Lapsed Catholics Explain Why They Leave the Church

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BenedictFTW said:
whenever we are made aware of the fact that there is nothing outside of the Catholic Church by way of salvation
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Fr. Feeney was excommunicated for insisting on this. There is salvation outside the Church. How it happens, however, is a nuanced topic. 🙂
 
agnes_therese said:
My Irish Catholic grandmother left after the parish priest publicly, in church, chastised her for her marriage to a non-Catholic.

It’s easy to say, “well, she should have _______ (fill in the blank).” But I can’t imagine what that was like for her, sitting there in a small rural church where everyone knew everyone. And I cannot find it in my heart to blame her.
Not only did that drive her from the Church, but because if it, my father never had a good word to say about the Catholic Church during the remaining 50+ years of his life.

These things don’t only affect the individual who may leave.
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Neither could I blame her nor your father and I trust God understands their heart. Peace.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Fr. Feeney was excommunicated for insisting on this. There is salvation outside the Church. How it happens, however, is a nuanced topic. 🙂
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Correct. And as for our brother poster’s rightful mention of visions of Hell, etc. (I agree with him on the principle that they are not to be trivialized, either), those visions of damnation should make us, as individuals, more focused on our own salvation rather than the salvation and damnation of others. Personally, my plate is full, with enough to give me pause to “quake in my shoes” at my Particular Judgment.

Benedict, as brothers and sisters in Christ, our concern should be to bring the lapsed Catholics back in a seductive rather than condemnatory way, because all of us need those redemptive graces. The way of charity is not to approve of departures but to make re-entry attractive and urgently important.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Fr. Feeney was excommunicated for insisting on this. There is salvation outside the Church. How it happens, however, is a nuanced topic. 🙂
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To state what most of our famous Fathers of the Church have said for centuries is not an excommunicable offence. If this Fr Feeney, whom I do not know of, was indeed excommunicated, it was not for saying that the Catholic Church is the One True Church and the only way of salvation. This is, of course, what Jesus says - when He gave the Keys of the Kingdom to Peter and said “Whatever sins you forgive are forgiven; whatever sins you retain are retained” as well as when Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through Me”. He gave us the one True Apostolic Church. He did not say there were many ways! Only one. To say anything else is to go against the teachings of Our Blessed Lord.
 
To state the Truth of Our Blessed Lord is not to condemn. It is more loving to not stray into areas of sentimentality and perceived ‘kindness’. In fact, this sort of thinking is what has caused people to water down the teachings of Our Lord. Be not afraid to speak the Truth of Our Lord. Be not too concerned with the feelings of your brothers and sisters if, in doing so, you offend Our Blessed Lord, who died on the Cross for our sins.
 
Here are but a few quotations from the wonderful Fathers of Our Church:

St Ignatius of Antioch: "For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the Bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange opinion, he agrees not with the passion of Christ. (Epistle to the Philadelphians)

Saint Justin Martyr (died A.D. 165): "And you deceive yourselves while you fancy that, because you are the seed of Abraham after the flesh, therefore you shall fully inherit the good things announced to be bestowed by God through Christ. For no one, not even one of them, has anything to look for, but only those who in mind are assimilated to the faith of Abraham, and who have recognised all the mysteries. …] So that it becomes you to eradicate this hope from your souls, and hasten to know in what way forgiveness of sins, and a hope of inheriting the promised good things, shall be yours. But there is no other way than this, - to become acquainted with this Christ, to be washed in the fountain spoken of by Isaiah for the remission of sins, and for the rest to live sinless lives. …]
Code: 
        "Further, I hold that those of the seed of Abraham who live according to the law, and do not believe in this Christ before death, shall not be saved." (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.)
Saint Irenaeus (died A.D. 202): "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others [heretics] which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money in a bank,] lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thiefs and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. …]

Also read Pope Benedict’s book “The Fathers”. God bless Pope Benedict XVI
 
BenedictFTW said:
To state what most of our famous Fathers of the Church have said for centuries is not an excommunicable offence. If this Fr Feeney, whom I do not know of, was indeed excommunicated, it was not for saying that the Catholic Church is the One True Church and the only way of salvation.
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I’m surprised you don’t know who Fr. Feeney was, and yes, he was excommunicated. Feeney was a famous U.S. Jesuit priest who defended the strict interpretation of the Roman Catholic doctrine, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”), arguing that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore no non-Catholics will be saved. He fought against what he perceived to be a liberalization of Catholic doctrine.

No one is doubting that Catholicism was and is the one true church, but it is NOT the only way of salvation. If that were true, then all the people who lived before Christ or who lived in ignorance of Catholicism all over the world since the Crucifixion are in Hell. 😦
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
I’m surprised you don’t know who Fr. Feeney was, and yes, he was excommunicated. Feeney was a famous U.S. Jesuit priest who defended the strict interpretation of the Roman Catholic doctrine, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”), arguing that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore no non-Catholics will be saved. He fought against what he perceived to be a liberalization of Catholic doctrine.

No one is doubting that Catholicism was and is the one true church, but it is NOT the only way of salvation. If that were true, then all the people who lived before Christ or who lived in ignorance of Catholicism all over the world since the Crucifixion are in Hell. 😦
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That’s a judgement, the truth of which we will know only when it is too late! Poor Fr Feeney. Was he one of the Society of Pius X (SSPX)? If so, these excommunications have been rescinded.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Not at all. The Church says that one does not have to be a formal member of the Church to be saved. 🙂
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Just goes to show that telling half a truth is so damaging to Truth. Just found this about Fr Feeney on Wikipedia. Fr Feeny was excommunicated for disobedience in rejecting a summons to go to Rome about his insistence on believing that there was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church:
However…

“He was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church in 1972, but was not required to retract or recant his interpretation of “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus”, which is inscribed on his tombstone [6] . Speaking two decades after the controversy Cardinal Avery Dulles judged Feeney’s doctrine on a series of lectures not having to do with “extra Ecclesiam…” to be quite sound.”
 
Perhaps the insistence of some that one church is as good as any other has caused many to leave the Catholic Church, with its insistence on no sex before marriage, no abortion, no contraception, no active homosexuality, etc. To stray from the Truth of Christ is to lead people astray and outside of the One True Church of Christ.
 
BenedictFTW said:
Perhaps the insistence of some that one church is as good as any other has caused many to leave the Catholic Church, with its insistence on no sex before marriage, no abortion, no contraception, no active homosexuality, etc. To stray from the Truth of Christ is to lead people astray and outside of the One True Church of Christ.
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Sure, those are some of the reasons some leave, but those are all tied to sexuality. There are, however, those who leave Catholicism for other than such shallow reasons.
 
More quotes from our wonderful Church Fathers in defence of the True Faith:

Saint Theophilus of Antioch (died A.D. 181): “And as, again, there are other islands, rocky and without water, and barren, and infested by wild beasts, and uninhabitable, and serving only to injure navigators and the storm-tossed, on which ships are wrecked, and those driven among them perish, - so there are doctrines of error - I mean heresies - which destroy those who approach them. For they are not guided by the word of truth; but as pirates, when they have filled their vessels, drive them on the fore-mentioned places, that they may spoil them: so also it happens in the case of those who err from the truth, that they are all totally ruined by their error.” (To Autolyctus)

Saint Irenaeus (died A.D. 202): "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others [heretics] which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money in a bank,] lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thiefs and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth.

Origen (died A.D. 254): “Let no man deceive himself. Outside this house, that is, outside the Church no one is saved.” (In Iesu Nave homiliae)
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Sure, those are some of the reasons some leave, but those are all tied to sexuality. There are, however, those who leave Catholicism for other than such shallow reasons.
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‘Shallow’? Maybe. But these are the most contentious areas of Church teaching for those outside of our Church.
 
BenedictFTW said:
More quotes from our wonderful Church Fathers in defence of the True Faith:

Saint Theophilus of Antioch (died A.D. 181): “And as, again, there are other islands, rocky and without water, and barren, and infested by wild beasts, and uninhabitable, and serving only to injure navigators and the storm-tossed, on which ships are wrecked, and those driven among them perish, - so there are doctrines of error - I mean heresies - which destroy those who approach them. For they are not guided by the word of truth; but as pirates, when they have filled their vessels, drive them on the fore-mentioned places, that they may spoil them: so also it happens in the case of those who err from the truth, that they are all totally ruined by their error.” (To Autolyctus)

Saint Irenaeus (died A.D. 202): "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others [heretics] which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money in a bank,] lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thiefs and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth.

Origen (died A.D. 254): “Let no man deceive himself. Outside this house, that is, outside the Church no one is saved.” (In Iesu Nave homiliae)
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Nuance, my good man, nuance. What is the understanding of the Church today? Read what I linked to. It includes references to the Catechism. BTW, just because one is a “Church Father” doesn’t mean that one speaks infallibly.
 
BenedictFTW said:
‘Shallow’? Maybe. But these are the most contentious areas of Church teaching for those outside of our Church.
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I’m not worried about non-Catholics, Jews, Moslems, and all others outside our Church.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Nuance, my good man, nuance. What is the understanding of the Church today? Read what I linked to. It includes references to the Catechism. BTW, just because one is a “Church Father” doesn’t mean that one speaks infallibly.
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You show no respect for the dead Fr Feeney, whom, for all you know is a saint in Heaven. You also show disregard for the Church Fathers. I think you have made your point, my good man. Enough said.

God bless. Someone will pray for you.
 
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