There seem to be 2 types of former catholics that I have met .?

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There seem to be 2 types of former catholics that I have met.

Have you found more types?
I Met them at Assembly of god church
And at SDA. .
The generally say they like the fellowship.

What reasons have you found?
 
The hierarchy of the church allowed for a very evil person to nearly drive our family to ruin for no other reason than a personal vendetta. One of my brothers goes to a Christian church that’s what I call a “pop up”. He won’t attend any church with any sort of higherarchy. I think fear of higharchy is fairly common.
 
My husband’s ministry is restoring fallen away Catholics. I have met many ‘types’; documented victims of sexual abuse, those who were from Catholic families but were not raised Catholic, those who married outside the faith and left, those who left for protestant or Eastern Orthodox churches. Many types, many reasons and one big reason to restore the lost lambs.
 
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The main reasons I’ve come across are those who left due to misunderstanding, and those who left because they were unwilling to give up a particular sin.

I’ve met very few people who left because of legitimate theological issues not born of a misunderstanding of Church teaching.
 
It has been estimated that at least half of children baptized Catholic cease practicing at some time during their adulthood. There are many reasons for this.

Here are a few I know of personally:
  1. Family neglected to raise the child Catholic. This individual literally had to go to his mother and ask her what religion the family was. She was shocked he did not know, bu the family had stopped practicing after a move when he was a toddler. He had no religious education. (Literally: he did not know the Christmas story, that the Holy Family was Jewish.) He goes to his wife’s Presbyterian church.
  2. Catholic married an Episcopalian wife and the couple decided to go to her church as a family.
  3. Catholic misunderstood the principle, “no salvation outside the Church,” thought that couldn’t be right (which it wasn’t, in the form this Catholic had learned) and rejected the Church based on the impossibility of that being a just standard. This person learned the principle of invincible ignorance and came back.
  4. Catholic wanting to marry a non-Catholic resented that it was necessary to verify that the non-Catholic’s previous marriage was not valid in the eyes of the Church. Left because the Church was viewed as “legalistic.”
  5. Catholic suffered a unilateral divorce, wanted to marry again but was found to be in a valid marriage (because the spouse who left testified to the tribunal something along the lines of: “I knew marriage was for life and intended to be married for life when we got married, but I just didn’t feel like being married any more, so I left.”) The Catholic left in order to re-marry.
  6. Catholic only went to Mass for as long as he was living at home and his parents forced him to go. He was taught the faith but even in childhood did not accept that it was true. He is not religious at all.
  7. Catholic thought Pope Francis was going to finally ordain women. When that didn’t happen, the Catholic gave up and joined a denomination with female ordinations.
I’m sure there are many more…
 
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I’m not one ! That’s all I know or care about.
If I ever visited Rome - or Jerusalem -
I’m going to a Catholic ceremony - I love it 😊
 
Hello. The main issue is fellowships.

With other christians you can discuss spiritual understanding.

1cor. 11. Saint Paul says the people are the body of Christ. But to honor the communion ceremony.
 
thanksgiving said:
Hello. The main issue is fellowships.

With other christians you can discuss spiritual understanding.

1cor. 11. Saint Paul says the people are the body of Christ. But to honor the communion ceremony.
Click to expand...
Our parish has adult Bible study, both a midday and an evening group. (The evening group coincides with religious education for the children in public schools.) There are other discussion-group type gatherings.

What I mostly get from those who leave the Church, I would suppose, is a desire to be able to consider one’s own spiritual understanding as definitive. I have met a great many people, both inside the Church and outside it, who want to study religion without giving anyone else the standing to tell them they aren’t right. Theologically, they’re what I call “denominations of one.” They move around until they find a group of Christians that largely agrees with what they think–we should not imagine there is some denomination of Christianity in this country in which everyone who comes in stays!

This is probably why we have so many denominations in this country. No one has a message that everyone likes, because that is impossible when every individual is his or her own authority. No matter who you are, what you do, or what you do or don’t teach, you can figure on members moving in and out at will.
 
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Yes welll …very well said.
Fellowship with understanding similar
 
I know one former Catholic who was abused by her boyfriend who eventually went on to be a seminarian, and the parish pretty much excluded her and her priest apparently blamed her for the problems. So she talks about how she’s glad that she isn’t Catholic anymore because they never wanted her there, and I never know what to say.
 
Well, Jesus said himself that the Eucharist is his body and blood. It’s not fellowship, and then a communion ceremony- The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian faith
 
Hmmmm…as a former Pentecostal I can only think of 1 type of “former” Catholic I have met…those were glad they were no longer Catholic
 
thanksgiving said:
Hello. The main issue is fellowships.

With other christians you can discuss spiritual understanding.
Click to expand...
A bunch of people on here are telling you dozens of reasons other than “fellowships” whatever that is.
Most of the fallen-away Catholics I know just stopped practicing religion in general for various reasons. They aren’t interested in joining another church, discussing the Bible or “fellowship”.
 
Peebo said:
Hmmmm…as a former Pentecostal I can only think of 1 type of “former” Catholic I have met…those were glad they were no longer Catholic
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If you don’t mind me asking, why are you a former Pentecostal?
 
thanksgiving said:
Met them at Assembly of god church

And at SDA. .
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SDA and AOG are two of the most virulently anti-Catholic sects in the entire world…

Is there a particular reason you’re hanging around people who are rabidly anti-Catholic?

These people will eat you up and spit you out and have you repeating the mantra that the Pope is the anti-Christ in about 8 seconds flat if you’re not EXTREMELY well grounded in all things Catholic.

How knowledgeable are you about Church History, the Fathers, the Catechism, the Bible, the documents of Vatican II, the Liturgy, the Saints, etc?
 
The one’s I meet strike me as having never been truly there if you know what I mean.
 
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