Feeling very rejected by the Church

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StudentMI

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Hope this is in the right forum.

I’d rather not go into a ton of detail but I’m feeling very rejected by the Church lately and my faith is suffering as a result. I’ve tried reaching out to numerous people in the Church for help and have received no response. This wasn’t just a one time thing but multiple attempts were made. I do suffer from depression and that might be making it worse but I don’t know what to do.

I try telling myself that there were holy men and women who were rejected much more strongly by the Church than I have seemingly been but it doesn’t help. I don’t know why God is letting this happen.
 
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I’m sorry you’re feeling this way, but as you pointed out your depression could be playing a big role in these feelings

Could you go into more detail about how you’re being rejected?
 
Are you saying you called the parish office to schedule an appointment with a priest and they refused to schedule it?
 
I’m sorry you are feeling this way.

However, without more detail as to why you feel this way, what exactly you tried to fix the problem, and how you were “rejected”, we cannot really help you here other than pray for you.

Why do you feel rejected?

Who did you reach out to?

How and when did you reach out?

Did you try to schedule a meeting with your priest and got told no?

Are you also getting medical treatment for your depression?
 
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I’ve tried scheduling an appointment and he doesn’t respond to my emails. He knows me too and knows I have depression and other issues. I tried calling another priest I know and he hasn’t called back.

It’s hard to go into details because of the nature of what happened. But it’s been hurting my faith and it just seems like God is allowing this to happen to test me or something and I’m not up to it. I’ve been wishing I hadn’t converted at all. It just seems like the Church is welcoming and then relegates you to the sidelines. I do see a doctor for counseling and he has encouraged me to reach out for help (he’s Catholic himself), but when I have this seems to happen.
 
If the priest didn’t respond to your e-mails, he may simply be bad at communicating via e-mail. Many people, priests included (but not just priests, also doctors, lawyers, friends of mine, relatives and I myself), do not respond timely to emails for various reasons. They get too much email, the emails go to their spam folder, they are busy/ out of town when emails come in and they miss them, they rely on another person to handle their email and the other person does a poor job.

If you do not get a response to an email, then you need to call the person, or better yet their admin assistant, see below.

As for calling the other priest you know and he didn’t call back, he may be busy, he may be out of town, he may have accidentally deleted the message, he may rely on an admin such as the parish secretary to handle his calls.

I find that I get a much, much better response by contacting the parish office when I need something. The admins there will know if Father A is busy or Father B is out of town or if Deacon C is available to meet with you. Please try this approach. And also, please try not to read too much into the fact that somebody didn’t answer your email. I know when one has depression (or anxiety or other mental disturbances), the failure of someone to respond can seem huge, but there are often practical reasons for it and to the other person it doesn’t seem like a big deal.
 
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StudentMI said:
I’ve tried scheduling an appointment and he doesn’t respond to my emails. He knows me too and knows I have depression and other issues. I tried calling another priest I know and he hasn’t called back.
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My priests are bad with email. I call the parish office and schedule an appointment through the secretary.

They are constantly pulled in many directions. They have very full schedules. You have to understand that sometimes your priest will miss a phone call or an email.
 
StudentMI said:
He knows me too and knows I have depression and other issues. I tried calling another priest I know and he hasn’t called back.
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How have your other interactions with your priest gone? What did he recommend you do? It could be that he wants you to make progress on your depression and other issues before he can take you on for any spiritual counsel.

-Fr ACEGC
 
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Yes that’s true Father. I’m gonna try calling the one I emailed. The worst that can happen is he tells me what Father told me above. It would be better than being uncertain.
 
It doesn’t sound like you’ve been “rejected by the Church” if that’s the case. It sounds like you met with Father, he determined that he wasn’t equipped to help you with the issues you presented with, and he advised you, quite rightly, to get some help for those issues. That was no more rejection than if you had gone to your regular doctor with severe gastrointestinal issues and he referred you to a GI specialist. That doctor wouldn’t be rejecting you, he would be sending you to someone who could better help you.

It seems like your depression is causing you then to read this in the worst possible light, as some sort of rejection of you as a person, rather than as that priest simply trying to help you in the best way possible. You weren’t rejected by your priest, still less were you rejected by the Church or put on the sideline or whatever. I say this as someone who occasionally deals with anxiety and depression, and I know how those thought patterns go, but you can’t go with what you feel–you have to go with what you know and what really is true.

I bring all this up and ask what I do because I’ve seen this kind of situation before. I’ve met with people who would come to me for spiritual advice, and after a meeting or two, it became clear that their problem was probably about 10% spiritual, but was really mostly psychological, and I’m not equipped to treat that. So I would tell them that they needed to seek help for that first, and then I could work with them. If the ship is taking on water, but there’s a fire in the way of you patching the hull, you need to put the fire out first. And in many of these cases, once the actual issues are dealt with, the spiritual problems seem to resolve themselves, since they were just a manifestation of the mental issues.

You are in my prayers.

-Fr ACEGC
 
I have suffered with depression most of my life. One thing I learned, things are NEVER as bad as they seem to be when I’m in a depressed state.

My Depression had a way of placing the most negative possible interpretation on things , and making big deals out of small nothings .

St Ignatius , You might want to study his work on disernemt of spirits , it helped me a great deal.
 
StudentMI said:
It’s hard to go into details because of the nature of what happened. But it’s been hurting my faith and it just seems like God is allowing this to happen to test me or something and I’m not up to it… I do see a doctor for counseling and he has encouraged me to reach out for help (he’s Catholic himself), but when I have this seems to happen.
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I would take exactly what you’ve experienced to your Catholic physician. He’s the most likely to be able to help you sort out how to go forward within the combination of physical, emotional and spiritual challenges that you’re facing.
StudentMI said:
It just seems like the Church is welcoming and then relegates you to the sidelines.
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I would definitely talk to him about what you mean by being relegated to the sidelines. I’m concerned because generally speaking we don’t have a right to serve the Church in the capacity of our choosing. We don’t even have a right to spiritual guidance of our chooosing and we certainly cannot expect spritual consolations to come at our bidding (not that you ever said we do). We are to be obedient to the needs of others and not just our own, and so what you wrote raises the concern that your very real emotional and medical challenges may be orienting you towards looking at your service or participation at church in terms of what’s in it for you. That’s understandable, but in the end it isn’t even profitable for you. That’s not to say you don’t have real needs that aren’t being met. It isn’t appropriate for you to get into too much detail here, and I think we understand that we can’t know exactly what you’re getting at. Talking to someone who you trust to be discrete and understanding of your exact situation, such as your Catholic physician or even your sponsors from RCIA, would be a good route to go.

Suffice it to say, however, that the saints have felt “put on hold” in a dry or needy situation. The suffering can be profitable in the end, but it is real suffering, all the same. Suffering can be a route to spiritual growth, but that is by no means automatic: suffering is not “good,” but only what God can make of it is. I hope you find a solution for your painful experiences, so you can find an opportunity for growth is this hard situation.
 
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StudentMI said:
It just seems like the Church is welcoming and then relegates you to the sidelines.
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I know that feeling, and in my experience, it is of the devil; he brings you down to his level and makes you feel worthless and rejected. In reality, many at my parish has been very welcoming and happy to see me (especially since I’m one of the few young people there).

Go to Confession and Mass often, and Satan’s veil over your eyes will be lifted. In my experience, going long periods without Confession or the Eucharist has proven detrimental to my own well-being.
 
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CathoRick said:
Go to Confession and Mass often, and Satan’s veil over your eyes will be lifted. In my experience, going long periods without Confession or the Eucharist has proven detrimental to my own well-being.
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And personal prayer, too. When we get depressed and prayer is hard, we can be tempted to hope that people can fill a void that only God can fill. It doesn’t work like that. We need people when we need people and we need God when we need God, but even if we need people and they aren’t there for us, God can help us through our poverty. It seems that it is more difficult for God to help those who don’t think they have any needs, while those who know they are needy are much better candidates for transformation by grace. Anything is possible with God, but there is a reason that Our Lord said “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “How difficult it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”

We’re all needy, but some of us know the truth better than others. That truth can lead to freedom, if we trust that.
 
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Not knowing your situation, allow me to comment. I too suffer from depression. The world today feels very impersonal which I think has given rise to so much social media interaction- people are reaching out. My experience while working and volunteering in a parish is that the staff considers it to be mostly a job while Father is stretched very thin with everything which is likely on his plate. And there are kind and not so kind Priests out there. ( Oh, how I miss those large, rotund Irish priests!!) Sunday Mass seems to be a get in and get out type of affair. Have you tried attending an afternoon Mass? I’ve seen many bonds and friendships develop when people talk after Mass. People take a real and greater interest in one another. Try it out. And please don’t isolate. This is the tendency and is the worst thing you can do. I know; I’ve been there…Defintely praying for you!
 
I know it feels to you like a personal slight. I can’t imagine a priest deliberately ignoring your contact because he doesn’t want anything to do with you. That wouldn’t be priestly of him. As the others have stated above, there could be innocent reasons for the lack of response. Please keep trying, and go through the channels you’ve been advised to.

Meanwhile, try to get help for your depression. I know what a bottomless pit that can be. You can climb out, but you’ll need help to do so.

Best to you, and God bless.
 
Offer your suffering to God. Have faith, God always helps the faithful.
 
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