Lost, considering returning to Catholicism despite disagreeing with so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What nearly everybody is missing yet it's fundamental is the FAITH part. What do you believe in your heart?

Do you believe that God is fully present body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist? If so then you could never be anything other than Catholic since it is the only faith that professes that. Those who don't believe that were never faithfully Catholic to begin with or they would never have thought they could find it in another religion.

Your terminology is weak but the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and members of the Church of the East are in agreement on the nature of the Sacrament.

But the Protestant churches are not. Rarely do people stop attending the Roman Catholic Church on principle and move to an Orthodox Church. I think the argument is a Roman Catholic believer would not move to an Episcopal church and think it was the same thing minus the hierarchy/magisterium.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op - if there was a local restaurant that made the most delicious dish ever but you found out they had been doing and supporting all the things the Catholic Church does - would you still eat there? There’s your answer.

False analogy. The Church is not a restaurant selling a fungible product.

Why would you hold a restaurant to a higher standard than your church? Valid question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What nearly everybody is missing yet it's fundamental is the FAITH part. What do you believe in your heart?

Do you believe that God is fully present body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist? If so then you could never be anything other than Catholic since it is the only faith that professes that. Those who don't believe that were never faithfully Catholic to begin with or they would never have thought they could find it in another religion.

Your terminology is weak but the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and members of the Church of the East are in agreement on the nature of the Sacrament.

But the Protestant churches are not. Rarely do people stop attending the Roman Catholic Church on principle and move to an Orthodox Church. I think the argument is a Roman Catholic believer would not move to an Episcopal church and think it was the same thing minus the hierarchy/magisterium.

Perhaps people who leave Catholicism for the Episcopal church (and there are many of them) are done with all the rulesand regs of Catholicism and want only to keep what they see as the good parts, e.g., the ceremonial aspects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No suggestion at all. Plaintiff’s practice is a business and plaintiff’s lawyers follow the money.

But the point is not that all institutions have problems, churches included. The point is that poster after poster has cited sex abuse as a reason to attack only the Catholic Church, to reject the moral authority of only the Catholic Church, to dissuade the OP from only the Catholic Church, and to propose as options other organizations that have had issues of their own, as if those issues somehow don’t matter but the ones in the Catholic Church do. That is fundamentally illogical and logically fallacious.

A person who wants to disagree with specific Church teachings should do themselves the favor of at least fully understanding what they claim to disagree with. How many posters here who disagree with the Church on “reproductive” issues have read Humanae Vitae or the Declaration on Procured Anortion? How many who assert that women should be Catholic priests have studied Ordinatio Sacerdotalis? How many critics of the church have even opened a copy of the Catechism?

The Church is unpopular because its teachings call people to account. The Church is vilified not because it is wrong, but because it is right, and the knowledge that they are not living the best lives they can wounds its critics.

Oh! Oh! Meeee!!!! Meee!!!!
19 years of Catholic education. Read and tested on Humanae Vitae. (Although I didn't read the declaration on procured abortion) Lots of tests on various parts of the catechism. I can even speak intelligently about Ex Corde Ecclesiae and what that does and doesn't mean for faculty in Catholic Universities and at Catholic campus health centers. And I can understand a more Latin than your average bear.

It's offensive and facile to assume that anyone who disagrees with the Catholic church just doesn't "really understand"

The very vast preponderance of people, especially on DCUM, who despise, deride, defame and claim to “disagree” with Church teaching haven’t got the faintest clue what they actually claim to oppose.

And you haven't a clue on what the "vast preponderance of people, on DCUM or elsewhere", really think about the Catholic Church.

[Anonymous]

Love this statement by Pope Francis about how pastors need to pastor instead of judge. I feel like it offers a good amount of space for those who hold differences of opinion from the church to find solace there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/world/europe/pope-francis-biden-abortion.html?smid=tw-share&fbclid=IwAR3uy0oMpJzhmXoNqtW6nBgkOby953aEqnCe7h8DYM9y4fxb8m-iWkQxqGM

[Anonymous]

OP -- I was you. I went back to the Catholic church b/c I missed the community and tradition. Some of my views have altered and evolved since returning, but i'm still considered pretty liberal by a lot of Catholics. i get pissed off at the church every so often and think of leaving to go to the Episcopalian church or Methodist, but i never do. I'm just very culturally catholic. My parish is pretty middle of the road. I'm happy I returned -- it's been good for my family and me!

[Anonymous]

OP, I am in the same place. We are going to try to go back - we have tried, Episcopal, Methodist, etc. and I have never felt at home there. My dad is dying and I need the comfort of the church, despite having the same major disagreements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am in the same place. We are going to try to go back - we have tried, Episcopal, Methodist, etc. and I have never felt at home there. My dad is dying and I need the comfort of the church, despite having the same major disagreements.

At my mother's funeral, the "comfort" the priest offered was to grant permission for me to deliver a tribute, as long as it was short, because this was their "busy season."

[Anonymous]

I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

So if someone in your community was molesting kids but also raised a lot of money for Children’s Hospital would you still support them? The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

There were a lot of good Germans during WWII, as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

So if someone in your community was molesting kids but also raised a lot of money for Children’s Hospital would you still support them? The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.

No way. I would burn that hospital to the ground. That guy probably molested those kids because of the hospital.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

So if someone in your community was molesting kids but also raised a lot of money for Children’s Hospital would you still support them? The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.

I think a better question is: If you learned that several doctors in your state were caught in fraud, and the state medical board didn’t take their licenses away, but just let him move on to another hospital: would you still take your sick self or sick child to a doctor who is licensed in that state? What if you know that they pay dues to the AMA that lobbies for causes you don’t personally believe in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

So if someone in your community was molesting kids but also raised a lot of money for Children’s Hospital would you still support them? The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.

I think a better question is: If you learned that several doctors in your state were caught in fraud, and the state medical board didn’t take their licenses away, but just let him move on to another hospital: would you still take your sick self or sick child to a doctor who is licensed in that state? What if you know that they pay dues to the AMA that lobbies for causes you don’t personally believe in?

+1. This is the better analogy. Obviously no one in their right mind is taking their kids to a doctor who molested kids, or themselves to a parish where a priest was credibly accused. The question is whether you lose all faith in the system and refuse to go to any doctor / priest. I am not Catholic either but it seems to me there's a difference between questioning Catholic tenets and being outraged at the known abuses in the church. OP has expressed the former but a lot of people are focusing on the latter. They aren't necessarily the same and the solutions aren't the same. If it's the abuses that are the problem, you can work to expose and ameliorate them. If it's the foundation of the religion that's the problem, you have to figure out what you can and can't live with.

I'm Jewish and I don't keep kosher or believe in the literalness of the Bible. I still make Shabbat on Fridays, strictly keep the High Holidays and Passover, consider myself a Jew. That's not unusual for Jews, there's a very wide spectrum. If my rabbi were credibly accused of something awful I might switch synagogues but it wouldn't shake my faith in Judaism as a religion or way of life. They're different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I won’t read all the pages.

I am a Jew who grew up surrounded by Catholics. Through their church, many of them found ways to be great people: kind, charitable, thoughtful, community oriented… that is all good. And the Catholic Church still runs a lot of programs that help people of all faiths.

I’d focus on that and not the admittedly awful bits. Find friends in church who want to use their faith to make lives better. You can find it.

So if someone in your community was molesting kids but also raised a lot of money for Children’s Hospital would you still support them? The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.

I think a better question is: If you learned that several doctors in your state were caught in fraud, and the state medical board didn’t take their licenses away, but just let him move on to another hospital: would you still take your sick self or sick child to a doctor who is licensed in that state? What if you know that they pay dues to the AMA that lobbies for causes you don’t personally believe in?

Bad analogy: If all the docs were general practitioners, or ob-gyns, or whatever, I'd stay away from that specialty and go to another kind of doctor. It's not like catholisicm is the only religion out there -- or even the only Christian religion.