There is more power in the sacraments than you think there is. It’s also very possible that there may be certain graces being withheld from people who clearly will not use the graces or hoard them for themselves.
If you tried to enter Heaven without sanctifying grace, you’d simply “drown” so to speak. Right now, it would seem especially important for you, even if you aren’t connecting any specific emotions with it. For all of us, there will be times when the emotions are difficult to conjure up. Even saints have had these sorts of times.
Obedience is one virtue that lifts you out of this. Do keep going to the sacraments.
If grace is to be extended to mankind, it seems that it would be available to everyone
–and it IS. It’s available to everyone, and we’re asked to get
sanctifying grace from the sacraments. Other Christian denominations do have
baptism. I get other sorts of graces by saying the rosary, so I’m promised; or by praying, whenever God wills to give them to me. As for non-Christians and salvation, please see here:
catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0403sbs.asp lest you misunderstand Church teaching. Bottom line: If they live in a way that accords with their best knowledge of God, we trust that he will be merciful to them.
I don’t understand why it’s difficult for you to do what we said: to stop looking at the Catholics in your parish. Do they have to be so invasive in your life? You can certainly go to Mass and confession without engaging in dialogue with those people. It’s that simple, why make it more complicated than it is? Why are you letting them be such a barrier? If every saint did that, they’d never have become saints. They’re saints particularly because they were better examples than just about EVERYBODY around them.
People who are vicious to others likely have some knowledge of Christ, but aren’t accepting and implementing it as fully as they should. So aren’t people who are guilty of sloth, which is indifference to religion, leading to not learning as much as they should about it. Yet others are good in some areas but struggle with chastity or issues of temperance. Does that nullify what Christ said completely? Does that nullify the very Church that He founded?
Regarding Internet forums: I know people who would rather go to other people in Internet forums in search of the Truth, instead of going straight to the catechism, apologists, authoritative Church teachings, encyclicals, books with Imprimatur (stamp of approval by a bishop), the Bible (preferably a STUDY Bible to get the full meanings in their contexts), to prayer, etc. If I listened to every Tom, D and Harry without doing some work on my own, I would be extremely confused and burned. There are all sorts of people here who are in different stages of learning. It’s absurd (my apologies) to expect everyone here to be a Jimmy Akin. You simply aren’t going to get the right answers from everyone; I don’t know why that is your expectation. Ideally, before people post, they should really ask themselves, “Do I know this, or is this just my opinion?” but too often they don’t. Be warned. That’s why I spend more time on
Catholic.com’s other sections, or Jimmy Akin’s website, or with my nose in a book, or on the Vatican’s website, than I do on the forums here.
Your definition of belief reduces the entirety of the spiritual, to something merely biological. It’s as though you are starting to deny spirituality entirely, which is not going to help you. Try not to say things that you probably don’t really mean. There’s a tendency to believe something more strongly once you speak or write it out; in this case it’s not good. Be patient while you think and write.
I don’t get a lot of feedback here, in the way of how proactive you’re being, or whether you’ve taken any of the suggestions we have had.
Please–you do yourself no favors at all, if you expect life to be easy, or expect every aspect of its beauty to be completely obvious to you at all times during your trial. The beauty will unfold,
the more you understand, which requires you to be proactive and learn. You cannot expect grace to wash away free will–that’s exactly what you are expecting if you think that grace magically transforms the hard-hearted who are insistent on not being open to it at all. Grace cannot work that way; it’s contrary to free will. It helps the struggling, but once someone has made up his/her mind not to use it, they’ve made their choice. There is always hope for repentance and deeper conversion, which is why we pray for God to soften hearts–but God works on His own timing, not ours. It is unfair, and illogical, to point to this reality as evidence against Catholicism.
