How much Liberals love the Church!

[DL82]

I just wanted to put forward a perspective that has slowly dawned on me over the past few weeks. It’s a perspective I never imagined I’d ever have.

My goodness, do liberal Catholics love the Church! They love it more than a traditionalist like me could ever imagine.

From the moment of my conversion experience, the Lord has given me a supernatural gift to believe everything the Church teaches, all of it, 100 per cent. I didn’t make it happen, He did, it’s called the gift of faith. It’s easy to love the Church when you believe everything she teaches. It’s easy to love the Church when you can see the good God is bestowing on the world through her.

But those liberals - they love the Church even though they don’t agree with her. Even though the words of the Pope or the words of the hierarchy drive them crazy, they keep coming, they keep showing up for Mass, keep clinging on. They keep getting involved, looking after children’s groups, worship groups, playing as full a part as they can as lay people, even though they know they’ll never be in charge because of the way the Church is governed. They love their priests even though the priests try to make them bend in a direction they don’t want to go. Often, they criticise the Church because they love it so much, they might not know what’s best, but they can only see the Church through their own eyes, so they’ll say what they see and hope that others see it too. Sometimes, often, very often, they’ll be wrong, but that doesn’t make such boldness any less admirable. Even when the Church doesn’t make their lives out in the real world make sense, and their lives don’t make the Church make sense, they carry on, through that confusion, they’re still Catholic.

Like the gentile woman who Jesus insults and sends away, they keep begging Him and clinging to His Church, even though the Church seems to tell them that they’re not really her children. Like the disciples, they are scandalised by the Church in so many ways, but still can say ‘Lord, to whom shall we go, you alone have the words of eternal life’. That is incredible devotion, that is a side of the gift of faith that I’ll never know.

What peace liberals would know if they had more wisdom, but what love and devotion and trust us traditionalists would know if we could embrace their realism, their trust, their hope in the face of uncertainty.

Yeah, I never thought I’d write in praise of liberal Catholics, but there it is.

 

[Yours_Truly]

Sorry, but I couldn’t disagree more. A person who rejects the teachings of the Church does not love the Church. To the extent that they reject what it teaches they actually hate it.

The Liberals don’t go to Church because they love it, but in the hopes of transforming it into their image and likeness. They are worse than the heretics of old who left and fought against the Church. These heretics stay within and corrupt it, thereby corrupting others who are sincere in their faith.

 

[Trishie]

Okay, so what’s happening here is that you are growing in God’s love and wisdom. God so deeply loves all His people. He sees and understands the authenticity of the spirit within each, and loves each person so profoundly. You are loving as God loves.

As Scripture says, the body has many parts. The heart has a different function to the head, and there are various organs that are hidden, and some that are inglorious…but the body functions only because they all fit together and the love of God flows though them. Should the eyes feel superior to the liver?..because without the liver the body dies…etc.

Those like me…I love the Mass, ]as the Mass, so the arguments from one side or the other sometimes flow over my head. I simply wish to live the Mass. I’ve been a daily Mass goer since Ash Wednesday 1980. I had a passion for God from a very young age. Would you call me liberal or traditional. I only call myself Catholic. If I had to, like many, I’d die for the Lord.There are many like me. A priest who barely knew me said once to my surprise, “I suspect that you are both very traditional and very radical.” Many see these as mutually exclusive. In God they aren’t. My Dad once said, “Traditionalists and radicals have much in common. They are both concerned with roots.”

 

[Trishie]

You are growing in the love that God has for each person.

 

[Rawb]

You don’t destroy what you love. You don’t take something you love, and manipulate it until it’s exactly how you want it - if a man did that to a woman we’d say she was in an unhealthy, abusive relationship. You love something for what it is.

I understand what you’re saying, and I can appreciate the strong Christian charity it comes from, and even agree with parts, but one only has to look to see that St. Mary’s in Brisbane to see how much liberals love the real Catholic Church, instead of the false religion they’ve caked up.

lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022502.html

I repeat, you do not destroy what you love.

 

[adolfo123]

I do not think they are sheep of the lack of PETER but wolves dressed are lambs …

 

[adolfo123]

You don’t destroy what you love. You don’t take something you love, and manipulate it until it’s exactly how you want it - if a man did that to a woman we’d say she was in an unhealthy, abusive relationship. You love something for what it is.

I do not agree with the poster of this… but what you state above is it not what Christ does to the ones he love … the patter shaping us into what he wants to love … in one sense …

 

[ncjohn]

We are all on a journey and we come to fuller understanding at different rates. But that can only happen when the Truth is presented with the love and concern that Jesus himself showed. It cannot be beaten into anyone and will only be “heard” by one who is searching from someone who has credibility to them.

I left the Church for about 25 years because of people who thought they could beat the Truth into me. I came back because I met people genuinely living the gospel life I had been told about in my very early years. As I observed them I could open my mind to see why the Church taught what She does. I didn’t have to feel afraid or defensive as I could see the face of Jesus in what each of these people said and did.

We ALL try to transform the Church–and anyone we come into contact with–into our image and likeness. If we believe strongly we cannot help but try to make what we believe the reality. Each of us is wrong a good percentage of the time, and it’s not just on the “liberal” side. Even those who know the Truth sin and indulge their own pride in thinking (or at least acting like) they have all the answers. We do not have the infinite knowledge to understand the infinite. And those who are on fire and have found a true love of God, however “off” their understanding may be at that point on their journey, will not be able to contain themselves from trying to pass on that joy they have found.

God is more than willing to allow each of us to grow on our journey. Unfortunately we aren’t as patient and want to toss out anyone who doesn’t conform to our understanding at whatever point we are currently in our own journey. I know I didn’t know as much at 7 as I did at 17, much less as much as at 57. I have to patiently allow others to grow, to answer their questions lovingly when asked and to model that peace that will help others find the interest and courage to ask the questions.

I’m sorry, but I just won’t buy into ascribing evil motives to “liberals” any more than I will to what I sometimes feel are misguided interpretations on the “traditionalist” side. I know that God will honor our honest attempts to find Him and that He will help us along the way. I know from experience that my own motives were never evil, however incomplete my understanding might have been and still is.

Anyone who is truly seeking God is at least moldable clay for the Master Potter. I’ll just let Him do His work and contribute in whatever small way He might call me to. I have way too big a beam in my own eye to be digging into anyone else’s.

Peace,

 

[KestrelRose]

To say that “liberals” can not love the Church, is to place oneself in the position of God. One human being can not know the heart and soul of another person. A human being has no authority whatsoever to state what another human being feels.

 

[KestrelRose]

There is so much to love in the Tradition of the Church we do not need to be constantly pointing out errors of those who do not agree.

Rather than trying to figure out what “liberals” feel and believe. Why not express what is loving and beautiful in being a “traditionalist”

 

[piouswoman]

Why would you try to apologize for those who really have no love for Tradition, and therefore, no love for Holy Mother Church?

 

[Timothysis]

Why would you try to apologize for those who really have no love for Tradition, and therefore, no love for Holy Mother Church?

Maybe you should meditate a bit on KestrelRose’s post:

To say that “liberals” can not love the Church, is to place oneself in the position of God. One human being can not know the heart and soul of another person. A human being has no authority whatsoever to state what another human being feels.

 

[piouswoman]

Maybe you should meditate a bit on KestrelRose’s post:

I don’t need to meditate upon it…it is nothing more than sugary, effeminate, modernist Churchspeak. It is flowery and sentimental, it lacks logic. Liberals don’t love the Church, they love liberals, they love liberal theology, and liberal modern philosophy upon which their minds have been formed. They embrace error.

Catholics cannot and should not love error, error is not beautiful, and it cannot be apologized for. There is no excusing error and it is wrong to defend it.

 

[Timothysis]

I don’t need to meditate upon it…it is nothing more than sugary, effeminate, modernist Churchspeak. It is flowery and sentimental, it lacks logic. Liberals don’t love the Church, they love liberals, they love liberal theology, and liberal modern philosophy upon which their minds have been formed. They embrace error.

Catholics cannot and should not love error, error is not beautiful, and it cannot be apologized for. There is no excusing error and it is wrong to defend it.

Between your sanctimonious post and your less than humble user name I think that there is nothing left to say here.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

The OP has an interesting take on things. And, after all, we do need to find some sort of answer for why people keep coming back despite saying they don’t believe in x, y, and z, often issues of fundamental importance.

I think there is one serious misstep in the analysis, however, when it is asserted that liberals keep on coming despite knowing the Church will never change. I can only speak from my personal experience and from the assertions of the most prominent liberals, but many of them seem to be convinced of exactly the opposite. They are constantly told that the Church is quite capable of change, the Church is in a process of change, as soon as these curialists get out of the way the Church is going to leap forward into a brave new world of secular liberalism, etc., etc. Then of course there are those whose hope for change is really only a hope that “the Vatican” will come around to the liberals (heretical) “fully Catholic” position.

So I don’t deny that there might be something to the OP’s idea, but liberal stick-to-it-iveness is certainly not practiced under the impression that 1) their opinions are at odd with true Catholicism and 2) the Church will never change.

 

[Chancellor]

I love this thread, it makes me feel as if I’ve just stepped through Alice’s Looking Glass. In this inside-out world there is an ill-defined group of “thems” that is vilified, hated, despised and mocked by a group of people claiming to be exemplars of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of this is because these “thems” are said to disagree with certain tenets of Holy Mother Church. All the more bizarre is the fact that this discussion is taking place in the section called Traditional Catholicism, a set of threads most noted for claiming that current practices of Holy Mother Church are flawed and defective.

I applaud the ingenuous tongue-in-cheek audacity of the individual who started this thread. Truly one of the better rat traps I’ve seen in recent months. Bravo.

 

[piouswoman]

Between your sanctimonious post and your less than humble user name I think that there is nothing left to say here.

It is always the same technique…attack the person when you don’t like what they are saying.

My attack was based on a post made, the post was truly upside down and completely ignorant. So instead of offering a reason for your disagreement and dislike of what I wrote, you attack me personally. That is pretty sad. You should be defending Holy Mother Church from liberalism, as liberalism is a sin.

 

[daughteroftruth]

Between your sanctimonious post and your less than humble user name I think that there is nothing left to say here.

What a loving, charitable thing to say. So, we’re to love and defend error? I’d like to know when Christ did that.

 

[daughteroftruth]

I just wanted to put forward a perspective that has slowly dawned on me over the past few weeks. It’s a perspective I never imagined I’d ever have.

My goodness, do liberal Catholics love the Church! They love it more than a traditionalist like me could ever imagine.

From the moment of my conversion experience, the Lord has given me a supernatural gift to believe everything the Church teaches, all of it, 100 per cent. I didn’t make it happen, He did, it’s called the gift of faith. It’s easy to love the Church when you believe everything she teaches. It’s easy to love the Church when you can see the good God is bestowing on the world through her.

But those liberals - they love the Church even though they don’t agree with her. Even though the words of the Pope or the words of the hierarchy drive them crazy, they keep coming, they keep showing up for Mass, keep clinging on. They keep getting involved, looking after children’s groups, worship groups, playing as full a part as they can as lay people, even though they know they’ll never be in charge because of the way the Church is governed. They love their priests even though the priests try to make them bend in a direction they don’t want to go. Often, they criticise the Church because they love it so much, they might not know what’s best, but they can only see the Church through their own eyes, so they’ll say what they see and hope that others see it too. Sometimes, often, very often, they’ll be wrong, but that doesn’t make such boldness any less admirable. Even when the Church doesn’t make their lives out in the real world make sense, and their lives don’t make the Church make sense, they carry on, through that confusion, they’re still Catholic.

Like the gentile woman who Jesus insults and sends away, they keep begging Him and clinging to His Church, even though the Church seems to tell them that they’re not really her children. Like the disciples, they are scandalised by the Church in so many ways, but still can say ‘Lord, to whom shall we go, you alone have the words of eternal life’. That is incredible devotion, that is a side of the gift of faith that I’ll never know.

What peace liberals would know if they had more wisdom, but what love and devotion and trust us traditionalists would know if we could embrace their realism, their trust, their hope in the face of uncertainty.

Yeah, I never thought I’d write in praise of liberal Catholics, but there it is.

Since when is attacking the Church, trying to turn her into a “universal helter-skelter,” reveal love for her? Because they come to Mass some Sundays and host church picnics? I’m sorry, but Christ never said “I am Love;” He said “I am Truth.” Charity without Truth isn’t Charity, it’s nothing more than a deception of the Devil. We must worship in “spirit and in truth” (words of the infallible God-Man), and the liberals choose to worship in “spirit and convenience.” Sad but true.

 

[KestrelRose]

If I was the parent of this group (myself included), I would probably say, “Guys, go to your rooms for awhile and sit in a corner.”

I remember drawing a line in the back seat of the car so that my children would have a boundry in which they had to stay. We all sound like spoiled two year olds and I think God is either laughing or crying over our childish behavoir.

There is so much beauty in this wonderful wonderful Church of ours. We need not pick at one another in this fashion. For anyone who thinks that I am a “liberal” they are sadly mistaken. I am not a died in the wool “traditionalist” either. But I love the tradition of the Church and, as I musician, I work within my own Church to bring as much of that beauty to the parisioners that I can without insulting them and turning them away from that beauty.

PS We must also remember who is in charge. God knows how to protect His beloved Church. It is our responsibility is show forth God’s love as it is taught by His Church. We can love Her traditions and demonstrate to the world why they are beautiful only with beauty, truth and love. Bickering and angry words are not the answer from either position.