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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP:  I grew up in a very Catholic centered childhood to young adulthood and now in my middle age, I don't have the Catholic culture and friendships I once had.  I actually had a hard time finding godparents for my son as all of our best friends were not Catholic.

I consider myself a Vatican II Catholic and was raised in a traditional yet open-minded church run by the Dominicans.  I have found the cloying conservatism of the last twenty years in the American church ridiculously narrow.  And the two local archdioceses here in the DC metro area have only made it worse.

However, I do believe in the Real Presence, but I find it spiritually unhelpful to my concentration to have Mass in what I call the "big suburban Protestant barn" architecture found in many churches.  My faith has also been closely tied to my ethnicity.  The rosary is just another form of prayer and one should find forms that work for you.  I particularly like walking labrynths.

I finally - after much searching - found a parish that I like, much more reminiscent of the church I grew up in, both in physical style and with a priest who is less rigid than many that have come out of seminary in the last ten years.

My husband is actually a minister in another denomination and we spend a lot of time in churches.  I think you might like the non-Missouri Synod Lutheran churches.  I love Episcopalians, but unless you find a wonderful priest, I think the spiritual side of your life just doesn't develop in the same way as with the Catholics and Lutherans.

I love the warmth of the Presbyterians and the Methodists and their music, but there are two streams in Methodism - one fairly liberal and another extraordinarily conservative.

I have often just had to pick what sustains me in what I consider this dark time in the U.S. church and in light of the fact that I am so distant from the Catholic culture of my young life. In that sense, I feel very Protestant in developing my direct relationship to God.  I need more the warmth of a Father O'Malley than the kind of bishops who seem to think the only things they can lecture us on sex topics and obedience.  The church is so much more than that - there needs to be an infusion of joy and community that is just lacking today.

I am very happy at my parish now, but while out in the wilderness, I tried to develop my own prayer life, read some inspiring lives of saints (like St. Therese, St. Philip Neri) and tried to go to church during the week when it was quieter.  (I know, I know.)

Good luck in your search for the right place.  You'll come round right for you and your family.  [/quote]

Sounds like you've developed a personal Catholicism that works for you -- based on your background, your personality/spirituality and your current options.  I'm not criticizing the concept, at all, just commenting that this is how it appears to me.  And I'll add that in my opinion, if this is turns out to be a trend among thoughtful Catholic adults, looking for a comfortable place for themselves within the faith of their childhood, the institution of the church will shrink even more in the future[/quote]

I don't really agree with this.

The universality of the Church makes it an awfully big tent.  For two millenia there has been room in the church for both good soldiers and pacifists, contemplatives and social activists, rich and poor, the simple minded and the intellectual giants, the skeptics and the nondoubters, .  The variety one sees in  Catholic saints reminds us how welcome this diversity is.  We each find our own path toward God based on our gifts, interests, and circumstances.[/quote]

Well, the Catholic church I was involved in for a small portion of those 2 millennia had no room for "diversity." There was one set of rules and it applied to all.  [/quote]

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