Where are all the FAITHFUL Catholics?

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duskyjewel said:
Just as a follow-on to Norseman’s post…

The Polish priests I have met have been far and away some of the best priests EVER. I don’t know what it is about Polish Catholicism, perhaps it was energized by a native Pope, but they just seem to turn out really wonderful priests. Thoroughly orthodox, totally unapologetic about it, and yet compassionate and understanding at the same time. I don’t usually do face to face confession… but I was comfortable enough to do so with one of the Polish priests we met in the (U.S.) Air Force.
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We are blessed with a young Polish Priest as our pastor. His only “problem” is that he tends to be very blunt(I love it BTW).
 
Dempsey this is not a judgemental or negative way to feel. You have every right to feel this way. finding a soul mate is very hard when you are serious about the faith. Down playing any of the church teachings isn’t proper. We are all sinners but I understand what you are saying. I have two sons in the same postion. They aren’t judgeing anyone they just want a spouse that understands and believes the same as them.

I wish I had a daughter for you. I will pray for you and your future spouse.
 
Dempsey1919 said:
If people want to use birth control that’s their business. I don’t want to use it but I know that I probably will have to in the future. That’s were my problem arises.
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Use of birth control for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy is a mortal sin. This is, of course, the most popular use of “birth control”, but there are others using it for treatment of medical conditions and are not using it for its original purpose.

Those people who use it to avoid pregnancy usually fall into one of 2 groups:
  1. The unmarried, who are looking for the “pleasure” of pre-marital sex without the consequences.
  2. The married who wish to not have any children at this time (or ever).
In the first group, there are 2 grave sins occuring, sex outside of marriage, and the use of birth control.

For those in the second group, they either don’t have a proper understanding of the call of marriage, or they are failing to approach the spacing of children correctly. Even the married commit grave sin when they contracept.

I wouldn’t want to see my future as one that requires mortal sin. You should not enter into a marriage if you know your spouse will want to contracept. I made this mistake myself, and I do regret the choice.

Pre-marital and “safe” sex warp true love. Find true love, and don’t compromise this belief.
 
chicago said:
Sounds like she knows something we don’t, bro!

Apparently, the Norsemen are going to have to get together for a parish hopping roadtrip through the Chicago burbs to find which church they’re hiding out in at prayer.
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So, instead of a “pub crawl”, it would be a “pew crawl”???
 
chicago said:
We can even raid the sacristy safes for altar wine!
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When I was in the Seminary my buddy and i snuck into the sacristy and drank a bottle of altar wine. We got so sick they didnt even punish us.
 
Coming_Home said:
I am 28, my husband is 29 and we have 5 children. We will take as many children as God plans to give us. We are part of the working class (my husband works, and I stay home), and sometimes it is lonely, because it seems like we are the only young family around doing what we are doing (having a large family, homeschooling, not having a lot financially). I do not think that I am better than others for doing these things, I feel like they are the things that God wants me to do for him. No, I do not get some kind of joy out of being weird. I wish that I wasn’t always the “weird one.” It gets very tiring always being looked at everywhere we go like we have some kind of disease or something! It gets very tiring always being treated as “second rate” by the culture around us. It is God who gives us strength and gets us through the tough times. We have found it very hard to form friendships with people of our own age who have the same beliefs that we have. We have made a lot of wonderful friends among the older people of our parish, and I am so thankful for that! My advice would be trust in the Lord! He has a perfect plan for your life. He will lead you to the one that he has chosen for you! Do not give in to the culture around you, stay true to God and he will bless you! 🙂

Jeremiah 29:11
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I hear ya! That’s why I like coming on here and sometimes just reading and reading reminds me I am not alone!
 
I think a lot of contracepting catholics just need to hear the churches teaching. Sad but true its not being taught, spoken about, or passed on. I mean my parents used NFP but i had to discover and learn it for myself after learning the churches teaching at a marriage encounter!!

You can also mean and get to know catholic women and hopefully through friendship open their eyes to the churches teaching during bible studies or discussions. The perfect wife God has planned for you might not be so perfect to begin with. Sometimes growing together in faith is what strengthens our relationships.

And last thought is have you though about meeting someone through a catholic singles website??

wait i guess this is my last thought. I know its easy for me to say since i found my one and only in high school and we have a big growing family…but try and relax and pray and let God bring her to you. He wont leave you alone forever if you are ment to get married.

Take Care! And dont ever weaken your standards!!
 
Once, while at work, a co-worker announced to the world that he had sex 8 times last night. I told him that if you did it right once was enough. Everybody laughed at him. He didn’t care much for me. No loss. I guess I wasn’t being very charitable.

I dated a woman I met on a Catholic dating web site. We went out several times. I never held her hand. I was afraid to. I just knew God would strike something if I ever tried to kiss her. Man, I didn’t want to find out what would get struck.

If you think Catholics got this sex and birth control thing figured out just look around at all the typing that goes on concerning those subjects.

I’ll submit this to you. God is not finished with you. He will be there with you as you grow up, even if you don’t. I understand exactly where you are coming from. Trouble is, God came for the sinners, not the Saints. Saints don’t need Him. But there have been two Saints, that never sinned, Mary and Jesus. You need to realize that in God’s eyes you are no better or worse than the homosexuals, adulterers, and whatever else you said. Actually, if you think you are better then maybe God is more upset with you.

We all need to continue to strive to be good Catholics and generally sinning is never a good idea. But, when it comes to a mate, first thing you need to learn to do is take a shower. Gotta smell good. Then, know that God created her and loves her and just may be sending her into your life to help your screwed up life be better. That’s what God did to me. Humility is also a good idea. Talk to her, listen to her, love her. If what she wants sounds good to you marry her.

Do not use the Church as a club to force her to do things your way. I cannot say that enough. She marries you, and you her. How would you like it if she came up with some “teaching” that said you had to do something you didn’t like, or agree with? You don’t marry the church, your mother in law, or God. Your job is to please your wife, hers is to please you. Both of you must please God.

By the way, don’t be that person that doesn’t hold hands or kiss. It is perfectly ok to say while dating that you want to have sex with the person you are dating. Just don’t do it. But, don’t be an ice cube either.

Good luck.
 
Pay attention to conversations more…I know that I’m not the only one in my past large group of friends (I’m kind of a homebody now and moved away from them a few years back) who would loudly and proudly state (in public and private when the topic would come up) that I want to be barefoot and pregnant and be a stay-at-home mom. I knew a LOT of women who felt the same. So as others have said, don’t give up hope. But you must befriend women first and through time and casual conversations you’ll eventually learn their views. Also, haven’t you learned that a watched pot never boils, same goes for relationships. Stop trying so hard in looking, start living and continue praying for God’s will to be done.
 
Dempsey1919, where in the UK are you? If you’re in London, there’s a great prayer-group in ‘Corpus Christi’ near Covent Garden, I highly recommend it!

As for meeting someone practising Catholic, google ‘Catholic Unattached Directory’, I met my husband through them (9 years ago, doesn’t time fly…) and you can put in your profile exactly what type of girl you’re looking for. When we were members I think a year’s membership was 50 pounds, and I met quite a few very traditional Catholic men, obviously I fell in love and got married and we now have 2 beautiful daughters!

And…for what it’s worth: we do agree with the Church and study the Bible and Cathechism, we don’t use any form of birthcontrol (not even NFP, I’d rather just let God decide, but that’s just me;) )…so, to say there are ‘no faithful Catholics’…Oh there are! But, you need to go out and find them:thumbsup:

Anna x
 
Norseman82 said:
It has been said that the Catholic Church in Poland is more conservative than the Vatican. It could be that Poland, through the years of partition, Nazi occupation, and the Soviet bloc era, had persecution to strengthen it - indeed the Catholic Church was the only institution that was an alternative, and may have been shielded from some of the outside liberal influences.

But Chevalier would be able to give a more accurate assessment than I, since he lives there.
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We have wonderful priests here. I don’t remember ever hearing any question the moral teaching of the Church. I remember very few instances when something sounded remotely wrong in that area. We do have problems, some of which involve priests and bishops, though, and there’s about 40% church attendance rate (nation-wide) compared to about 90% baptised, and it wouldn’t be overwhelmingly easy to find a young practising woman who’d talk about faith to another Catholic, wouldn’t intend to use pills and so on. Admittedly, I’m somewhat clumsy about it and maybe I don’t go to the right places or do everything that’s in my power, but the problem exists nonetheless. However, I like it here compared to what I hear from most of the outside world. But do not think there’s no problem with liberal morality gaining ground. Relativism and permissivism may not be as strong as elsewhere, but they exist and sometimes exist in abundance. In a typical group of young people, being pro-life, against contraception and premarital sex, attending church regularly and other things from this area, won’t place you in the majority.

As for the strength of the Church, being Catholic has long been a part of Polish identity. There has been a tie between being Polish and being Catholic. Patrotism and Catholicism intertwined in our struggles throughout history and we fought a lot of wars and suffered a lot of invasions, not to mention internal problems. It seems to me that while Polish rulers of the middle ages had their own sins, they generally tended to be on the good side, while their enemies on the bad one. After that, we were surrounded by Protestants on the South-West, West and North, the Orthodox on the East, Muslims on South-East borders. The last one earned us the name of the bulwark of Christianity. We did have Christian enemies, but few Catholic ones past Reformation and before the Austrian Empire participated in our partitions. So one could say nearly all our enemies were of a different faith. That was quite a consolidating factor (which doesn’t mean we didn’t actually have the best religious tolerance levels in the whole of Europe at the time… I think we did). At any rate the Church and Catholicism has been in the centre of our patriotism for ages, especially in times of trouble. In communist times, it was practically an alternative authority. As for John Paul II being our native Pope, that added a lot to people’s piety, brought about a renewal in faith, imbued us with a lot of spirit, but I don’t think it’s going to die with Benedict XVI in the Vatican (and I hope it won’t).
 
Dear Dempsey,

Please don’t despair about faithful Catholics! It is more difficult for you because you are living in the UK, however. Here in th US we still have many Catholics who don’t live their faith to the fullest( I live in Boston which is the land of disobedient Catholics) but my daughter who lives in Washington DC and is getting a Masters/PhD in theology at Catholic University tells me that she was happily surprised to meet so many devout Catholics in the area. It still is hard to meet practicing young Catholics in the US but they are out there and you have to try harder to meet them now. My two daughters and I are converts to the Catholic faith and we love it! You might consider trying Catholicmatch as they have some people from the UK. Also, Ave Maria Singles is a place to meet sincere marriage minded Catholics.

Good Luck!
 
Dempsey1919 said:
If people want to use birth control that’s their business. I don’t want to use it but I know that I probably will have to in the future. That’s were my problem arises.
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No one can force you to use an artificial control device. Pressure maybe, but not the kind of force to cause that you should have to do it. And if your wife were to use it, it would be she using it, not you.
I don’t think that people who use contraception are “faithless” - of course they aren’t; they believe in Christ and try to live good lives. However, if they endorse artificial birth control, then they are not in line with official church teaching - that is a fact.
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Yes. That part is my problem too. Not so much the fact that, “heretics! they don’t agree with 100% of what the Church says!” as the fact I can’t engage in any sexual relations knowing that a drug the woman is using may well be an abortifacient. I just couldn’t have sex in such circumstances. Besides, it pains me that someone might know it might be an abortifacient and still use that drug.
I’m also sorry if I came across as judgemental or arrogant, I didn’t mean to be.
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🙂

And don’t worry about the working class or middle class. Middle class people have to work for their living too. There’s not as much divide as it might seem. I don’t think a girl of the middle class would care at all, really - especially if you’re able to support a family. Especially a Catholic girl. You don’t have to care either.
 
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