around the different Carmelite communities. She said that “Sister Therese is amiable enough” but that’s about all could be said about her.

Therese herself remarked remarked a person’s holiness may “not be evident to the eyes of mortals.”

Many Sisters in her Carmelite community were unaware of the holiness of her ‘ordinary’ deeds of kindness, and doubted that anything worthwhile could appear in her obituary circular. I implore God for ‘everyday’ love and trust such as Therese maintained before temptations of doubt and suffering. Like her, in ordinariness made holy by union with Jesus our God who lived ‘the ordinary life’, we must become shining lights in an era when disbelief, humanism and self-absorption prevail.

I don’t think we always know if Catholics around us are spiritual or nominal. Some of those people who seem like nobody much at Church, for instance, may be far holier in God’s eyes than any of us know. Maybe you haven’t found God’s hidden treasures around you. Maybe you won’t know who they are till after death…I hope you find some, even in your vicinity…Who knows!

Actually, it isn’t just nominal Catholics who will make you uncomforable for being religious, you’ll also find that there are Catholics who have a different yet no less valuable spirituality who can give you a hard time…but it was natural for your mother to wish to know your intentions.

 

[benedict_XVIII]

Don’t know any faithful Catholics?
Neither do I.
You can imagine: I met personally Mother Teresa in Calcutta in 1990 and she lied to me and one of her closest nuns cheated me some money.
I would dearly love to trust Church people. I would dearly love to think I am going to church to find excellent people, true Christians devoted to God and to the needy.
But I just can’t.
Listen to this:
I have a friend here in Genoa Italy, a woman I have known for 30 years, my best friend ever.
She helps out in a parish giving clothes, food and money to the poor.
One day a blak priest comes from Africa to that Church, with a contract made between hisn Bishop in Congo and our Bishop in Genoa to spend some time in that parish to learn nis “job” better.
Notice that our Archbishop in Genoa is also the Chairman of the Episcopal Conference in Italy, the leader of all Bishops.
To cut a long story short, the black priedst is hated from the beginnibng. They put him to live in a disastrous apartment, they do not even give him knivers and forks to eat with.
Sometimes they do not let him say mass either. And they do not help him get a stay permit.
Because my friend wass the only one who helped him, someone well placed in the parish spread the voice around that my friend (woman) and the black priest were sleeping together.
Eventually life becomes so hard for the black priest that he is forced to leave. They even withhold some of the money they owed him for the masses he had said.
He moves to Rome and finds some room in a Franciscan convent but he was being charged 500 bucks a month so he has to move out and rent a room from an atheist who only charges him 150.
He thenm meets some bishop from outside Rome and asks him for help. <This new bishop rings the Genoa Bishop to get references about the black priest and the Genoa Bishop lies, telling him he doesn’t know any black priest !
The black priest is now in a fix. He is studying at the University in Rome but doesn’t have a stay permit and no regular source of income.
Priests in Rome even told him a black priest will never be allowed to be a parish priest in Italy.
I am not trying to slander the Church.
God is my witness that what I say is exactly what happened and what has been honestly told me.

 

[Trishie]

There are good Catholic people.

Next week our three priests are going without every cent of the money from the Sunday Mass collections. It will all be sent to Victoria to help the wildfire victims.
All the Christmas Mass money that was collected, went to St Vincent de Paul for the poor of our parish. Our priests kept none for themselves.

Rhese St Vincent de Paul Catholocs that are in about every parish in my country, can expect phonecalls to go out to help people anytime, and they do, whatever effort it costs. And ordinary Catholic people contribute tens of thousands in these parishes so disadvantaged people can be helped. As at Catholic Centacare, and the help we ordinary Catholics give Caritas.

Our parish sends $100 every week to the East Timorese poor. We have regular fund raisers for them and we have a special Mass and celebration regularly for East Timor refugees. Other Australian parishes collect money and have fundraisers also, to get East Timor back on its feet.

Our priests had one of the East Timorese priests, who is coffee coloured! dear man, living there in their house for a year so he could learn to speak English. They also took care of having a tattoo removed that had been on his arm since he was a little boy hiding in the jungle during the persecution there.

We also had a New Guinea priest (dark shin and tight curly hair) living and working in our parish for a couple of years. We all thought the world of him and he had many friends.

We have a Catholic.group in the suburb next to mine who devote themselves to collecting furniture and whatever is needed to help Sudanese refugees settly in our country, There is also a Catholic volunteer group nearby that help direct as well as raise funds for handicapped people.

We had an African priest visiting from Tanzania. His teeth hurt, so my sister arranged with her dentist to have his teeth fixed free. We drove an hour round trip to take him there. Later, my husband I had him to dinner, and took him sightseeing.

I just know so many kind and generous, and sincere Catholics

I walk to and from Mass, and sometimes I get as many as three offers of lifts home in fellow Catholic’s cars.

My younger sister and her family is Catholic. She and her husband had five children. But you know what this Catholic couple did! They later adopted a Downs Syndrome boy, and later, a profoundly handicapped Lebanese boy. My brother and his wife had three children, who grew, and then they adopted three handicapped children, one Lebanese, one Chinese. Each of these children have had the best care, whatever medical help, and loads of love.

There is so much love and goodness amongst Catholics.

 

[Gab123]

Hi! You bring up a most important topic. It is precisely because you don’t know any faithful Catholics that you have a great opportunity to share Christ. It is very important to understand the role of the Clergy, Religious, and Laity, and how each have their own important duties. For the laity, the role is primarily to share Christ with those who do not have him in their life and to live out our imitation of Christ wherever we find ourselves in the world.

Here are two links that I urge you to check out. The first is a short online video titled “The Final Judgement”

The second link below is a brief talk by the great archbishop Fulton J Sheen. In this talk he explains that Christians are not to live their Christianity inside an igloo, isolating their faith from the world around them. This talk is worth listening to many times until it profoundly sinks in. It is a wake-up call for the laity to activate their Christianity beyond simply keeping the commandments, avoiding mortal sin and going to Church. The role of the laity is to share the life, grace, and truth that is received at Mass, with those “empty vessels” which are hungering for truth. Here is that link

 

[fin]

Thank you for all your posts. I understand what you guys mean. It’s just that sometimes I get lonely, you know. It’s hard when nobody understands you. I hope to be light to others, but I can’t force them. I hope it’s not wrong for me to desire to be friends with good Catholics. It’s just that there’s a need in me that aren’t fulfilled by my environment. I do understand that very many people do experience this, not just in the spiritual level.

 

[Cluny]

God is my witness that what I say is exactly what happened and what has been honestly told me.

---

And of course, this story, like all stories you hear second-hand (or more) are always 100% accurate, are they not?

 

[benedict_XVIII]

God is my witness that what I say is exactly what happened and what has been honestly told me.

---

And of course, this story, like all stories you hear second-hand (or more) are always 100% accurate, are they not?

I guess this story is, my dear friend.
I got it from the black priest through my woman friend and I can trust it is 100 % accurate.
Not only because I know both people but, why would the black priest want to slander his bishop ?
It makes no sense.
I forgot to say that he contacted two different attorneys in order to get himself a stay permit.
Both of them cheated him the money but he is still without stay permit today.
Remember Cat Steven’s song?
“Oh, baby, it’s a wild world.
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile.”
I know the world inside out : it’ is Hell

However, I do trust your positive stories too, make no mistake.
I wish they happened to me.

 

[thistle]

Don’t know any faithful Catholics?
Neither do I.
You can imagine: I met personally Mother Teresa in Calcutta in 1990 and she lied to me and one of her closest nuns cheated me some money.

I think you need some psychiatric help!!

 

[church_mouse]

Thank you for all your posts. I understand what you guys mean. It’s just that sometimes I get lonely, you know. It’s hard when nobody understands you. I hope to be light to others, but I can’t force them. I hope it’s not wrong for me to desire to be friends with good Catholics. It’s just that there’s a need in me that aren’t fulfilled by my environment. I do understand that very many people do experience this, not just in the spiritual level.

Ask God to put people of deep faith in your life. That’s what I did and He did.

 

[Shin]

‘We have all seen men, and women too, pass the whole night, even several in succession, playing at chess or cards; and what can be a more dismal, unwholesome thing than that? But the world has not a word to say against it, and their friends are nowise troubled. But give up an hour to meditation, or get up rather earlier than usual to prepare for Holy Communion, and they will send for the doctor to cure you of hypochondria or jaundice! People spend every night for a month dancing, and no one will complain of being the worse; but if they keep the one watch of Christmas Eve, we shall hear of endless colds and maladies the next day! Is it not as plain as possible that the world is an unjust judge; indulgent and kindly to its own children, harsh and uncharitable to the children of God?’

St. Francis de Sales

‘I have never gone out to mingle with the world without losing something of myself.’

St. Albert the Great

‘The love of God is our proper love, for we are created for that alone; the love, on the contrary, for everything beside, ought in truth to be termed hatred, since it deprives us of our proper love, which is God. Love then God, who loves thee, and leave him who does not love thee, namely, everything beneath God; for all things are enemies to that true love.’

St. Catherine of Genoa

 

[Trishie]

Thank you for all your posts. I understand what you guys mean. It’s just that sometimes I get lonely, you know. It’s hard when nobody understands you. I hope to be light to others, but I can’t force them. I hope it’s not wrong for me to desire to be friends with good Catholics. It’s just that there’s a need in me that aren’t fulfilled by my environment. I do understand that very many people do experience this, not just in the spiritual level.

Fin, I hope and pray that God will find ways to send you spiritual friends

 

[beckycmarie]

I really feel that I am located in the wrong place. The mindset of the people around me are just totally out of my league. If I were in an environment of religious Catholics, I wouldn’t get comments like being too religious, you should enter religious life and all.

Dear fin,

I love what my Archbishop wrote in this year’s annual appeal letter. I’ve shared it a couple times here and think you might find his words inspiring, too:

“The stars in the night sky declare the glory of the Lord, so too God’s people radiate with the glory of God in a dark world. God has strategically placed each star in the heavens and God has strategically placed you on the earth to bring light to your environment.” - Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory

Of course don’t totally dismiss what others are saying about religious life - take some time to discern if it’s a calling. I’ve found one way God asks me to do things is to send several people all saying the same thing.

 

[benedict_XVIII]

I think you need some psychiatric help!!

If you fully trust all Church people, you too might need some, Thistle.
Of course, the truth always hurts.
I call God as witness on me that I am telling the truth. I remember exactly all about my close encounter with Mother Teresa and one of her closest nuns, Sister Dionisia.
I had human witnesses supporting my story then but, of course, it was 1990, a long time ago.
I was there and I know what I am talking about.
You were not there, Thistle, it would not be right for you to judge.
Don’t forget even saints sin, so there is nothing unusual in what I say.
The only unusual thing is maybe that all these bad stories always happen to me.
Much as I would really like, I haven’t got one single good story to tell from all my encounters with Church people in three continents in 57 years.
Aren’t I unlucky !

 

[benedict_XVIII]

Recently I contacted a priest thru the Net who works about 40 miles from my town,.
From time to time I contact a priest hoping to finally hear only good stories.
This priest’s name is Piergiorgio Motti, you can talk to him if you like and if you can speak Italian. he will confirm what I am saying.Initially he was a Franciscan friar. He was accountant in his monastery.
One day he discovers that one of his superiors is having a personal bank account and mismanages convent money.
This priest I’m talking about then goes and tells the Brother Superior.
Result ?
He is condemned and asked to leave the congregationn and nothing happens to the rogue friar.

 

[InLight247]

fin, does your church have SCC (Small Church Community)?
Most Catholic churches have this group. We get together 7 weeks before Lent and 7 weeks before Advent to study the coming Sunday’s Scriptures, relate the Scriptures to our daily lives and share our personal experiences. We pray together, of course.

You may want to join such a group and to have fellowship with like-minded people. That is a starting point.

If your church does not have such groups, you can talk to your pastor and start to form SCC. Our church has multiple SCCs, each meets at different time of the week.

 

[John_Russell_Jr]

my mom asked me if I’m planning to enter religious life. I said no, and that there are many lay Catholics who are into their faith, and I happen to no nobody like that. as much as i don’t want to be annoyed, I am.

It’s frustrating because almost everyone around me is nominal. They totally don’t know probably faithful Catholics, thus concluding that if you go to daily Mass, (or even just Sunday mass), into Catholic news, praying and all,you must be signing up for religious life.

THey totally don’t understand that religious life is not for everyone, but having a spiritual life is a must for everyone.

I really try to overcome what some people think of me, ignoring them and just doing what I want to do in my spiritual life.

I really feel that I am located in the wrong place. The mindset of the people around me are just totally out of my league. If I were in an environment of religious Catholics, I wouldn’t get comments like being too religious, you should enter religious life and all.

i’m glad there’s CAF so I can get to read about like-minded people.
I just really want to have faithful Catholics to have fellowship with.

Praise God for allowing you to bear witness by your example and blessing you with crosses and persecution. Therein lies the path to heaven. God is showing yo great favour with these crosses and he’s counting on you. Keep the faith and God bless