Honest Apostasy -- Leaving the Church

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To me, it’s not God or truth that changes, it’s human comprehension of Him that evolves. We are limited and sometimes we take a long time to learn or understand something. The great saints and Popes help us understand better and move a little closer to God.
 
You’ve given me something to pray on. Thank you. Not sure if I completely agree with you or if I have more disagreement on these points. Either way, it was something I needed to hear and it was said in a very kind way. Thank you for that
 
Catholicwife32 said:
I don’t blame or worry for those leaving. I do not judge their destinations. I have faith in God’s goodness. I think the issue is that people judge others because it’s rooted in how they motivate themselves to be devout. If those people over there are going to Heaven, why do I need to put in so much work?
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I don’t blame them and I won’t judge them, but I do worry about those who are leaving and pray for them to return. If the Catholic Church is the one true church that our Lord Jesus founded (which I do wholeheartedly believe), then I would want them (and everyone else) to be part of our Lord’s church.

I worry about them because I’m afraid that they have the wrong idea what the Church is all about. It’s not a creation of man, it’s the creation of our Lord.

The Church is holy and will always remain so, as our Lord Jesus promised. But time and time again, bad people get in positions of power in the Church and do great harm to the Church. Running away to a lesser church isn’t the answer. The answer is to rebuild and renew the Church from within, for the faithful to root out the evil that resides with the Church with the help of God and all the Saints.
 
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ChristMyLife said:
Unwillingness or inability to give up certain sins - some of the most common ones are sexual sins - people who enjoy their porn or masturbation too much, people who are unwilling to stop using artificial contraception, people with addictions to various things, etc. They have a certain sin or sins which is such a big or important part of their life that they begin to justify them and convince themselves the Church is wrong in its teachings on morality and therefore not infallible and so they abandon ship.
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This mentality troubles me. People leave the Church because they no longer (or maybe never did) believe. It is simple. You either have faith and believe, or you don’t. I don’t like to see the assumption made that people are either too lazy or too self-serving to follow the rules and that is why they leave. People do the things you listed because they don’t believe they are sinful. They don’t believe they are sinful because they don’t believe in the Church. Not because they are lazy or ignorant. Two, intelligent people can learn the same thing, have the same understanding of it, and still …one believes and one doesn’t. You wouldn’t live your life according to something you didn’t believe, I hope. Don’t expect other people to.
 
QwertyGirl said:
People leave the Church because they no longer (or maybe never did) believe. It is simple. You either have faith and believe, or you don’t. I don’t like to see the assumption made that people are either too lazy or too self-serving to follow the rules and that is why they leave. People do the things you listed because they don’t believe they are sinful. They don’t believe they are sinful because they don’t believe in the Church.
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I’m not speaking nonsense which I made up.

I’m speaking from personal experience I’ve had myself, and also personal relationships I’ve had with other people.

I stand by everything I wrote. It is my estimation 90% of the people I’ve met who fell away from the Church (including myself at certain times in my life) is due to one of those two root causes, or a combination of those two, or a third cause combined with a bit of those two.

I’m sorry if what I believe to be the truth upsets you, but this is the God’s honest truth which I’ve come to believe.
 
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My experience tells me differently. As someone who does not believe, it is troubling to hear many Catholics believe they know why and attribute the articulations you made to people like me. None of what you stated applies to me. I know a lot of people who have left the Church, and none of those things apply to them, either.

So I guess we will have to agree our experiences tell us very different things. Glad we have CAF for everyone to weigh in and share what they know.
 
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I agree about rebuilding the Church from within, but I think it is unfair to call leaving “running away to lesser churches”. Especially when many who leave go to the Orhhodox. The Orthodox are definetly not a “lesser church,” and I’m sure many other faiths aren’t either. I don’t know enough about other denominations to speak much about them, but I do know many have faith in the True Presence and have many of the sacraments we as Catholics have.
 
I’d be slow to apply your experience to everyone who has left. The case of Melinda Selmys doesn’t sound like you.
 
QwertyGirl said:
This mentality troubles me. People leave the Church because they no longer (or maybe never did) believe. It is simple. You either have faith and believe, or you don’t.
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No, you’re oversimplifying it into a question of faith in all cases.

The previous poster is correct. Many people actually believe in Jesus, Mary, even perhaps the saints, but they can’t live up to the moral teachings, so they bail out.

They may try to find another Christian Church that’s more welcoming, they may go the “spiritual but not religious” route, or they may just be Chreasters or lapsed Catholics. The more honest ones will tell you they left because they were doing something, generally sexual, that didn’t agree with the Church, but they decided to do it for some reason anyway. Some will say they don’t fit in at church or don’t feel comfortable going to Mass. But some others will be like the woman in the article and build up a big justification of how the Church is wrong.

I know a number of such people and they probably have more faith than most of the folks on this forum.
 
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gracepoole said:
I’d be slow to apply your experience to everyone who has left. The case of Melinda Selmys doesn’t sound like you.
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As I said, I know many people (a lot) who have left for the same reasons I left. I don’t attribute my reasoning to everyone, though.
 
My experience tells me they still have some faith. They just don’t have faith in the whole package. This is a problem they aren’t able to reconcile with remaining in the Church.

You are right. Many still have faith in God, the saints, etc. In my experience, though, they have lost faith in the agency of the Church.
 
Or they have just come to some split with it, often an amicable one in their mind.

The Church to them is for their mom, granny, the cousin who became a priest, the addicted friend who became a Jesus freak to beat his habit. They will ask all these people to pray for them. If things get bad enough in their own life they might suddenly find a pew again.
 
PeterT said:
I don’t blame them and I won’t judge them, but I do worry about those who are leaving and pray for them to return. If the Catholic Church is the one true church that our Lord Jesus founded (which I do wholeheartedly believe), then I would want them (and everyone else) to be part of our Lord’s church.
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It is my belief that those who are outside the Church will enter Heaven before those inside the Church. This isn’t because the Church isn’t the one true Church, but because the gospel is filled with paradoxes we don’t expect. I mean, certainly, we might ask “Well then why preach at all? Why avoid sin at all?” But see, those questions reveal where our heart is. We should not fear Hell or aspire for Heaven. Such concerns are still rooted in a focus on our own welfare and taint our religious devotion into a type of earning of salvation. In actuality, we should love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, to the point that we hate sin for sin and love God for God, and love others for their own sake.

The saint lives a devout life, preaching the gospel and opening the door to Heaven, letting those he touched in his life in ahead of him even though they did not labor as long as he did. The one who holds the umbrella of pride within the fountains of grace within the Church either overtly judges others or claims their judgement is love. But in actuality, they judge themselves as in a superior position and go out to people not in love but in anxiety, believing it is their job to save people. When people refuse to come into the judge, their hostility and lack of charity rears its ugly head.

Love is not anxious. It preaches the gospel because it knows the gospel is good. People who are anxious do not preach the good news. They preach bad news. “You’re going to hell unless you become like me because I’m better than you.”

My openness to Orthodoxy has to do with searching for the Truth. I’ve heard enough Catholic rhetoric and theology. I’ve heard enough apologetics. But I cannot be convinced that the Orthodox Church is the one true church and Catholicism is not. I might believe that the Orthodox have done a better job at preserving more ancient Christian theology and traditions and that they have a deeper appreciation. I side with the Catechism completely on the wounds to Christian unity.

At the same time ecumenism cannot be a mere watering down of the faith. But I do think the west is overly intellectual. The ironic thing was that I used to love Catholicism because it was SO intellectual. But I think we’ve sought after too many answers and have tried to controlled people’s opinions too much. We’ve taking too much ownership for other people’s salvation, even historically rationalizing murdering people for the sake of protecting others. And more recently, covering up the molesting of children, again, for the sake of saving people from Hell. This is a misguided sense of moral responsibility.
 
They didn’t see Him in the saints either?

May the Lord help us all. We need to pray and fast.
 
What I see is people who are searching for the Truth, but who have decided it isn’t in the Church. Who knows where they wind up, eventually? Possibly back to the Catholic Church, maybe to another church, or maybe with no church at all. I really beieve most people are searching for the same thing. Maybe they don’t know it when they see it, maybe they don’t see it at all. In any event, I still contend the Church isn’t rejected because people are too self-absorbed to accept it as a previous poster implied. Maybe I am naive, but I have lived a lot of life and seen a lot, just like many here. I have come to a different conclusion, though.
 
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13pollitos said:
I agree about rebuilding the Church from within, but I think it is unfair to call leaving “running away to lesser churches”. Especially when many who leave go to the Orhhodox. The Orthodox are definetly not a “lesser church,” and I’m sure many other faiths aren’t either. I don’t know enough about other denominations to speak much about them, but I do know many have faith in the True Presence and have many of the sacraments we as Catholics have.
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Sorry, but it definitely is “lesser” because it’s not in full communion with the Church of Rome, the seat of Saint Peter and whose successors are the Vicar of Christ. Our Lord founded only one church here on Earth and the head of that church is the Pope, currently Pope Francis. Any other church that is not in full communion with Rome — with the church that our Lord Jesus created — should not be considered an equal.

But let me be clear on this: I am in no way implying Eastern Rite churches that are in full communion with Rome are “lesser” churches. They all belong to and are in communion with the one true church created by our Lord. But that doesn’t include churches that decided to split away from the Church of Rome and the authority of the Pope.

Now, let me also be very clear on this: I’m not implying — in any way — that members and leaders of the Catholic Church are somehow more holy than members and leader of other Christian churches. That’s definitely NOT a given as the current scandal attests to. There are living saints among all the Christian churches here on Earth. But because other holy people worship at other Christians churches doesn’t make those churches equal to any church that is in full communion with the church that the Pope — the Vicar of Christ — leads.
 
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Catholicwife32 said:
At the same time ecumenism cannot be a mere watering down of the faith. But I do think the west is overly intellectual. The ironic thing was that I used to love Catholicism because it was SO intellectual. But I think we’ve sought after too many answers and have tried to controlled people’s opinions too much. We’ve taking too much ownership for other people’s salvation, even historically rationalizing murdering people for the sake of protecting others. And more recently, covering up the molesting of children, again, for the sake of saving people from Hell. This is a misguided sense of moral responsibility.
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I agree with this point of view. I actually appreciate the view of many Orthodox theologians about when the bread and wine become the consecrated body and blood of our Lord. In the Roman church, theologians have p(name removed by moderator)ointed the moment when specific words are spoken by the priest during the Eucharistic prayer. The Eastern Orthodox view is that the changes occur during the Anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer), but that it remains a sacred mystery when it actually occurs. I can personally appreciate this degree of humility by the Eastern Orthodox churches.
 
I agree it’s not really possible to know the degree of faith that people have and these things are even harder to evaluate online.
 
brian_custer said:
which Anglican/Episcopal Church is “official” ?

Ireland? Northern Ireland? Canada? England? Australia? NZ?

i am confused

a “Church” is supposed to be “universal” ; not “national” …
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It is confusing.
Anglican isn’t in the official name for the Episcopal Church in the US but many Episcopalians refer to themselves as Anglicans because it is in communion with the See of Canterbury and their rituals are from England.
Anglican refers to England so when the US became an independent country, Church of England was problematic so it was Protestant Episcopal based on its polity.
Many churches around the world in the Anglican Communion have the word Anglican in their names but some don’t. Other examples include the Church of Ireland and Church of Uganda but they are part of the Anglican Communion.
It’s like the Maronite Church, the word Catholic isn’t in its official name but it is in communion with the Pope so Maronites are Catholics.
 
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