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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.