Why are you not Catholic?

[dronald]

beats me really, but we went wrong somewhere along the line. somehow people just stopped caring or something.

but it’s the greatest gift we have, they’re just taking it for granted. seriously, if that’s the only reason, I would say maybe give it another go if you feel so called.

I’ve been in your situation, been going to the same parish for years and people hardly talked to me. at one point I thought of just stopping, it’s not like anyone would notice anyways, but God would notice.

the curch has been in worse circumstances, I think, Jesus did literally tell Francis of assissi to rebuild his church because everyone had become so worldly

sometimes it takes a great saint to make a big change, maybe you could be the one? I found the problem wasn’t just with other people, it was also with me. I’m always waiting for people to approach me but maybe I needed to do something about that.

take care and God bless

I don’t really care so much for myself as I do others. I can’t become Catholic and then have no one along my journey, especially if I wanted to convince others to become Catholic. I would have no support when speaking with Muslims, Atheists, whoever. That’s why at this point I simply trust in God.

Pardon my interruption with your conversation with Share Love but from my point of view Catholics have been bullied into silence for almost as long as America has existed. If you research the history of our church in America you will see some very disturbing things. So, I don’t understand why is this so surprising to noncatholics? I never come out and tell people that I am a Catholic…I used to, but no more. My little corner of America is very anticatholic. I would go so far as to say many Catholics where I live know exactly what I’m talking about. I guess I could turn the question around and ask “why should we be very vocal about our faith when we might be ostracized for it?” There is only so much bullying and discrimination one can take. Sorry if I sound bitter, I don’t mean to. I truly love my faith. My heart aches to tell others about how I feel after I receive communion.

As a Canadian this is utter malarky. People are more likely to look down on Evangelicals here.

 

[dronald]

As a person who will hopefully, God willing, be received into the Church next Easter Vigil, I definitely know where you’re coming from. It often baffles me why people aren’t so stoked about this. There’s solid, credible evidence that Jesus did come back from the dead. We have the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, Jesus is really there. People don’t realize how truly astounding that teaching is: that God is truly, substantially present, flesh and blood, soul and divinity, in the Blessed Sacrament. Why aren’t people excited about this, is something I often ponder to myself.

Yep. When I first went to my local Cathedral I came out very, very upset. I even made a thread about it, I was so heartbroken that people really couldn’t care less about what was happening.

 

[dronald]

I just recently converted and did so because what the Catholic Church teaches and proclaims is far more fulfilling than any of the protestant teachings I came across. And that is completely different than which church has the best country club atmosphere or whether they have good programs, or whether you feel “welcomed” when you come into church.

Do you want the truth when it comes to the Gospel or do you want warm and fuzzy feelings because someone told you good morning and gave you a hug?

Just my two cents.

I want to preach the Gospel with Christians. And yes, I want brotherly love and truth. Catholicism here is the country club. If you’re a Catholic, then it’s your family and perhaps the people your kids go to school with here.

Catholicism is not vibrant here, it’s pretty dead. No one takes it seriously, especially Catholics.

 

[lonegreywolf20]

I want to preach the Gospel with Christians. And yes, I want brotherly love and truth. Catholicism here is the country club. If you’re a Catholic, then it’s your family and perhaps the people your kids go to school with here.

Catholicism is not vibrant here, it’s pretty dead. No one takes it seriously, especially Catholics.

That sounds like why I was Catholic. Because my family was, so I felt obligated and I was expected to follow in their footsteps. It certainly wasn’t because I would have chosen Catholicism for myself.

 

[Richard_White]

God already blesses us abundantly and get this, I do not need to be Catholic to receive His abundant blessings.

My friend, I have never before received such animosity from a wishing of God’s blessing. This clearly shows a certain level of bitterness on your part and that you are obviously not truly at peace with yourself or with God.

May God, the Blessed Trinity, guide you back to His peace and the fullness of His Truth and Love in the Holy Catholic Church!

 

[Richard_White]

I want to preach the Gospel with Christians. And yes, I want brotherly love and truth. Catholicism here is the country club. If you’re a Catholic, then it’s your family and perhaps the people your kids go to school with here.

Catholicism is not vibrant here, it’s pretty dead. No one takes it seriously, especially Catholics.

My friend, it is very unfortunate that the Catholics you are seeing in your community are not very reverent or fervent and that this has turned you away from God’s Holy Catholic Church. However, this is absolutely NOT descriptive of the Church as a whole. I don’t know where you live, but there are so many fervent Catholics that I know and that help to build up the Church everyday (I’m in the New York City metropolitan area).

I don’t know how you could reject Catholicism simply because of the attitudes of some of the people that you see around you.

May God bless you and lead you back to His Holy Catholic Church!

 

[Micosil]

Yep. When I first went to my local Cathedral I came out very, very upset. I even made a thread about it, I was so heartbroken that people really couldn’t care less about what was happening.

Yes, it is disappointing. Do note, though, even if I see this kind of lackluster attitude, it still hasn’t pushed me back, oh, no, not at all. I do plan on crossing the Tiber soon.

 

[lonegreywolf20]

My friend, I have never before received such animosity from a wishing of God’s blessing. This clearly shows a certain level of bitterness on your part and that you are obviously not truly at peace with yourself or with God.

May God, the Blessed Trinity, guide you back to His peace and the fullness of His Truth and Love in the Holy Catholic Church!

It wasn’t said with bitterness at all. If that is how it came across, then my apologies, it wasn’t meant to be taken that way.

I am fully at peace with myself and with God.

 

[rcwitness]

That sounds like why I was Catholic. Because my family was, so I felt obligated and I was expected to follow in their footsteps. It certainly wasn’t because I would have chosen Catholicism for myself.

I was raised Evangelical Free (non-denom)

No one in my family is Catholic (except one grandpa who didn’t practice). I believe I was led by the Spirit to seek the Truth behind/in Catholicism. I went to Masses and did not worry about people, but on prayer and the words of the service. I was very surprised at how Christ centered worship is, and how much Scripture is applied!

I can definitely sympathize for people trying to find Godly, bold, enthusiastic people to guide them into the faith. It will depend on the Parish you attend. I take your criticism as a true nudge to be more hospitable to my fellow Catholics.

As for the Marriage stuff, there is a lot to be learned about the Sacrament. There is law regarding it.Jesus and Paul acknowledge the primary law in Scripture. You have seemed to come to the conclusion that all instructions and precepts bound by the Church must be explicit in Scripture. I’m not sure why so many people believe this. All things “written” to be held does not need to be Sacred Scripture.

 

[exnihilo]

An example would be marriage. No where in the Bible does it say that you must be married by a Catholic priest in order to be considered married by God. No where in the Bible does it say to betray your wife by getting a radical sanation (my wife would not get married by a Catholic priest as she believes that we are already married and I fully agree with her that we do not need to be married once again to have a valid marriage in the eyes of God) with or without her knowledge as I was told to do by Catholics.

Issues surrounding marriage are an impediment to many becoming or staying Catholic. The ironic thing for me is that marriage is one of the issues I converted. As a young child sitting in my Protestant church and hearing Jesus teaching on marriage it was quite clear to me the importance of marriage. As someone whose parents were divorced this especially impacted me. In my opinion only the Catholic Church really upholds the teaching of Christ on marriage. As the foundation of the family and society is marriage being wrong about this issue is being seriously wrong about a fundamental of the Faith.

Me, a number of times, including this past year. The main reasons are:

1. I believe that all baptized Christians who believe in the Trinity are members of the visible Catholic Church. This doesn’t, in theory, have to prevent my becoming Catholic. Vatican II grants as much, with the caveat that they are imperfectly united to the Church. I don’t have a problem with that caveat. Any doubts I have concern not the imperfection of our union to the Church but the claim that Catholicism as a visible institution shows forth the fullness of the Faith, which I’m not sure is true in any practical, observable way. (I.e., maybe we’re all just “imperfectly united to the Church,” Catholics and Protestants alike.)…

I know you’ve given this great thought and struggled with it. But regarding issue #1 how do you resolve the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:17?

‘If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.’

It seems to me that without a single church in some sense this verse is rendered meaningless. If I’m excluded from one church but can just go join another and still be in the Church then isn’t this teaching drained of any real meaning? There has to be one visible Church in some sense from which I can be excluded. The best candidate seems to me the Catholic Church. This was an important factor for me in my conversion.

 

[Share_love]

I don’t really care so much for myself as I do others. I can’t become Catholic and then have no one along my journey, especially if I wanted to convince others to become Catholic.

I understand the wish to have people along the journey with you, but that is also what communities like this are for - corresponding with like-minded Catholics. When you know that Jesus is in the tabernacle in Catholic churches around the world and that you receive Him at Mass, you are given the adequate amount of company you need. You have God Himself whom you can visit and He will literally feed you.

 

[Share_love]

It wasn’t said with bitterness at all. If that is how it came across, then my apologies, it wasn’t meant to be taken that way.

I am fully at peace with myself and with God.

I do not know your background, but with all due respect, why remain in a man made church from the sixteenth century when Jesus founded a Church on Peter and gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven? Jesus established only one church; why not remain in the one He founded?

 

[icamhif]

Yep. When I first went to my local Cathedral I came out very, very upset. I even made a thread about it, I was so heartbroken that people really couldn’t care less about what was happening.

Hi dronald.

Have you attended RCIA? That is where you will most likely find the devout Catholics (and thus the right laymen to ask in the Parish.) You don’t have to desire to be Catholic in order to attend.

 

[lonegreywolf20]

I do not know your background, but with all due respect, why remain in a man made church from the sixteenth century when Jesus founded a Church on Peter and gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven? Jesus established only one church; why not remain in the one He founded?

I do not believe that only Peter was given the keys to the church. I also do not believe that the Catholic church is the only church.

Jesus is not only found at the tabernacle of the Catholic Church. He is not only found within the for walls of a building. Jesus can be accessed anywhere at any time.

 

[Peter_J]

I realized I simply couldn’t support such an organization anymore, these two people are hailed as paragons of Catholic virtue in my local parish by the priest and while disliked by almost every other parishioner are constantly upheld as a shining example of Catholic virtue in practice.

I definitely get your revulsion at that. The only thing I can really say is this: there have been a number of times when I have read an anti-Protestant or anti-whatever (and often downright nasty) post, and then saw a Protestant (yes Protestant) thanking the author of said post for “being such a good Catholic”, or words to that effect. So it is clear that the phenomenon you mentioned is not limited to Catholics.

 

[SalusaSecondus]

You have cleared nothing up and only further prove why I am no longer Catholic.

Yes, it is a sacrament in the Lutheran church, but where the Catholic church fails by making a man-made rule that says if you are Catholic you must marry in the Catholic church, the Lutheran church accepts marriages that were not done in a Lutheran church. In other words, our marriage is valid and consecrated by God, no matter what the Catholic church wants to believe with it’s man made rule.

God already blesses us abundantly and get this, I do not need to be Catholic to receive His abundant blessings.

Which Lutheran church considers marriage to be a Sacrament?

 

[SalusaSecondus]

I used to be Catholic as my whole family is Catholic. So I was raised Catholic and did the sacraments because it was what my family wanted me to do. My heart was never really in it though. In my teens I rebelled and stopped going to mass. Then in my mid-thirties I met my wife who was non-denominational (she too at one time was Catholic) and she showed me the love of Christ through her. I also learned that Jesus can be accessed and visited at anytime and where ever you are. That a building of brick and mortar is not needed.

I still had issues though with different churches and bounced around 5+ years. I even went back to mass at the local Catholic Church for a time. However, me going back to the Catholic church didn’t last long as so many rules of the Catholic Church just do not line up with scripture and is the main reason why I am no longer Catholic.

An example would be marriage. No where in the Bible does it say that you must be married by a Catholic priest in order to be considered married by God. No where in the Bible does it say to betray your wife by getting a radical sanation (my wife would not get married by a Catholic priest as she believes that we are already married and I fully agree with her that we do not need to be married once again to have a valid marriage in the eyes of God) with or without her knowledge as I was told to do by Catholics.

Almost a year ago I went to a Lutheran service for the first time and I knew that I had found my church, since then my two children were baptized Lutheran and my wife and I have become Lutherans.

Thanks for sharing. I brought my family with me too.

 

[SalusaSecondus]

You know, the reason that we feel sometimes encumbered by sin is because we become very sensitive to the presence of sinfulness in our lives and in the world around us. This is a good thing, because it shows that are beginning to feel the True Love of God.

When it comes to doubt, there are many resources that can help you get over it.

I find it hard to believe that you could not find a nice send of peace from the Lord Jesus and that you would so quickly gave up the beauties of the Catholic faith for Lutheranism. I mean, listen to the name: why would anyone want to join a denomination that was founded by a man (a heretic, nonetheless), when you were already living in God’s Truth.

May God bless everyone on this thread and guide them to His Holy Catholic Church!

If what I was feeling was true Gods love, I would hate to feel what his hate feels like.

 

[Horton]

I do not believe that only Peter was given the keys to the church. I also do not believe that the Catholic church is the only church.

Jesus is not only found at the tabernacle of the Catholic Church. He is not only found within the for walls of a building. Jesus can be accessed anywhere at any time.

You are right Jesus is not only found in the tabernacle nor only within the walls of a building. He is found in all the faithful of His Church, the Church He founded, and the Church He entrusted to Peter. Jesus is found in the works of Christians, He is found in the face of those who serve the poor & needy, those who suffer. Jesus is in us.

 

[Share_love]

I do not believe that only Peter was given the keys to the church. I also do not believe that the Catholic church is the only church.

Jesus is not only found at the tabernacle of the Catholic Church. He is not only found within the for walls of a building. Jesus can be accessed anywhere at any time.

May I ask how long you were Catholic? You were taught about the Real Presence, right?

How do you explain this?

therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html

Or this?

therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/english_pdf/BuenosAires3.pdf

I don’t mean to sound confrontational, but there is no scriptural support for what you just said. No other apostle was given the keys of the kingdom, only Peter.

If you don’t believe the Catholic Church is the only church, then why does Jesus explicitly say, “Upon this rock, I will build my church”? Why not “churches”?