I'm taking a long break from religion!

[MainBrain]

I’m going to take a long break from religions. Catholicism has let me down just as much as my born again days. No fruits are born.
GOOD BYE!
Please don’t condemn me to hell.
I have had enough of the fantasy.
I still believe in Christ and ask for his forgiveness all the time.
My wife is downhill. And prays have not helped.
Enough is enough.

 

[Faxero]

Enjoy your break.

May you find interior spiritual peace. :angel1:

The Church is always here to welcome you back. :heaven:

 

[Josiah_k]

I think in the writings of PAUL he announces the importance of being in a relationship requires you both to devote yourselves to each other rather than you could say the less fortunate types who are single and devote or at least try to devote themselves just to G-OD .

Underestimating your attempts of a closer walk with the spirit one would think have surely not gone unnoticed .
Mysterious also are mans ways, thoughts and disappointments, contrary to their belief of the spirit being all consuming more mysterious and no long lasting will to think like a human ( A little humour never hurts ) .

 

[MarcoPG]

Well, what is great is that Jesus will be waiting for you, with His love and mercy. We will pray for you, too.

It may sound stupid to you right now. But you say it is a break, so hope is still there, and has to be there. And you say you still believe in Christ.

Who wants to follow Him (that is believing) should carry his/her cross. We may fall during the journey.
I am confident this will bring good somehow. I have also health problems now, and in the moments I feel down, I pray, not waiting for the answer I want to, but HIS will. And because I know god does not go away, but we do, I am relieved.

We here on the forum should pray that you find new strengh and trust in God.

 

[RosslynV]

Pope Francis teaches that the spirit is present and works in other religions. Maybe you can try different religions every few weeks and see what u like. Good luck in your search.

 

[meltzerboy]

I’m going to take a long break from religions. Catholicism has let me down just as much as my born again days. No fruits are born.
GOOD BYE!
Please don’t condemn me to hell.
I have had enough of the fantasy.
I still believe in Christ and ask for his forgiveness all the time.
My wife is downhill. And prays have not helped.
Enough is enough.

I don’t think anyone on this Forum will condemn you, especially not to hell. On the contrary, I’m sure most of us will wish you the best on your spiritual journey.

 

[Petaro]

Where will you go? For Jesus has the words of eternal life. A break from faith? Not according to your post. A beak from ceaseless seemingly hopeless prayers?
If He won’t cure your beloved, look at His decision to linger before raising Lazarus. John 11. 5: Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. 7 Then after this He said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
Perhaps he wants more of you. But, like the unjust judge, He responds to perseverance.

I had a friend who was not a Catholic, but his wife was. She was dying, but wanted to go to Lourdes to seek a miracle from Mary. He reluctantly agreed, but she died before they could go. He went himself in her memory, visited the grotto and returned a Catholic. Weird how some things turn out.

Have a break, but return and harass Him for your beloved like a terrier. My poor prayers are with her in your absence.

 

[Dorothy]

Pope Francis teaches that the spirit is present and works in other religions. Maybe you can try different religions every few weeks and see what u like. Good luck in your search.

Yes, but that can lead astray.

OP – Keep praying to the Lord, He will guide you, and the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.

 

[Emily2014]

I’m so sorry that we have all let you down when you needed us most.

I’m praying hard for you and especially for your beloved wife, who is so ill.
God bless you and help you both, through His love. :heaven:

 

[friardchips]

I’m going to take a long break from religions. Catholicism has let me down just as much as my born again days. No fruits are born.
GOOD BYE!
Please don’t condemn me to hell.
I have had enough of the fantasy.
I still believe in Christ and ask for his forgiveness all the time.
My wife is downhill. And prays have not helped.
Enough is enough.

You taking a break from God? Well be assured, that this is not mutual - Jesus never loses one of His own so He won’t be taking a break from you. As the psalm 138 says in CTS Bible (139 in others) I copied this out so please excuse typos. Wishing you the best and your loved one:

"Oh Lord, you search me and you know me, you know my resting and my rising, you discern my purpose from afar. You mark when I walk or lie down, all my ways lie open to you.

Before ever a word is on my tongue, you know it, O Lord, through and through. Behind and before you besiege me, your hand ever laid upon me. Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.

O where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your face? If I climb the highest heavens, you are there. If I lie in the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, and dwell at the sea’s furthest end, even there your hand would lead me, your right hand would hold me fast.

If I say: “Let the darkness hide me and the light around me be night,” even darkness is not dark for you and the night is as clear as the day.

For it was you who created my being, knit me together in my mother’s womb. I thank you for the wonder of my being, for the wonders of all your creation.

Already you knew my soul, my body held no secret from you when I was being fashioned in secret and moulded in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw all my actions, they were all of them written in your book; every one of my days was decreed before one of them came into being.

To me, how mysterious your thoughts, the sum of them not to be numbered! If I count them, they are more than the sand; to finish, I must be eternal, like you.

O God, that you would slay the wicked! Men of blood, keep far away from me! With deceit they rebel against you and set your designs at naught.

Do I not hate those who hate you, abhor those who rise against you? I hate them with a perfect hate and they are foes to me.

O search me, God, and know my heart. O test me and know my thoughts. See that I follow not the wrong path and lead me in the path of life eternal."

God bless.

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

Try the “apophatic” tradition of the Church.

It is the flip side to the “kataphatic” that most Catholics take for All There Is, including me until in my 40s I found out there was more than just behavior contests and head knowledge.

My guess is the unbalance between kata- and apo- is the reason many are driven from the faith, and very possibly you. They see the head knowledge with the loving transformational spiritual development.

MS

 

[PietroPaolo]

What an odd string of reactions to someone who is freely choosing to reject Christ and His Church (which is His body, you can’t reject someone’s body without rejecting them - imagine saying to your wife, “oh honey, I still love you, its just your fat, disgusting, ugly body I can’t stand to be around”). Shall I be the only one to break the chorus of mostly positive replies? Leaving b/c Catholicism hasn’t “born fruit”? In what way? Has it failed to make you “feel” a certain way? It doesn’t exist to make people “feel” anything. Has it failed to make you holier? Perhaps the problem isn’t with the Church, but with you. God has, after all, equipped the Church with everything necessary for His sons and daughters to grow closer to him. Should you try defective “other religions” until you “see what u like”? Maybe, just maybe, religion isn’t about what we like - maybe it is about what God likes.

I won’t “condemn you to hell” (I lack such power), but I will allow “Vatican 2” to speak,
“Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.” (LG 14).

You’re not exactly “invincibly ignorant” of Catholicism - you’re a Catholic (presumably who has received the Sacraments, you’re here on CAF where Catholic Doctrine is proclaimed, expounded, and explained 24/7, and you choosing to reject the Church).

What would be the state of your soul if you died before coming back from your “long break”? I can’t say that - only you and God know for sure (and maybe not even you), but I wouldn’t play so fast and loose with my eternal life if I were you. Which reminds me of this…

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...-h730-no/adb6ca2ddd2c921bb327b8595f161efb.jpg

 

[friardchips]

We live in an age of mercy not condemnation. And sometimes subtlety helps. Maybe people need to hear something positive as this helps to keep them hoping. I do agree that not encouraging them to stay, as some of the posts clearly don’t do, are acts contrary to their wellbeing - leaving the Church should never be supported. But there is a way of encouraging that inspires rather than instilling hell on a person even more than they are already feeling and about to make even worse for themselves by jumping ship.

It does sound to me thinking about it again as if the OP could do with speaking to an understanding priest. And maybe taking the wife along to share in the experience (?).

 

[Gorgias]

Pope Francis teaches that the spirit is present and works in other religions. Maybe you can try different religions every few weeks and see what u like. Good luck in your search.

Ugh…no. :nope:

This is not what Pope Francis teaches – it is not the case that Catholics should “try different religions” in order to “see what u like”…!

MainBrain is hurting because he came to the Church expecting to reap ‘fruits’. Now that he has concluded that there aren’t any fruits for him to pluck, he’s (pretty reasonably!) frustrated. The question isn’t “is this church broken?” (or, as it were “hasn’t this church really just let me down?”), but rather, “my understanding of what ‘church’ and ‘God’ and ‘religion’ is all about – is it on the right track or am I missing something?”

The answer is that God isn’t a casino and no church is a slot machine. Prayer isn’t about “let me put my time in and wait to hit a big payout.” (By the same token, religion isn’t about “this slot machine isn’t winning, so let me go try another.”)

MainBrain, I’ll be praying for you. (Rosslyn, I’ll be praying for you, too… )

I hope, at some point, you’ll find a measure of peace – or, even better, that this peace can be found in God’s Church.

 

[Tigg]

I’m going to take a long break from religions. Catholicism has let me down just as much as my born again days. No fruits are born.
GOOD BYE!
Please don’t condemn me to hell.
I have had enough of the fantasy.
I still believe in Christ and ask for his forgiveness all the time.
My wife is downhill. And prays have not helped.
Enough is enough.

Please tell us, what were your expectations?

 

[friardchips]

Ugh…no. :nope:

This is not what Pope Francis teaches – it is not the case that Catholics should “try different religions” in order to “see what u like”…!

Agreed! Absolutely didn’t. Nope, nope, nope!

I hope, at some point, you’ll find a measure of peace – or, even better, that this peace can be found in God’s Church.

With persistence, true peace will be found in Christ and His Church, which is where we unify our spirit with God’s.

 

[Paleocon]

I’m going to take a long break from religions. Catholicism has let me down just as much as my born again days. No fruits are born.
GOOD BYE!
Please don’t condemn me to hell.
I have had enough of the fantasy.
I still believe in Christ and ask for his forgiveness all the time.
My wife is downhill. And prays have not helped.
Enough is enough.

Then you are endangering your salvation.

 

[RosslynV]

Ugh…no. :nope:

This is not what Pope Francis teaches – it is not the case that Catholics should “try different religions” in order to “see what u like”…!

MainBrain is hurting because he came to the Church expecting to reap ‘fruits’. Now that he has concluded that there aren’t any fruits for him to pluck, he’s (pretty reasonably!) frustrated. The question isn’t “is this church broken?” (or, as it were “hasn’t this church really just let me down?”), but rather, “my understanding of what ‘church’ and ‘God’ and ‘religion’ is all about – is it on the right track or am I missing something?”

The answer is that God isn’t a casino and no church is a slot machine. Prayer isn’t about “let me put my time in and wait to hit a big payout.” (By the same token, religion isn’t about “this slot machine isn’t winning, so let me go try another.”)

MainBrain, I’ll be praying for you. (Rosslyn, I’ll be praying for you, too… ). Please provide quotes from pope Francis which state that one has to be a catholic to.be saved…

I hope, at some point, you’ll find a measure of peace – or, even better, that this peace can be found in God’s Church.

 

[RosslynV]

Please provide quotes from pope Francis stating that one has to be catholic to be saved.

 

[MarcoPG]

Please provide quotes from pope Francis stating that one has to be catholic to be saved.

According to an article by Now The End Begins, Pope Francis enforced this view that the only way to God cannot be done without the Virgin Mary and the Church of Rome.

Without both, you are simply condemned to burn for all eternity in hell. [NOTE FROM MARCOPG: That’s the jounalist’s opinion. Still, reading what the pope says…]

The statement that Pope Francis uses that the article brings up is as follows:

"Dear friends, let us ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, for the grace to never fall into the temptation of thinking we can make it without others, that we can get along without the Church, that we can save ourselves alone, of being Christians of the laboratory. On the contrary, you cannot love God without loving your brothers, you cannot love God outside of the Church; you cannot be in communion with God without being so in the Church.” *

“The Most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire ‘which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ unless before death they are joined with Her…

No one, let his alms giving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Jesus Christ can be saved unless they abide within the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church"

[Eugene IV, in the Bull Cantate Domino in 1441, cited by a contributor of http://www.inquisitr.com/*, not the best of the sources, but we still hope the quotations are right! The one of the current pope too.]

What we always keep in mind, is that a pope can have personal opinions, but cannot depart from Church doctrine. The Church may find good points in other religions and christian confessions, still the Church teaches the only way is Catholicism. Other ways might come from God, which we ca only speculate about, but aren’t subject of a definitive teaching. Hope is one thing. Assurance of salvation is linked to it, but is another one.