Lost faith in the church, can't practice

[z_0101]

There are so many good answers here already and it’s hard to improve on most of them…

One person here talked about the history of the Holy Mother Church, I agree, we need to learn about out Church’s history. One very easily read book is: Pilgrim Church: A Popular History of Catholic Christianity by Fr. Bausch. I’ve not read the revised version and it is co-authored. If you can find Fr. Bausch’s first release.

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, (…) 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 Devil delights in kicking us when we are down, turning us from our Faith, our Church, our God when we are at our weakest.
read the Book of Job in the old testament (link DR translation)

Even St. Thérèse of Lisieux had a Long Dark Night of the Soul
The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux With Additional Writings and Sayings of St. Thérèse (link PDF)

Reconciliation, The Holy Eucharist, along with constant prayer. Even when you think Our Lord isn’t with you, that is when he is most present.

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

Please, go, receive the mercy, grace, and love of our Lord through the Sacraments.

But ever since the whole pope Francis communion for remarried business began, (…) 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

Ah, this isn’t as you seem to think… so many people wanting something that simply wasn’t said - posting half truths. There are some very restrictive situations where the remarried can be re-admitted and receive
You should actually read (link - PDF - Vatican)Amoris Laetitia to really understand what was intended (ie pg 228). Of course this is a long read, full of some very esoteric commentary, and many very intelligent people have a difficult time following what is indeed intended; however, there is the following from Why all the fuss over allowing Communion for the remarried in just the hardest of cases?(link to the full article) that pulls the main point out of Amoris Laetitia

The faithful who persist in such a situation may receive Holy Communion only after obtaining sacramental absolution, which may be given only “to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when** for serious reasons, for example, for the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate**, they ‘take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples’”(8). In such a case they may receive Holy Communion as long as they respect the obligation to avoid giving scandal

So, there has to be a grave reason, repentance, lack of scandal, AND the remarried coupled must live as “brother and sister.” This isn’t the wholesale abandonment that many want the faithful to believe.

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.

Exactly what the Evil one wants… for you and for all of the Body of Christ to turn our hearts way from the Church that our Lord Christ established for the salvation of mankind.

I occasionally go for confession and mass maybe once every 6 months.

Perhaps, more often? I know, you’re in a bad place in your spiritual journey right now, each step harder, more discouraging.
If you have a parish close to you that has perpetual adoration, even if not perpetual just some Adoration, please, consider adding an hour of Adoration once a week to your schedule. You needn’t do anything except sit there and be in the presence of the Lord - even if he’s just there, with you in the tabernacle.

Everytime I plan on going for confession or mass, something happens.

What happens, a tree fall on your house, forgive me, I say this in all charity… however, a tree did fall on my house… literally - 60mph straight line winds for over an hour - old trees, they just couldn’t take the abuse.
The Devil will take every opportunity to make it difficult for you to receive the Sacraments.
Being Catholic is hard.
We are tested by the world in our faith during every moment of our lives, some of these tests are very difficult and these are the times when we need our faith the most - when we can see our way to it the least.

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.

By all means, and please, pray for me and my family.

 

[Ginny89]

I just wanted to come back and say thank you to all of you for your comments, advice, sympathies and encouragement. The main reason I joined this forum was for the ability to ask for prayers from people I knew would be faithful Catholics. I read each post on this thread with much openness and, I hope, humility. I will continue to pray. Thank you very much.

 

[exnihilo]

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.

I don’t know why papal infallibility would come into question over AL. The Holy Father isn’t defining a doctrine that must be held by the whole Church. The necessary factors to even be an infallible teaching aren’t met. It could be the Holy Father offered bad pastoral advice. It could be even really terrible and spiritually dangerous advice, but I don’t see it as a doctrinal issue.

 

[GratefulFred]

I don’t know why papal infallibility would come into question over AL. The Holy Father isn’t defining a doctrine that must be held by the whole Church. The necessary factors to even be an infallible teaching aren’t met. It could be the Holy Father offered bad pastoral advice. It could be even really terrible and spiritually dangerous advice, but I don’t see it as a doctrinal issue.

You make an important point.

I cannot and do not speak for Pope Francis. Just my own thoughts.

If we want to love God, we will do all we can to know Him and to keep His Commandments.

But God knows we are often weak and sin. He offers us the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The requirement, not often mentioned, is that we must be sincerely sorry for our sin and do our best to not sin again in order to receive proper forgiveness and enter back into a State of Grace sufficient to receive Him in Holy Eucharist. Yet we know we commit some sins over and over. Still if we are sorry and try our best we can be forgiven. But if we are NOT sorry, forgiveness can be withheld. That is a matter between the sinner and his/her confessor.

If one gets drunk and drives and puts another in a wheelchair or in a grave, one cannot go back to the situation before the drinking. Yet one can be truly sorry and forgiven, albeit there are criminal and civil penalties to absorb.

With marriage, many marry WITHOUT SUFFICIENT proper training in the responsibility they take on. We know this because the divorce rate is so high. It is so easy to get married and so very hard to get annulled. What should a merciful God do with those who realize they did wrong in remarrying without an annulment, but cannot undo it, and yet are truly sorry and beg forgiveness?

We understand that God is a Just God. We must make amends before we enter Heaven. Some will not admit they gravely sinned and He will deal with them too, not my concern. But we also understand that God loves us and is Merciful.

I think Pope Francis is focusing on Mercy on a case by case basis.

 

[3DOCTORS]

I just wanted to come back and say thank you to all of you for your comments, advice, sympathies and encouragement. The main reason I joined this forum was for the ability to ask for prayers from people I knew would be faithful Catholics. I read each post on this thread with much openness and, I hope, humility. I will continue to pray. Thank you very much.

So happy to hear that the answers people have given were of help to you. I took you to Mass with me last night in spirit and prayed for you during the Consecration, when our prayers are extra powerful. Along those lines, I too suggest spending time with Jesus in Adoration. I can go for my holy hour sometimes feeling tired, rushed, depressed, burnt out, discouraged, or any other negative way - and in the course of that hour I am transformed. I always leave in much better shape than when I went in. If I’m having a good day I leave feeling even better. It never fails.

 

[Casilda]

The devil has tried since creation to destroy us earthly beings, been beating us over the head since Christ Our Saviour crushed his on the cross over 2000 years ago.

I advise you to find a godly priest to talk to. Confess. Receive absolution. Join us for communion. We are all together in this.

 

[joeybaggz]

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.

Since your request is for prayer, I will offer that for you. It is the season for RCIA, for those coming into the church, and those seeking to deepen their faith. The entire church community prays for those going through the process. We pray for you too.

I do want to offer you a couple thoughts. I have been in your position to some degrees in my life. My problems with the institutional church have been numerous although not so onerous as yours. What comforts me is to look at the original twelve and see their bumbling, unfocused efforts and realize that Christ through the Holy Spirit guided them back when they wandered off the reservation. He has done that for almost two thousand years. Christ is in charge; hear his words, fear not.

Jesus once said, “unless you become as one of these little children, you will not see God, for such as these is the kingdom of heaven made.” As I age and my body and mind break down gradually, i have come to realize that my soul needs to grow younger,not older. Watch a little child and you see hope, trust, belief, love, and joy in them. Little children can control nothing, they are at the mercy, and in the care of, their parents. We in the church are totally reliant on the care of our heavenly Father, and His Son who created the church, and lovingly guides it through time. I offer that you watch little children, especially at Mass and in church settings. See how they are reliant on their parent(s) and through that insight, you may well find the love, hope, trust, and joy that you seek.

Shalom

 

[JPUSC]

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

Maltese bishops: Divorced-and-remarried ‘at peace with God’ may receive Communion (Catholic News Agency)

catholicnewsagency.com/amp/news/maltese-bishops-divorced-and-remarried-at-peace-with-god-may-receive-communion-39095

 

[FollowChrist34]

Did it ever occur to you that God might be calling you to use your faith on his behalf in this situation - that is, rather than denying him outright? I actually agree with the Pope on the sterility of that kind of clericalism - when you use it to work yourself out of the Church and your faith. Mind you, I think the Pope and I apply the concept of clericalism a little differently - I add this as a disclaimer. I think it’s clericalism when you theologize Catholics into Protestants.

 

[Ginny89]

Did it ever occur to you that God might be calling you to use your faith on his behalf in this situation - that is, rather than denying him outright? I actually agree with the Pope on the sterility of that kind of clericalism - when you use it to work yourself out of the Church and your faith. Mind you, I think the Pope and I apply the concept of clericalism a little differently - I add this as a disclaimer. I think it’s clericalism when you theologize Catholics into Protestants.

I think I understand what you’re saying. Perhaps we put too much faith in the leaders of the church. But I have not denied God–or Christ–outright. What has been wounded in me is my trust in the church. But I still believe in God and Christ. In fact, I think I still believe in the church too, even though it is an injured faith.

 

[FollowChrist34]

I think I understand what you’re saying. Perhaps we put too much faith in the leaders of the church. But I have not denied God–or Christ–outright. What has been wounded in me is my trust in the church. But I still believe in God and Christ. In fact, I think I still believe in the church too, even though it is an injured faith.

Excellent! Do what you can to heal it (the Church). Speak up. Read your Bible. We serve Christ after all. Be part of the solution as they say.

 

[fred_conty]

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.

Sounds as tho you are very confused and in dispare. The more you try to ferrit out your thoughts the more confused you will become. Now is not the time for logic which would only lead you into more confusion.

Get a miraculous medal or a green scapular of our Lady. Wear it or carry it with you at all times. Keep saying the prayer on them.

One last thing, put yourself in the hands of Mary and tell her you are trusting her to help you thru all of this. And she will. She herself said that if you ask, you will receive GREAT graces. But you must ask.