Three cheers for "cafeteria" Catholics

[One_point]

@Lost Wanderer. What church teaching caused you harm? no one here is “shying” away from the possibility that the church teaching caused you harm. we are denying the very idea of such a possibility outright. If you would explain what that teaching was and what harm it caused, we can try to help you. I wager it is a matter of misunderstanding or misapplying (or both) church teachings that you are actually talking about.

My guess is based on your comment that church teaching somehow gave you a dark, mindless, stupid way of seeing the world. My first red flag. Anyone who spends any significant amount of effort exploring the depths of catholic church teaching cannot come out the other end implying some atrocities against reason. that’s ridiculous. Apart from the holiness of her saints, if there is anything that is compelling about the church to any objective inquirer even if they ended up disagreeing with the church, it is the church’s mind. the coherency of her thought, its sublime rationality. these are indisputable to a person who has actually looked at the church’s own thinking in its own merits. from your posts one might think you were the victim of some cult that somebody made up twenty years ago and whose claims no one has ever put through the tests of rational inquiry. sorry but I simply disagree. you are wrong.

 

[DannyGR]

@Lost Wanderer

It appears that at some point you sought out the Church without seeking Christ. If you see the Church as an institution just like any other and came to the conclusion it does not permit free thought or critical thinking, then for your sake I would hope you dissented from the Church. You certainly wont find Christ in the Catholic Church if you have that kind of distorted view of the Church.

God is omnipresent and caters to us individually, I have no doubt that people have found and came to know him without the Church. However, from the Catholic point of view, these persons’ knowledge of him is in varying levels incomplete and not as fulfilling. It took some good literature and me not searching for Christ in Christians, but rather me seeking out God himself to have the (albeit relatively small) faith I have.

I wish you the best in your intellectual and spiritual journey!

 

[St_Francis]

Funny. My personal experience traces my previously darkened and closed mind to humility, trust, and submission. Fancy that.

I feel like you and I keep going round in circles, but you’re on my list of people to pray for so I will say it seems our lives were the complete opposite. I lived my youth and young adulthood in a secular way, in the secular world, where everyone “does their own thing,” and I felt there was no cohesion. When God brought me round to the Church Ihad heard criticized all my life, I found clarity, integrity, and so much more! I feel like my mind was darkened outside the Church, by sin and by solitude. Once in the Church, sin began to loose its grip and my mind was no longer alone but in contact with great thinkers and with the greatest thinker of all: God.

I will say this, however: where I live, priests are very busy and lack time to answer a lot of individual questions. And I have run into those who a personally disinclined to answer questions. A lot of my learning I had to do on my own til the internet developed enough to “meet” others.