Lost faith in the church, can't practice

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Ginny89

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Hello. Please bear with me once more for my long post.

I am a lapsed Catholic. I have been in a limbo of sorts where I believe but cant bring myself to get up and be Catholic anymore.

My last 5 years have been a tough ride. Lots of painful things happened to me including the suffering of a loved one who is now passed on, despair and my own fallenness, doing and saying things I never thought I would and being very ashamed. In the midst of my crisis I was a struggling catholic. Aware of mortal sin, the need for confession and mass. But ever since the whole pope Francis communion for remarried business began, it made my weakened faith weaker. It is as if a shrapnel found its way to the core of my faith in my heart.

I cannot bring myself to deny my faith. I still believe God is God and Jesus is Jesus. Sometimes I even believe the church is the church. But to be honest, my faith in the church has been severely wounded.

I may think in my head that the church is true and infallible but this truth no longer reaches my heart. And so the church’s commands have lost their hold on me. I no longer feel guilty about skipping Sunday mass and have been praying to God to forgive me when I sin and to get me to go to Church on Sunday and to confession. But the motivation just isn’t there as it was before.

Because before I didnt just believe in the church intellectually but trusted in her too. Now I just don’t. I feel as if the highest members themselves seem unconvinced that the church has such claims to truth, and this sort of kills my own conviction. I know this must only mean that my faith was weak before. When the storm came, it blew it away and my faith crushed like the house built on sand or blew away like the seeds without roots.

But I had withstood a lot of assaults and difficulties that came with the faith. The abuse scandals, while painful and embarrassing, never phased me. I knew those priests were sinners and even traitors to the church but the church herself was true. But the combination of a painful several years of several losses in my own personal life and many humiliations had me doubting already and the last straw was that period that started with the pope opening up communion for remarried without renunciation first, that painful period of back and forth in the church, the synod, politics, up to the encyclical…it just about shredded my faith. It was so painful that I think I ended up disconnecting my heart from the church in order to avoid the anticipated pain of watching sacred teachings overturned and her whole credibility thrown into the sea.

What hurt me the most was not just the prelates who were pushing this but that it was a continuation and even the climax of a theme in my own personal life at that time for a few years: I felt like my faith was a joke. I became scared of trusting God because I felt like he was putting me through too much pain without relief. Not answering my prayers. I felt abandoned. The church was my only pillar in that dark time when I thought no relief would ever come to me and so when suddenly she of all things became also unstable and unsure I’d just about reached my limit. And so I think I withdrew my heart as a psychological defense mechanism. My whole worldview was shaken to its core. I once wrote in a journal that I felt I was mourning Jesus as if he was dead to my soul. My soul wanted him back. I couldnt let go of the goodness that I found when I first entered the faith. I couldnt belueve it was all a sham. I used to pray: pkease let it be true. I couldnt imagine a world without that ultimate goodness undergirding it. That despair was terrible to me. I still talk to God and pray but I dont have the life of rhe sacraments.

Now, for about 2 years, my personal life has slowly turned around in the external sense. It’s no longer one nightmare after another. I am constantly wanting myself to go back to my lost faith even though i dont know i can feel the same. I occasionally go for confession and mass maybe once every 6 months. I just cant divorce myself from the faith, but also find that i just dont have the same belief in the church that I used to have. Everytime I plan on going for confession or mass, something happens. I lose motivation. Its like I have a faith that is dead. I think certain things are true but i m just not in love any more.

Please pray for me that my heart may find a new love for God. Like the first time, it was love for God that motivated me to the church. Please pray that I may find love and strength in truth.
 
Praying for you.
May Jesus shows you his ways.
Please pray for me too, I am so afraid of God because of my sins.
 
Hello Ginny, I don’t have as devout a background as you but here goes (and I’m a single older bloke).

I wonder if whatever the wisdom or lack of it at the concrete level in promulgating what has been promulgated, behind it all God is saying, try to think what sacraments are for (not exactly an outer substitute for inner grace). If we help others develop their ministry we’ll gain our crown, if they help us develop our ministries we’ll gain our crown.

In an uncertain world surely we are here to demonstrate how others can place their trust in God somehow.

Christ’s will is not only to save us on our own, but additionally to help break down unnecessary barriers with others - while enhancing each one’s true individuality. Meantime if we fulfil our once-a-year obligation to receive, with a good intention, we can’t go wrong.
 
Ginny89 said:
Hello. Please bear with me once more for my long post.

I am a lapsed Catholic. I have been in a limbo of sorts where I believe but cant bring myself to get up and be Catholic anymore.

My last 5 years have been a tough ride. Lots of painful things happened to me including the suffering of a loved one who is now passed on, despair and my own fallenness, doing and saying things I never thought I would and being very ashamed. In the midst of my crisis I was a struggling catholic. Aware of mortal sin, the need for confession and mass. But ever since the whole pope Francis communion for remarried business began, it made my weakened faith weaker. It is as if a shrapnel found its way to the core of my faith in my heart.

I cannot bring myself to deny my faith. I still believe God is God and Jesus is Jesus. Sometimes I even believe the church is the church. But to be honest, my faith in the church has been severely wounded.

I may think in my head that the church is true and infallible but this truth no longer reaches my heart. And so the church’s commands have lost their hold on me. I no longer feel guilty about skipping Sunday mass and have been praying to God to forgive me when I sin and to get me to go to Church on Sunday and to confession. But the motivation just isn’t there as it was before.

Because before I didnt just believe in the church intellectually but trusted in her too. Now I just don’t. I feel as if the highest members themselves seem unconvinced that the church has such claims to truth, and this sort of kills my own conviction. I know this must only mean that my faith was weak before. When the storm came, it blew it away and my faith crushed like the house built on sand or blew away like the seeds without roots.

But I had withstood a lot of assaults and difficulties that came with the faith. The abuse scandals, while painful and embarrassing, never phased me. I knew those priests were sinners and even traitors to the church but the church herself was true. But the combination of a painful several years of several losses in my own personal life and many humiliations had me doubting already and the last straw was that period that started with the pope opening up communion for remarried without renunciation first, that painful period of back and forth in the church, the synod, politics, up to the encyclical…it just about shredded my faith. It was so painful that I think I ended up disconnecting my heart from the church in order to avoid the anticipated pain of watching sacred teachings overturned and her whole credibility thrown into the sea.

What hurt me the most was not just the prelates who were pushing this but that it was a continuation and even the climax of a theme in my own personal life at that time for a few years: I felt like my faith was a joke. I became scared of trusting God because I felt like he was putting me through too much pain without relief. Not answering my prayers. I felt abandoned. The church was my only pillar in that dark time when I thought no relief would ever come to me and so when suddenly she of all things became also unstable and unsure I’d just about reached my limit. And so I think I withdrew my heart as a psychological defense mechanism. My whole worldview was shaken to its core. I once wrote in a journal that I felt I was mourning Jesus as if he was dead to my soul. My soul wanted him back. I couldnt let go of the goodness that I found when I first entered the faith. I couldnt belueve it was all a sham. I used to pray: pkease let it be true. I couldnt imagine a world without that ultimate goodness undergirding it. That despair was terrible to me. I still talk to God and pray but I dont have the life of rhe sacraments.

Now, for about 2 years, my personal life has slowly turned around in the external sense. It’s no longer one nightmare after another. I am constantly wanting myself to go back to my lost faith even though i dont know i can feel the same. I occasionally go for confession and mass maybe once every 6 months. I just cant divorce myself from the faith, but also find that i just dont have the same belief in the church that I used to have. Everytime I plan on going for confession or mass, something happens. I lose motivation. Its like I have a faith that is dead. I think certain things are true but i m just not in love any more.

Please pray for me that my heart may find a new love for God. Like the first time, it was love for God that motivated me to the church. Please pray that I may find love and strength in truth.
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Please do not take this the wrong way but when meet folk like you I say, it is OK to lose faith in the church but not to lose faith in Jesus… do you see the difference?
 
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a gentle Father and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our sorrows, so that we can offer others, in their sorrows, the consolation that we have received from God ourselves.
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Faith from our Father is a flowing faith, and does need a fexability as we transit from one stage of our life to another. We are fed milk in our early stages, and then later real food.

This is really what many others have gone thru before you. And the words of Jesus are words of success, “learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart.” He was meek/gentle towards all, and humble in placing all of us first before himself. Using this may lead you someday to give someone else encouragement and help because he allowed you this experience. We profit from all he sends us, and as Jesus said, “let nothing go to waste.”

As far as the church allowing divorced/remarried persons to receive communion, my understanding is that only in special situations is this possible. Sometimes a married person knows that their first marriage was invalid, but gathering the proof may be impossible since people die, move on, or simply won’t cooperate. In those cases where the person’s first marriage can’t be paper proven to be invalid, yet it is still known to be invalid, then I believe they will be permitted to communion. It will not be an open invitation for all divorced/remarried persons to communion. This will not change the moral code we follow but just a pastorial change to include more who should be allowed to receive. This would also be prefixed with the reception of the sacrament of penance.

What you are going thru can be one of the darkest moments in your life. But this too will pass and the springtime of your joy will return.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a gentle Father and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our sorrows, so that we can offer others, in their sorrows, the consolation that we have received from God ourselves.
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I myself experience emotions or thoughts from time to time that could be said to be a loss of faith. But it isn’t a loss of faith. It is just an emotion or a fleeting thought that enters my mind which I may choose to dwell on. That isn’t to dismiss its power. But it may help to keep in mind we can’t control our feelings or even thoughts that enter our mind. Being faithful is carrying on despite hardship and especially when we don’t feel like it. I know in my own life it is easy to be faithful when my emotions and thoughts encourage it. The real challenge is when I don’t have that motivation.
I know this must only mean that my faith was weak before.
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Not necessarily. It might be your expectations and perception of historical reality may have been off. I may be wrong but it seems to me some of the crisis you are experiencing comes from a doubt about the steadfastness of the church or at least its leaders. There has always been trouble in the church. There have always been those in the church, including leaders, who have not lived the faith.

There is also a long history of individual priests and even bishops not teaching the true faith. If you look back at history you’ll find things like the Arian heresy where a large number of bishops didn’t hold to orthodoxy. You’ll find popes who didn’t live right and some who even encouraged if not held erroneous beliefs. The key is these errors didn’t stand and were never taught to the whole church. They were never said to be part of Tradition. It was Tradition that corrected these falsehoods. Keeping that in mind nothing you see today challenges the steadfastness of the Church. While there will be until the end individuals or even groups who seem to not be orthodox any such teachings will be corrected. The correction can play out slowly so that given our short lifespan it seems the error is winning. But it isn’t.
 
You should do a quick look through Church history; you will see that there has always been controversy going on. That’s what helped me out when I was getting nervous. I looked and said, wow they had problems too in that time! But if the Church made it through all that, the Church can survive and prosper now 🙂
 
Loyalty to Jesus Christ is loyalty to his Church because it’s the Church he founded. By the way I want people who are claiming that Pope Francis said that Pope Francis said that people who are divorced and remarried in a civil divorce and remarriage can receive communion haven’t even read his documents don’t listen to the news I keep telling people that if you want news go to news.va. by the way, you can read all the papal documents online for free if you want to know what it really says and I would suggest reading it in Latin and Italian if you speak them. you’re in my prayers but you need to let this go and that one comment about fidelity mean to Jesus Christ being separate from the church is not accurate you cannot have Jesus Christ without the Church and vice versa. Pope Francis actually did say that or something along those lines.
 
Not all our popes throughout the years have been perfect … eventually the Church finds its way back … I don’t worry about the Church … I worry about my soul and my faith in the Lord … I am supposed to judge only myself … so that’s what I do.
 
Rosebud77 said:
Please do not take this the wrong way but when meet folk like you I say, it is OK to lose faith in the church but not to lose faith in Jesus… do you see the difference?
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There is no difference. Jesus Christ and His Church, the Catholic Church are One and the Same.

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter. - St. Joan of Arc
 
Amen. Stop reading the blogs and other sometimes misinformed sources.
Your personal relationship with God and the state of your soul is paramount.
I suspect you know your reluctance to practice is wrong, or you would not have asked for advice.
Be at peace. Read the Psalms daily, listen intently to the readings at Mass, listen to your priest’s homily. Go to confession and be one with the Lord in Eucharist.
The see if your life doesn’t get a whole lot better.
Feelings and doubts can deceive us.
Go back to the Mass.
He did it for you.
I’ll pray fro you.
 
I wish I had the perfect words to console you. Your post was very honest and heartfelt. I can relate to a lot of it even if I’m not in the same space of despair over my faith (and I’m not saying I have had zero trials but not as difficult as what you’re going through). When we’re in a state of burnout because life has just brought one crisis after another, that I for sure can empathize with. During such times we are way more vulnerable to doubts about just about anything, a vulnerability that Satan will not miss an opportunity to exploit.

The worries about whether the Church’s teachings are under threat has occurred to me and it can be unsettling. I’m hoping that the recent developments aren’t going to be a problem - that they will be applied very cautiously and not be construed in an overly permissive way, and that those of us who have avoided going against the teachings won’t feel like our own sacrifices for the sake of upholding the Church’s teachings didn’t matter and we might as well have gone ahead and acquired a spouse and kids via illicit means - as in the popular saying “better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

My conclusions have been twofold: 1) to trust that much of the reporting has been given a liberal spin, and that the truth is not what many media outlets would have us think; and 2) that we must still respect the Church and the Pope but if our minds are extremely troubled, pray straight to Jesus and Mary to lead and guide us - and to the Holy Spirit to be with the Church. And then do our best to be at peace and not let our Faith be shaken. The Sacraments are still valid, God has not abandoned us and He never will. Hang in there, I’ll be praying for you.
 
I can symphaise with the OP a great deal, the controversy over AL has become almost a case study for me on why papal infallibility may not be real. But for now, I just carry on regardless because I don’t know what else to do.
 
Ginny89: welcome to the Forums. Your sincerity is apparent and your commitment to God and Christ will see you through this rough patch. Even St Mother Theresa talked about 'the dark night of the soul." She felt estranged for a long time but continued her work for the love of God.

As often as you can, sincerely say this prayer: "JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU."

Daily. Perhaps several times each day.

Prayer is lifting our mind and heart to God. A conversation with Him. Often we talk. Sometimes we listen. I developed my own two personal prayers in addition to well established prayers:
  1. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. grant me the Wisdom and strength to know and do Your Will. Not my will, but Your Will be done.
  2. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, grant me ever increasing Faith in You, Faith that causes me to attend Mass as often as I should and receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist as worthily as I can.
Please note Ginny, that my prayers are all about my personal relationship with Christ, the Living Son of God. While I am aware of the debates within the Church today and throughout history, I do not believe Jesus will judge me - determine my eternity - on how I chose to side with one debater or another - whether or not someone was allowed to receive the Sacraments. What I think of others is NOT how I will be judged. How well I tried to love God, how well I allowed Him into my mind and heart is the standard for me. It is NOT for me to try and judge others. I do not have enough facts and I cannot know the motivations in their heart.

I believe that Jesus Christ literally is present in the Holy Eucharist and comes into me if I receive Him as worthily as I can. That requires participation in Holy Mass and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation as often as necessary. That is my focus.

I pray it will be your focus too.
 
Rosebud77 said:
Please do not take this the wrong way but when meet folk like you I say, it is OK to lose faith in the church but not to lose faith in Jesus… do you see the difference?
Click to expand...
Very well said. And if someone is posting at CAF about this, there is still hope, desire, the shadow of faith, Christ, lingering there on some level.

Sometimes the Church can be more of a stumbling block than a help in this regard. Which is ok, I think God permits time outs. Faith is not the absence of doubt or trial. Time outs are not necessarily time outs in the grander scheme of things.
“…the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. ” Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being
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Ginny89 said:
Hello. Please bear with me once more for my long post.

I am a lapsed Catholic. I have been in a limbo of sorts where I believe but cant bring myself to get up and be Catholic anymore.

My last 5 years have been a tough ride. Lots of painful things happened to me including the suffering of a loved one who is now passed on, despair and my own fallenness, doing and saying things I never thought I would and being very ashamed. In the midst of my crisis I was a struggling catholic. Aware of mortal sin, the need for confession and mass. But ever since the whole pope Francis communion for remarried business began, it made my weakened faith weaker. It is as if a shrapnel found its way to the core of my faith in my heart.

I cannot bring myself to deny my faith. I still believe God is God and Jesus is Jesus. Sometimes I even believe the church is the church. But to be honest, my faith in the church has been severely wounded.

I may think in my head that the church is true and infallible but this truth no longer reaches my heart. And so the church’s commands have lost their hold on me. I no longer feel guilty about skipping Sunday mass and have been praying to God to forgive me when I sin and to get me to go to Church on Sunday and to confession. But the motivation just isn’t there as it was before.

Because before I didnt just believe in the church intellectually but trusted in her too. Now I just don’t. I feel as if the highest members themselves seem unconvinced that the church has such claims to truth, and this sort of kills my own conviction. I know this must only mean that my faith was weak before. When the storm came, it blew it away and my faith crushed like the house built on sand or blew away like the seeds without roots.

But I had withstood a lot of assaults and difficulties that came with the faith. The abuse scandals, while painful and embarrassing, never phased me. I knew those priests were sinners and even traitors to the church but the church herself was true. But the combination of a painful several years of several losses in my own personal life and many humiliations had me doubting already and the last straw was that period that started with the pope opening up communion for remarried without renunciation first, that painful period of back and forth in the church, the synod, politics, up to the encyclical…it just about shredded my faith. It was so painful that I think I ended up disconnecting my heart from the church in order to avoid the anticipated pain of watching sacred teachings overturned and her whole credibility thrown into the sea.

What hurt me the most was not just the prelates who were pushing this but that it was a continuation and even the climax of a theme in my own personal life at that time for a few years: I felt like my faith was a joke. I became scared of trusting God because I felt like he was putting me through too much pain without relief. Not answering my prayers. I felt abandoned. The church was my only pillar in that dark time when I thought no relief would ever come to me and so when suddenly she of all things became also unstable and unsure I’d just about reached my limit. And so I think I withdrew my heart as a psychological defense mechanism. My whole worldview was shaken to its core. I once wrote in a journal that I felt I was mourning Jesus as if he was dead to my soul. My soul wanted him back. I couldnt let go of the goodness that I found when I first entered the faith. I couldnt belueve it was all a sham. I used to pray: pkease let it be true. I couldnt imagine a world without that ultimate goodness undergirding it. That despair was terrible to me. I still talk to God and pray but I dont have the life of rhe sacraments.

Now, for about 2 years, my personal life has slowly turned around in the external sense. It’s no longer one nightmare after another. I am constantly wanting myself to go back to my lost faith even though i dont know i can feel the same. I occasionally go for confession and mass maybe once every 6 months. I just cant divorce myself from the faith, but also find that i just dont have the same belief in the church that I used to have. Everytime I plan on going for confession or mass, something happens. I lose motivation. Its like I have a faith that is dead. I think certain things are true but i m just not in love any more.

Please pray for me that my heart may find a new love for God. Like the first time, it was love for God that motivated me to the church. Please pray that I may find love and strength in truth.
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hi Ginny,

I am sorry that you are going through a hard time.

you are in my prayers

however, just one correction, pope francis has not “opened up communion for the divorce and remarried”, he has simply said that there are perhaps some situations where this would not constitute mortal sin. these cases would in actuality be pretty rare

perhps this is not a wise move, perhaps it will be abused but he is not teaching heresy
 
I just finished reading the The Rad to Character.
When you are going through a difficult time, it is hard to find solace anywhere.
What I might suggest is not reading the whole book, but only the chapter on Dorothy Day who is considered for canonization despite her checkered life. When she discovered the Catholic Church, her conversion was not because she found solace in the Church itself. What she saw was a fierce loyalty among the poor people with whom she worked. With its rigid structure, the Church provided structure to her unstructured life.
Often we seek happiness instead of purpose. Dorothy Day still struggled with that allusive quality called “happiness” throughout her life, as did St. Teresa of Calcutta. When Mother Teresa told Bishop Curlin about her dark night, he reminded her that incense goes upward.
One of the biggest points made in Road to Character is the importance of seeing yourself as part of a larger whole.
In today’s society, we are too often asked to seek our own passion rather than to ask what life is asking of us where we are at a particular moment in time.

The next question to ask is whether you are placing your trust in the structure itself, or in the One who is the Head of the structure. As Pope Francis said, The Church is a field hospital. It is where people come to be healed. It is comprised of the people of God with Christ as its Head.
 
GratefulFred said:
Ginny89: welcome to the Forums. Your sincerity is apparent and your commitment to God and Christ will see you through this rough patch. Even St Mother Theresa talked about 'the dark night of the soul." She felt estranged for a long time but continued her work for the love of God.

As often as you can, sincerely say this prayer: "JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU."

Daily. Perhaps several times each day.

Prayer is lifting our mind and heart to God. A conversation with Him. Often we talk. Sometimes we listen. I developed my own two personal prayers in addition to well established prayers:
  1. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. grant me the Wisdom and strength to know and do Your Will. Not my will, but Your Will be done.
  2. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, grant me ever increasing Faith in You, Faith that causes me to attend Mass as often as I should and receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist as worthily as I can.
Please note Ginny, that my prayers are all about my personal relationship with Christ, the Living Son of God. While I am aware of the debates within the Church today and throughout history, I do not believe Jesus will judge me - determine my eternity - on how I chose to side with one debater or another - whether or not someone was allowed to receive the Sacraments. What I think of others is NOT how I will be judged. How well I tried to love God, how well I allowed Him into my mind and heart is the standard for me. It is NOT for me to try and judge others. I do not have enough facts and I cannot know the motivations in their heart.

I believe that Jesus Christ literally is present in the Holy Eucharist and comes into me if I receive Him as worthily as I can. That requires participation in Holy Mass and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation as often as necessary. That is my focus.

I pray it will be your focus too.
Click to expand...
Very well said. I see the OP’s post as indicating that she is not wanting to give up. The struggle can be very intense but hopefully some helpful things are being said on this thread for her.
 
It is always easy to lose motivation when restarting an old habit. You go back mentally to the time when you stopped doing the habit.

But… If you keep going back to church, your mind will start to establish a new way of thinking. And the more you go, the easier it will get. It will be as easy as any other habit.

We will pray for you.
 
All I can add is the old Nike Shoe line, “Just Do It!” Go to church and hear from the priest what is going on, not from the press! I was self estranged for well over 20 years, now I am back, and my soul is healing nicely. praying you find your way as well.
 
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