Losing my faith and don't know what to do

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When I go up for Communion, I love to meditate on the fact that all around the world, people of all races and conditions are going up to receive Communion. I envision all these people, some of whom have walked a long way or ridden a donkey to get to Mass.

That to me is what the “Catholic” in the Catholic Church is all about. Christ established the Church for us–everywhere, each and every one of us.

I am sorry that there are some Catholics who are so far off track that they can think things like that, much less say them. It is such a stupid thing on which to base anything.

Another quick point: I used to live in the South, where a lot of churches are still separate, not from intention but because people go where their parents went, where they like the music and preaching style, but all the Catholic churches had people of all races.
 
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St Martin de Porres was mentioned a couple of times here. I also have an affection for him, though second hand so far. He was a contemporary of a favourite saint of mine, St Rose of Lima, who held great admiration for him. They are both buried at the Convent of Santo Domingo in Lima Peru.

Be assured there is a great company of saints watching over you, praying for your faith and strength to remain in the Catholic Church.

May God bless you in your journey.
 
ok even if that is factual, I wouldn’t conclude she was a racist. God knows the heart, she wouldn’t be blessed if she were. If I had a vision of Roman soldiers seeing Jesus in the clouds pointing them to kill half a million Jews sieged in Jerusalem in 70 AD, that wouldn’t make me anti-semitic. Seeing past events doesn’t alter morality.

Some people choose to be racist but that is not and will never be Catholic teaching.
 
So Friend, your considering giving UP JESUS in PERSON over Race issues? I’m NOT making lite of your feelings; only trying to add some perspective.

John 6: 54-55; 66-70
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. Unless you eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. … And he said: Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to me, unless it be given him by my Father. After this many of his disciples went back; {ABANDONED HIM} and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God

Racism is illogical even dare I say STUPID; you did not choose be a person of color, nor did I choose to be Irish; so if it NOT “our” fault; where is the logic in holding it against us?

Jesus personally crafted CROSSES for each of US to carry; Pray much and carry on.

Lk 14:27 And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

May God Bless you and assist you in carrying your heavy cross,
Patrick
 
Tis_Bearself said:
said things that may have been accepted in their time
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Yes! We are ALL shaped by our culture, our era and the thinkers of our time. How many of us can be condemned as some kind of “-ist” by people 2-300 years in the future?
Tis_Bearself said:
Servant of God Augustine Tolton and Servant of God Julia Greeley.
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WE also have a church dedicated to the veneration of St. Peter Claver in an inner city parish near us. He is not American, but was a great saint in many ways. Like your family, follow Anne Catherine Emmerich in the good she did. Don’t follow her in her racist ideas (if they ARE, as @Tis_Bearself says) ARE racist and not euphemisms of something else). Recognize that a saint is not someone perfect, but only a soul who has proven their love for Christ and a fervent desire to die in a state of grace.
Tis_Bearself said:
One of my favorite parish priests is from Africa and he has done wonders for my spiritual life.
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Me too!
Dan_Defender said:
Some people choose to be racist but that is not and will never be Catholic teaching.
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Amen!

To add: I am the whitest white person you will ever meet. Seriously, whatever “almost Albino” color is…that’s me. Thank God my eyes are darkish blue-grey! 😉 If any community suffers from white privilege, it is the white, middle class community I grew up in. There was ONE black girl in my ENTIRE high school (and super nice to me and I liked her a lot) for 9th through 11th grade. In 12th grade, two black girls entered their freshman year in our high school. You’d have thought the poor girls were subversives, out to overrun us with "darkies’ :roll_eyes: Oy! as my Jewish friends would say 🙂 . Anyway, this white girl (me) prays EVERY DAY to St. Monica to intervene with my son and god-son. Cause that is a woman who KNOWS how to bring beloved children into the Church. As my friends say “She ain’t playin” 🙂 and I will forever be grateful to her and I will ask her to pray for me and pray for her until I die.
 
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Look into the three wise men – the magi. They’ve always been seen as descendants of the three sons of Noah, each the patriarch of “the three races of man.” They all came together as one to worship Christ, and all have been seen as Saints since the beginning.

Look into the Black Madonnas that populate Europe. Based on the Canticle of Canticles (“Song of Solomon”) that has Our Lady saying, “I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

Knowing there are general differences between the races isn’t racism; it’s science. Judging or limiting individuals because of those general differences is racism. Avoid people who are either unscientific enough to reject the first, or uncharitable enough to reject the second. And stay close to Christ, Who built His Church on the rock of St. Peter, against which the gates of Hell will never, ever prevail.
 
Are you kidding me? If that statement is not racist then I don’t know what is. The author clearly believed that Black people were inherently stupid and corrupt in a way that White people were not. I’d rather assume Anne Emerich didn’t say those things since the authorship of her works is often disputed but I’d never say in a million years that what the OP quoted wasn’t pure racism: it absolutely was!
 
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But the Bible doesn’t say anything about race. That Ham passage being understood as a reference to the origin of Black people was a mideaval invention that came up to defend the indefensible evil of chattel slavery that European nations rampantly engaged in while throwing away their Christianity for a profit. What a great disaster that was, may God forgive those people for the evil they knowingly did. I say knowingly because it is obvious from the protests of missionaries and some popes that people understood very well that this was evil. They just did not care for Christianity as much as the coin. That’s the tragedy of the human race.
 
Galatians 3:28 does it for me. There is neither slave nor free, neither male or female, neither this race or that race, neither anything that makes humans want to denigrate other humans. All are one in Jesus.
Never, ever let someone’s ignorant words make you believe you are less than a beloved child of God. To do so is to give into the evil one.
 
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Dear OP, hey there’s a whole church of Africans in this world, they are in the hundreds of millions! Please don’t let some few dozens foolish Americans where you are make you think that they are synonymous with the Catholic Church as a whole. Americans are a tiny, tiny, faction of the church and the racists are an even smaller faction of that tiny faction. Please remember the church is world wide and over a billion strong. Don’t let the poisonous politics of where you live fool you into imagining that it is representative of the church. The church is Black, Arab, White, East Asian, Polynesian, Native American etc.

I also would like to see the fool who wants to argue that racism is compatible with Christianity: Let him bring his hatred here now and try to defend it like a man. I hope he’s ready with references because Ima obliterate him mercilessly (his nonsensical arguments, that is).
  1. We shall first start with the uncompromisable Catholic dogma of the unity of the human race which decends from Adam and Eve. The one on which our entire religion depends on, seeing as both original sin and salvation are rooted on that unity.
  2. After he tires of trying to do the impossible (of showing how that^ is compatible with a notion of inherently inferior human races), we shall move on to the soul as breathed on every human at conception. Let us see him try to show us in what sense some souls are less dignified, less rational, less beautiful than others on account of anything but wilful sin. Once he finishes that second impossible task, let him show us how he determined this inferiority of some souls. Perhaps he was present at their creation?
  3. When he’s finished with all the above we shall move on to the passage Limoncello quoted from Galatians (and there’s still more!)
 
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I’d just say a couple things:
  1. Remember that the Church is a hospital for sinners; not a museum of Saints. We are in the Church because we are “sick” and need the divine healer that is Christ. Of course you are going to meet people that profess their faith but act contradictory to it;
  2. “Catholic” is not a “race.” We are ONE, Holy, CATHOLIC (“universal”) and Apostolic Church. My priest is from Nigeria. I’m Irish. I live in a predominantly Hispanic community. What binds us is our kinship as Catholics/Christians even though our “cultures” that we were raised in are different in some aspects. We are still brothers and sisters;
  3. Those who you are reading on the internet that are claiming to be Catholic but are espousing non-Catholic sentiments? Keep in mind, they are NON CATHOLIC sentiments. So even if they are saying they are practicing Catholics, their words and actions may not be what the Church actually teaches; Nazism and White Supremacy is nowhere to be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church…at least I haven’t seen it there;
  4. Be sure what you are thinking is Nazism and White Supremacy being expressed is, in fact, Nazism and White Supremacy. Those terms get thrown around a lot these days based on politics (I am friends with a Black Trump supporter who is called a Nazi quite regularly, for example). But anyone espousing the notion that anyone else is less worthy of human dignity because of their skin color is NOT espousing the teaching of the Catholic Church…no matter how they try and rationalize it;
  5. Ever hear the term “the bigger the sinner, the better the Saint?” Remember, Saints were sinners first. The lives of Saints are raucous and cringe worthy. But they overcame them; that’s why they are Saints. Don’t let their stories scandalize you;
  6. Stop reading ignorant and hateful people on the internet. You know you are a child of God with all the inherent rights and dignity that come with it. Don’t let these folks lead you away. If you do, then Satan got what he wanted through them. Just be the person God intended and created for you to be. Pray for those on the internet that are acting contrary to who God created and intended them to be.
That’s all I got to say. Hope it helped.
 
I highly recommend Fr. Josh Johnson’s book Blessed and Broken, by Fr. Josh Johnson. Here’s the gist:

 
The Black Hebrew Israelites believed that they made Jesus look like a caveman. They hated it.
 
I can sympathize with you concerning your feelings towards racism, in any form. When I was younger, being of arabic descent I too felt I didn’t belong. However, please don’t believe that your race effects everyone…just bigots and racists…who cares what they think?
As far as Ham’s curse, I took the following quote from Billy Graham’s website. I hope it helps your self esteem (which is up to you to build up)

"No, this is not true, although it’s been repeated so often and for so long that many people still believe it, and — like your uncle — have used it to justify their prejudice against people of other races.

Noah, the Bible tells us, had three sons, each of whom (after the great flood) would become the founder of a number of nations or peoples. One of the sons, Ham, became the founder of some groups that settled in Africa, although most of his descendants settled elsewhere, including Babylonia and Assyria in the Middle East. (You can read the list of the nations that came from Noah’s sons in Genesis 10.)

Because of a specific shameful act that occurred after the great flood, Noah pronounced a curse or judgment on one of Ham’s sons, a man by the name of Canaan. The judgment was that Canaan and his descendants would become servants or slaves to his brothers and their descendants, and over time, this actually happened. But the curse was not on Ham; it was only on his son, Canaan (see Genesis 9:25). Nor was Canaan the founder of any African nation or race; his descendants settled only in the Middle East.

Racial prejudice is sin in the eyes of God, and the Bible should never be used to defend it. God created the whole human race, and Jesus Christ died to redeem people from every race. Remember: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16)."
 
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You are looking left and right and seeing only sinners. Look up to the perfection of God, or else the assault on your faith will only accelerate.

Example: When walking on the water, what happened to Peter when he took his eyes off the Lord?

There is a message there.
 
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