pro_universal's reasons for leavin the Catholic Church

[sven2131]

My reasons are as follows:

1. I simply do not perceive the hand of God in the Church anymore. When I was younger and understood less about the Church’s teachings, I felt more connected to God than I have as an adult Catholic. Learning more about my Church and history left me feeling less spiritually connected to God.
2. The theology itself was something I could not honestly believe anymore. The fact of the matter is, the trinity does not make sense to anyone who doesn’t already believe it. It is not a logical doctrine, and while I acknowledge that God is beyond understanding…this isn’t the case with the trinity. The trinity is easy to understand; it’s just contradictory, that’s what makes it so tough for outsiders to accept that it makes sense.
3. The history of the Church does not seem to fit one that has the full truth of God. Too many wars, too many mistakes, and too much intolerance.
4. The structure looks like “spiritual licensing” to me. I do not agree that God limits his substance and distributes it to authorized persons only, on the basis of ritual transfer.
5. The behavior of the average Catholic is not remotely like anything a first century Jew would recognize as good and moral. I realize that times change, but it’s apparent to me that Christianity in general is simply debasing itself to the point that whatever morals rule the day, are the morals conveniently taught by Christianity.

There’s a short list.

HI im new

I just know that the church is a hospital for the sinners, not a place to be perfect. Peter denied Jesus, Thomas didnt belived taht he resurected until he touched his wounds, every disciple abandoned him when he was arrested just john remian when he died.
this means taht we are all humans, the catholic church is divine n come straight from God, but the church is also made by men n men are sinners for their nature. and one can go religion to religion n we ll never ll find a religion in which peopel wotn do bad things.

about the wars of the catholic church they were in times that they belived they were the only belivers in God, and that the rest of teh world were unfaithfulls , jstu like jews n musulm .
but when Christophere Colombus arrived to america that made them realize that God is also with every pagan, n with every person in their cultures. and that there were not unfaithfulls.

one of the biggest wars were the crusades, it happened mainly cause most of Syria , Lebanon , Turkey, Grece, Cyprus, Egipt Spain, Cisily and otehr coutnrys had many christians n the musulms invaded those countrys n put those countrys with islamic law. also they were gonna invade more part of Europe so teh chrsitians had to do something about it. to try to stop the musulms.

 

[ssejllenrad]

Dear Pro universal,

I have seen your posts as a lurker for half a year now.

Were you really ever wanting to be a Catholic? I mean that. I am not judging you or condeming you, but just being honest here—

You never sounded comfortable with Catholic thought- and that is okay, I wish of course that was not the case- and I pray for you a lot!!!

But , don’t pull my leg. You really dont need an excuse to deny the Church, you only have to excommunicate yourself -----

or just pull out. I think you are a very thoughtful person and I like your passion – but no one wants to see you conflicted or not happy in the Church-

Just be sure you are right- I don’t say that as a threat, I ask you to challenge yourself to really be convinced that you have made the correct choice-

Beacause I love you brother, and want only good for you, and wish you rest from this agony.

IMHO, that is right where you are now. You are in the best place, that is a community of believers - and even though I dont like your views-

You are my brother. I would die for you.

Nicely said!

 

[Ella]

Ella

*Pro, I respect you for following your conscience. I pray that God leads you on your journey for the Truth.
*
Oh Ella, I wish you hadn’t said that. You are encouraging him to believe that his conscience is being truthful, when you know full well that he has been seduced by the Father of Lies.

Would you say Eve was following her conscience when she ate the apple? She too had been seduced by the Father of Lies, and was perfectly willing to believe.

I believe that Pro has the free will to do so. I don’t think Pro should remain a Catholic if he doesn’t believe in the Trinity or Jesus’ divinity. In fact that’s impossible.

 

[M_Oliver]

You are not a surprise to me M Oliver. So really what you are doing here is trying to negate Catholicism. The Trinity is a Catholic belief. You will gain very little by attempting to negate it.
Free will is only logical in God. If we did not have free will, God would be a slave driver. Also, we are not buddhists and we are not fatalists. Therefore we claim free will. If you do not have a free will, then it is not God in control of you, it is obviously the opposite. But again, that is a conscious free decision of yours.

Nope. I am not trying to negate catholicism. The trinity belief is not owned by catholics. It is very widespread. I don’t need to attempt to negate it, God never states that it exists.

Why is free will only “logical” in God? I’ve never seen that written. I’m completely confused on how you can say that “if you DO NOT have a free will THEN it is NOT God in control of you” You seem to be saying that BECAUSE of man’s FREE will God is in control? If man is free to will his own destiny then how is God controlling that destiny??

 

[M_Oliver]

Yes, God does direct all creation, but he does not direct angels and humans, as he does the flowers and nature. If you do not have the freedom to choose your own destiny then you say that God forces people into hell, and that is a lie. He directs human with the respect of their freedom. God predestines no one to hell. Humans are responsible for their sins says the Lord.

Help me out here. The catholic church teaches that angels and humans are not included in “all” creation? Maybe I am reading that wrong. It is sometimes hard to write what we exactly mean.

No, I am not saying that God “forces” people into “hell”. Please explain to me what “hell” is. I honestly would like the catholic definition of “hell”. I suspect it is the same as every other churches teaching, hopefully not.

Is it taught in your church too that a loving God can **torture a man, forever **and He would call this love?

 

[tequilamac]

Nope. I am not trying to negate catholicism. The trinity belief is not owned by catholics. It is very widespread. I don’t need to attempt to negate it, God never states that it exists.

Why is free will only “logical” in God? I’ve never seen that written. I’m completely confused on how you can say that “if you DO NOT have a free will THEN it is NOT God in control of you” You seem to be saying that BECAUSE of man’s FREE will God is in control? If man is free to will his own destiny then how is God controlling that destiny??

Obviously if you deny free will and state God is directing all man’s movements, you are saying God is capable of creating and acting like Charles Manson or the Son of Sam. If you say that God directs all man’s actions and man does not have free will, you are saying man has to sin because God makes him. And that is ridiculous. If you are sinning, or are capable of sin, then you have free will. If you refuse to accept that you have a free will, if you are forced into bad actions against your will, then you are controlled by Satan, not God. Because God is incapable of inspiring or directing, or forcing sin. Darkness exists not in God. So… who are you saying God is? Capable of sin or not?

 

[tequilamac]

Help me out here. The catholic church teaches that angels and humans are not included in “all” creation? Maybe I am reading that wrong. It is sometimes hard to write what we exactly mean.

No, I am not saying that God “forces” people into “hell”. Please explain to me what “hell” is. I honestly would like the catholic definition of “hell”. I suspect it is the same as every other churches teaching, hopefully not.

Is it taught in your church too that a loving God can **torture a man, forever **and He would call this love?

Your statements negate God entirely. Yes, angels and humans are included in all creation and you know the Church teaches that. You also know that god created man in his own image. Which means that man has intelligence and the ability to know right from wrong. When you state that man does not have free will, you are saying that man does not know right from wrong.

One definition of hell is the situation a person finds himself in when he puts forth that God is capable of inspiring evil actions or that evil exists within God. The position of having no God at all.Which is where you are when you insist that man has no free will and that man’s evil actions are inspired and directed by God.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

I’m taking this from someone else, but I can’t remember where I saw the formulation exactly like this:

1. God is Jesus
2. God is the Father
3. God is the Holy Spirit
4. Jesus is not the Father
5. Jesus is not the Holy Spirit
6. The Father is not Jesus
7. The Father is not the Holy Spirit
8. The Holy Spirit is not Jesus
9. The Holy Spirit is not the Father
10. There is only one God.

If there’s a way to get a more textbook example of a contradiction, I’d like to see it.

But the Scriptures do say that God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. The Scriptures also say that God is the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light.

I can understand you’re frustration with some things, but I have to admit that this doesn’t seem too difficult to reconcile with a clear analogy using the three primary additive colors combining to form white light.

1. Primary additive light is red
2. Primary additive light is green
3. Primary additive light is blue
4. Red additive light is not green additive light
5. Red additive light is not blue additive light
6. Green additive light is not red additive light
7. Green additive light is not blue additive light
8. Blue additive light is not red additive light
9. Blue additive light is not green additive light
10. There is only one white light made up of three primary additive colors.

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God”. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

On the one hand, The Trinity is One.

We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.”

On the other hand, the divine persons are really distinct from one another.

God is one but not solitary. Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: “He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son.” They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.”

In other words, the Divine Unity is Triune.

Note the Trinity’s similarity to the very nature of primary additive light: All three additive primary colors combine to form white light. Remember that this model of color, that is, the way the primary colors combine to form other colors, pertains to additive light only.

diycalculator.com/imgs/console-09.gif

I suppose that Christian revelation has, using this analogy, acted as a prism in regards to the monotheism of Judiasm, effectively revealing the One True God into three divine persons.

Consequently, I would suggest that the adversary’s light is more akin to the worldly, subtractive light color scheme noted on the right hand side above.

Please note: I admit that even this analogy is imperfect. But I think it demonstrates the working the of the trinity better than any other analogy I’ve heard before. And, as far as my limited human understanding is concerned when combined with the revelation from the Catholic faith, that’s how I see it anyway.

 

[pro_universal]

Mr Ex Nihilo,

Again, the analogy works precisely because you’re choosing a “parts make up the whole” situation. You can choose non-contradictory analogies all you like, but they won’t ever match the trinity exactly, which is why you are still compelled to point out:

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God”.

I do not see how the color example even remotely matches the trinity. Combinations of light don’t really explain how a person can be fully God, but at the same time, distinct from another person who is also fully God.

The idea of finding examples in nature is certainly a traditional one. You might be interested in seeing St. Augustine’s chapter from The Trinity…on the magical number six, and how conspicuously it figures in to different ratios.

All interesting, but ultimately do not, in my opinion, really give a non-contradictory account of the trinity.

The one logician I have heard comment on this issue said this about the trinity:

“That’s an easy one, it’s inconsistent.”

And looked at me as if I were crazy for not seeing it.

The best you can do with this doctrine is what you did: point out that God is mysterious. And maybe in some mysterious world, we need not be bound by rules of logic, but I refuse to believe that God revealed truth in a way that, if we think about it, we must conclude is illogical.

Mystery and metaphor is one thing; blatant contradiction is another. I don’t believe God delivers his mysterious words in the form of teachings that do not make sense.

 

[janryboy]

Oh St. Augustine! As I could remember, my Theology teacher (she’s a nun) told me about…St. Augustine was walking in the shore and he met a young boy fetching sea water, when he ask the kid, what is he doing? The boy replied that he was trying to pour all water from the sea in a hole(burrow in the sand) he created…imagine?

For this reason St. Augustine never doubted the Trinity anymore…for as long as he knows that his heart is restless until it rests on God…

 

[Ella]

The best you can do with this doctrine is what you did: point out that God is mysterious. And maybe in some mysterious world, we need not be bound by rules of logic, but I refuse to believe that God revealed truth in a way that, if we think about it, we must conclude is illogical.

Mystery and metaphor is one thing; blatant contradiction is another. I don’t believe God delivers his mysterious words in the form of teachings that do not make sense.

Interesting that you used to have no problem with it, during your years of being Catholic. Were you born Catholic, or Christian, or did you convert, only now to decide it’s all a lie?

 

[pro_universal]

Interesting that you used to have no problem with it, during your years of being Catholic. Were you born Catholic, or Christian, or did you convert, only now to decide it’s all a lie?

I certainly did have a problem with it. I was born Catholic, and as a child, didn’t really understand the theology. I don’t think most children do. I had an idea of God, and the understanding that Jesus did his work, but beyond that, no real clue beyond the repetition of the Nicene creed.

When I started to become interested in theology and philosophy, I found that the trinity was a deep mystery to me, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to make sense of it.

I told myself what most say here. God is mysterious, and I shouldn’t expect that I’d understand everything…and besides, I accepted the authority of the Church, so in that sense, I had to believe its basic teachings. If you accept that Jesus is God and that his Church is the vessel of truth in the world, then of course you will find a way to believe in the trinity.

I no longer believe in that authority, and so I have no reason to come up with inventive ways to turn a contradiction into something rational, and much less reason to resort to mystery to explain it.

 

[tequilamac]

I certainly did have a problem with it. I was born Catholic, and as a child, didn’t really understand the theology. I don’t think most children do. I had an idea of God, and the understanding that Jesus did his work, but beyond that, no real clue beyond the repetition of the Nicene creed.

When I started to become interested in theology and philosophy, I found that the trinity was a deep mystery to me, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to make sense of it.

I told myself what most say here. God is mysterious, and I shouldn’t expect that I’d understand everything…and besides, I accepted the authority of the Church, so in that sense, I had to believe its basic teachings. If you accept that Jesus is God and that his Church is the vessel of truth in the world, then of course you will find a way to believe in the trinity.

I no longer believe in that authority, and so I have no reason to come up with inventive ways to turn a contradiction into something rational, and much less reason to resort to mystery to explain it.

So basically you have become smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable then the average person. Good on you
For my own part, I think I’ll muddle around down here with the rest of humanity of average intelligence and understanding.

 

[pro_universal]

So basically you have become smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable then the average person. Good on you
For my own part, I think I’ll muddle around down here with the rest of humanity of average intelligence and understanding.

If you want to read arrogance into that post, I don’t really know what to tell you.

“smarter”, “wiser”, and “knowledgeable” are three words I didn’t use, nor did I imply them. If you read my post, the key was the acceptance of authority…but hey, why bother reading when it’s much faster to take a cheap shot at someone you’ve already supposedly ignored?

FYI, the majority of humans don’t believe in the trinity. And I would say it’s a safe bet that a sizeable number of Christians do not really understand it. I found that any time I engaged in basic discussions of it with non-practicing Catholics (when I was Catholic), heretical versions of the teaching were common.

 

[Contarini]

No, it does not. “Limited to” was not a phrase I used, and it’s not part of the teaching.

But by using a simple equivalence, that is what you imply. That’s how you get your “inconsistency.” I’m simply making explicit what is logically implied in your claim of inconsistency.

But certainly, the Body of Christ is God. Would you deny that statement?

Of course I’d deny it. You really don’t have a clue what orthodox Christians believe on this subject, do you?

Christ’s physical body is divinized by being assumed by His divine nature, but it is not equivalent to God.

I repeat what I said before: you’re assuming Islamic premises and criticizing Christianity from those premises.

It can at least tell us what Jews of today believe.

But why should I, as a Christian, accept the judgment of modern Jews? Obviously what they think is of interest to me–more so than are the opinions of any other non-Christians. But why should I assume that they have some kind of final authority over the interpretation of Scripture?

And we can ask how they ended up believing that Jesus as God is idolatry.

Sure, we can ask that. We can also ask why the many Jews who became Christians came to believe otherwise!

Well, God being too awesome for human flesh and blood would certainly be a contradictory reality also.

If this is what you call a contradiction, fine. To me a God who can become Incarnate is more awesome than a God who cannot. I see no logical contradiction here whatever. On the contrary, I see an increase in our understanding of just how awesome our God is.

And btw the belief that God is immaterial actually makes it easier to believe in the Incarnation. One could make a case that a being with a body of fire (which is how it seems to me the ancient Hebrews thought of God) could not possible become incarnate without wiping out life on earth. But if God is the invisible, immaterial source of all being, then it would follow that this immaterial being who created matter could incarnate Himself in any way He chose. At least, there seems no good reason to say that He could not.

The problem with your definition of “immaterial” is that it’s a negative one. That limits God. The Christian understanding is that God’s lack of a material body is a perfection, not a limitation. It follows therefore that God could become incarnate in a material body, as long as the divine essence was not limited to that material body (and of course Christians don’t claim this). The greater can be manifest as the lesser, but not vice versa. Claiming that the incarnation is impossible (as opposed to unfitting) is claiming that God’s power is limited, so that He somehow creates a material reality that can do something (exist in bodily form) that He cannot.

There’s another way your argument would work–and that’s if matter was seen as not just a limitation but actually a defect. That is not how Christians see it either.

Well, certainly some Jews embraced this idea that God was not material (the Christians), but they were rejected by the other Jews. This is shakey, to say the least.

What is shaky is your understanding of the history. The author(s) of the Shi’ur Komah were not Christians (at least there’s no trace of Christianity in the text). My point is that there’s no good reason to believe that God’s immateriality was a point of dogma for Jews at this point. Christians came to believe in God’s immateriality at least as soon as Jews did–possibly sooner. This was simply not the issue between Christians and Jews. Your way of stating the question is blatantly anachronistic.

 

[Contarini]

Again, as much as you want to argue the history, the basic teachings themselves are the contradiction.

But you have yet to state the teachings in a form that an orthodox Christian can recognize. You’re exhibiting convert syndrome already–you can’t state Christian theology in a form that Christians can accept. That disqualifies any argument you make against Christian theology, since you have rendered yourself incapable of understanding it in the first place. (I see this all the time on this board, usually between Protestants and Catholics.)

The numbered list is simple, but it’s also a collection of statements that you can definitely make about the trinity (they come from the Athanasian creed.)

Bunk. Nos. 1-3 do not come from the Athanasian Creed and are not Christian teaching. As you state it (and you must mean this, or else your inconsistency argument holds no water), no. 1 implies that God and Jesus are completely interchangeable terms–that everything denoted by the one is denoted by the other. No Trinitarian Christian teaches this. We don’t even teach this about the Father and the Holy Spirit.

1. Drop the claim that God is one and indivisible. A God with separate parts (and thus, limits) can fit this theory.

God’s essence is indivisible. God’s essence is instantiated in three Persons. The entire essence is present indivisibly in each Person.

You can say this is overly sophisticated gobbledy-gook, but if you say it’s simple contradiction you are demonstrating that you don’t understand it.

Edwin

 

[pro_universal]

But by using a simple equivalence, that is what you imply. That’s how you get your “inconsistency.” I’m simply making explicit what is logically implied in your claim of inconsistency.

Of course I’d deny it. You really don’t have a clue what orthodox Christians believe on this subject, do you?

Christ’s physical body is divinized by being assumed by His divine nature, but it is not equivalent to God.

 

[Mickey]

The entire essence is present indivisibly in each Person.

The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.
(From the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom)

 

[pro_universal]

But you have yet to state the teachings in a form that an orthodox Christian can recognize. You’re exhibiting convert syndrome already–you can’t state Christian theology in a form that Christians can accept.

I really would like to settle this issue, so please quote to me the language concerning the trinity which was untrue. I responded to your claim that Jesus’s body was “divinized” and not “fully divine” or “God” above. I’d like to know which line I got wrong.

Bunk. Nos. 1-3 do not come from the Athanasian Creed and are not Christian teaching. As you state it (and you must mean this, or else your inconsistency argument holds no water), no. 1 implies that God and Jesus are completely interchangeable terms–that everything denoted by the one is denoted by the other. No Trinitarian Christian teaches this. We don’t even teach this about the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Alright, then please explain to me the difference between Jesus and God. “Jesus is God” is a pretty basic Christian term. I can’t count how many times I heard it and learned it. It’s also a statement I can make without qualification.

For clarity, I’m inserting here a quote from the Athanasian creed. It uses precisely the language I did in 1-3: ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html

1. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;

Now that I’ve shown you the precise language I took from the creed, I hope you will not continue to call 1-3 on my list “bunk.” They are, after all, from an authoritative source.

Maybe for the purposes of explaining the trinity in a forum debate you’ve decided that this isn’t orthodox, but the fact is, “Jesus is God” is a well established teaching of the Church.

If you want to dispute this further, I’d really like for you to outline the specific differences between Jesus and God. (It would be odd for you to do so, since if you did, that would seem to be proof that Jesus was not fully God…or maybe you have some way of explaining how Jesus is “fully God,” even though there are parts of Jesus that are not God?)

God’s essence is indivisible. God’s essence is instantiated in three Persons. The entire essence is present indivisibly in each Person.

You can say this is overly sophisticated gobbledy-gook, but if you say it’s simple contradiction you are demonstrating that you don’t understand it.

Edwin

I don’t think it’s overly sophisticated. I think it’s an incomplete statement of the teaching designed to make it appear more sensible than it is.

If you just want to confine yourself to saying “three persons, one substance”, that’s fine. But when you start saying that the Father is fully God, and the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is Fully God, and that neither is identical to one another, and that each contains the whole three in its “God nature”, then you do certainly have some clear cases of contradiction.

Contradiction is the starting point for the debate; that’s what the greats like Augustine were trying to resolve, and that’s why they all eventually turned to the argument that faith alone will yield understanding.

 

[MariaG]

Having read over this entire thread, what I find interesting is that one of the reasons for Pro leaving the Church was over the doctrine of the Trinity because it cannot be fully explained.

Yet one of the beliefs of Islam is that the nature of God cannot be fully explained.

I find this extremely ironic as well as very sad.

To embrace Islam, one must believe that the full nature of God is a mystery. Yet in the next breath rejection of Christianity based in part on the lack of ability to fully explain and understand the nature of our Triune God.

God Bless,
Maria