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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My parents were very devout and not at all hypocritical about it.  As was my grandmother.  It's part of why it has been really really hard for me to leave the Church.  I used to teach CCD with my mom.

I do have some general crisis of faith issues generally that go beyond the church, but then I have specific issues with the church.  I have a bi daughter.  She does not feel welcome, so that's part of my issue.  My larger issue is that I feel like the church has largely ignored its social justice calling, and totally sold itself out to the anti-abortion right wing activists.  The fact that over half of American catholics voted for Trump, and the fact that we have a majority Supreme Court that is entirely hostile to the interests of the poor and disenfranchised tells me that the Church has totally lost its way as far as guiding its flock.  That's focused on the American church, but I also just cannot wrap my head around the Vatican still not accepting birth control, which is so fundamental to keeping families out of poverty and allowing women to lead lives of some independence and significance.  The birth control thing is really fundamental for me.

So, to answer your question -- there is nothing my parents could have done better to keep me in the church.  There's some stuff the Pope(s) could have done differently, and the USCCB.

It makes me really, really, really sad, but this is where I am.[/quote]

Have you studied Humanae Vitae?  The Declaration on Sexual Ethics?  Looked into the enormous charity work the Church does?

One of the greatest spiritual traps for the unwary is to become confused between religious practice and the virtue of religion on one hand and what largely are intellectual and socio-political matters on the other.  If the Supreme Court is, as you propose, “entirely hostile to the interests of the poor and disenfranchised,” that would not accord in any way with the Church’s teaching on charity or its vast body of social teachings going back at least to Pope Leo XIII.  Insisting that artificial birth control is the only way to keep “ families out of poverty and allowing women to lead lives of some independence and significance” seems disingenuous. People aren’t barnyard animals devoid of reason, and it is quite apparent that an anti-life culture (the USSR for example) is more than willing to profess putative “reproductive freedom” to more fully exploit women (and men) for its own purposes.

I feel this great disappointment in your post, and I wonder if there is more to your dissatisfaction with your personal religious experience than the issues you cite. While you seem motivated by charitable feelings, the people you mention are not you. Their relationship with God and with the Church is not yours. Cutting yourself off from what seems to have been a source of life and hope seems ill-conceived and based more on intellectual, social and emotional matters than on spiritual discernment.  I’m not a giant booster of the current edition of the Jesuits, but some of them are quite skilled at helping people work through such things. [/quote]

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