What's the point of being a practicing Catholic as a 20-something, esp men?

[Agnessa]

First, chances are you will indeed die before 35. This is something we don’t like thinking about, but there is a non-zero probability, however small, that you, or anyone else, would not survive for the next ten years - or even for the next 24 hours.

Second… you already used to be an atheist. But you decided to convert - why? Because your life felt empty with nothing but material pleasures, being sure that there is no God or purpose in men’s existence? I know mine very much did. Did something happen to convince you that Jesus Christ is, indeed, the Truth? If so, do you think you would be able to make yourself believe otherwise?

As a 26-old woman with no Catholic family (my family is mostly non-practicing Orthodox), I understand what you might be feeling, I really do. But in the end, I also know, that I want Christ in my life - and I want it more than an opportunity to not feel guilty for life of sin.

 

[Starrsmother]

The big answer is short, sweet and to the point. Are you a Catholic–and I mean are you REALLY a Catholic? If so, Jesus put no age limits on when a person was to pick up his cross and follow him. Moreover, if you don’t do it now, you are kidding yourself that you will wake up one bright day, realizing that now is the time and get your life straight and back where it should be. Virtue is practiced–as is sinful behaviors.

 

[MacBP]

I could make a long post cataloging all the trials and curious predicaments that go along with being a young person and a practicing Catholic who is 100% faithful to the Magisterium, (particularly for the odd case such as myself, who is an atheist convert with no Catholic family to speak of, which goes contrary to the way that the faith is normally passed on through family, schooling and tight-night communities) but really, I’ll just get down to it and you can guess what I mean by that:

Why shouldn’t I just live as a practical atheist for the next 10 years?

Odds are I won’t die before I’m 35, and I’ve got an eternity to get closer to God anyways. It just seems it would be a lot easier to be a practical atheist, in employment, dating, socializing, sex, than it is for someone such as myself, an atheist convert with no Catholic family or circle of friends (which usually form in elementary school anyway).

I guess I’ve found it difficult and not tried, but just for a while.

But then again, so have about 99% of other people my age according to this book, summarized in the video below:
amazon.com/gp/product/B00HWWPAXG
youtube.com/watch?v=myGzvGCgnsc

Thoughts?

I have plenty! I think the best way to respond to this post will be to share my personal experience. In many ways I’m like you: I’m a Catholic convert coming from a family that has completely rejected organized religion and largely rejected the concept of God. I decided to become a Catholic when I was 13/14. I was faithful until I was about 16 and then I fell into sexual temptation followed by many other kinds of sin and remained that way until I was 20. At that point I had another conversion experience and have been a practicing Catholic every since. These experiences would lead me to make the following points:

1. It’s much harder to repent then you might think. You’ll probably develop a favorite sin (mine was pornography and masturbation) and after awhile you’ll stop viewing it as a guilty pleasure and more as a necessity. When I started watching porn I felt a great deal of guilt and was determined to not do it again. After a few months of failing to resist that temptation I no longer wanted to remain chaste. So, after ten years, you may not longer want to repent which will put your immortal soul in jeopardy.
2. Sin darkens the intellect. Even if you don’t become addicted to any one sin, my own personal experience is that sin reduces your moral faculties. It is harder to tell right from wrong and good from evil. After ten years of sin it may be very difficult to come to that decision to repent on your own.
3. Sin leaves its scars. In particular, my experience with porn and masturbation has taught me that sin changes you. I’ve been refrained from both masturbation and porn for almost three years and I still experience an unbelievable amount of temptation on these issues, especially with porn. While there will always be that biological imperative pushing you towards sexual sin, the images and experiences associated with porn proved to be just as tempting. Not only must I resist the temptation to access pornography, I find that I must also resist the temptation to access those mental images. That has made it much… much… much harder to be chaste.
4. While confession relieves the eternal punishment due to sin, it does not extinguish the temporal punishment. From what I understand, that means your ten years of indiscretion may result a worse time in purgatory. I suspect that this will nullify any pleasure you managed to gain in ten years.
5. Our experience of the beatific vision is related to our practice of virtue. In other words, holier individuals have a better time in heaven. Ten years is a lot of time to grow in holiness, and you may be depriving yourself of a greater share of heavenly glory. Once again, more than enough to nullify any advantages gained in ten years.
6. You’ll be depriving yourself of Catholic friendships. Some of the more fulfilling friendships I’ve had in my life were those with a basis in faith. It’s difficult to form a relationship with a basis in faith when you don’t have one.
7. As someone else has stated, it will make finding a Catholic wife more challenging. A faithful practicing Catholic girl is hard enough to find as it is. Don’t take ten years of searching out of that equation.

OVERALL I must repeat that engaging in sin for ten years will make it VERY difficult to repent. I would not be a practicing Catholic if it were not for the special intervention of God and circumstances. Even so, the temptation to relapse is constant. There are many times that I sincerely want to relapse with masturbation and pornography. I want to sin, despite how severe the consequences are and how little the payoff. Like your post, I believe that I’ll just have a few days of indiscretion and get back on track. That’s not how this works. There are consequences for our actions. I know, I still have to live with them.

*** I know that you may not specifically be referring to masturbation and pornography but I think this applies to any sin you may want to commit.

 

[EasterJoy]

I have plenty! I think the best way to respond to this post will be to share my personal experience. In many ways I’m like you: I’m a Catholic convert coming from a family that has completely rejected organized religion and largely rejected the concept of God. I decided to become a Catholic when I was 13/14. I was faithful until I was about 16 and then I fell into sexual temptation followed by many other kinds of sin and remained that way until I was 20. At that point I had another conversion experience and have been a practicing Catholic every since. These experiences would lead me to make the following points:

1. It’s much harder to repent then you might think. You’ll probably develop a favorite sin (mine was pornography and masturbation) and after awhile you’ll stop viewing it as a guilty pleasure and more as a necessity. When I started watching porn I felt a great deal of guilt and was determined to not do it again. After a few months of failing to resist that temptation I no longer wanted to remain chaste. So, after ten years, you may not longer want to repent which will put your immortal soul in jeopardy.
2. Sin darkens the intellect. Even if you don’t become addicted to any one sin, my own personal experience is that sin reduces your moral faculties. It is harder to tell right from wrong and good from evil. After ten years of sin it may be very difficult to come to that decision to repent on your own.
3. Sin leaves its scars. In particular, my experience with porn and masturbation has taught me that sin changes you. I’ve been refrained from both masturbation and porn for almost three years and I still experience an unbelievable amount of temptation on these issues, especially with porn. While there will always be that biological imperative pushing you towards sexual sin, the images and experiences associated with porn proved to be just as tempting. Not only must I resist the temptation to access pornography, I find that I must also resist the temptation to access those mental images. That has made it much… much… much harder to be chaste.
4. While confession relieves the eternal punishment due to sin, it does not extinguish the temporal punishment. From what I understand, that means your ten years of indiscretion may result a worse time in purgatory. I suspect that this will nullify any pleasure you managed to gain in ten years.
5. Our experience of the beatific vision is related to our practice of virtue. In other words, holier individuals have a better time in heaven. Ten years is a lot of time to grow in holiness, and you may be depriving yourself of a greater share of heavenly glory. Once again, more than enough to nullify any advantages gained in ten years.
6. You’ll be depriving yourself of Catholic friendships. Some of the more fulfilling friendships I’ve had in my life were those with a basis in faith. It’s difficult to form a relationship with a basis in faith when you don’t have one.
7. As someone else has stated, it will make finding a Catholic wife more challenging. A faithful practicing Catholic girl is hard enough to find as it is. Don’t take ten years of searching out of that equation.

OVERALL I must repeat that engaging in sin for ten years will make it VERY difficult to repent. I would not be a practicing Catholic if it were not for the special intervention of God and circumstances. Even so, the temptation to relapse is constant. There are many times that I sincerely want to relapse with masturbation and pornography. I want to sin, despite how severe the consequences are and how little the payoff. Like your post, I believe that I’ll just have a few days of indiscretion and get back on track. That’s not how this works. There are consequences for our actions. I know, I still have to live with them.

*** I know that you may not specifically be referring to masturbation and pornography but I think this applies to any sin you may want to commit.

Not to mention that sin by definition offends God, who is all-good and justly deserves all of our love and obedience.

If we love God, how do we even entertain this question?

Someone once explained to me that when the Prodigal Son asked for his inheritance, in the understanding of the time he was essentially saying, “Father, I wish you’d hurry up and die, but since you are being slow about it, let’s just pretend you have, so I can get on with my life without you.” It was a gross and shocking violation of the filial love due to one’s parents.

To wish for a life of sin is saying essentially that: Father, I do not care about you. The truth is, I wish you were dead so I could be out from under your authority. Give me your bounty, and then get out of my life.

The eldest son in the Prodigal Son, meanwhile, thought he was working for his father in order to accomplish something for his father. This is a bit silly, since the father had many servants. The reason the sons were doing the father’s work was not to get things done for him, but to become like him. That is why we serve God, so we can become fit for heaven. It is a long road, and the sooner and more seriously we get to it, the better.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Furthermore, if the OP is very close to meeting his future wife (which is statistically very likely between 25 and 35–the average first time husband is now about 29), it is very likely that bad habits and bad company will repel the better candidates and attract bad apples. (When I read men’s rights stuff, I always wonder, where do you guys even meet these horrible women? But there are some simple explanations as to why a guy might wind up with a series of horrible women.)

Some remarks are in order here: it is orders of magnitude more difficult to meet good Catholic women who didn’t hookup than it was in my parents’ generation and this difficulty in searching only gets harder as one gets older. Compromises are often made. Have to imagine it’s difficult for them as well as they are often so deep behind their deflector shields that they have trouble recognizing a good man when they do meet one. This is the big reason I date outside of my faith and have a lot less trouble doing so.

Women do exist who I would not wish on my worst enemy; it’s only because of the internet that we now realize they are not as rare as unicorns and that my cousin, my friends and I are not alone in our experiences with them. Now I’m older, hopefully a tad wiser, and I do my best to remember the great examples set by my family that not all women are like that and so I keep my eyes open. Someday I’ll meet that one… Or not.

As a revert, I can tell you the narrow path is often the hard one. The Truth was never meant to be nice, fair, warm, fuzzy, not any of those soft words. But it will set us free if we let it. One of those Truths is knowing with certainty that tomorrow is not promised to us, therefore we must live today, we must love the Lord today. Nothing wrong with making future plans. But know that there is a non-zero probability that they won’t happen. Up to and including the possibility that we might not be here as long as we think we will be. Your physical body will die, it’s only a matter of when. That and taxes are the only sure things in this life.

I love the Mass, the promise that is inherent in it, the presence of the Eucharist that helps us to remember Him. The Mass is what brought me back Home. Every so often, I find myself in awe of yet a different part of the liturgy. I make the time to attend every week; this is never a chore or an obligation, I want to be there, I need to be there for it recharges me to get back in the saddle. The point of being a practicing Catholic is to be in communion with Him and with the Body of Christ which is all of us. For my fallen nature, for my stand against sin and temptation, there is no better place to be.

 

[Xantippe]

Some remarks are in order here: it is orders of magnitude more difficult to meet good Catholic women who didn’t hookup than it was in my parents’ generation and this difficulty in searching only gets harder as one gets older. Compromises are often made. Have to imagine it’s difficult for them as well as they are often so deep behind their deflector shields that they have trouble recognizing a good man when they do meet one. This is the big reason I date outside of my faith and have a lot less trouble doing so.

Women do exist who I would not wish on my worst enemy; it’s only because of the internet that we now realize they are not as rare as unicorns and that my cousin, my friends and I are not alone in our experiences with them. Now I’m older, hopefully a tad wiser, and I do my best to remember the great examples set by my family that not all women are like that and so I keep my eyes open. Someday I’ll meet that one… Or not.

If it’s harder and harder to meet a nice Catholic girl, and more and more so as you get older, that’s yet one more excellent reason not to take a “vacation” between 25 and 35.

I suspect part of the problem you’re running into is that a woman’s being “high-maintenance” and just a little crazy is actually very attractive and compelling to a lot of men, despite what they think they think about those qualities. If you look around and see a lot of high-maintenance and/or crazy women who are socially fairly successful, that suggests that that particular strategy is working great for them in the current social environment.

I think that’s really always been the case that certain “negative” qualities in women are VERY attractive to men–see, for example Scarlett O’Hara–she’s a terrible, terrible person, but by and large, it works for her. (And that’s a 1936 novel that’s about life during and after the Civil War.) There’s also a quote from Florence King’s Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (1975) where Florence King talks about a certain kind of woman who uses b------iness for the same reason she uses lemon verbena–because it makes men WANT her.

Hence, I would discourage men from believing that there’s something uniquely terrible about current conditions–men, bless their hearts, have always been willing to give women cookies for treating them badly, and then they complain about being treated badly.

 

[jmcrae]

I could make a long post cataloging all the trials and curious predicaments that go along with being a young person and a practicing Catholic who is 100% faithful to the Magisterium, (particularly for the odd case such as myself, who is an atheist convert with no Catholic family to speak of, which goes contrary to the way that the faith is normally passed on through family, schooling and tight-night communities) but really, I’ll just get down to it and you can guess what I mean by that:

Why shouldn’t I just live as a practical atheist for the next 10 years?

Odds are I won’t die before I’m 35, and I’ve got an eternity to get closer to God anyways. It just seems it would be a lot easier to be a practical atheist, in employment, dating, socializing, sex, than it is for someone such as myself, an atheist convert with no Catholic family or circle of friends (which usually form in elementary school anyway).

I guess I’ve found it difficult and not tried, but just for a while.

But then again, so have about 99% of other people my age according to this book, summarized in the video below:
amazon.com/gp/product/B00HWWPAXG
youtube.com/watch?v=myGzvGCgnsc

Thoughts?

It might not seem like it now, but your 35 year old self will thank you for staying faithful to the Church during your younger years.

He won’t have any difficult bad habits to break. He will have no fear of the doorbell ringing, and a child standing there demanding financial compensation for the difficult life he was forced to endure with your former girlfriend, his mother. He will be known as a pillar of his community, and his wife and children will be happy, well-adjusted people. The difficulties of his younger years will have honed him into a brilliant businessman with a well-deserved reputation for honesty and hard work.

 

[angelic06]

It is easy to become entrenched in sinful ways and then find it very difficult to love God again, and so have no salvation. Secondly, the state of the person in heaven varies depending upon merit, so then even if one reestablishes a state of grace and final repentance, this degree of merit will be lessened.

Vico,

I am very glad you mentioned degrees of blessedness, such that in light of Catholic teaching the one who spends his or her life pursuing a life of holiness will not be rewarded, ultimately, as the one who spends one’s life pursuing debauchery, then repents at the final minute. In fact, in Byzantine theology, salvation is a process of “theosis”-becoming more like God, such that our reward will naturally reflect the path of holiness we have chosen-or not-on Earth.

 

[Demetra2]

I can understand, a little, why you’re frustrated! I’m a 27-year-old Catholic girl, and while my family is Catholic, none of my friends practice anymore, and no one understands why I’m “stubborn” about things. Dating is the hardest; waiting until marriage is a deal-breaker for most men these days. I’m waiting anyway.

It’s hard, it can be frustrating, it can be painful, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that it’s all worth it. I’d rather spend Saturday night watching a movie, and happily go to Mass the next morning, then out partying and waking up next to a guy whose name I don’t remember, the way some of my friends do. Jesus gave everything for me. I can give up some things for Him, especially since those aren’t the things that will bring lasting happiness.

Believe me, I know how hard it is to be a young Catholic in a secular world, but hang in there and run with Him. You won’t regret it.

You are awesome!!

 

[recentrevert]

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Why shouldn’t I just live as a practical atheist for the next 10 years? y

Because we do not know the hour or the day and presumption is a sin that God punishes most severely. I have seen it first-hand. To punish this sin God takes away His grace so that the sinner falls into an abyss of sin and then God will either strike them down before they repent or He will simply not give them the grace of contrition or a firm purpose of ammendment. That way you will suffer more in hell. St. Alphonsus gave good sermons on this which can be found on-line (but beware of the schismatic sedevacantist propaganda on one such site)). It is of course the devil who is telling you to think this way.