Finding it harder to be moral as a Catholic than as an atheist

[DarkLight]

For background: I was an atheist for several years. I was a virtue ethicist, not a moral relativist (few atheists are in my experience).

Since coming to Catholicism, I’ve been having a significantly harder time dealing with morality. It’s not that the temptations are any worse, it’s that I feel constantly overwhelmed and helpless against God’s standard. I get a lot of cases where I know that I shouldn’t be thinking/feeling a certain way, but I have no idea how to even begin changing. This didn’t really bother me as an atheist…I didn’t much like it, but I sort of pushed stuff I didn’t know how to address to the side and worked on other things. Now it’s like the one thing I don’t know how to deal with just stays in the center of my mind frustrating me, reminding me that I’m failing.

I also find myself worrying a lot more about what God expects, to the point where it’s hard to get past. I feel like I’m very unsure of what God wants and I’m afraid of doing something wrong by accident. I’m finding it harder to help people out without worrying about if I’m unknowingly helping someone sin. And I’m really afraid to act in situations where I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, or feel like there’s no good choice I can make, for fear of making the wrong decision.

I’m just getting overwhelmed. It’s harder to care about people now than it was before. It’s so much more draining and I end up wanting to give up, because no matter what I fix or improve it’s so little. I kind of wish I could go back to atheism, just because I feel like I was actually a better, more caring person then.

 

[Della]

You’re suffering from scrupulosity. First of all, God knows we can’t meet his standards by our own efforts–we’re all in the same boat there. We aren’t supposed to be virtuous just by hoping we’ll be or wanting to be, but by letting God make us that way.

How do we do that? We take advantage of all the means of grace he has given us. For it is by God’s grace and not our own efforts that we gain virtues. Each of us has a portion of natural virtues, these are fine, but they aren’t in the same category as the virtues we gain by God’s grace, although both are gifts of God.

Think of whatever you are struggling with. What is haunting you most? Is it really a sin or are you dwelling on it in order to avoid facing those things that really are sins? This is where we need confession–to let the priest sort out what is sin in your life and what isn’t.

We need to feed our souls with the Eucharist, our minds with the Scriptures, our hearts with prayer, our bodies with purity, by giving alms, giving our time and talent to help others, etc. Catholicism is an active faith that is practiced not just a set of doctrines/dogmas to which we give mental assent.

Acticely practive your faith. Pray Morning and Evening Prayer. Learn about the Bible, it’s origins and how it applies to your life. Do these things and in time you will no longer worry over what sin is and if you are leading others into sin for you will learn what it is and how to let it go and love God, love your neighbor and life the live God wants for you.

 

[Lady_Love]

I highly recommend reading St. Therese’s “Story of a Soul.” She makes the practice of faith simple and easy.

"Yet, Lord, you know my weakness. Each morning I take up my resolution to practice humility and, by evening, I realize I have still committed many failings of pride.

Seeing this, I am tempted to discouragement.

However, as I well know, discouragement is also an act of pride! And so, O my God, what I want to do is to base all my hope on you alone. You can do all things, so be pleased to bring to birth in my soul the virtue I am looking for. And to obtain this grace from your infinite mercy, I will say repeatedly: O Jesus, meek and humble of heart: make my heart gentle and humble as yours!" - St. Therese

Your struggles are the struggles of saints.

 

[TomD123]

Since coming to Catholicism, I’ve been having a significantly harder time dealing with morality. It’s not that the temptations are any worse, it’s that I feel constantly overwhelmed and helpless against God’s standard. I get a lot of cases where I know that I shouldn’t be thinking/feeling a certain way, but I have no idea how to even begin changing. We don’t control how we feel necessarily. We control our response to our feelings. Our responses can contribute to our feelings but not necesarily control them. For example, if I get mad at someone, I can’t necessarily hellp my feeling of anger. If I sit there and wish evil on him or stirr up my anger because I like hating this person or because it might lead me to harm this person, then I have deliberately taken my anger and made it no longer a feeling but a willed choice. This didn’t really bother me as an atheist…I didn’t much like it, but I sort of pushed stuff I didn’t know how to address to the side and worked on other things. Now it’s like the one thing I don’t know how to deal with just stays in the center of my mind frustrating me, reminding me that I’m failing.**We all fail, thats why God’s mercy is always there for us. Also remember St. Augustine said: “Because we are human, we are not strong, because we are not strong, we pray” Lastly, these are definately symptoms of some scrupulosity **

I also find myself worrying a lot more about what God expects, to the point where it’s hard to get past. I feel like I’m very unsure of what God wants and I’m afraid of doing something wrong by accident.Scrupulosity symptom I’m finding it harder to help people out without worrying about if I’m unknowingly helping someone sin. Well we wouldn’t want to help anyone sin, this is an added concern as a Catholic, but this isn’t a bad thing. If you are “helping someone” and at the same time “helping them to sin” are you actually in reality HELPING them? Get what im saying?.. And I’m really afraid to act in situations where I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, or feel like there’s no good choice I can make, for fear of making the wrong decision. Catholic Moral Principals: (I could get referecnes if you need them) 1) We cannot act when our conscience is in doubt (e.g. “I don’t know if this is a sin” —We should refrain in that situation from engaging in the action) 2) We should always make a doubtful conscience certain so that we know if something is wrong or right…this may happen 3) Directly- through consulting good moral theology books and spiritual directors, Church teaching, St. Alphonsus, St. Thomas, etc… or 4) Through an indirect solution. There is not enough space to describe #4 but have you Ever heard of PROBABILISM? Its a solution to the problem here. It clears up doubts. Once you clear up doubts you may act on a certain conscience with full confidence that you are not sinning. This #4 is important…look into it or feel free to ask me for more info

I’m just getting overwhelmed. It’s harder to care about people now than it was before. It’s so much more draining and I end up wanting to give up, because no matter what I fix or improve it’s so little.**The Devil wants this, but God is supporting you. Don’t give up. ** I kind of wish I could go back to atheism, just because I feel like I was actually a better, more caring person then.

I agree with the above posters!
I suggest looking into the devotion to the Divine Mercy…it is very helpful and important.
I also wish to remphesize the importance of the Rosary, the Eucharist, and TRUST in GOD.

My specific comments are above in bold in your quote. I hope this is helpful, God Bless

 

[Aggies08]

This is how I think:

I do the best I know how. For the rest, I ask God’s mercy, and know that he knows I do all I can.

 

[Myqyl]

It’s a journey… God doesn’t expect us to suddenly be at the finish line, just that we take our next step in that direction. Then another… Rinse and repeat…

God bless

 

[Ubenedictus]

For background: I was an atheist for several years. I was a virtue ethicist, not a moral relativist (few atheists are in my experience).

Since coming to Catholicism, I’ve been having a significantly harder time dealing with morality. It’s not that the temptations are any worse, it’s that I feel constantly overwhelmed and helpless against God’s standard. I get a lot of cases where I know that I shouldn’t be thinking/feeling a certain way, but I have no idea how to even begin changing. This didn’t really bother me as an atheist…I didn’t much like it, but I sort of pushed stuff I didn’t know how to address to the side and worked on other things. Now it’s like the one thing I don’t know how to deal with just stays in the center of my mind frustrating me, reminding me that I’m failing.

I also find myself worrying a lot more about what God expects, to the point where it’s hard to get past. I feel like I’m very unsure of what God wants and I’m afraid of doing something wrong by accident. I’m finding it harder to help people out without worrying about if I’m unknowingly helping someone sin. And I’m really afraid to act in situations where I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, or feel like there’s no good choice I can make, for fear of making the wrong decision.

I’m just getting overwhelmed. It’s harder to care about people now than it was before. It’s so much more draining and I end up wanting to give up, because no matter what I fix or improve it’s so little. I kind of wish I could go back to atheism, just because I feel like I was actually a better, more caring person then.

i think you are dealing with stuff the wrong way, the way we feel and think are part of our personality, one cant heal bad thought and feeling by hiding, runing from or denying them. Invite God to your thoughts and feelings, let him bring meaning out of chaos. God is interested in your thought and desires, let him in, dont let them overwhelm you, present them all to the lord.
I wish i could speak more.
Peace

 

[fastenatingguy]

You’re suffering from scrupulosity. First of all, God knows we can’t meet his standards by our own efforts–we’re all in the same boat there. We aren’t supposed to be virtuous just by hoping we’ll be or wanting to be, but by letting God make us that way.

How do we do that? We take advantage of all the means of grace he has given us. For it is by God’s grace and not our own efforts that we gain virtues. Each of us has a portion of natural virtues, these are fine, but they aren’t in the same category as the virtues we gain by God’s grace, although both are gifts of God.

Think of whatever you are struggling with. What is haunting you most? Is it really a sin or are you dwelling on it in order to avoid facing those things that really are sins? This is where we need confession–to let the priest sort out what is sin in your life and what isn’t.

We need to feed our souls with the Eucharist, our minds with the Scriptures, our hearts with prayer, our bodies with purity, by giving alms, giving our time and talent to help others, etc. Catholicism is an active faith that is practiced not just a set of doctrines/dogmas to which we give mental assent.

Acticely practive your faith. Pray Morning and Evening Prayer. Learn about the Bible, it’s origins and how it applies to your life. Do these things and in time you will no longer worry over what sin is and if you are leading others into sin for you will learn what it is and how to let it go and love God, love your neighbor and life the live God wants for you.

Thank you for such a great response; copied for my catechism class!

 

[DarkLight]

Thanks. I’m still in RCIA, so no eucharist and no confession. Can’t attend classes until next semester due to a schedule conflict, and there don’t seem to be any other opportunities to really get into study with others. Bible reading is very hard because I see guilt and things I can’t follow on every page. I struggle with rage that has ties to some past events that still affect me - it feels like I’ve tried just about every coping strategy out there, as well as a long string of mental health professionals, and nothing calms it. I’m out of energy by the time I’ve barely managed to fulfill my responsibilities.

By helping someone sin…it’s more cases where I’m providing help not knowing what the person will choose to do with my aid. I know that you’re not supposed to act against your own conscience, but mine seems to go off at everything, enough that I know I can’t do everything it thinks I should and refrain from everything it thinks I shouldn’t without going completely insane.

For background: I grew up in a very conservative Baptist church. This was sort of the view they had…sort of a “if you really loved God you’d do this and this and this…”. It’s a bit hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it.

 

[Marie1234]

You should read “Understanding Scrupulosity: Questions, Helps and Encouragement” by Rev Thomas Santa C.Ss. R.

As soon as you officially become Catholic, you should go to confession as soon as possible. But in the mean time, trust in the Mercy of our Lord. Say an honest and heartfelt act of contrition in prayer to God. God can forgive even mortal sin if one says a perfect act of contrition.

ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=309839&Pg=&Pgnu=&recnu=

ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=539088&Pg=&Pgnu=&recnu=

Do so and trust that God has forgiven you and resolve to do your best not to sin anymore. But make sure to go to confession as soon as you can.

I pray you find peace, and I am so happy you have come back to faith in God!

 

[Della]

Thanks. I’m still in RCIA, so no eucharist and no confession. Can’t attend classes until next semester due to a schedule conflict, and there don’t seem to be any other opportunities to really get into study with others. Bible reading is very hard because I see guilt and things I can’t follow on every page. I struggle with rage that has ties to some past events that still affect me - it feels like I’ve tried just about every coping strategy out there, as well as a long string of mental health professionals, and nothing calms it. I’m out of energy by the time I’ve barely managed to fulfill my responsibilities.

By helping someone sin…it’s more cases where I’m providing help not knowing what the person will choose to do with my aid. I know that you’re not supposed to act against your own conscience, but mine seems to go off at everything, enough that I know I can’t do everything it thinks I should and refrain from everything it thinks I shouldn’t without going completely insane.

For background: I grew up in a very conservative Baptist church. This was sort of the view they had…sort of a “if you really loved God you’d do this and this and this…”. It’s a bit hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it.

I’m so sorry you are carrying around “demons” from your past. I had a few of those to get over, as well. It sounds like, as well intentioned as your former church meant to be, that it was cultish in how it approached the issue of sin/reward. That’s quite typical of Fundamentalists’ thinking. I read a good book on how cults work and how to let go of the guilt laid on members. Just recognizing what is causing your anger issues goes a long way towards healing them. It’s was all the oppression and denial and group pressure to conform with those in charge having all the power, yes? I went through that, too. It didn’t drive me away from Christianity, but it did drive me away from my sect, into a long time of soul searching and trying to make sense of it all. One author that gave me direction amid all the chaos was C. S. Lewis. He was able to distill reason and faith into common words that are relateable to ordinary people.

You may not be able to receive the Sacraments, but you can talk to the priest. If you want to set all this before him, just make an appointment to see him. You don’t have to tell the secretary why, just say it’s a matter dealing with your spiritual needs or it’s personal.

Letting go of the past isn’t possible unless and until we confront it and deal with the damages. I also suggest a good Catholic counselor. One who knows the difference between sins and feelings of unworthiness. I wish all the best to you in all this. You have my prayers.

 

[Della]

Thank you for such a great response; copied for my catechism class!

Typos and all? Seriously though, I hope it helps your class. God bless.

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

Bible reading is very hard because I see guilt and things I can’t follow on every page. I struggle with rage that has ties to some past events that still affect me - it feels like I’ve tried just about every coping strategy out there, as well as a long string of mental health professionals, and nothing calms it. I’m out of energy by the time I’ve barely managed to fulfill my responsibilities.

By helping someone sin…it’s more cases where I’m providing help not knowing what the person will choose to do with my aid. I know that you’re not supposed to act against your own conscience, but mine seems to go off at everything, enough that I know I can’t do everything it thinks I should and refrain from everything it thinks I shouldn’t without going completely insane.

It might take you a while to get rid of the Baptist baggage. Any chance of having regular meetings with a priest or an experienced lay person who could help you with that, along with the RCIA? Becoming Catholic is like being in a new culture. It takes a bit of time. Don’t worry, it’s normal.

In terms of the first issue above: what you can do is pray for healing and you can go to adoration. That is an amazing devotion that has helped me very much. There was a point when I just didn’t know how to proceed in my life of faith - I felt I exhauseted all my sources and energy and was still failing as a Christian. I went to adoration with this and said to Jesus that I had enough, that I was giving up doing it on my own terms and asked him to help me. It felt a bit like jumping off a cliff and not knowing if somebody would catch me. But he did. Basically, give this to him and ask him to do what has to be done. We don’t grow in holiness out of our own merit but because of God’s grace. Focusing too much on ourselves and what we can do will impede our spiritual development.

The same is with sin. Unfortunately, we will sin until the day we die. The goal is to move away from sin as much as possible and to desire virtue with all our heart. This still doesn’t mean that we will not sin, but hopefully we will sin less. We will only reach perfection in Heaven. This is not something to obsess about - it is the reality of this life and we accept it and work with what we have. Try to focus on love of God and look towards virtue, rather than look towards sin and analyze it infinitely. Eyes on the prize. Gazing at sin will not help you become more holy, just more worried and restless. Let me give you an example of how I approach this. I struggle with anger very much. I have been praying for it, to be delivered from this sin. I want to be holy! So I ask God for graces that will get me there. I hate this sin but I don’t dwell on it - I think about God and His love and how I want to be a saint. This will help me get rid of sin, not obsessing about the sin itself. Does this make any sense?

As for what people will do with your help and how they will use it, this is not your problem. You are not responsible for other people’s actions. However, if you know that your help will be used for something bad, then you don’t help that person.

 

[fred_conty]

For background: I was an atheist for several years. I was a virtue ethicist, not a moral relativist (few atheists are in my experience).

Since coming to Catholicism, I’ve been having a significantly harder time dealing with morality. It’s not that the temptations are any worse, it’s that I feel constantly overwhelmed and helpless against God’s standard. I get a lot of cases where I know that I shouldn’t be thinking/feeling a certain way, but I have no idea how to even begin changing. This didn’t really bother me as an atheist…I didn’t much like it, but I sort of pushed stuff I didn’t know how to address to the side and worked on other things. Now it’s like the one thing I don’t know how to deal with just stays in the center of my mind frustrating me, reminding me that I’m failing.

I also find myself worrying a lot more about what God expects, to the point where it’s hard to get past. I feel like I’m very unsure of what God wants and I’m afraid of doing something wrong by accident. I’m finding it harder to help people out without worrying about if I’m unknowingly helping someone sin. And I’m really afraid to act in situations where I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, or feel like there’s no good choice I can make, for fear of making the wrong decision.

I’m just getting overwhelmed. It’s harder to care about people now than it was before. It’s so much more draining and I end up wanting to give up, because no matter what I fix or improve it’s so little. I kind of wish I could go back to atheism, just because I feel like I was actually a better, more caring person then.

I might suggest a couple of things.

In the performance of life, God leaves it to us to make the choices. There may be many good choices at any one given time. Some are good, some are better, and some are the best. He leaves that up to us. As long as a person does a good thing that pleases God.

As we grow in our closeness with Jesus, we then begin to desire the better choices because the person wants to do more for Jesus and to please him more. But this requires time and prayer for it to happen. This is where a person graduates from one level to another in the spiritual order.

The other point is that when we invite God into our lives, he brings with him his light to shine on our current darkness. The darkness being things that we didn’t see as bad before. A person becomes aware of lots of faults they never saw before. And the more they try to overcome these revealed faults, the more other faults show up that they didn’t see before.

That is what growth and love of God results in, so that the saint thinks he is a sinner, while the sinner thinks he is a saint. So God every once in a while, according to what we can take, will reveal to us another fault that we didn’t see before. And then the thought comes to mind, what a terrible person I am that I didn’t see this before. He of course is doing this to remove the obsticles between him and the person he loves. This is a good sign.

So I would venture to say, your troubles are just beginning to be seen because he will open to you the real road you must follow. And he will do this just as long as the person wants to be close to him and invites him into their life.

The red flag appears when this process of God’s fine tuning stops. When we no longer see our faults or do not see where improvements can be made. Because Jesus will never force himself on us, but will only do what we allow him to do. So a person has to tell him that they want this cleansing to be deeper in love with him.

There is no need to fear in this, since he is gentle and considerate and thinking only of our good and will never ask more than you are able to do.

Just a few thoughts.

 

[Contarini]

Thanks. I’m still in RCIA, so no eucharist and no confession. Can’t attend classes until next semester due to a schedule conflict, and there don’t seem to be any other opportunities to really get into study with others. Bible reading is very hard because I see guilt and things I can’t follow on every page. I struggle with rage that has ties to some past events that still affect me - it feels like I’ve tried just about every coping strategy out there, as well as a long string of mental health professionals, and nothing calms it. I’m out of energy by the time I’ve barely managed to fulfill my responsibilities.

By helping someone sin…it’s more cases where I’m providing help not knowing what the person will choose to do with my aid. I know that you’re not supposed to act against your own conscience, but mine seems to go off at everything, enough that I know I can’t do everything it thinks I should and refrain from everything it thinks I shouldn’t without going completely insane.

For background: I grew up in a very conservative Baptist church. This was sort of the view they had…sort of a “if you really loved God you’d do this and this and this…”. It’s a bit hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it.

I grew up in the Holiness movement–we thought both Catholics and Baptists were wimps. . . . so I get where you are coming from.

I have to say that when I see some of the “Moral Theology” threads on this forum, I want to run a million miles away from Catholicism. It reawakens agonized memories of my childhood, which I have escaped in Anglicanism (though to be fair, my Episcopal parish priest is pretty strict in the confessional–indeed, I haven’t been to confession for a while because he told me rather sternly to “find new ways to sin”–i.e., he was tired of hearing the same sins over and over).

One very helpful thing that a Byzantine Catholic priest said to me years ago is that Protestants, even if they aren’t Calvinists, tend to have this idea that sin reveals your spiritual state rather than causing it. So if you sin, at least in certain ways, it’s a symptom of a deep, long-lasting problem. Whereas Catholics think in terms of “OK, you sinned, so get yourself to the confessional and resolve to start over again.” The Byzantine priest told me that he had wandered away from the Church and done a lot of things his parents didn’t approve of, but that they didn’t panic in the way that conservative Protestant parents seemed to do under similar circumstances. I think that was a very interesting observation, which on the whole has been borne out by my experience.

Edwin

 

[Della]

I grew up in the Holiness movement–we thought both Catholics and Baptists were wimps. . . . so I get where you are coming from.

I have to say that when I see some of the “Moral Theology” threads on this forum, I want to run a million miles away from Catholicism. It reawakens agonized memories of my childhood, which I have escaped in Anglicanism (though to be fair, my Episcopal parish priest is pretty strict in the confessional–indeed, I haven’t been to confession for a while because he told me rather sternly to “find new ways to sin”–i.e., he was tired of hearing the same sins over and over).

One very helpful thing that a Byzantine Catholic priest said to me years ago is that Protestants, even if they aren’t Calvinists, tend to have this idea that sin reveals your spiritual state rather than causing it. So if you sin, at least in certain ways, it’s a symptom of a deep, long-lasting problem. Whereas Catholics think in terms of “OK, you sinned, so get yourself to the confessional and resolve to start over again.” The Byzantine priest told me that he had wandered away from the Church and done a lot of things his parents didn’t approve of, but that they didn’t panic in the way that conservative Protestant parents seemed to do under similar circumstances. I think that was a very interesting observation, which on the whole has been borne out by my experience.

Edwin

Catholics also believe that committing the same sins, especially grave sins, over and over again is symptomatic of a deep-seated problem. So, we don’t tell people to simply go to confession, and in essence, suck it up and go on. If a person has a truly hard time getting past a certain sinful behavior, he ought to seek counseling, yes?

 

[DarkLight]

I’m so sorry you are carrying around “demons” from your past. I had a few of those to get over, as well. It sounds like, as well intentioned as your former church meant to be, that it was cultish in how it approached the issue of sin/reward. That’s quite typical of Fundamentalists’ thinking. I read a good book on how cults work and how to let go of the guilt laid on members. Just recognizing what is causing your anger issues goes a long way towards healing them. It’s was all the oppression and denial and group pressure to conform with those in charge having all the power, yes? I went through that, too. It didn’t drive me away from Christianity, but it did drive me away from my sect, into a long time of soul searching and trying to make sense of it all. One author that gave me direction amid all the chaos was C. S. Lewis. He was able to distill reason and faith into common words that are relateable to ordinary people.

I grew up in the Holiness movement–we thought both Catholics and Baptists were wimps. . . . so I get where you are coming from.

I have to say that when I see some of the “Moral Theology” threads on this forum, I want to run a million miles away from Catholicism. It reawakens agonized memories of my childhood, which I have escaped in Anglicanism (though to be fair, my Episcopal parish priest is pretty strict in the confessional–indeed, I haven’t been to confession for a while because he told me rather sternly to “find new ways to sin”–i.e., he was tired of hearing the same sins over and over).

One very helpful thing that a Byzantine Catholic priest said to me years ago is that Protestants, even if they aren’t Calvinists, tend to have this idea that sin reveals your spiritual state rather than causing it. So if you sin, at least in certain ways, it’s a symptom of a deep, long-lasting problem. Whereas Catholics think in terms of “OK, you sinned, so get yourself to the confessional and resolve to start over again.” The Byzantine priest told me that he had wandered away from the Church and done a lot of things his parents didn’t approve of, but that they didn’t panic in the way that conservative Protestant parents seemed to do under similar circumstances. I think that was a very interesting observation, which on the whole has been borne out by my experience.

Edwin

We were independent Baptist, which in this case means we were one of the ones that thought the SBC were liberal compromisers. There is a lot of cult-like stuff…it’s taken me a long time to realize that things like the state of my house are not sins. I have a very hard time with the idea of “selfishness” and being able to say no to people. Modesty is also a big thing - that was a huge part of my rift with my old church and with Christianity, I had some trouble with a guy and was made to feel very guilty for it, because I must have been immodest somehow. A lot of sins were very “after the fact” like that - the whole mess was basically, because some guy had acted inappropriately toward me, there must have been some sin I committed to cause his behavior.

I’m still very nervous dealing with people in the Church. I’ve dealt with a lot of guilt/shame from them…and yes I agree, sometimes this forum isn’t the most encouraging. I got a lot of trouble because I enjoy theology - that wasn’t an appropriate thing for a young woman to study. I’ve found that no matter what I wear or say or do someone will say I’m not doing it right, and it’s very hard to sort it out. They also wanted to use pastoral counseling for everything, whether it was appropriate or not. I have nothing against pastoral counseling, but your average pastor should not be trying to handle abuse and trauma on his own!

 

[Della]

We were independent Baptist, which in this case means we were one of the ones that thought the SBC were liberal compromisers. There is a lot of cult-like stuff…it’s taken me a long time to realize that things like the state of my house are not sins. I have a very hard time with the idea of “selfishness” and being able to say no to people. Modesty is also a big thing - that was a huge part of my rift with my old church and with Christianity, I had some trouble with a guy and was made to feel very guilty for it, because I must have been immodest somehow. A lot of sins were very “after the fact” like that - the whole mess was basically, because some guy had acted inappropriately toward me, there must have been some sin I committed to cause his behavior.

I’m still very nervous dealing with people in the Church. I’ve dealt with a lot of guilt/shame from them…and yes I agree, sometimes this forum isn’t the most encouraging. I got a lot of trouble because I enjoy theology - that wasn’t an appropriate thing for a young woman to study. I’ve found that no matter what I wear or say or do someone will say I’m not doing it right, and it’s very hard to sort it out. They also wanted to use pastoral counseling for everything, whether it was appropriate or not. I have nothing against pastoral counseling, but your average pastor should not be trying to handle abuse and trauma on his own!

I went through much the same thing in my sect, although no one tried to molest me. I had been brought up Episcopalian before my family got sucked into the sect, so I had some upbringing that hadn’t been so strict and blaming to compare it to, thank God. The book that helped me so much was Captive Hearts, Captive Minds. It let me see what had been done to me and helped me let it go. Many of these sorts of Fundamentalist groups think they are doing the right thing, but they don’t have any safeguards or ways for people to report mistreatment, and as you experienced, blame is put on the victim not on the perpetrator. I highly recommend you read it. Most priests in the Catholic Church have no training in dealing with cult recovery. But a good counselor will. When I say counselor I mean someone with training not some person from the faith community taking it on themselves to “counsel” people back into victimhood. No, I mean real counselors who can help you sort through the PTSS I believe you are experiencing, but that diagnosis would be up to a professional counselor.

 

[DarkLight]

The official diagnosis is one of those nice little NOS disorders - basically I missed PTSD by one criterion out of the five they used. The clinician wanted flashbacks or nightmares about the event to diagnose, which I don’t have. But it’s by all accounts a traumatic type deal, even if I don’t hit all the bullet points. Right now I’m caught up in the difficulty of there just not being much care available - the people that know what to do have their schedules booked completely full, if they’re taking new patients at all it’s a 6-9 month wait just to get one appointment, with no guarantee of another one after.

It’s definitely a “blame the victim” mentality. I was a young adult (18) on my first relationship. There was a definite idea that abuse doesn’t happen to modest, submissive women, along with very low expectations of men. Even outside of that group I’ve found a lot of difficulty with Christians…there’s a lot of suspicion and “why didn’t you (fill in the blank)?” type questioning. It makes me quite hesitant to talk too much with people in Church.

 

[In_Training]

I know that you’re not supposed to act against your own conscience, but mine seems to go off at everything, enough that I know I can’t do everything it thinks I should and refrain from everything it thinks I shouldn’t without going completely insane.

For background: I grew up in a very conservative Baptist church. This was sort of the view they had…sort of a “if you really loved God you’d do this and this and this…”. It’s a bit hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it.

I grew up in Catholic schools with that sort of view. And it nearly got me killed, in a manner of speaking.

I was always told I never fit in in school. I asked questions that shouldn’t be asked. I doubted things that wouldn’t ever be doubted by true Catholics. My teachers, year after year, told me I filled a certain role, and even though I knew that wasn’t true, I started to fill that role anyway, out of spite. I left the church for atheism just before high school. It was a huge relief not to have to care. This isn’t what atheism means but it’s what it meant to me at the time.

Regardless, I was still filling that role. This 9th grade girl was raped and I laughed at her and called her a s— and then convinced her to get an abortion. Which she did end up getting somewhere because she was in the hospital for days for hemhorraging and then she was asked to leave the school because of it.

I don’t know how, but I’d learned to control everyone around me. Anything I could do to hurt everyone around me. I don’t know how I came into this power, but anything I said, people would do. If I told someone in my class to steal cigarettes for me, they would. If I told girls to shut up and take off their clothes for me, they would. And then I’d watch them cry the next day when I made fun of them in front of the class, and somehow, it felt good. But that’s what people in my school were trained to do. To do what the Bible says without questioning it. To do what Bible-followers say without questioning it. To have faith is to follow blindly simply because you’re told to. Even if you don’t know if it’s good for you or not.

Yes, I’m not stupid, I knew I needed help, but it was strangely addicting. After leaving the church and considering myself an atheist I was able to distance myself from the notion that I had to either 1.) do what people wanted or 2.) do the opposite. It was refreshing not to have to listen to anyone, and I stopped bullying people, and I was happier. But after a while, the dreams started, and the Bible on my closet shelf fell to the floor in the middle of the night and woke me up, and for the first time in years I shut my eyes and asked God to tell me what to do.

I came back to the Catholic church at 21 (almost 2 years ago), thinking that I’d be able to handle it better as an adult. I was sort of right. I used to want to enter the seminary to become a priest but have decided against it because I don’t want people thinking I know what’s best for them or the right thing to do, because clearly I don’t. Since I’ve been back to the Catholic religion, I can basically follow the rules that my priest has given me… no smoking, no alcohol, no profanity/blasphemy, no dating girls just for sex and breaking up with them the next day… I’m definitely more in control of my actions instead of other people’s, but there’s still a lot of guilt, going to church, and then throwing up after church. Sometimes it does feel like you’ll go insane.

No way I do the right thing all the time, and no way will I ever. No way do I expect forgiveness, no matter how many Acts of Contrition I say. I know the Bible says God is merciful but I don’t feel ready. I’d rather watch others find peace in the religion than face it myself. It makes me happy when others are forgiven, even if it means I have to give up my place with God for others who deserve it more. Regardless of where my teachers said I’d go when I die I will always try to serve God and will always tell him the truth. That is the kind of faith I will always have, even if I can’t survive in a religion.

I definitely think you should have faith in the conversations you can have with other people in your church, as long as you feel comfortable. I’ve never given credit to Catholics, who for the most part seem petty, spiteful, and unacceptably judgmental, but out of rebellion I did way worse things. So I kind of wanted to apologize for the less-than-kind posts I’ve made on other threads… Catholics are a strong group and maybe one day I’ll finally get what the Bible is talking about. :bible1: