Lapsed Catholics Explain Why They Leave the Church

[CMatt25]

Probably like Spain, France, and Italy.

Poland, however, is a bright spot.

Poland has better attendance, Rich?

 

[saveusfromhell]

What you highlighted: “The bishops are all men who are believed to be the successors of the Apostles. Priests who are entrusted to shepherd their flocks are all men. So I’m not clear how you can be in the Church and as part of the practice of your faith, not have a relationship with man along with God.”

Your bishop is believed to be an Apostolic successor. Many Catholics I presume entrust their priest to shepherd them. So you have a relationship with them.

so logically your saying because man sinned God sinned. sorry it makes no sense all, because men are flawed does not mean that God and or his church teachings are flawed.
it simply means we are failing to live up to what we believe.

 

[saveusfromhell]

But we ARE the body of Christ…and some people have been deeply wounded by those amongst us…I don’t think we can deny that. There are those that were wounded…have questions and some of us (the Body) act like this indicates lack of faith.

Yes the sacraments are foremost but to say that people just need to ignore all the other…is short sighted…some of us were deeply wounded by the other.

it indicates a lack of charity rather than a lack of faith.
this would possible indicate a belief some people deserve hell more than others.
none of us should ever consider this as an option, lest we be judged by that standard.
as hard as this is to come to terms with there is a few parabels that preach about this.
nobody was more wounded than Jesus for our sins. yet he forgives us.
each one of us should start with the basis that there is no greater sinner and nobody that deserves hell more than ourselves.
while praying for our brothers and sisters, if and when they fall to continue on the road to salvation.

i think of st gerard majella falsely accused yet refused to give a defense to his accusers while offereing up his suffering to Jesus

And as long as we never acknowledge that…I don’t see hope of bringing siblings home.

. many times i have seeen lay people priests bishops and the pope acknoweldge this.

 

[ishii]

Ishii, if a specific individual named John Doe knew but did not remain after experiencing a change in belief, he could not be saved according to CCC. And “could not” is a tense of “can not”. Now sure I’ll grant you that no one knows whether John will have returned even if just at the moment before taking his last breath. But otherwise the Church does appear to be saying to me John will go to hell.

The Church can say that if a hypothetical individual John Doe dies with mortal sin on his soul (i.e. spiritual death) then John Doe will go to hell. But that is not the same as saying a specific person is going to hell because they did x or y type of grave sin. The reason is because we don’t know if the person has committed a mortal sin or not - grave matter being only one of three criteria necessary for a mortal sin (the others being full consent of the will and knowlege). I think the Church can say that an individual is in danger of going to hell, but that is not the same things as saying a specific individual is going to hell. I hope I am making sense.

Ishii

 

[saveusfromhell]

Matt7:15 Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves.16 You will know them by what they do. Thorn bushes do not bear grapes, and briers do not bear figs.17 A healthy tree bears good fruit, but a poor tree bears bad fruit.18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a poor tree cannot bear good fruit.19 And any tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire. 20 So then, you will know the false prophets by what they do. (GNT)

cmatt25 this can be taken as someone who teaches an alternative gospel/way to salvation other than the one the church teaches. I was a catholic yet now I know the church is wrong, although i believe in Jesus, follow me i know the way .

 

[Annabelle_Marie]

Who said anything about “just ignoring” [wounds]? I didn’t say it; you are saying it. God has never asked us at any time in human history to ignore wounds, from whatever source they occur. Being wounded is an invitation to draw near to the Passion – not as some historical event of no personal contemporary value to us, but as a challenge to become one with that Passion. In the present, we all have to endure our private or public Passions. The holiest priests in the Church have been deeply wounded, by people not in religious life, and by authorities within the Church. It is said that the best healers are wounded healers, as they can relate to the wounds of others. The best healers are not the departed wounded, the wounded who abandon the faith when some of the bearers of that faith contradict the faith.

The fact remains: If one leaves the Church because of disappointment in its messengers, that person is abandoning the central message.

A lot of these repeated arguments also assume that those of us making counter-arguments have not been deeply wounded & even betrayed; we have. It’s just that we have seen that leaving the Church is the opposite of the answer. It solves nothing, and merely shows us to be reliant on the wrong things & the wrong people. There is holiness out there, within the Church: find it. God is waiting for us to find it, both in people and in spite of other people.

I’m not at odds with you. But I think all to often people ignore the wounds…sometimes with an I stuck it out and didn’t abandon the faith why can’t you. This can translate to a further wedge between these people and the Church…which does no good.

I’ve heard things like, “how can you not know”…just suck it up and go…I have had issues but I stayed and was faithful. I never said leaving the Church was the answer…but that’s not the issue.

These people HAVE left…for whatever reasons…some for SOME VERY good reasons. The issue is how do we help them find their way back? I would submit that it’s not as easy as telling them they were wrong to abandon the central message.

I left when I was a kid…my parents left…so I had no real choice:shrug: when my dad took me years later…I never heard a message at all in Mass…nor could anyone explain to me why I should stay.

I would still be wondering if it weren’t for good people who were willing to acknowledge problems and wounds and help me to process it. If they had just said…"oh you abandoned the Church…that was the wrong answer…I still wouldn’t be back. Cause I felt like the Church had abandoned me. At that time.

Praise God for a holy priest and wonderful laymen.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Probably like Spain, France, and Italy.

Poland, however, is a bright spot.

What’s with you and all this talk of Poland and Polish stuff?

 

[ProVobis]

Poland has better attendance, Rich?

Probably around 70%. And 90% of the country is Catholic. They go to Mass, whether they’re divorced, remarried, or what not. They know when not to go to communion though.

What’s with you and all this talk of Poland and Polish stuff?

I think that would be I who started it.

But before you throw us under a bus, remember your next priest may come from Poland.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Not necessarily to me? But, perhaps to me? What do you know of what kind of a Catholic I am?

I have no idea what you’re talking about. My post – the post that you just quoted – has nothing to do with the state of your personal soul. Nor did I even address that. The concepts are being addressed & refuted, not persons. But as usual, here is one more person personalizing a general debate about the value, the advisability – or lack thereof – of leaving the one true Church because of the actions of evildoers. I have no idea what your personal fidelity is to the sacraments. MY POST WAS NOT ABOUT YOU. It is about the discussion – a discussion about what a supposedly terrific solution it is when Catholics abandon the full font of grace, located in Christ’s Church exclusively, because there are bad people in the Church, some of whom wear a Roman collar, others of whom are laypeople with petty priorities about their unimportant turf in some parish function, with self-righteous attitudes in church, yadayada.

That ^ is an irrational position. It’s an emotional reaction, and that’s the best that can be said about it. It’s an emotional reaction which compromises the person leaving because it deprives him or her of sacramental life. Someone brought up forgiveness of sin. You think forgiveness of sin is outside of the Church? Not when we’re speaking of sacraments, it isn’t. Other faith traditions do not include the sacramental graces of Penance. Only the Catholic Church has that.

The arguments here are lame. Leaving the Church is an understandable reaction to hurt or disappointment. It is not a solution to evil within the Church, whether that evil or sickness resides in a person with authority, or in a person who illegitimately exercises pretense to authority. Again, the person ultimately hurt is the person who leaves. There’s no “lesson” learned for those who have been left or rejected. If they haven’t learned from their self-evaluation that their actions have hurt others, than seeing others leave will not redeem them either.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Good point.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. My post – the post that you just quoted – has nothing to do with the state of your personal soul. Nor did I even address that. The concepts are being addressed & refuted, not persons. But as usual, here is one more person personalizing a general debate about the value, the advisability – or lack thereof – of leaving the one true Church because of the actions of evildoers. I have no idea what your personal fidelity is to the sacraments. MY POST WAS NOT ABOUT YOU. It is about the discussion – a discussion about what a supposedly terrific solution it is when Catholics abandon the full font of grace, located in Christ’s Church exclusively, because there are bad people in the Church, some of whom wear a Roman collar, others of whom are laypeople with petty priorities about their unimportant turf in some parish function, with self-righteous attitudes in church, yadayada.

That ^ is an irrational position. It’s an emotional reaction, and that’s the best that can be said about it. It’s an emotional reaction which compromises the person leaving because it deprives him or her of sacramental life. Someone brought up forgiveness of sin. You think forgiveness of sin is outside of the Church? Not when we’re speaking of sacraments, it isn’t. Other faith traditions do not include the sacramental graces of Penance. Only the Catholic Church has that.

The arguments here are lame. Leaving the Church is an understandable reaction to hurt or disappointment. It is not a solution to evil within the Church, whether that evil or sickness resides in a person with authority, or in a person who illegitimately exercises pretense to authority. Again, the person ultimately hurt is the person who leaves. There’s no “lesson” learned for those who have been left or rejected. If they haven’t learned from their self-evaluation that their actions have hurt others, than seeing others leave will not redeem them either.

 

[Elizabeth502]

I’m not at odds with you. But I think all to often people ignore the wounds…

Staying does not equal “ignoring the wounds.” That’s the basic fallacy here.

Similarly, leaving does not necessarily heal those wounds. At least, I have not met a single Catholic who has left, temporarily or permanently, who honestly believes that the act of leaving, in itself, healed her or his wounds. In most cases what it did was build resentment, because it left them with no outlet within the institution for expression of dismay, regret, anger, etc. What it did was make them isolated, physically and psychologically. And I will repeat: it deprived them of sacramental life, which heals our wounds. So it isolates spiritually as well, which is the greatest danger. I don’t know a single Catholic who has left who feels “resolved” about leaving. Leaving does not resolve anger and hurt (if those were the reasons for leaving, and not a refusal to work on the theological virtue of faith, a virtue which is a challenge for the devout as well as the casual or barely committed believer).

Was anyone on this thread actually processing the spiritual journey of the Church’s Holy Week of a few days ago? Hint: it was about woundedness to the point of near despair, and where to go with that, to whom to turn with that. Turning away into the darkness is not the Message of Holy Week.

And because some of us have seen the error of our ways (in that leaving solves zero and hurts only ourselves) does not mean that we have not been wounded just as deeply (or more so) than those who have left but not returned. That’s the third fallacy here. The act of departure, and the length of that, is not the measure of woundedness, or the measure of legitimate feelings of injustice. You may imagine that it is, but it isn’t.

 

[CMatt25]

I have no idea what you’re talking about. My post – the post that you just quoted – has nothing to do with the state of your personal soul. Nor did I even address that. The concepts are being addressed & refuted, not persons.

As Rich already pointed out, you said, “I’m speaking to others, not necessarily to you.” So his valid point stands that while you were not “necessarily” speaking to him it could have been construed then that perhaps you were. And now you wish to backtrack and say you were not addressing persons after you said were in fact “speaking to others”.

 

[KateKimmer]

I think sometimes people need fullfillment .
Something inside them, most likely only God can be the answer.

When they don’t get fullfilled, (for whatever reason)

they think the church is hte “problem” and leave.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Elizabeth502]

As Rich already pointed out, you said, “I’m speaking to others, not necessarily to you.” So his valid point stands that while you were not “necessarily” speaking to him it could have been construed then that perhaps you were. And now you wish to backtrack and say you were not addressing persons after you said were in fact “speaking to others”

This is absurd. You have completely misrepresented what I said.

The only reason that I inserted the word “necessarily” was precisely because I do not presume and did not presume to know who does and does not value the sacramental life of the Roman Catholic Church. No, I am not “backtracking.” I never meant him personally, because only he is in a position to say and to know whether he does see the Church’s sacramental life as essential to spiritual growth. He made a general comment, adding to the debate. I had no idea whether he meant to refer to himself or to others (since he also mentioned Jesuits who taught him, former-Catholic-now-atheist friends of his, etc.). I thought he was arguing the discussion points in general, not his personal position. I refuted his points because he seemed to be supporting those he knows who left the Church (their supposed reasons for leaving). I think their reasons are irrational. (For example, leaving out of weak faith is the opposite of a solution. Hint: to grow one’s faith it is necessary to stay in the Church and fight that difficult battle of doubt that the rest of sinners need to battle daily. Leaving the Church does not bring intellectual clarity about the theological virtue of faith, because that process is not even an intellectual process, ultimately. It is the intellect united – through prayer and the sacraments – with the will and the spirit.)

Stop trying to justify your position based on points that were never made – more imagined hurts. I never accused anyone on or off this thread of being in some state of sin or being “a bad Catholic.” I am pointing out for everyone, including those supposedly trumpeting the wonderful value of leaivng the one true Church of Christ, that the supposed “value” has not been demonstrated. You have not made your arguments.

 

[CMatt25]

This is absurd. You have completely misrepresented what I said.

The only reason that I inserted the word “necessarily” was precisely because I do not presume and did not presume to know who does and does not value the sacramental life of the Roman Catholic Church. No, I am not “backtracking.” I never meant him personally, because only he is in a position to say and to know whether he does see the Church’s sacramental life as essential to spiritual growth. He made a general comment, adding to the debate. I had no idea whether he meant to refer to himself or to others (since he also mentioned Jesuits who taught him, former-Catholic-now-atheist friends of his, etc.). I thought he was arguing the discussion points in general, not his personal position. I refuted his points because he seemed to be supporting those he knows who left the Church (their supposed reasons for leaving). I think their reasons are irrational. (For example, leaving out of weak faith is the opposite of a solution. Hint: to grow one’s faith it is necessary to stay in the Church and fight that difficult battle of doubt that the rest of sinners need to battle daily. Leaving the Church does not bring intellectual clarity about the theological virtue of faith, because that process is not even an intellectual process, ultimately. It is the intellect united – through prayer and the sacraments – with the will and the spirit.)

Stop trying to justify your position based on points that were never made – more imagined hurts. I never accused anyone on or off this thread of being in some state of sin or being “a bad Catholic.” I am pointing out for everyone, including those supposedly trumpeting the wonderful value of leaivng the one true Church of Christ, that the supposed “value” has not been demonstrated. You have not made your arguments.

You said what you said.

“I’m speaking to others, not necessarily to you”. And then you later said, “The concepts are being addressed & refuted, not persons.”

You said you were speaking to others but also said persons were not being addressed. I’d ask who are the others if not persons? But nevermind. It’s not something I need to beleaguer further. Just please refrain from saying I misrepresented what you said if I merely quote what you said. Thanks. In any case peace along your faith journey.

 

[wynnejj]

You said what you said.

“I’m speaking to others, not necessarily to you”. And then you later said, “The concepts are being addressed & refuted, not persons.”

You said you were speaking to others but also said persons were not being addressed. I’d ask who are the others if not persons? But nevermind. It’s not something I need to beleaguer further. Just please refrain from saying I misrepresented what you said if I merely quote what you said. Thanks. In any case peace along your faith journey.

I guess Elizabeth should have passed her note through her legal department before publication. I’m saying this, because no matter how her statements were interpreted, she clarified and that should be that.

 

[wynnejj]

When a person (speaking to concepts, not to any person on this forum) begins to question the efficacy of the Holy Eucharist due to the empirical evidence of the actions of the communicants at large, then one’s faith is put to the test. I am sure that the devil is at work here to orchestrate events so that people are tempted around you to behave in dreadfully rude series of interactions, most irritating being triumphalism (you just don’t get it). Nevertheless, it is that person’s responsibility first, foremost & ultimately to ask, seek, and knock (pray, meditate & study). As Catholics generally realize, the centerpiece of the Catholic faith, that generally delineates it from other non-Catholic Christian denominations, is the Holy Eucharist and the question comes - what if it is not real? What if it is just a case of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”?

I was born Catholic, but if I were born a Jew, would I just be a good Jew never to look at the Catholic faith? What is this stuff about a chosen people anyway, did not God love all people equally before Christ? Aren’t God’s mysteries revealed to all seekers of truth no matter what culture born? How about charges that Christianity is an amalgam containing pagan elements, most especially the Zoroastrian sect of Persian Mithraism as the most popular Eastern religion in pagan Rome. Zoroastrian religion believes in angels and demons, virgin birth of the god Mithras, a Mithraic communion with the concept of eating his body & blood, a belief in the resurrection of the body, and an end times Armageddon.

To suggest that serious persons don’t have a right to seriously question their faith when the empirical evidence shows almost 100% reception of the Holy Eucharist at Sunday Mass, yet not the decency of Lassie to bark (via sermon) about Timmy falling down a well (abortion issue) for years on end, is disingenuous.

The bottom line is that with all these legitimate questions, when faith conflicts with reason, one has to rely on the answer Jesus gave us. The proof of inerrant truth received from God are miracles. The ongoing revelation of truth as to the nature of God in various aspects are the miracles which highlights various saints in their particular nature of God.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

This is absurd. You have completely misrepresented what I said.

The only reason that I inserted the word “necessarily” was precisely because I do not presume and did not presume to know who does and does not value the sacramental life of the Roman Catholic Church.

When you say “not necessarily you,” you are nonetheless including me in the overall group you were referring to.

No, I am not “backtracking.”

Yes, you were by trying to wriggle out of your original statement.

I never meant him personally, because only he is in a position to say and to know whether he does see the Church’s sacramental life as essential to spiritual growth.

Which isn’t even the topic of this thread, the topic being why Catholics leave the Church. I made a statement that some leave the faith because they have lost some of their faith, and I know why they left, not why they “supposedly” left.

I think their reasons are irrational.

Your opinion is fine, but I can assure you that their reasons were rational and understandable.

Hint: to grow one’s faith it is necessary to stay in the Church and fight that difficult battle of doubt that the rest of sinners need to battle daily. Leaving the Church does not bring intellectual clarity about the theological virtue of faith, because that process is not even an intellectual process, ultimately. It is the intellect united – through prayer and the sacraments – with the will and the spirit.)

You are presuming that your pious argument is something that everyone will accept.

. I never accused anyone on or off this thread of being in some state of sin or being “a bad Catholic.”

No one said that you were.

I am pointing out for everyone, including those supposedly trumpeting the wonderful value of leaivng the one true Church of Christ, that the supposed “value” has not been demonstrated. You have not made your arguments.

Who said that leaving the Church was something wonderful? Who was trying to say that leaving was a value? I think that you are creative in impuning to others things they did not say or imply.

Bottom line is that some people, for intellectual reasons among others, lose their faith and are no longer interested in the Church.

 

[ProVobis]

Most don’t, that is.

There is the Polish National Catholic Church, of course, created in reaction to the U.S. Church not allowing the Polish language to be taught in parish schools.

Language and culture have a lot to do with it. Now, of course, US bishops allow Masses to be said in more than English. The Archdiocese of Chicago allows something like 24 vernaculars. And it’s mostly the Spanish and Polish Masses which haven’t been losing as much.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Language and culture have a lot to do with it. Now, of course, US bishops allow Masses to be said in more than English. The Archdiocese of Chicago allows something like 24 vernaculars. And it’s mostly the Spanish and Polish Masses which haven’t been losing as much.

St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Brooklyn, NY, my old parish and still my mother’s parish, is still a Polish church with half the Masses in Polish. Heck, the entire neighborhood, Greenpoint, is mostly Polish. The shops all have Polish signs and not always English ones, and even if you go to the Associated or Key Food supermarkets in the neighborhood, the cashiers will address you in Polish until you indicate that you speak only English.

Even the former Cardinal Wojtyła visited our parish on a trip to the U.S. I use my visits to NY as opportunities to use the language at some of the shops and restaurants.