What drew to to the Catholic Website and Forums?

[adelore]

This is truely ment to be a Friendly Question…

What drew you (if your non-Catholic) to join a Catholic Website Forum? Again this is not to start a debate for whatever you reasons were…but I was just wondering, why would Non-Catholics join a Catholic Forum?

I’ll go first in the Reverse sort of…For years I joined many Non-Catholic Forums, I had fallen away from the Catholic Church…I was looking for answers, and what I thought was searching for the Truth… 25 plus years later…(after studing many other religions) I was lead back home to the Catholic Church…and I started to study the Catholic Church with an open mind…(even though I was a craddle Catholic) to compare and seek complete Truths.

So that’s my story, What’s yours?

 

[JonNC]

This is truely ment to be a Friendly Question…

What drew you (if your non-Catholic) to join a Catholic Website Forum? Again this is not to start a debate for whatever you reasons were…but I was just wondering, why would Non-Catholics join a Catholic Forum?

I’ll go first in the Reverse sort of…For years I joined many Non-Catholic Forums, I had fallen away from the Catholic Church…I was looking for answers, and what I thought was searching for the Truth… 25 plus years later…(after studing many other religions) I was lead back home to the Catholic Church…and I started to study the Catholic Church with an open mind…(even though I was a craddle Catholic) to compare and seek complete Truths.

So that’s my story, What’s yours?

First, adelore, thank you for going first. It shows your sincere interest.

I am a cradle Lutheran re-examining my confession, and exploring Catholicism. Discouraged by some of the current trends in Lutheranism, from relativism and modernism in some circles, and a seemingly stubborn resistance to ecumenism in others.
Jon

 

[geometer]

I was using a search engine and found a thread here on sacred geometry. I created a website on sacred geometry.

www.theosopher.com

Best regards,

Vincent

 

[4Squarebaby]

I’m in what most members here would consider a mixed marriage. A google search on some forgotten question brought me here now I mostly lurk around.

 

[Peter_J]

What drew you (if your non-Catholic) to join a Catholic Website Forum?

That’s a relief.

When I read the title of this thread, I figured that the words “the Catholic Website” were a misprint, but I wasn’t sure.

 

[The_Iambic_Pen]

I was researching the Prayer to St. Michael. When I was in Iraq in 2005, someone had taped it to the window of one of our humvees, and I was curious about it.

 

[gcnuss]

This is truely ment to be a Friendly Question…

What drew you (if your non-Catholic) to join a Catholic Website Forum? Again this is not to start a debate for whatever you reasons were…but I was just wondering, why would Non-Catholics join a Catholic Forum?

adelore,

I’ll try to make a long story short.

I am a lifelong Lutheran, now in the ELCA but raised in one of its predecessor bodies (and, in turn, raised in one of that predecessor body’s predecessor bodies). If that doesn’t confuse you, I’m doing better than I thought.

I need to go back to my formative years (fifty years ago) when I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church. The pastor who confirmed me was a vociferous anti- Catholic and his views colored my impressions of Catholicism for many years. My thoughts about the Catholic Church had been changing – my wife and I even sent our daughters to the local parochial school.

I have been more or less active in one or another Catholic forum for ten years or so. I began exploring Catholicism as a result of attending a Lutheran/Catholic conference (the Aquinas-Luther Conference at Lenoir-Rhyne College) and being very surprised at the ecumenical tone of the speakers. I began reading extensively about Catholicism even as I was going through the process of discerning my call to the ministry.

The upshot of all this was that (1) I have remained a Lutheran, (2) that I entered the seminary and was ordained at the age of 62, and (3) that I have developed and maintain a strong interest in Lutheran/Catholic dialogue. My prayer is that one day we will again all be one as our Lord prayed that those who follow him would be one.

 

[Detales]

Curiosity drew the Cath. Ex-cath, actually. I grew up in the Church and was a believing, devoted, well catechised, proselytizing member of the Church. Then I had what I call my discontinuity experience. To vastly undersate it, my life and all its premises were suddenly and completely pulled out from under me by a rather different state of awareness. I had had mild “religious” experiences before, but this one was of an altogether different catagory. It sent me asking questions that no catechism, Bible tract, CCC, encyclical, nor any clergy could even begin to address on terms of any meaning appropriate to what had happened to me. “Have faith and it will pass” was as useful as “maybe you’re not pregnant” might be to a woman in her ninth month.

At any rate, I left the Church on grounds of insufficiency of accountability for this catagory of experience. And, as I sought my answer, it became clear that a lot of things didn’t stack up other than as an internal argument for the “authority” of the Church. In my mind and experience, over time this has been increasingly confirmed. Yet I would not advise any firm believer to drop their faith or go elsewhere. There are very good reasons for this. Also, my reply here is to the original poster who has also looked elsewhere and has come back to the Church. That is well and good if that satisfies the need.

I did, after much searching within and without the Church, find a remarkably accurate and appropriate understanding of not only the phenomenon I had experienced, but of all of my theological uncertainties and conflicts. That was over thirty years ago. The resolution I found at that time has proved to pass every test I could come up with and has been unfolding in depth, meaning, and practicality for me ever since. It has of late even been of great use in seeing the Catholic Church in a new, though differently cast light. The Church, yet, I found, holds the treasuers I discovered elsewhere, but they are secreted, hidden, and discouraged.

So I came on here hoping to dig up my old Catholic bones and see if Yoric could yet teach me anything more. It has been everything from a very, very dismaying to a somewhat hopeful experience. I am greatful, for sure for my early education. Had I not been such a devoted Catholic, I might not have found what I did. In any case, it has been a revelation and a confirmation to see from a different perspective what I once was in terms of belief.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

I was using a search engine and found a thread here on sacred geometry. I created a website on sacred geometry.

www.theosopher.com

Best regards,

Vincent

Gabriel of 12:

Hi geometer; ever heard of the ancient biblical study “Gematria”? This study of scripture using numbers and symbols brings the whole content of the text to the surface for me. Its not practiced or as popular as it was with the Early Catholic church Fathers, they wrote volumes of this stuff interpreting scripture using numbers and symbols. Will visit your site thanks.

 

[ufamtobie]

adelore,

The upshot of all this was that (1) I have remained a Lutheran, (2) that I entered the seminary and was ordained at the age of 62, and (3) that I have developed and maintain a strong interest in Lutheran/Catholic dialogue. My prayer is that one day we will again all be one as our Lord prayed that those who follow him would be one.

IF you truly want our Lords prayer answered and be one with him you must start with yourself for there is only one Church that Jesus Christ founded and yes it is the Catholic Church all others chuchessss came 1500 years later.

To be one with Jesus, is to be one in his house that he founded.

Ufamtobie

 

[why_me]

What drew me to this section of the forum was the anti-mormonism of some posters. I felt that the lds church needed some defending. And so, I am here.

 

[Bookworm88]

A forum I was at several years ago had a Catholic member who engaged me in numerous discussions. I was a Baptist. and she had grown up as a Baptist, so she knew exactly where I was coming from whenever I asked a question, and she answered my questions with Scripture. In one of her posts, she invited people to check out this Catholic forum here of which she was a member. I don’t remember her screen name, and she didn’t actually post much here, but mostly used this forum for a resource. So in the course of checking out the forum, I decided to throw in my two cents in a thread or two.