Reply to My Fellow Catholics Please Help Me To Understand

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "My Fellow Catholics Please Help Me To Understand"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Cardinal Bernard Law came to speak to my Confirmation class in the 80s in a suburb of Boston. Like another PP, I was raised in a Catholic family & was very devout. My parents were Eucharistic ministers etc. I have an uncle who was a priest. But Cardinal Law shook me right out of my faith on the actual day of my confirmation! Instead of talking about a million positive things he could have in the moments before we became adults affirming our chosen faith, he told us a story about a girl who'd been raped by her father and chose to keep the baby. Time & place, folks, time & place. I am not a Bill Maher type who thinks that religious people are stupid. I think the poster who believes the faith has endured for thousands of years & trusts that, not the people in power, is lucky. S/he still has his/her faith and his/her faith community. But Cardinal Law robbed me of my faith, so now I am an agnostic who doesn't know if there is a God, just that I *do* know that manipulative men who use their religious power to try to control young women -- the very same men who apparently covered up pedophilic rape of thousands of my neighbors -- are not part of an organization I need to be ANYWHERE near. Not to mention that our local church shunned my mother when my father divorced her. In her time of need. And that the first man I ever had sex with (who was a good Catholic boy who wanted to marry me) was dysfunctional because he'd been molested by an altar boy (who himself, we can guess, was abused by a priest?). Yeesh. OP, I think you will probably know in your heart of hearts if you can stay with the church or not. I wish I still had faith; I wish I still had a supportive community and the certainty I had as a child when I read scripture and hoped to be a holier person. But if you still believe in *God*, then your issue is probably just which church you feel most comfortable with. If you think you can make change, I do think that changing the church from within is likely a good idea.[/quote]

+11
I was already agnostic but loved the tradition and community of the catholic church and chose to raise my children with supplemental catholic education. When someone spoke to the girls separately in my daughter's confirmation class about modesty, I had the same thoughts (this was with in the last few years).  That's not nearly as bad as a rape story on the day of.

Agree with your advice - change within if you still believe because you are already "in". And the loss of community is real.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics