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Rence
Guest
One can’t force another to have faith, or to believe. Just saying they’re required to do so is lipservice. In addition to just not helpful at all.
What about those who weren’t asked to begin with?
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Lost_Wanderer
Guest
I’m sorry but I think that’s a very narrow way of defining those of us who have taken their faith less seriously.
Here’s what I experienced growing up. I was mostly sent to Catholic schools from child, teenager, and all the way through college. I was taught Catechism in high school and my college Theology classes took care of elaborating on doctrine, sacraments, Church history etc.
Yet what did I ever use that faith for? Self-loathing.
The product of that was an anti-social outcast, average Juan, whose contempt for himself only reflected in contempt for others (and vice-versa). So, when I finally put a stop to it, my ‘faith’ suddenly lost its purpose.
My whole family is the same and I’m just the last one who’s finally bent. It’s more of a case of tit-for-tat than complete ingratitude towards the Church. Our faith seemed to do us ill and so I don’t think it’s fair to chide us for not following the rules so much after that.
Did that mean we were all going to convert though? Not really. I’m, at the very least, too tired for that. Many of us simply stay because other faiths/non-faiths are even less comforting. Islam has its Arabic shades that are just too hard to shed. Buddhism demands even more self-denial and self-restraint. Protestants are only more extreme extensions of liberal and conservative Catholicism. As for New Age paganism, that’s just too hippie for my taste.
I’m not going to waste my time calling for some ecclesiastical reform but please, I wish the more faithful would get off our backs. If you want to preach some humility and obedience, at least have the humility to admit everyone is just in it for how happy it makes them (along with the fact that the Church has failed in delivering the same to others of its flock).
P
Phemie
Guest
I once had a priest teach a course in Baptism to adults involved in parish ministry. He related the complaint of a father who came to him complaining that all the kids learned in religious ed was “Jesus loves them”. This priest’s attitude was “What could be more important than that?” When you have that attitude from a Pastor you aren’t going to have the Baltimore Catechism front and center in the classroom.Love it. My mom summed up my years of CCD with one sentence: “It seemed like all you ever did was draw pictures of Jesus being nice to the children.”
And for the most part, that’s true.
OTOH, I had a question and answer Catechism in school in the 60s. We had to memorize the answers and spit them back. If we asked any question about the meaning, the teacher, who’d also been taught the same catechism decades earlier, could only say ‘that’s what’s written’. You couldn’t get an explanation for anything because all they could do was spit back the answers they’d also learned by rote. Faith? Not so sure.
Of course they also couldn’t answer my “Why, if a year has 52 weeks and a week has 7 days, does a year have 365 days rather than 364?” or “Why, if a gallon is 4 quarts and a quart is 2 pints and a pint is 2 cups and a cup is 8 ounces, is a Canadian gallon bigger than an American gallon?”
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manualman
Guest
And you charge the church with arrogance?
Millenia of the best minds and holiest hearts wrestling with Scripture and Tradition come up with an authoritative and consistent moral theology, but unlike all those fools, YOU actually ponder the things and think skeptically, so you’ve figured out what all those meatheads got wrong.
Nice work! Too bad all them oldtimers were too arrogant to just hand you the reins!
All us NFP using folks never ponder things. Nope, we just don’t even notice all those hormonally charged fertile times that got left a-wasting. If only we knew how to ponder…
OK, perhaps I’m being rude and snide. But at least I noticed when I was doing it.
E
ExCatholicGuy
Guest
And you charge the church with arrogance?
Millenia of the best minds and holiest hearts wrestling with Scripture and Tradition come up with an authoritative and consistent moral theology, but unlike all those fools, YOU actually ponder the things and think skeptically, so you’ve figured out what all those meatheads got wrong.
Nice work! Too bad all them oldtimers were too arrogant to just hand you the reins!
All us NFP using folks never ponder things. Nope, we just don’t even notice all those hormonally charged fertile times that got left a-wasting. If only we knew how to ponder…
OK, perhaps I’m being rude and snide. But at least I noticed when I was doing it.
E
ExCatholicGuy
Guest
Yes you are, and more importantly, you’re exemplifying the logical fallacy - Appeal to Antiquity - which is at the core of Catholic apologetics. Thanks for your post; you’ve reaffirmed the correctness of my decision to leave Catholicism!And you charge the church with arrogance?
Millenia of the best minds and holiest hearts wrestling with Scripture and Tradition come up with an authoritative and consistent moral theology, but unlike all those fools, YOU actually ponder the things and think skeptically, so you’ve figured out what all those meatheads got wrong.
Nice work! Too bad all them oldtimers were too arrogant to just hand you the reins!
All us NFP using folks never ponder things. Nope, we just don’t even notice all those hormonally charged fertile times that got left a-wasting. If only we knew how to ponder…
OK, perhaps I’m being rude and snide. But at least I noticed when I was doing it.
M
manualman
Guest
Not at all. It’s not the antiquity that validates catholic teaching, it is their fidelity to Scripture, to Christ, the Early Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, the saints…
My default position is that all these things are greater than I am. I do not suppose that nobody before me has been skeptical or pondered things (at risk of beating a dead horse). I suppose that they DID, and so I read them and their thoughts. And I generally discover along the way that the reason these people did not get lost in the mists of time (like all these internet posts inevitably will be soon) is that those people really were smarter and holier than I am and most other people are and people noticed.
Does this always make it easy to be faithful? Nope. If you’re looking for an easy religion, this ain’t the one.
J
jmr_1985
Guest
Living the Catholic life is hard. It requires a rejection of the things the world holds dear. While I have not read all of the replies, I believe another big problem is a loss of Catholic identity after Vatican II. I was watching the movie The Cardinal the other night. I look at those beautiful Churches in the movie and how the faith was lived and practiced at home and at Mass. People felt that there was something special about their faith and about the Eucharist. Today, my high school age future sister-in-law goes down the street to the Presbyterian Church for youth group and Sunday service because: 1) it is more fun and 2) her friends are there. It just makes me wonder if somehow Catholic identity was lost when the beautiful churches were renovated in the “spirt of Vatican II” and things like meatless Fridays were done away with. I’ve heard Steve Ray say that people wanted Catholic Churches to feel more like Protestant Churches, so they could blend in with American culture. I just wonder if maybe some lost the sense of why practicing the faith was so important, what the Mass was all about, what it meant to be Catholic.
JMR
JMR
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EasterJoy
Guest
I think the answer lies in the once-popular bumper sticker: QUESTION AUTHORITY
People now put their own judgment ahead of everyone else’s. Sure, they accept authority–but only authority that is leading them where they have been convinced on their own that they want to go! Taken to its logical conclusion, this makes the whole idea of putting one’s faith in revealed truth nonsensical, excepting of course when it comes to the sort of grasp of the truth that the person gains by the “revelation” of direct experience.
When the attitude is, “God, if you have anything to say to me, say it to me directly,” well, that is not an attitude that will have a shepherd. The Catholic faith cannot be twisted in enough directions to suit that attitude. No religion can, unless you count the trivial solution in which each one invents a religion for himself, worshipping a god of his or her own making.
Let us consider the way it was in St. Paul’s day:
*The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside.”
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.* 1 Cor. 1:18-25
There was a time when a Catholic was a Catholic, and once you were from a Catholic family, there was a limit to how much you could choose to assimilate. Why try to impress someone outside the faith and conform to their ways of thinking, if you’d still be rejected for your pains? If they were going to hang you for being loyal to the Pope whether you were or not, what temptation is there to be disloyal for some gain in the estimation of the world? Aren’t we all now tempted to defend the faith on grounds that the world will find wise or with signs that will impress the world, even though this is a fool’s errand?
The other problem is that a great many Catholics who actually want to know the Apostolic faith well have to go and learn it on their own. They have to come to Catholic Answers or read the catechism on their own or do what they can, because the teaching on the parish level is so often (though not always!) insufficient. There has been a failure to hand on revealed truth with the level of depth and breadth needed by an adult, IOW, and not just a failure of the faithful to accept it. Catholics are really left guessing about which religious writers are orthodox and which aren’t!
This has partly to do with the shortage of priests and religious, because that has necessitated the use of lay catechists who do not have a rigorous background themselves. In that case, catechesis is a matter of the blind leading the blind. My hair has curled at some of the things that I have heard lay catechists teaching. (No, not all of the popes have been canonized. No, there are not going to be women priests some day; Rome has been about as clear as possible about that. Yes, there is a required fast for Catholics before receiving Holy Communion…and so on.) Is it any wonder that the young might a reject a faith in which you hear things from the 2nd grade teacher that don’t agree with the third grade teacher that don’t agree with what Mom and Dad know at home? Giving the youth teaching that has depth and yet is all on the same page is important in order to hope that they’ll continue to accept the faith as adults, too, but not all youth get that, let alone have friends at church who get that, too. Even if your parents teach you, after all, are you not tempted to take an easier way that is being taught to your friends in other families in your parish?
People now put their own judgment ahead of everyone else’s. Sure, they accept authority–but only authority that is leading them where they have been convinced on their own that they want to go! Taken to its logical conclusion, this makes the whole idea of putting one’s faith in revealed truth nonsensical, excepting of course when it comes to the sort of grasp of the truth that the person gains by the “revelation” of direct experience.
When the attitude is, “God, if you have anything to say to me, say it to me directly,” well, that is not an attitude that will have a shepherd. The Catholic faith cannot be twisted in enough directions to suit that attitude. No religion can, unless you count the trivial solution in which each one invents a religion for himself, worshipping a god of his or her own making.
Let us consider the way it was in St. Paul’s day:
*The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside.”
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.* 1 Cor. 1:18-25
There was a time when a Catholic was a Catholic, and once you were from a Catholic family, there was a limit to how much you could choose to assimilate. Why try to impress someone outside the faith and conform to their ways of thinking, if you’d still be rejected for your pains? If they were going to hang you for being loyal to the Pope whether you were or not, what temptation is there to be disloyal for some gain in the estimation of the world? Aren’t we all now tempted to defend the faith on grounds that the world will find wise or with signs that will impress the world, even though this is a fool’s errand?
The other problem is that a great many Catholics who actually want to know the Apostolic faith well have to go and learn it on their own. They have to come to Catholic Answers or read the catechism on their own or do what they can, because the teaching on the parish level is so often (though not always!) insufficient. There has been a failure to hand on revealed truth with the level of depth and breadth needed by an adult, IOW, and not just a failure of the faithful to accept it. Catholics are really left guessing about which religious writers are orthodox and which aren’t!
This has partly to do with the shortage of priests and religious, because that has necessitated the use of lay catechists who do not have a rigorous background themselves. In that case, catechesis is a matter of the blind leading the blind. My hair has curled at some of the things that I have heard lay catechists teaching. (No, not all of the popes have been canonized. No, there are not going to be women priests some day; Rome has been about as clear as possible about that. Yes, there is a required fast for Catholics before receiving Holy Communion…and so on.) Is it any wonder that the young might a reject a faith in which you hear things from the 2nd grade teacher that don’t agree with the third grade teacher that don’t agree with what Mom and Dad know at home? Giving the youth teaching that has depth and yet is all on the same page is important in order to hope that they’ll continue to accept the faith as adults, too, but not all youth get that, let alone have friends at church who get that, too. Even if your parents teach you, after all, are you not tempted to take an easier way that is being taught to your friends in other families in your parish?
E
EasterJoy
Guest
No. The core of Catholic apologetics is the appeal to revealed truth as a superior source of information about God and the moral life compared to the wisdom of mere logic. If you cannot accept that, if you cannot accept that the Apostolic faith as the depository of divine revelation about Jesus Christ, then you cannot accept the Christian faith. This is in the plain meaning of the New Testament, over and over and over again.
Reject revelation, and you reject Christ. It is that simple. There is nothing to be done about it.
E
EasterJoy
Guest
There is this, too: One of the reasons that more Catholics are leaving the faith than previously is that Catholics do not face the kinds of unjust discrimination that kept us from having contact with people outside the faith.
We are less insulated by prejudices that lead to our being more or less shunned by the non-Catholic world, and which lead us to shun contact with many of them. To have eliminated so much of the evil of prejudice between Catholics, Protestants, and the rest of society was a good thing, but it does require us to be stronger in our faith than we may have had to be before. Breaking down unjust walls does give outsiders some pretext to believe they have standing to comment on how Catholics ought to act and what they ought to believe. It exposes us to many more temptations, just as when Constantine converted Christians were both freed from injustices, more free to evangelize, and yet also exposed to a whole new batch of temptations towards different evils than before.
We are less insulated by prejudices that lead to our being more or less shunned by the non-Catholic world, and which lead us to shun contact with many of them. To have eliminated so much of the evil of prejudice between Catholics, Protestants, and the rest of society was a good thing, but it does require us to be stronger in our faith than we may have had to be before. Breaking down unjust walls does give outsiders some pretext to believe they have standing to comment on how Catholics ought to act and what they ought to believe. It exposes us to many more temptations, just as when Constantine converted Christians were both freed from injustices, more free to evangelize, and yet also exposed to a whole new batch of temptations towards different evils than before.
A
Avocadomom
Guest
I actually think you are right-on. People either do not understand or do not accept why they should obey the Church or even be a part of it. The questions people really need to ask are: “What gives the Catholic Church the right to tell me what to do and believe? Are they just making this stuff up? Is any of this worth it?”
I think many people reject the authority of The Church without even giving the idea a thourough investigation. They just don’t like someone telling them what to do.
Right now I am very much discerning (this will probably take me months, if not years) whether or not The Church has the authority to “reveal truth.” It’s a very long, hard process for those with inquisitive, skeptical minds. I am definitely willing to give it a chance, though.
L
lily22
Guest
Glad I’m not in “school” anymore.
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manualman
Guest
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lily22
Guest
LOL!Does that mean you’re done learning??Check for pulse!
L
lily22
Guest
LolDoes that mean you’re done learning??
S
shelby_sun
Guest
There are many very well educated people, many going through 16 year of Catholic school, who are very well taught and informed on the Catholic Church’s teachings and have examined all the aspects, but still don’t obey.
A good example is the use of BC other than NFP. They see the end result the same with either one you use. The acknowledge that the amount of sacrifice is different, but that could be said about the amount one gives to the church through monetary means, volunteer hours, Mass time. They also see having sex when ever you want is most time a complete way of couples showing love to one another, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. It is precious and giving, so why should it be planned like a doctor appointment. That is some of their reasoning on that issue anyway and that is what parents are teaching their children.
M
manualman
Guest
Man, I must be going to the wrong kind of doctor!
L
LongingSoul
Guest
Are you making sure to regularly contemplate the Gospels as part of your discernment process? Not just during Sunday Mass, but at home during quiet times.This is the place where we are properly led to submit to the authority of Peters successor as “the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful”.
It sounded as if you might be relying only on your own intellect and perspective in discerning what you will believe, but walking with Jesus through the Gospels helps that confidence that the Church is the way of Christ.
C
Cojuanco
Guest
People don’t respect authority anymore, which is deplorable. You see it in our political culture, especially (disagree with them, but respect the office, if not the man). We’ve become too egotistic for our own good.
- Status