Yab Yum
You say God is not a bean counter.
I am trying to move away from the Catholicism I learned in school.
One strike and you’re out.
As hell was very crowded a man was forced to share accommodation with another man who said “My name is Adolf and I am here because I killed 7 million Jews. Why are you here?” The man replied “Because I ate a sausage one Friday fifty years ago”.
We used to have a hymn
Maybe you learned incorrectly?
Was
everything you learned about Catholicism wrong?
Are you sure that all you learned was what was truly taught, and that you didn’t misinterpret it?
I’m sorry but as a 50 something cradle Catholic (and the product of an elementary education with the Sisters of Mercy in the 1960s in Philadelphia), neither the Baltimore catechism nor any other religious education teaching for me came anywhere
close to the teachings you’re presenting as YOUR Catholic education.
So. . .was I lucky? And you unlucky?
Did I consistently learn correctly and you incorrectly?
Are you actually remembering what really happened, or what you ‘think’ happened which has been colored by heaven knows how many years of reinforcement of something incorrect so that any truth has been buried too deeply or twisted too far?
Can you show me some of your old notes from religion class with all these cute anecdotes above?
I, OTOH, have some of my old copybooks with “God made me” and angel stamps (2nd grade), drawings of the old ‘venial sin smudge on the milk bottle’, etc. Funny how instead of having been given ‘one strike and you’re out’ I seem to have been taught that sin is an offense against God **but **we have Christ who intercedes for us, Mary who prays for us, angels to guide and guard us, confession to make things ‘right’ again, prayers to help us to grow in things like fortitude and temperance, the Holy Spirit and His gifts, Scripture to strengthen us, etc. etc.
I have a feeling that you have resolutely set your face to consider only one facet which you mistakenly think is the sum total of Christianity, and that everything you do or say or think is colored by that view in spite of the fact that you have so many people and so many resources available that actually DO give the fullness of truth and teaching.
Did you ever read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle?
(spoiler alert)
The Dwarves (who refused to believe in Aslan and not only did not help the children but actually helped their enemies instead), on their death were brought into "the stable’ which contained the entire world, the universe, in all its beauty. The children were able to see all this but the dwarves only ‘saw’ a dark, dank stable. When they were given food and drink of surpassing taste and glory, they only ‘saw’ thistles and dirt. When they heard Aslan roar and pass by them, they only ‘heard’ annoying noise and light. They had all the capacity to see, hear, feel, taste and touch, but
they refused to use that capacity and insisted on only seeing, hearing, etc. what THEY determined ‘reality’ to be.
