Why do people hate the church especially those coming from Christian backgrounds

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What are some of the reasons why people would hate the church?

I could think of some reasons. Please add

I guess the reasons differ from person to person.
  1. In some cases I think it could be that some people had a bad experience from a priest or a church authority and it would have “hurt” then and they carry that hurt and bitterness with them even after 30-40 yrs…
  2. In some cases especially these days the media does a lot of damage to people’s perception of church. They deliberately spread lies.
  3. Many grow up in families where their own parents bad mouth church all the time. So it can affect children’s perceptions
  4. Of course the failing of church and it’s authorities.
  5. Other systemic issues like the mishandling of child abuse cases (however child abuse doesn’t seem to be a universal problem. A country like india which has a high number of priests doesn’t really have an issue like child abuse and subsequent cover up
 
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Is this a CAF appropriate thread? Not so much the rules but … Idk, It’s hard to explain. It’s kinda like how I wouldn’t visit your home then proceed to talk negatively about your spouse over dinner.
 
I had some one asking me this question today morning since they said they don’t want their kids to hate church. So just exploring. I am a lifelong catholic who went today morning to church for mass and confession (slightly) risking my own health .
 
Most non Catholic Christians would have to admit to be in error if they agree with the Catholic Church. Many others have an issue with authority especially spiritual authority.
 
In that case I’ll add 1 thing
6. The rules and teachings don’t match their experiences of the wider world (non Catholic peers) over time.

Never Catholic but a former Christian.
 
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“If the world hates you, remember it hated Me before it hated you” John 15:18

No one in our age said it better than Venerable Fulton J. Sheen:
" “If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hated. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church that is accused of being behind the times, as our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by men. Look for the Church which amid the confusions of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly it is other worldly. since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. But only that which is Divine can be infinitely hated and infinitely loved. Therefore the Church is Divine.”
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Taken from Radio Replies, Vol. 1, p IX, Rumble & Carty, Tan Publishing
 
Usually because they have experienced or witnessed overwhelming pain delivered courtesy of the Church. It could be one of a million things, but once that is experienced, you can imagine not going back for a second helping. Also spreading the word in the hopes of preventing the same thing doesn’t happen to others.

It comes across as hateful, often, but I am not so sure it is a response based in hate.
 
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Many reasons, most of which fall under this summary by Fulton Sheen:

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”
 
Maybe you are talking about committed, faithful non-Catholic Christians who criticize the Catholic Church, and the anti-Catholicism that circulates among them? Some of that opposition is well intentioned (although often ignorant or just plain wrong). The “well intentioned“ part is that they speak out of the conviction that a close counterfeit is much more dangerous than a very inaccurate counterfeit. The close counterfeit will deceive many more than the inaccurate one.

On a more subtle level, there is the omnipresent temptation to re-create God in our own image. Non-Catholic Christians have only the Bible as their anchor. As Catholics, we have the Bible and tradition. Those dual anchors prevent us from drifting into unorthodox places theologically. Non-Catholic Christians think they are being more committed to a pure view of God by rejecting tradition (again, well intentioned!), but in practice it works out to be the opposite. There really is more freedom on that side of the aisle to spin God according to what you think he should be.

But if a non-Catholic is pursuing Jesus, there is still so much common ground between us and them, whether they realize it or not!
 
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It’s kind of like how people hate Trump. I’d say a majority of them don’t know why, they just do because others do.
 
No. I think people are more than that, especially when it comes to religion. They have their reasons, regardless of whether or not they seem reasonable to others.
 
Vico said:
Concupiscence.
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I agree. In Jesus’ time, people did things like stoning others or throwing them off a cliff in the name of justice. They rejected the call to a higher standard.
 
PHXsunsAZ said:
It’s kind of like how people hate Trump. I’d say a majority of them don’t know why, they just do because others do.
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Oh, we know exactly why. It isn’t groupthink; ours, anyway.

Why bring him to this discussion anyway?
 
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I was taught that the Catholic Church was a counterfeit, evil system by my southern baptist pastor. The way it’s explained is convincing when you have a lifetime of Protestant/evangelical indoctrination about only using the Bible and ignoring tradition. I wasn’t even aware of this thing called tradition that Catholics discuss regularly. Our focus was solely on our individual churches. As stated above, what I thought Catholics believe was far from what we actually believe. It’s a completely different mindset.
 
I am from Kerala in India only which is mentioned in this article. Kerala is one of the biggest supplier of priests to many countries in the world. Child sex abuse is unheard of in the church in Kerala but occasionally you hear about some illicit affairs involving clergy but to my knowledge it is not a systemic problem. The fraction of illicit affair cases involving clergy compared to their number is very minimal as per my knowledge.
 
In my experience, those who hate the Catholic Church, or Christianity in general, either grew up in a faith that constantly trashed the Catholic Church (such as some SDA congregations) or else they had some very bad experiences with a Catholic parish, other Catholics, or other Christians.

I have met people who had their childhood disrupted because their parent got heavily into some Christian religion to the point where the religious practice was causing them to abuse or neglect their family.

I have met people whose families became angry at them or disowned them when they expressed some doubt or took up a lifestyle that their church did not approve of (which could be anything from being LGBTQ+ to simply dying their hair green and joining a band).

I have met people who were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused by a priest, Catholic school teacher, Catholic parent, or Catholic spouse.

I have met people who got so angry at God for letting their loved one die that it carried over into a hatred of religion.

These are the most common situations I see when somebody’s attitude goes beyond just “eh, religion, not my thing, I don’t believe in it, but if you like it fine” into actual hate or animus.
 
Dan_Defender said:
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Vico:
Concupiscence.
Click to expand...
I agree. In Jesus’ time, people did things like stoning others or throwing them off a cliff in the name of justice. They rejected the call to a higher standard.
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ISIS stoned a woman to death in Hama, Syria in 2014. In that year, “stoning is also a legal punishment in Pakistan, northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Mauritania, and Yemen.” (According to Kathryn Seifert Ph.D., Psychology Today).
 
I hope that you are right. However, it is also possible that there are many cases that have not yet come to light in India. I bet that most people in Ireland or the United States did not think that there was a systemic problem in the Catholic Church in those countries 25 or 30 years ago. To be honest, I was not aware of the true scale of sexual abuse within both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Churches in England and Wales until quite recently when it was exposed in a series of reports by a public inquiry. I had assumed that it was on a smaller scale than in Ireland and the US and that it had happened a long time ago.
 
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