To the non-Catholics and Catholic Converts here

[Jennet]

I am autistic. The difficulties that causes me has been the biggest problem I have encountered.

I’ve wanted to become Catholic ever since I was a child, but only began to enquire seriously when I was nineteen. Since then, I have tried to go through R.C.I.A. on three separate occasions, but because I didn’t mention to the presiding priest my problems with being around people I don’t know well, communicating through speech, and coping with regular attendance, I only managed to complete a few sessions each time.

On the 27th March, I am trying again… and this time, I shall be trying to persuade my carer to go with me as well as speaking to the priest about my difficulties. Being as I’ve now been studying the Faith for over ten years, I am hoping that I might be able to receive the relevant sacraments privately in the not too distant future.

 

[JRKH]

I am autistic. The difficulties that causes me has been the biggest problem I have encountered.

I’ve wanted to become Catholic ever since I was a child, but only began to enquire seriously when I was nineteen. Since then, I have tried to go through R.C.I.A. on three separate occasions, but because I didn’t mention to the presiding priest my problems with being around people I don’t know well, communicating through speech, and coping with regular attendance, I only managed to complete a few sessions each time.

On the 27th March, I am trying again… and this time, I shall be trying to persuade my carer to go with me as well as speaking to the priest about my difficulties. Being as I’ve now been studying the Faith for over ten years, I am hoping that I might be able to receive the relevant sacraments privately in the not too distant future.

I prayer for you that this will come to pass.

Peace
James

 

[fif1189]

If you still have qualms about approaching the priest despite JKRH’s reply, consider the RCIA director or even start the program at the Parish you live in. The first part of it is Inquiry. Your questions can be answered and may even help others. You are free to leave at any time. There is a point in time when you state your intention to become Catholic formally. But even then, if you are not ready, you do not have to when the rest of the class does.

My answer to your post is probably secularism. I had parents who had left their childhood churches (Father: Roman Catholic, Mother: protestant, denomination unknown.) I celebrated Christmas and Easter- the secular way - but knew about Jesus being the Son of God, but not how that was important. I sang Christmas Carols and other hymns in public school before political correctness changed that (along with other types of songs.) I attended what would now be called Vacation Bible School one year. I attended Mass with friends a few times, participated in a Quincenera celebration. But I also learned science (which is NOT the opposite of religion!) But I did learn evolution and perhaps that would have been a stumbling block had not the priest in my RCIA class said that Creation and Evolution are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I can combine my scientific mind with my religious heart and soul.

Probably my biggest obstacle was inertia! I married a Catholic man. My mother even once said that if I ever joined a church, it should be the Catholic Church! I made a partial decision to take RCIA when my first daughter was born (after we had been married 8 years!) She was almost 6 by the time I finally did and that was due to my husband realizing she needed to start CCD/RE and he asked about the RCIA program for me!! This Easter will mark 9 years as a Catholic, as a baptised Christian. I hold to the teachings of the Church, even if I can’t always defend them to my Protestant friends.

The qualms will be there but I will still approach him next time I go to mass.

Going on your last paragraph my atheist mother recently told me, “You know, if you want to join the Catholic church I would support that. They’ll actually allowed to have fun!” Also, by heritage, about half my family has been Catholic so to her I’d be keeping tradition alive according to her.

 

[JRKH]

The qualms will be there but I will still approach him next time I go to mass.

Going on your last paragraph my atheist mother recently told me, "You know, if you want to join the Catholic church I would support that. They’ll actually allowed to have fun!" Also, by heritage, about half my family has been Catholic so to her I’d be keeping tradition alive according to her.

This is wonderful…It’s good to know that you have your mom’s support.

Peace
James

 

[Bix]

RCIA

 

[mskejj]

As a former deist from a “Christian” family (my dad used to be JW and mom is pretty much a universalist now)…

existence of hell
deity of Christ
Mary
brothers and sisters of Jesus

I actually believed in the Pope long before the other things… I looked at the succession and thought that if Jesus really did start a Church, then it would have to be the Catholic Church.

Most of my family believes hell does not exist, but the more I read, the more I believe it does. A loving God would not force people to be with Him for eternity, and Hell is being away from God after seeing Him. The souls in Hell want to be there, and only God can read the soul, so it’s not for humans to determine that nobody wants hell, or that people should just be erased. There is no point in being pro-life if the soul just gets erased because eventually they’d be gone anyway.

I was raised to think that Jesus was son of God, but that he couldn’t be God because of the “father, why have you forsaken me” verse. But on closer inspection, that is actually a quote from the Old Testament about the crucifixion, and Jesus is announcing this. It also shows from a human perspective, people sometimes think God has left them, but He is really there all along.

I also used to find the Marian doctrines/dogmas a little strange. Some of them do still seem strange (namely, some of her titles), but I now better understand her role as the Mother of Jesus, Queen of Heaven, etc.

Another used-to-be-confusing thing is that some people think Jesus had brothers and sisters. But the references to brothers and sisters just mean family member (i.e. cousin; some of my friends from other cultures call their cousins brothers and sisters) and they are children of another Mary. The biggest giveaway is when Jesus gives his mother to John the Baptist to be under his care. If Mary had other children, they would obviously have been younger than Jesus, since she was a Virgin when she gave birth to Him. In that culture he would have never given his mother to someone else if she had another son alive. Her husband Joseph was obviously dead by that point or it wouldn’t have been necessary to hand her over to someone else’s care. So giving her over to John, the son of his mother’s cousin Elizabeth, only made sense if he was the closest relative.

I enjoyed your story…I just wanted to comment on when Jesus gave his Mother to John at the foot of the cross. John the Baptist was Elizabeth’s son and he had been beheaded earlier in Jesus’s ministry. John the Apostle was the brother of James and the son of Zebedee. We see this event as Jesus giving his Mother to all Christians when he gave her to John. Interesting fact, in Matthew 27:56 we see that John’s real birth mother was also there at the crucifixtion. The fact that Jesus gave her to John shows us on a literal level that she had no close relatives and on a spiritual level…that he was her firstborn and we are all her children through her son, Jesus Christ.

 

[Ubenedictus]

I was never a non catholic but presently im having problems proving papal doctrines from church history (especially early history). I seems i need to examine all the early councils again. Hope my case count
Ubenedictus

 

[batman1973]

Mary, and the existence and reality of Hell. These a huge stumbling blocks for me. For Mary, it’s the wanting to make her a Co-Mediatrix/Co-Remptress. This sticks out at me as a big no-no. And with hell, I believe it is real, and unfortunately people will be sent there by they’re own choosing.

 

[JRKH]

Mary, and the existence and reality of Hell. These a huge stumbling blocks for me. For Mary, it’s the wanting to make her a Co-Mediatrix/Co-Remptress. This sticks out at me as a big no-no. And with hell, I believe it is real, and unfortunately people will be sent there by they’re own choosing.

The issue that you refer to is actually “co-redemptrix” and this issue has been put aside at least for the time being which I think is a good thing - just from the perspective of clear communication with our non-Catholic brethren.
I too was shocked when I first heard about it but after doing some reading and coming to understand it a bit better, I don’t find it theologically so problematic.
The biggest problem is that the term, as understood in the English language, is not at all how the term is understood in ecclesial Latin.
Basically, in the Latin use, it is a term used to describe how Mary cooperated in God’s plan of salvation in a very unique and singular way.
In English though “co-” is seen as “on a par with” - like “co-pilot” or “co-council” or “co-captain”.

That said - I am very glad that the Holy Father has declined to make any such declaration for the simple reason that we have enough issues of misunderstanding between Catholics and protestants as it is…This, essentially small issue of semantics and translation, would just be another headache that it is better to avoid.

Peace
James

 

[fif1189]

A slight update, I put my qualms aside and asked a priest if I could meet with him to ask some questions about Catholicism. I have a meeting with him on Tuesday.

 

[JRKH]

A slight update, I put my qualms aside and asked a priest if I could meet with him to ask some questions about Catholicism. I have a meeting with him on Tuesday.

Hurrah…:dancing:

Hope all goes well…Stop back and let us know…OK?

We’ll be here…:coffeeread:

Peace
James

 

[fif1189]

Another slight update. The meeting didn’t happen, he apparently forgot and got called away to something else. I left my phone number and they said he would call me.

Hahahahaha, well, if I needed any evidence that priests are human too, I got it

 

[Della]

Another slight update. The meeting didn’t happen, he apparently forgot and got called away to something else. I left my phone number and they said he would call me.

Hahahahaha, well, if I needed any evidence that priests are human too, I got it

You might want to ask who is the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) director at the parish. Many people go through the RCIA program merely to see if becoming Catholic is right for them. Even Catholics have gone through just to refresh their understanding of Catholic teaching. Most catechumens (those who have never been baptised) and candidates (those being reconciled to the Church from Protestant ecclesial bodies) are going to receive their rites of initiation this Easter Vigil (the evening Mass before Easter Sunday), so you’d probably have to start next September. But, in the meantime you can talk to the priest (when he’s available), ask questions here, and pray, pray, pray. You have my prayers for your spiritual journey.

 

[JRKH]

Another slight update. The meeting didn’t happen, he apparently forgot and got called away to something else. I left my phone number and they said he would call me.

Hahahahaha, well, if I needed any evidence that priests are human too, I got it

Yup - they are human – and busy…

Peace
James

 

[Bob_Crowley]

So I have something I’ve been curious about, to those of you here who are not Catholic (yeah, all 5 of us ) and those who converted for whatever reason, what was your main obstacle(s) to becoming Catholic (As in, disagreements with church teachings, family, etc)?

I’m probably a bit different from most. The only reason I was “Presbyterian” was because my father lost his Catholic faith and rebelled. Part of that was having me baptised “Presbyterian”. He himself was a bit scathing about Protestants stating simply “They can’t even agree among themselves what they believe!”

I did get some training in Sunday School as a “Presbyterian”, but got out of it when I could, since neither of my parents went to church.

So when I did become Christian in the real sense, I initially went back to the very same church where I’d gone to Sunday School (despite spending a few years on other side of Australia in Perth). Sort of like God telling me you’re going right back where you started…

The pastor I had there, whom I often refer to in my posts as “my old Protestant pastor” was actually Methodist by training, a refugee from the Uniting Church merger of the 1970’s. So I didn’t get the hardline Calvinistic stuff I might have gotten from other preachers. Again I think it was God’s timing, and He wanted me to meet the man. While he discouraged me, I learnt a great deal from him.

He was never very anti-Catholic and told me he got along pretty well with Catholics.

Then I met a Catholic psychiatrist when I needed a bit of help with depression, and he was also very spiritual. I actually went to a family healing mass even before I’d become Catholic, at his recommendation. I was impressed with his depth of spirituality. He’d once been Protestant as well, or “Catholic by choice” as he put it.

Nevertheless even when I was getting this spiritual push to go Catholic, I resisted for a while. For most Protestants there’s a sort of inbuilt wariness of Catholic Churches, and I’d also married a Christian lady of Baptist persuasion, and I didn’t like the potential family division this posed.

But eventually I had an argument with a pastor and decided I was going.

As far as Mary, Pope, saints etc. were concerned, they could just go into the “too hard” basket until I’d had a bit of time to look into them. In other words, jump in first, and learn to swim as you go.

That’s about it. I didn’t have any real strong problems with it, other than the usual fear of significant change, the sort of thing CS Lewis put as that state of mind a man finds himself in when he is just about to join the Catholic Church or the Communist Party, from which there is no easy extrication, with the sense he’d just entered a room and the door shut behind him, triple locked on the other side.:frighten:

 

[SeekNFind]

There were several doctrines that made me “nervous” shall we say:
-Mary
-confession
-infant baptism
-validity of non-immersion baptism
-in persona Christi

But the Holy Spirit broke down all those issues. I simply accepted them and felt at peace. I also asked God several times along this journey that if I was making a horrible mistake that He somehow lead me out of it into the light. The deeper I got, the more I craved until I found myself yearning for the communion and wanting to go to Mass as often as I could.

 

[Ubenedictus]

Mary, and the existence and reality of Hell. These a huge stumbling blocks for me. For Mary, it’s the wanting to make her a Co-Mediatrix/Co-Remptress. This sticks out at me as a big no-no. And with hell, I believe it is real, and unfortunately people will be sent there by they’re own choosing.

just to add if the church decides to use the titles of coredemptrx and co mediatrix for mary she isnt MAKING her coredemtrix and comediatrix no, the church is simply admitting that which is the truth just like the definition of the trinity.
Ubenedictus

 

[King_Lazy]

So I have something I’ve been curious about, to those of you here who are not Catholic (yeah, all 5 of us ) and those who converted for whatever reason, what was your main obstacle(s) to becoming Catholic (As in, disagreements with church teachings, family, etc)?

“Is it true?”

That was the major obstacle for me. I will submit to the Truth, even if I don’t understand it or feel strongly against it; that has always been my attitude. So for me, resolving the issue of Catholic claims to truth and authority were the main obstacle. Anything else I felt I might otherwise disagree with became irrelevant, because who am I to argue against God and the two millennia of wisdom in His Church?

 

[Marybeloved]

“Is it true?”

That was the major obstacle for me. I will submit to the Truth, even if I don’t understand it or feel strongly against it; that has always been my attitude. So for me, resolving the issue of Catholic claims to truth and authority were the main obstacle. Anything else I felt I might otherwise disagree with became irrelevant, because who am I to argue against God and the two millennia of wisdom in His Church?

You’re exactly like me. Truth- and it alone, is the sole reason I will believe anything, especially the claims of religions, belief systems, or world-views. The rest really should be irrelevant. Whether we “like” this or that belief, if it’s true, then it’s true . No amount of disliking it will make it a lie, nor can any amount of liking a lie make it truth.

 

[JRKH]

Originally Posted by King Lazy
“Is it true?”

Truth and authority are indeed the core issues in coming into the Church but the most difficult one is (IMHO) authority. Every other disagreement between Catholics and Protestants comes down to this one issue…Authority.
A Protestant can make a legitimate claim to the idea of submitting to Truth in Scripture even if they “don’t like” that truth.

However…the issue of Authority, Christ given Church authority, is what keeps many out of the Church.
The funny thing is that, after I came home to the Church (the Eucharist really called me home)…I came to discover just how much the NT speaks TO the model of the visible and authoritative Church and how little (nothing really) there is in the NT to support the “invisible church” model.

Peace
James