I continue my study to understand WHY it is for myself and the rest of the Christian and non Christian world to become Catholics, nonetheless this matter has me further wondering
As one who has considered Catholicism and has no plans of conversion ---- those of you who have a number of generations in the church, maybe a relative or other close friend to you who became a priest and/or woman who went the process of preparation/etc to be in a religious order
Or you are part of laity with no plans of that changing in your life -----interested in sincere answers, no agendas relative to sides that divide in the church.
I am not too sure what your question is: do you want a cradle Catholic to tell you why you should be a Catholic or you want to hear why a cradle Catholic has stayed Catholic?
I may be wrong but I guess it is the latter. If that is, then thanks for the opportunity for giving my sharing here.
Even though I am a cradle Catholic, there was a time when my faith was indifferent and I was pretty much being sucked into the secular world. That was after college when I started working and experienced being financially independent.
I can say that I came from a traditional humble Catholic family. As such there was the discipline of practicing the religion; and freedom both in what we did and the things we had were somewhat limited. In other word, we were under the responsibility of our parents, and even grandparents.
Working life, as a professional, opened me to whole new dimension of freedom especially with the privileges and money at my disposal. I enjoyed myself by getting/doing the things that I could not have before. Religious practice became less and at times non-existence.
This went on for about six years until I got married and had children when I started attending church again. It was more for the sake of identity and for the children.
I started to become genuinely serious and ardent in my faith after a renewal experience in the Catholic Church. You can say I was sort of born again, borrowing the Protestant jargon, and on fire.
Now what was significant for me during the indifferent period, was that I never intended to change my religion for others.
To me, if I should be a Christian, it would be Catholic, which I was. Others were all inferior to Catholicism in term of originality as far as Christianity was concerned.
Protestantism was an offshoot of Catholicism. It simplified Christianity when it forgo its traditional practices and belief with its essentialism and so therefore, incomplete.
Orthodox, though has its originality but with the schism from the Catholic Church, it had lost the headship of Peter, and therefore lost its completeness in the inheritance of the apostles that Jesus had left behind. Its prestige was thus lower than the Catholic Church.
Those recent churches like the Mormon or Jehovah Witness were just too new and clearly were innovation of modern man.
Other religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam had never made an impact on me and therefore there was no affinity for them.
So to my thinking then and which had never changed was that if I were to be religious, it would be the Catholic Church.
That was my main reason being Catholic - she is the authentic Church that Jesus left behind and the fullness of Christianity is to be found there, so why settle for less?
The rest was history and here I am today.
God bless.
Reuben
