What creates ex-Catholics?

My wife is a former Catholic. She is the only one in her family who no longer practices Catholicism.

Her mother is very devout and takes it seriously. Her father, who passed away, kept a distance from the church because he hated the hypocrisy of the members (not just the clergy). He was very sensitive to religious pretense.

I think she just grew up with it, and it was never that meaningful to her. It was part of her ethnicity and upbringing, not really her faith. Eventually she joined an evangelical protestant group because it met her spiritual needs. Her family was not happy, but they didn't prevent it.

This is all interesting. Some people drop out when they undergo something like a divorce. Others are looking for a closer, more social life with others in their church, so they join Evangelical or other Protestant churches.

Some not well versed may see something very old world or ethnic and not like it and think this characterizes the whole church.

But I suspect many who drop out just go along with the political correctness of the age that characterizes the church as obsolete or totalitarian or fascists or anti-woman or something like that. A few people dropped out of my parish when the pastor started strongly promoting NFP training.

There is supposedly a steam of people coming into the church, or "swimming the Tiber" as they call it from the Protestant tradition. These people usually have given this move considerable thought. I was surprised to learn that when these people do this, they are almost immediately cut off from their friends and former church affiliates; no longer welcome to Bible studies and things like that.

A related question I've often wondered about is why do liberal Catholics (those types of liberals who reject much of what the Church teaches) bother to stay in?

That's easy, Rob. Having been both Protestant and Catholic, I can say that Catholicism really gets in your bones in a way that Protestantism just doesn't (as a new Orthodox, I can say that Orthodoxy works in the same way). Catholicism just feels right, even if you don't believe the dogma. That being the case, and if there is zero expectation from your pastor or parish that you will believe any of it, and if the authentic doctrine of the church is not proclaimed from the pulpit or otherwise taught in your parish ... why would you leave?

"why would you leave?"

Yeah, I guess -- but such a mentality is extremely foreign to me.

As Aaron Baugher implies, though, do you think that in some cases there is a sort of perverse desire to be a turd in the punchbowl or a boatrocker?

Connie, reading between the lines a little bit, the reasons you articulate are reasons articulated by those I find to be PC -- at least you nos. 1 and 2 and maybe 5, depending on which theological issues. But PC is always a sticky widget to discuss. Would you care to elaborate? I'm interested.

I don't recall getting much relativism from the Church, but I have often heard it from older Catholics, "If you're a good person, you'll go to heaven." Well, why put up with Mass when the good Hindus and atheists are going to get there too?

CCD was terrible. I honestly can't remember learning anything. There are a lot of Catholics (like myself, although I'm learning on my own) who just don't know much about their Church. When attacked by Protestants or society at large, they have no arguments. I mean, one can oppose Church teachings for various reasons, but I've met very few who actually know why the Church doesn't have female priests, for instance. If the Church doesn't care enough to teach its flock, why should they stick around? And Exhibit A is the DaVinci Code. Far too many Catholics liked that book and think it is true.

A lot of Catholics are in the northeast, with social and demographic patterns similar to Europe. My guess is that if you dug deeper, you'd see that where Catholicism lost members, so did the Episcopals and other older traditions because of correlation with other factors.

Indifferentism. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are largely cultural religions. Lacking a cultural reinforcement they both struggle. This is true for the mainline Protestants. It is true even for the SBC in the South. Indifferentism is a disease that inflicts conservatives as much as it does liberals. See the reaction to Romney's Mormonism for a case in point.

Now I don't think we are dealing with anything that hasn't been seen elsewhere. What's different is that grown children are extremely unlikely to worship in the same community as their relatives. When these children arrive in their new communities, they often find their childhood-type place of worship is not bending over backwards trying to get them acclamated. In fact, they may not care at all that they want to join. Some places may be downright hostile. For a person not secure in his faith or a person who may be out of practice, this is not the most receptive atmosphere. Unfortunately, the 18-25 demographic has quite a few members in both groups. Such is the life of transients.

The typical Catholic parish has liberals, conservatives, orthodox members, heterodox members, contraceptors, NFPers, even-NFP-is-a-sin'ers, cradle Catholics, converts, white collars, blue collars, and so on.

I think most clergy and lay leaders realize they can't please all of these demographics, but that it is possible to not offend any of them. The result is an hour long attempt to say nothing. For the 99% of Catholics whose participation in the Church starts and stops on Sunday morning, that leaves little reason to stay other than inertia. Whether you are liberal anti-dogmatist or a conservative pro-dogmatist matters little if the dogma never sees the light of day on Sunday morning when "everyone" is there.

For those who take the time to go on retreats, meetings, Stations and other devotions, etc the reasons to stay in the Church are obvious even if very few people are courageous enough to practice the authentic faith in a regular Sunday Mass.

PS I am an orthodox, serious Catholic who writes this out of love (and frustration).

I left the RCC for many reasons--being gay is one, but the further away I get, the more I realize that wasn't even one of the big reasons. I remember some absolutely wonderful priests when I was growing up, and also some absolutely awful ones--but they were awful not because of any sexual abuse, at least that I knew of. What really turned me off was the spiritual pride and hypocrisy of many priests. I don't take well to being lectured at, spoken down to, harangued... I don't respond well to being told "this is what's right, this is the way it is, because *I* said so". And you're supposed to be modeling Christ for me?
Engage me as a person, as a human being with an intellect and an open mind and a spirit, as an equal partner in my spiritual formation. Don't dictate to me and silence my questioning with claims of authority. I figure that if you can't explain something to me and have to resort to shouting, then you've utterly lost the argument.
I think clerical attitudes like this are the result of the top-down power structure of the RCC--or maybe that's just my personal axe to grind. ;) I've never encountered this kind of attitude in the many (granted, mainline) Protestant churches I've been to where the clergy don't take your presence for granted.

Rob G: I'm a cradle RC who loves my church, who studies my faith, and cannot quite buy oh, only 3 or 4 of its teachings. On doctrine, I believe that Catholicism (and probably Orthodoxy for all I know) comes about as close to Truth as is humanly possible even with the aid of revelation and the Holy Spirit. I don't think that makes me a "liberal" Catholic, but I'd understand if someone would disagree with that. If you were to call me a relativist however, well, dem's fightin' words :)

Rod's explanation for why I stay is spot-on. Furthermore, where else would I go? No demonination has a lock on objective Truth, neither do I, and it seems silly to shop around for a denomination with a precise mix of doctrines (with some unknowable mix of right and wrong ones) that precisely matches my own.

How is that so foreign to you?

That said, I also know many fallen and falling away Catholics and some who are barely hanging in there, who love their liberalism more than Church or Truth. In those cases, I'd agree with you - "Why do you stay?"

Look to be intellectually honest.I've thought about leaving for a couple of reasons.

1) The response of fellow Catholics in the laity and the heirarchy to the abuse scandal.

2) Spiritual boredom. Monotonous Lifeless recitational services. (Yes they're out there.Too often in fact.) Lack of spiritual food. Lack of vibrancy.

But I'm convinced I won't leave.

The first challenge was the most difficult. Eyes on the cross and redemption alone. Exercising faith in the darkness. Refusing to judge. Repenting when I did. Practicing forgiveness and mercy with everyone including myself, whether or not someone deserved it.

There are still issues there. But I've decided I can't make it any better by leaving. God needs us to be faithful and loyal to Him. And if I was born Catholic then that's my call and I need to wrestle, not quit. Shine as much light as God decides to give me. No covering it with a bushel basket or taking off into another faith. Still it's hard. I've just finally decided to have my youngest baptized and he's almost 2! Trust is much easier to come by for me (and many others) now.

On the second, I realized 'If your hungry, don't sit there and starve. Go find some spiritual food'. I found a vibrant church with lots of bible studies, prayer meetings, healing masses and workshops/retreats as my base and we do Catholic Church hop unabashedly a bit locally between 6 or 7 places. And we are planning to reconnect with the Cursillo retreat movement.

I think it's good to hear what different pastors have to say. Expose the kids to different expressions of the Catholic Mass (Melkite, Benedictine, Augustinian, Catholic Charismatic, Traditional,Gregorian Chant). Most like the Contemporary masses best. So we focus on those.

Overall the kids are getting a broader experience of what it means to belong to the Catholic community. And we do go to our main parish at least 2 or 3 times a month. But We try to focus on the Catholicity not the parochialism. And it's helped us to stay. There is a richness in the Catholic Church that very few people seek out and experience. I think if they'd have found it; they wouldn't have needed to leave for dryness. There's still alot of good out there. Seek and ye shall find.

Maybe that was Freudian, but I meant to say trust is much harder to come by.

"Why have people left?" is the question asked. But for many who left, you have to ask of them, "Were they ever there, in the first place?"

Far too many "cradle Catholics" NEVER made a conscious decision to embrace Christian discipleship. Sure, they were "put through the motions:" baptized as infants, dragged to Sunday Mass by parents, put into Catholic schools or (for public school kids like myself) into CCD programs. But the faith never really took hold and one day they realized it was not for them and they "dropped out" of the Church.

The late, great JPII made clear that the "New Evangelization" he promoted will only work if true conversion takes place in the heart. This means that even for the most conspicously devout, "re-conversion" is a never-ending, life-long effort. As "Irenaeus" so correctly stated, it is about "authentic Christianity." And it has to begin with each of us, in the way we re-shape our character and "take on Christ" in everything we do. It takes time and patience ... and a good deal of cooperation on our part with the Holy Spirit :-)

Not everyone is going to be attracted to orthodoxy ... certainly not at first glance. I sure wasn't :-) But the moral teachings and devotional practices of the Church (which so many of my NY Times-reading friends absolutely loath) have grown organically from a 2,000 year "ongoing meditation" on the meaning of the Good News and its application to our lives and our culture. People may reject the teachings of the Church, but they can't ignore them :-) I don't make any claim to fully understanding them -- let alone following them every day in every way. But instinctively I respect them for being the truth and I try to "think with the Church" and understand these teachings and, step-by-step, try to live them by the grace of a forgiving God.

One sign of hope for the Church is the growth in lay ecclesial movements (Neo-Catechumenate, Communion and Liberation, Opus Dei, etc.) and other activities (Youth Basketball, charistmatic prayer groups, etc.) that offer small-group fellowship. One problem with the Church is its huge size: we've become a victim of our own success!! Many of the larger parishes in my urban diocese are about half the size of some celebrated megachurches. People get lost in the shuffle, so to speak. Evangelization is very "relational" and depends a great deal on the power of "personal witness" -- but that is NOT likely to happen if Church-going merely means attending Sunday Mass where you don't know anyone in the pew kneeling beside you. It's too impersonal and anonymous. Thus the importance of small-group fellowship.

Most people I know who have left the Catholic Church have just drifted away; they haven't made any kind of soul-searching, thought-out decision to leave. And I think the main reason is that the Church has just not given them any reason to stay. Much of it has to do with the emptiness of what is perceived as meaningless routine, and the homilies free of any meaningful content. It was just easier not to be Catholic, and the Church never gave them any reason to want to make even the minimal effort required to go to Mass once a week.

I think the Church is only beginning to realize that, in this country at this time, it has to compete in a marketplace of ideas, and that it can no longer count on the fact that people will remain Catholic just because they have always been, or because their parents and grandparents were.

I also think that the Church is just beginning to realize that it will be more attractive by challenging the mainstream culture than by going along with it. Why was Christianity so attractive to so many people in the late Empire? Because it challenged people to live counter to the prevailing hedonistic values of the mainstream culture, and offered a sense of something more profound.

In addition, the Catholic Church has always been (until recently) very good at basic childhood catechesis, but has always been very bad at adult catechesis. The Church is only beginning to address the majority of the faithful as intelligent adults, and challenge them to build on the basic tenets of the faith that they memorized as children. (Of course, nowadays, many of them aren't even required to do that.) We are in a situation where, for the first time since antiquity, many of the laity are better educated than many of the clergy, and the Church needs to adjust to that. (I suspect that this is a challenge for the Orthodox Church as well.)

I owe my faith far more to my parents, esp. my mother, than I do to 12 years of Catholic school. One summer, when I was around 10, my mother was so disgusted at what we *weren't* being taught in school that she had my sister and me study the Baltimore Catechism and repeat it to her. I still remember some of it. Not only did we always go to Mass as a family, but we had family rosary every night in October and May; we lit an Advent Wreath as a family; my mother trooped us all down to Confession four times a year; and she said a prayer with us every morning before we left for school.

I have to say, I don't know anyone who left the Church over the sex abuse scandal (either the abuse itself or the Church's abominable handling of it), but then neither do I know anyone who, to my knowledge, was molested by a priest or knows anyone who was. I don't know whether I'm typical in that regard, or not.

Finally, what has always struck me about so many former Catholics is that they continue to identify themselves as former Catholics, in ways that, say, former Presbyterians seldom go around identifying themselves as such or calling themselves "recovering Presbyterians". As someone once remarked, the Catholic Church is the "Hotel California" of religions: You can check out, but you never really leave. ;-)

It is no coincidence that many of us left the Catholic Church in our younger years when we were yearning for a deeper experience with the Living Christ. For me, I was drawn to Evangelicalism because I found in it a seriousness about the Christian life that I did not find in my parish. Eventually, I accepted the solas of the Reformation and became convinced that Protestantism was correct, though I never ceased to appreciate and learn from many of the thinkers that preceded the Reformation, such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. In fact, I earned my PhD in philosophy at a Catholic institution, Fordham University, where I studied under some of the finest Thomist scholars including W. Norris Clarke and Gerald McCool.

However, on April 28, 2007, I returned to full communion with the Church when I went to confession for the first time in over 30 years. (When I told my brother, Jim, what I was to do, he volunteered to help me out if I had trouble recalling my sins! :-)).

You can read about my story in these places
http://www.insidethevatican.com/newsflash/2008/newsflash-jan07-08.htm
http://www.ignatius.com/Magazines/CWR/beckwith.html

Interesting thoughts. I converted to Catholicism in 2003. In essence, I abandoned the faith of my parents, but in the reverse of what is being discussed here.

In Catholicism, I found the fullness of Christianity - something I do not recall ever feeling as part of my upbringing (Jehovah's Witness). I cannot imagine anything that would make me leave. I would describe myself as neither orthodox or liberal in a religious sense. Just struggling to live up to the teachings of the church in the best possible manner that I can.

My parents weren't OK with my conversion. It is still the elephant in the room, particularly with respect to my decision to raise my children in the faith. It's just something to deal with day by day.

That said, my husband was a lapsed craddle Catholic when we met and married. Divorce drove him from the church.

I am one of those ex-catholics who wrote about his experience in the other thread.

Why did I leave? I left because I couldn't find the answers. I left because I was frustrated with the direction I was going. I left because of guilt. That's one I notice people don't talk about. There is a heavy guilt trip (in my opinion) when it comes to being Catholic, and it left me hollowed out in many ways. There were a number of times where my mind went "what's the point? I'm just gonna screw it up again." After a while, you begin to wonder if the problem is the expectations instead of yourself. And that's where I am now.

Another thought: I don't know how many times I've seen thoughts like the one's above about never really being part of the church or lack of soul-searching. But I know I get angry every time I see it. It plays back to the guilt. I don't know how many nights I just laid there and went "Please not me. Please don't leave me out like this." Five years on, nothing's changed it seems. I'm still screwing it up.

I'm tired of never being enough. I'm tired of being left outside, even in my own family. I'm still here, even if nobody it seems likes that fact.

As a young Protestant leader, I find the stories here illuminating. Please keep sharing!

A lot of Catholics are in the northeast, with social and demographic patterns similar to Europe. My guess is that if you dug deeper, you'd see that where Catholicism lost members, so did the Episcopals and other older traditions because of correlation with other factors.

Excellent point. Have there been any studies on geography of this phenomenon? Anecdotally, my strong sense is that the Church is numerically declining (judged by Mass attendance patterns) mainly in the traditionally ethnic areas of the Northeast and to a lesser extent the urban areas of the Great Lakes states.

More than anywhere else in this country, Catholicism in those regions was intertwined with a particular urban culture. That culture has all but disappeared, and so it is no surprise that religious belief and identity has changed also.

"How is that so foreign to you?"

AND

'That said, I also know many fallen and falling away Catholics and some who are barely hanging in there, who love their liberalism more than Church or Truth. In those cases, I'd agree with you - "Why do you stay?"'

J Dave G, that's exactly my point. What's foreign to me is what you describe in that 2nd statement. I can't see staying a member of a church where I don't believe much of what's taught, that's all. To me it's intellectually (and spiritually) dishonest.

I can't see staying a member of a church where I don't believe much of what's taught, that's all.

That's a fair point, but I don't think it reflects the perception of most progressive Catholics who remain in the church while often dissenting from the current trends. I believe 95% of what is taught in the church. The problem is the 5% of disagreement is used as a litmus test for my devotion to the faith by many orthodox Catholics who like to divide the world into "good" and "bad" Catholics.

I don't believe that there are many Catholics who believe 100% of what is taught in the church. Anyone who criticizes the Vatican II reforms, for instance, is rejecting what is taught in church. Anyone who supports unjust war, capital punishment, oppressive immigration policy, is rejecting what is taught in the church. Anyone who sat quietly during the abuse scandal or blamed it all on the "lavendar menace" is not being faithful to the church.

So we have disagreements. We have dissent. The rich tradition of our faith allows for that and arguably expects it.

I think there are as many reasons people leave as the people themselves. I was raised Episcopal and I became Catholic because I believe it to be the Church established by Christ and led by Peter, the Rock. If I ceased to believe this for any reason, I would not have much reason to be Catholic anymore. I find that people who left often were indifferentist, maybe they married a Protestant and they went back and forth between the Methodist Church of one spouse, for example, and Catholic, and found that the Methodists were more friendly, or had a better youth group, or had adult Sunday School or Bible study or something. Many people were angry about the pedophilia scandals and left, but many just drift away.

I find it interesting that a number of people don't affiliate with any religion. I think for many people, church is sort of like a hobby for people who like that sort of thing. Many people I know, including my own family members, believe in God and even in Christ, but don't see much point in going to church every Sunday. I am sometimes tempted by this myself. Like CS Lewis, I often find myself going to church even when I don't want to because I know God wants me to. I think I am getting a little burned out because I work at the church I attend as a secretary and I get tired of going to Mass and having people bug me with church business (especially since I am paid by the hour which does not include Sundays) and I know that's a bad attitude. There is only one Catholic Church in my town so sometimes I go to the Newman Center Mass at the local university.

Actually, more people still belong to a church than did in the 18th century, for example, which had a larger percentage of the population unchurched, strangely enough.

I think it takes effort to "keep the faith" so to speak and it's just so easy to drift away. The other thing in my view, is that partially due to the priest shortage but other reasons as well, many Catholic parishes are just huge, as large as small villages, often having 2000 or more families, as opposed to the average Protestant church (not the megachurches of course) of about 300 members. It is very easy to get lost in the crowd. People often leave for that reason.

Another reason is divorce and remarriage. There are people who just don't see why they should go thru the annulment procedure and consider it a farce. So they go to the Lutheran or Episcopal Churches, which on the surface at least, don't seem that different than the Catholic Church due to the similarity of the liturgy.

I would note that the mainline Protestant denominations are losing members as well. Many of them have most of their members over 50 or 60 and the young people are drifting away.

I also think that it is likely that the children of many of the immigrant Catholics will drift away. We already have a problem in my parish--we have lots of Latinos here, many of whom don't speak much English. We have found that if we don't have a mass every Sunday in Spanish, they are snapped up by the evangelical and Pentecostal churches which do have services in Spanish. But their kids don't like the Spanish mass. They speak Spanish but not liturgical Spanish and complain that they don't want to go to Spanish mass because they dont' get anything out of it. Meanwhile, the parents don't want to go to English mass because they don't understand it. Hopefully, some of these kids will go to English mass when they are adults but I rather suspect they won't go anywhere.

I'm a former Catholic who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. The emotional reason was that I became fed up with fellow Catholics, both clerical and lay, who thought that (a) Catholic Christianity is inherently oppressive;(b)since it IS oppressive, it's all right to pick and choose what you want to believe and do and still call yourself a faithful Catholic; and (c) the sheer stupiditiy and ugliness that became liturgical practice--all in the spirit of Vatican II, of course! When something is ugly, something is wrong. If it's true that how we pray is how we believe, then something in the Catholic Church went awry. It became less demanding in discipline and that undermined belief.

The rational reason was my increasing skepticism about Catholic dogma, especially around Papal authority and (strangely, perhaps) the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. After lots of study and prayer, I concluded that Roman Church had assumed, unilaterally, too much authority without the consensus of whole Church.

It was hard to do, willfully making myself a heretic and a schismatic in the eyes of the Church in which I'd been nurtured and brought up. But it was the right choice. Truth is the most important thing, even if it's painful to embrace.

Whoa - I wish there was a "recall that post!" capability. I would like to edit the first paragraph:

I can identify with much of what Sheilagh wrote. Taking the responsibility to find a good parish and making the commitment to participate in parish activities and give back service made a big difference for me in the strength of my faith and my feeling of connection. As a child, the parish (and school even) that I attended were not run in a way that really encouraged people to WANT to give service., as far as I could discern. The parish's main activities in the year were selling raffle tickets for monthly "Cash Galore" drawings and working on the yearly festival. Looking back, going to that parish for 10 yrs was pretty spiritually deadening. What a revelation it was to get out to the Univ of Illinois and find some wonderful parishes there where people SANG(!), people were FRIENDLY(!), people were ENTHUSIASTIC and WANTED TO BE THERE(!). There were ACTIVITIES, both spiritual and social. Woke me up that this kind of parish could exist.

Sheilagh, when you mentioned Cursillo, I was flooded with memories. My Cursillo weekend was probably the best thing that happened to me in my adult Protestant life. (Yes, Lutherans do Cursillo, too!) Go. You'll never regret it. God bless.

The main reason I left the RCC is that by its tenets I am a considered a heretic. In another era of history I would have been burnt at the stake.

I don't recognise the efficacy of the sacraments in instilling grace. I need no "presbyter" to mediate between me and God in confession; no scholastic semantic casuistry like "transubstantiation" to explain the immanent presence of God; no baptism to remove the "stain" of Original Sin because there is no such thing; thus the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is superfluous.

I deny a wrathful God whose "honour" was so insulted by men's sins that he decided to autoanthropomorphise and "die" those sins. I find ludicrous the entire intellectual house of cards that is Christology: persons, natures, homoousia, homoiousia. In other words, I reject the entire raison d'être for the institutional church.

I pass over the hypocrisy of the Church's sexual teachings and the sexual ethics of its bishops and presbyters. Facilitate the immolation of the souls of innocent little children and you are rewarded with the emoluments of a sinecure as archpriest the Basilica of St. Mary Major. I agree with Thomas Aquinas that "hominization" does not occur simultaneously with conception; (Thomas, like Copernicus, covered his tracks with a nod to the authority of the Church to avoid the fires of an auto-da-fé: that thankfully is not necessary today.) Of course, I am French so that l'amour and its sometimes unintended consquences does not rise to the level that requires the theologians' prurient notice. I believe that Mary had other children and there is little justification in interpreting the "brothers of the Lord" as his second cousins once removed or whatever. I think that the interpretation of Isaiah in regard to the prophetic nature of the Virgin Birth is flat out irrelevant; that in fact in Hebrew the word used is not primarily to be taken in the Greek sense of "parthenos" or our sense of "virgin" at all.

I will add that I was educated by the Jesuits in college. In the required theology courses, I argued such of the above points as I was aware of then (mostly original sin) with several of the professors. I was often told "you are a heretic" (an Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, docetist, semi-Pelagian among others); I asked if I could get that in writing as it would probably be the last document the Holy See would ever issue in Latin (this was about a year after after the closing of Vatican II. Until Benedict's Summorum Pontificum it probably would have been.) Since they've stopped excommunicating heretics (like abortion advocates Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc.), I am unlikely to get my certificate even in the vernacular; excommunication is now reserved only for such agents of the devil as Archbishop Lefebvre. I don't recall whether Wojtyla excommunicated that heroic upholder of Tradition before or after he (Wojtyla) kissed a Koran.

Having said that, I recognise that faith like the other theological virtues of hope and love, is of the heart, not the mind. So I still pray the prayer that I learned in my exploration of Orthodoxy many years ago: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Salvation is of the Jews, hypocrisy is of the Jesuits.

Salamander wrote:
I was so used to encountering this variety of Catholic that I was a little taken aback when I met a few practicing Catholics who actually could give good reasons for the Church's teaching.

Yes! A little more of that would go a long way. A Catholic Answers talk I went to way back when told this former evangelical that (a) there are Catholics that read their Bibles and (b) there is a rational defense of Tradition, much as Proestants defend Scripture.

Hi Aaron Baugher -

It is my understanding (please, someone correct me if I'm wrong) that contracting a civil divorce does not exclude you from communion. It is remarriage that will excommunicate you. Two of my aunts divorced, one due to her husband's adultery and another due to an abusive husband. Neither remarried, although one did later get an annulment.

I think that the doctrine can be more clearly explained by saying that the church "does not recognize" civil divorce. You are always married in the eyes of God. The church will allow someone to obtain a civil divorce for serious reasons.

In addition, since you were raised Catholic but married outside the church, you may have a very cut-and-dry case with regards to the nullity of your marriage. I recall recently that Nicole Kidman did not need an annulment to marry her current husband in the Catholic Church, because she married Tom Cruise in a Scientologist ceremony (granted, getting married in another Christian church is not identical to that situation).

You might want to seek out a trustworthy priest just to discuss your situation.

Boy, this is something I heard about constantly before I was a Catholic ... but I never, ever encountered it in 13 years as a diligently practicing Catholic. Seriously, I couldn't find anything said by a priest, or taught by the Church, that was neurotically guilt-inducing. In fact, just the opposite: it was as if the institution worked hard to avoid anybody feeling guilty about anything (except that one priest at my parish in Fort Lauderdale [1995-1998], who preached constantly about the sin of homophobia).

Since you came to the church as an adult convert, you probably avoided the whole Catholic Guilt Complex. I can assure you, being born into and raised in a Catholic family, going to Catholic schools, etc. is a whole 'nother animal.

"Seriously, I couldn't find anything said by a priest, or taught by the Church, that was neurotically guilt-inducing."

That's because you likely embraced--and sought out--the discipline and "guilt" as part of your faith journey. The fact that you were disappointed by the lack of discipline is as telling as someone who says they felt tortured by the guilt. They are the opposite sides of the faith coin. That you sought out an even more "disciplined" faith means you were looking for something in your faith experience that differs from most people.

Rod,

Your religious education was not in the hands of religious between the ages of 6 and 14, was it? If I recall, you came to Catholicism as an adult. I'm sure the experience of someone who goes thru RCIA is very different from how we were taught.

Jim

Besides the answer to the question "why did you leave the R.C. church?", I wonder how many would like to leave it, but are afraid to, because they've been taught they'd go to hell, regardless of whether they joined another Christian church.

This concern was a hurdle for me, and other former Catholics I know, and took considerable time to resolve.

Oh, poor catechesis over the last couple generations is definitely part of the problem. Church shopping has become as popular as changing the brand of car one buys.

A while back 60 minutes profiled Joel Osteen, a great example of American-bred religion (as opposed to more universal traditions such as Orthodoxy and Catholicism). At one book signing a gentleman gushed "My wife is Jewish and I'm Catholic and we just love your show!"

Sheesh.

I am not patting myself on the back when I say I am a well-catechized Catholic. I just am. European-born and raised in a family of Catholics and Lutherans who grew up in a generation when faith was still taken very seriously, when I entered the Catholic Church in the U.S. it was with eyes open and knowing exactly why I was converting.

The last couple of generations of Americans have been so poorly instructed in history that it's not surprising that religion is regarded as just so much another option as any other.

Whenever I meet a former Catholic who tells me that they left because there were "too many rules" the flags go up immediately.

Catholics who leave because they really don't know what they are leaving in the first place are legion these days.

At the same time, converts, reverts and immigrants (although their children may become as allured to the American system of church shopping as this generation) are filling their spaces.

According to the Pew study if I remember correctly, mainstream Protestantism is not faring well at all.

For me it was the hypocrasy and dogma. The priests I talked with acknowledge that the roman catholic church has changed its mind on how things should be done, and that the roman catholic church may not be following God's will in every manner. The problem I had was those priests would also tell me that it is a mortal sin not to obey the roman catholic church even when they are not following God's will. There isn't even a decent vehicle to bring it up for debate.

Now that Pope Benedict is in charge I've seen the roman catholic church start to change back to the way it was before Vatican II. I've read statements from the Pope that seem to contradict Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II. I thought Popes were supposed to be infalliable on spiritual matters so I'm surprized by the acceptance of some of Benedicts speaches, decrees, and briefs that contradict his predecessor.

I might have stayed if Pope Benedict were more like his precessor. Pope John Paul II was a good man. But I believe he was just a man, just as fallable as the rest of us. If there is anything Pope Benedict has taught me its that the roman catholic church is not the sole means for salvation. And as long as they put tradition and saving face above God's will more and more will leave.

I wish I new Martin Luther's history better. I remember in adult confirmation class that Luther had found that one of the previous Popes said that there was salvation outside of the church, just not outside of Christ. Maybe its in Pope John Paul II's writings because he referenced it in his one of his briefs. Its been so long since I've studyed this I cant recall it off the top of my head.

"I teach Sunday School in a Lutheran Church and it is difficult to convince good kids from good families that they are in need of a redeemer."

They certainly had no such problem "convincing" the "good" kids in "Bible Camp". Their methods were kinda scary though.

"I can say that Catholicism really gets in your bones in a way that Protestantism just doesn't"

Rod, I've got to disagree with you on that. Pentecostalism also "gets in your bones". (After all, they have the best hymns, the best preaching.) As does Salvationism.

Your blanket statement is way too broad to be accurate.

"I'm going to find a church that suits my beliefs better?" could just as easily have been written, 'I can't believe this hokum. It's not based on solid ground. I'm outta here.'

Jaybird and Jim:

Dead on on the difference between being BORN Catholic and CONVERTING to Catholicism.

Roland:

So you're a TDJA guy, too, huh?

This is a fascinating thread.

I'm noticing some patterns here: people cite poor catechesis, lack of strong parental example (as opposed to parents who simply made it a rule to stay in Church through high school, for instance) disagreement with particular teachings, and lack of good leaders as reasons for leaving; people cite good catechesis or a rediscovery of the faith as an adult, strong parental example, and acceptance of major Church teachings as reasons for staying. What's interesting about this is that those of us who stay don't let lackluster or even bad leadership push us away; I think for myself the hierarchical structure of the Church is actually a benefit here, since one can easily look to Rome and ignore local dissidence when necessary.

In some ways, though, I'm reminded of an anecdote Fulton Sheen wrote about in one of his books, which went something like this: A priest consulted with an older pastor about some problems the younger one was having with the faith. The older priest listened as the young priest outlined all the areas of dissent he was struggling with, ranging from relatively minor matters of liturgical practice to major issues involving the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The older priest listened, nodding, as the young one spoke. Finally, the young priest asked for advice--should he leave the priesthood? The Church itself?

And the old priest looked into the young one's eyes, and asked simply, "Blonde, brunette, or redhead?"

The point of that little story, of course, is that often our stated motivations for disagreeing with the Church have little to do with deep theological conflicts. Put simply, we have a vested interest in some particular sin or other: we like a certain sexual sin, and don't want to give it up, perhaps, or we're fond of drinking to excess and don't see why we should have to feel guilty about it, or the soft gluttony of too much food prepared too exactly to our specifications is a comfortable habit, or we like throwing a little genteel hate at our neighbors and feeling superior to them, or we don't see why we of all Christians shouldn't get to contracept, or we divorced a Catholic spouse and now want to marry in the Church again, and get really mad when we're denied an annulment, or we don't want to give up going to Madame Palmreader for our weekly fortune-telling session, or--true story--some mean Catholic teacher once made us kneel on cracked corn for a penance (that last happened in the early 1900s to the father of an elderly deacon I once knew; this deacon grew up outside the Church, became Catholic for a girl, and went on to have a huge Catholic family with her not only of their own children, but of disadvantaged children no one else would adopt). There's no doubt that sometimes someone is treated unjustly by a person connected with the Church, which creates a spiritual conflict; but lots of times the injustice, such as it is, is entirely in our own hearts: we want the Church to stop reminding us that we're sinners, and stop calling us to abandon sin, take up our crosses, and follow Christ.

What happens then is that we say either "I'm going to leave, since the Church won't allow me to do X," or "I'll stay and do X anyway, because the Church would be perfect if she'd just enter the twenty-first century and allow X like all those other churches do." In any case, we've decided that our own truth is superior to any claims the Church has to Truth, and that we can be our own mini-magisteriums, personal pontiffs, and even complete churches all by ourselves.

None of this is meant to brush aside the real pain and suffering experienced by those who do leave, of course; nor am I speaking to those who do leave because of the sort of spiritual conflict I mentioned in which the harm someone has endured which has been identified with the Church leads to an intolerable state of spiritual darkness. But for those who leave because the Church doesn't allow them divorce, contraception, abortion, homosexual activity, gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, sorcery, hatred, etc., the reality is that they want the Church to stop being the Church, which is an unreasonable demand.

Is there anything wrong with cultural Catholicism? Last time I checked, they baptised their kids and sent them to Church every Sunday. Many of them even married in the Church. I would rather die a cultural Catholic than a convicted atheist.

Back when we had a stronger culture in this society, those cultural Catholics would:
a) Disown children who married outside the Church.
b) Chew out the parents who hadn't gotten their grandbabies baptised or were lax in their formation.
c) Offer a little change when asked by the priest or the bishop without even giving much thought to what the project was.
d) Would support their fellow parishioners business over some megamart.
e) Would stick out a tough marriage.

At no point in the history of the Church, we the pews mainly filled by convicted Thomists, Augistinians, or Franciscans. They were filled by people in all different stages of life. They were doing the best the could, the best knew how.

Also poor Gospel teaching. The Lutheran church is suffering from this as well. Evangelicals do this well.

Sarah, actually confessional, historic Lutheran teaching and practice are just as catholic as they are evangelical. Luther taught that the bread and wine of Holy Communion are the true body and blood of Christ; he believed in baptismal regeneration and private confession; he also continued to honor Mary as the ever-virgin Mother of God. Lutherans are much more "Gospel-based" in many ways that some Evangelical and Pentecostal bodies.

What's interesting about this is that those of us who stay don't let lackluster or even bad leadership push us away; I think for myself the hierarchical structure of the Church is actually a benefit here, since one can easily look to Rome and ignore local dissidence when necessary.

Quite right, Erin.

Larry:

TGDJA!

Nothing better than a good theological throwdown with the Jebbies. Especially when your grade and GPA are at stake. Great guys though, a lot of them.

Noticed you replied to my message Rod. I'll admit I may be in the minority when it comes to the guilt trip angle, but it is very much there in my case.

The priest at my parish was very big on the 'Culture of Death' angle. It found it's way to get laced in very noticibly. He also didn't do a lot of the more "liberal" parts of the service (when negotiable). He did believe in the idea of the lay being more invovled though. He was very successful (during his time, I think the parish increased memebership four-fold). But it did lose me.

I'll also admit part of it is upbringing. I have a tendency to live with regret for a long time. Whether that was because of daily life and spilled into religion or because of religion and spilled into daily life, I don't know. Either way, I still haven't healed from that.

PS: devout Orthodox spouses, too. And for all I know Mormon and Unitarian as well. And maybe the occasional Jew, Moslem, or Buddhist.

If you're spiritually empty and you're living with somebody spirit-filled....

Aaron Baugher, as a priest and a canonist (church lawyer), I can assure you that if you were married outside the Catholic Church and later divorced you are not excluded from communion as long as you have not remarried. Make a good confession and speak to a priest about getting an annulment (in your case a very simple procedure, providing documents).

As to why people leave or stay:

My perspective is different since I am on "both sides of the fence" as a priest of 20 years and a cradle Catholic with about half Catholic education, half public school/secular college education.

I echo the laments about bad religious education. As a Catholic who grew up in the 60's and 70's most of my parish based religious education was awful. They tried, but it was not very systematic and had far too little solid content. Instead of imparting religious knowledge the focus seemed to be on getting us to have religious feelings, "love" being the major focus. Who could disagree with love? But feelings only get you so far, you can't understand or defend your faith without knowledge of it.

I could very well have fallen away and ignored my religious vocation. I was blessed with good parents, they were not overly pious, family devotion consisted of grace at meals, Sunday Mass and stations of the cross during Lent. However it was clear faith mattered to my parents, we often discussed the sermon on the way back in the car. My parents cared about prayer and they actually read books on various controversial topics. My mom is still a basic "Vatican II" liberal Catholic with a deep faith in God and the Eucharist.

Because of my parents and questions from my peers I began to read about Catholicism in Junior High and High School, everything from the World Book encyclopedia (article by Fulton Sheen) to Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. My family moved and I went to a very good Catholic High School for two years that had good priests and academically rigorous study of the Catholic Faith. My vocation blossomed.

Why do people stay? I think they take the responsibility of learning about their faith and practicing it conscientiously.

Why do people leave? All the reasons given here are causes, but I think the root cause is today's society. The study, devotion, and commitment to community necessary for ANY religious faith is hard. The survey that occasioned this thread bears this out. We live in a media saturated society, parishes are big and find it hard to cater to each person's spiritual needs (megachurches might teach us something about this), and sinful behavior is much more actively encouraged by society. The priest abuse scandal shows that reform of priests, bishops and religious orders is needed. Even Evangelicals find it very hard to retain people.

My hope as a priest is that I will give people reasons to stay and grow, not assertions of authority. But we also need a lot more lay spiritual leadership, which I see happening EWTN is one example, there are many others.

We should not kid ourselves it will be a challenge to be Catholic in this present society. Prayer, good Gospel teaching, and great communities will help but we will lose people, complacency will not cut it.

I am not now nor have I ever been but my father was an ex-Catholic who left the church for a number of reasons that were never really explained long before he met my mother and my wife is an ex-Catholic who left the church for a number of reasons long before she met me. Oh, and before I met my wife I had a girlfriend in the process of becoming an ex-Catholic because her boyfriend before me had been a priest.

This makes life interesting as I have no use for theology except as a source of humor (enter Marvin) and dealing with Catholic relatives and in-laws over the years, such dealings having long persuaded me that if I were ever so foolish as to embrace a religion it would most certainly NOT be Catholicism. (The one cousin on my father's side that I've stayed in touch with also left the Catholic church and is a very active liberal Protestant who runs around the world delivering farm animals to farmers whose crops I have probably worked to defoliate!)

And I'm not sure where this is heading at all except that people make decisions for lots of reasons and as there really is no rational reason to believe that one belief can be any better than any other whatever decision they make is just fine (an intelligence capable of creating a universe is really going to worry about some musty old books, yeah, right), except that I really wish that when they held my wife's aunt's funeral they would have shut up and buried the damned woman instead of singing some nonsense about eagle droppings.

There are people who stay in the Church even though they disagree with what is being taught, AND there are people who leave who aren't honest (perhaps even with themselves) about their reasons for leaving.

And there are people who leave the church because they have felt abused and battered by the Church and those inside the church. Instead of being treated with the grace and patience that comes with being a good Christian, they were treated with disrespect and disdain when they voiced dissent. Those concerns can't be brushed aside with a quick and dismissive, "they weren't trying hard enough"

I don't see how these are necessarily mutually-exclusive alternatives. Why can't both be true? There are people who stay in the Church even though they disagree with what is being taught, AND there are people who leave who aren't honest (perhaps even with themselves) about their reasons for leaving.

I suppose you're right that they're not necessarily mutually exclusive propositions, but I think it does work that way quite a bit. If someone fervently disagrees with the Church over say, homosexuality or the morality of pre-marital sex to be angry enough to leave over it, I find it difficult to believe that they'd be all that shy about the reason for doing so. At any rate, if conservative Catholics are so vexed by liberals in the pews, one would think they'd be relieved when they finally do decide to leave, no matter what reason they give. Maybe it's just human nature to try to get a parting shot in - which is why you have conservative Catholics complaining about the godless deviants who left the church, and liberals who left still complaining about the mean old bluenoses who drove them away.

Kimberly wrote:
"If you believe (as I do) the Catholic Church is the true church founded by Christ and protected by the Holy Spirit, then you know the Church not only won't, but can't, change teaching to contradict Truth. If that results in personal difficulty - as of course it often does, since we all struggle with our temptations and weaknesses - it's not the fault of the Church but ourselves."

Yes . . . that is exactly what I learned in CCD class . . . I learned that the sum total of what my questions meant, was that by even asking such questions, I had demonstrated that I was in sin, and was therefore in great need of repentance . . . I learned that all those who question what the church says or does, do so because (and ONLY because) they are sinners; since the church, according to its own self-definition, cannot ever be wrong! Which is one way to squash a debate, isn't it?

My questions weren’t welcomed as opportunities to grow as a Christian. They were simply condemned as evidence of my sinful and defiant nature (and to the poster above who got called a 'heretic,' so did I, more than once).

I came away with the sense that the RC church didn’t want my understanding; it only wanted to force my agreement. I am not claiming that this is the experience of all Catholics, but it was mine, and it seemed a good idea to part ways. I agree that I am a sinner; I disagree that church teachings are exempt from sin.

To rphjr60 -- I am glad to know that there are priests out there who strive to give people reasons to learn and grow.

Catholics especially younger ones tend to be liberals (no idea why). The Church itself is culturally and economically liberal, but socially conservative. This mismatch is the reason why people leave... I think. Hardcore conservative Catholics are not happy with lefty stances of the church in non-social areas. Younger liberals (like me) cannot stomach its unwavering social conservatism. However I still call myself a Catholic and have great respect for the Church. And yes I don’t even try to reconcile it all. I guess I am hoping for a second Pope John XXIIIrd.

What creates ex-RC'ers? According to a friend who actually IS a sociologist, that would be a VERY difficult question to research, as many people would not give the "real" reasons why they left, as they are either embarrassed about it or can't quite articulate it.

I left because of The Scandal; the revelations about the RCC and it's conduct, from the top down, made the entire theological construct collapse like a house of cards for me.

For others, the reasons are varied, BUT, I suspect that many people leave the RCC for the same reason that other people leave the church of their birth: they reach a point that they make up their own minds about their faith and how to practice it, and look for a church/non-church that affirms what they've come to believe. I think, at bottom, it is as simple at that.

It's just tha to the Catholic mind, which has been taught that the RCC is The One, True Church, joining another church is the same as abandoning salvation itself, which strikes the Catholic mind as horrific. I now belong to the Episcopal church, and we don't teach that we are the One True Church, but one of many legit churches. Many non-RCC churches teach this. Ergo, they don't hyperventilate about it as RC'ers do.

Catholicism today, if lived faithfully, is countercultural.

Nothing causes more people to leave (or, more typically, slowly drift away from) the Church than remarriage after divorce and contraception. That isn't usually because of any great resentment against the Church's official condemnation of those behaviors (rare is the Sunday homily that even mildly refers to them). Rather, those behaviors symptomize mindsets that are radically incompatible with the Christian message. Note that I'm not denying that many individuals who are on their second marriages or who practice "family planning" are also ardent, sincere Christians. But taken in the aggregate, such behaviors (by Catholics or non-Catholics) are closely related to spiritual lukewarmness.

Until about half a century ago, we lived in a culture that generally disapproved of both birth control and divorcees remarrying. Within that broader culture, there was a strong Catholic subculture, based on ethnic neighborhoods and institutions, that further reinforced norms of Catholic practice and identity. Today, that Catholic subculture is mostly a memory. And the broader culture affirms and takes for granted behaviors that the Church rejects.

So while M.Z. Forrest makes a good point about the value of cultural Catholicism, the reality today is that without a supporting culture there is no such thing. There are only determinedly countercultural Catholics and the lukewarm.

I went to CCD as a kid in the 60's, but confirmation loomed and the teachers wouldn't answer my questions (and were quite snippy that I'd ask them). I took confirmation really seriously, and I couldn't go through with it without answers. I went back to church in college, but to an evangelical church. This was done reluctantly at the request of my then-fiancee, just to stop his incessant asking. Within 2 years we were youth leaders there...

About 5 or 6 years ago, life was not making sense. I happened across a Rule of St. Benedict. That led to my becoming an oblate at an abbey (it was a definite "God thing") I began that journey as an Evangelical and make my final oblation after becoming Orthodox. I am glad for the Orthodox parish I attend, but being Western at heart and in life, I find comfort in the Mass.

fwiw, I had explored returning to the RCC at the same time as I was exploring Orthodoxy. I was scared by the lack of what seemed solid footing - dogma was different depending on whom I asked; as a Prot, istm either no one knew what the RCC taught, or they had been taught wildly different things, or were doing as they pleased. I was not comfortable. The abbey with which I am affiliated is more traditional; likely why I feel at home there.

Jaybird, I never said that. In fact, if a person sincerely disagrees about a matter of doctrine after study and research, and comes to a place where this disagreement is irreconcilable, then the honorable thing to do is to leave.

But I was talking about the specific question you asked based on my earlier post; I had already run through some reasons for leaving before discussing the specific question of whether *sometimes* the reasons given were not the real reasons; the three possible mechanisms were then a further exploration of the idea that stated reasons and reality don't always match up.

If someone tells me, "I left the Church because I realized that I've never believed in the Incarnation," I wouldn't have reason to doubt their veracity, and wouldn't violate charity by doing so. But if I knew for a fact that the same person who expressed that sentiment had been keeping a mistress for years, it wouldn't be uncharitable to suppose that more than the Incarnation had become a problem.

I do think that "Humanae Vitae" is a big reason why the Catholic Church has lost so many members; that and her unbending teaching on divorce and remarriage. Not saying the teaching is right or wrong (well, okay I do think that church of Rome's teachings on these issues are wrong," but I do think that rightly or wrongly, these teachings are responsible for "dropping off" of so many members of the Catholic Church. If Rome had issued a more moderate teaching, namely, that married couples for unselfish purposes could use non-abortifacient contraception, that we would see a different picture today. But Rome's lack of "oiconomia" will keep many away.

But the Church has made it a matter of life and death, heaven and hell and no matter how sincerely you state the Nicene Creed, no matter how faithful you are to your spouse, and no matter how much you pray and give alms, your soul is dead in sin if you don't conform on this tabboo. Personally, I find this to be very sad.

Well, this is part of the divide. While being Catholic involves being obedient to the teachings of the Church--which differ from the teachings of Christ--there can be room for dissent, even if folks like Erin thinks you have an obligation to leave the church if you dissent. One can be loyal to the church--and even obedient--while questioning Church-made law that has only tangential support in the Scriptures. One is even able to disagree about what the Scriptures say--and how those intersect with the church-made law--while remaining a faithful Catholic.

So there are people who question the Vatican's position on contraception and homosexuality, recognizing they are church-made positions that do not necessarily reflect the Scriptures and Christ's teaching. Acknowledging that the Vatican and the Pope are political entities that have been wholly inconsistent over the life of the church can be a liberating experience.

Daniel,

If the Church officially makes something a dogma that one must conform to and states that this dogma is the will of Christ and if the Church is wrong about it, then doesn't that mean that the Church is not officially teaching the will of Christ? In that case, doesn't it mean that the Roman Catholic Church is not Christ's Church? This is the conclusion that I came to, namely, that certain "infallible" teachings such as papal infallibity and universal jurisdiction, the filioque addition to the Nicene Creed, indulgences, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and contraception are wrong; hence, the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church but is a heretical organization. It is one thing to be wrong on a doctrine. It is another thing to be wrong about a doctrine yet stil teach that all must obey the doctrine or be damned. To me this reveals that the papacy has usurped the role of Christ and is an unbiblical and untraditional teaching that amounts to heresy.

I don't have time to read all 115 previous comments Here are my observations about why people leave Catholicism:
1. The Pre-Vatcian II-educated often cite physical abuse and punishment for minor offenses at the hands of nuns and priests.
2. For post-VII educated, many of us really didn't learn anything about the Catholic church in Catholic schools except the names of the seven sacraments, a few basic prayers, and "God is Love". Almost everything I have really learned about the Catholic church came from two semesters of History of Christianity at a state university and independent study. Due to this lack of education, many people just buy into the misrepresentations about Catholicism or don't even really understand what the rules are or how they came to be. When Catholics have a lack of real information, it is easier for them into buy into other denominations that seem to have real information.
3. I'm on a Catholic homeschooling forum, and someone mentioned that their priest had said that the Eucharist is foundation of life-long Catholicism. If someone truly understands the meaning and importance of the Eucharist, they can't help but see other denominations as a pale imitation. True love of the Eucharist leads one to Confession and to trying to avoid sin in the first place. I really believe that priest hit the nail on the head.

Barbara,

But there are other denominations who hold to a very realistic sacramental understanding of the Eucharist, such as Orthodox, Lutherans, and traditional Anglicans. The RC Church doesn't have a monopoly on sacramental spirituality and I can easily see why many couples, burdened by very hard teachings (contraception) might want to find a new sacramental home in one of these other Churches.

Erin,

Let us say hypothetically that the Church is wrong on contraception and that not all contraception is intrinsically evil. If the Church is wrong on this, then isn't it the case that the Church is not the Church of Christ? Precisely, I think, because she claims something to be of the essence of the Gospel proclamation that is not. I realized when I could no longer agree with the Church on these things that I had to go, because in conscience, I could not believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ. If anything in the fundamental dogma of Orthodoxy were wrong, then I couldn't be Orthodox either. But I believe that the Orthodox Church has preserved all of the essential teaching of the Gospel.

Well, there's this culture in which we live that downgrades religion to a private lifestyle choice. Ontological primacy to the All Holy Individual first, then figure out which religion or "spirituality" suits what we believe to be "who we are." Apostolic Christianity just doesn't care much for that approach, which ascribes way too much accuracy in self-awareness to a people who are hopelessly lost to themselves, pampered as they are to every new consumer fancy that gets thrown at them.

Most of us Americans have plenty of gripes with Uncle Sam and are subconsciously ashamed of his many historical corruptions and atrocities (far worse in total than anything the Catholic Church has ever done), but we don't ever think for a moment that they're grounds for surrendering our passports. Citizenship still is not a private lifestyle choice. Yet we have a double standard: our Patria gets a free non-deal-breaker pass on evils, but not our Ecclesia. So Patria has become the new Ecclesia, hence the widespread modern virus of nationalism across the globe and the decline of the Church. No wonder so many Western Catholics leave the Church. But I'm inclined to agree with you Rod, if they're leaving for these reasons, then what can we do but shake the dirt off our shoes and move on and be faithful to the Christ of the Saints, Apostles, Martyrs, and Doctors of the Church.

Erin,

We'll have to agree to disagree. My point anyway wasn't to start an argument about contraception, but to point out that once someone no longer believes in a teaching of the RC Church, one must come to consider the possibility that the RC Church is not the Church of Christ.

I don't think it's 'ignorant' to seek a vibrant community. I think it's 'apathetic' and 'fatalistic' not to at least try.

And it's reeking of harshness,judgment and condescension, to demean those who seek a Church- Catholic or otherwise -that's family-oriented, vibrant, etc. There are Catholic communities that can actually MEET the needs of their parishoners and do a great job of it. Catholics don't need to settle for dry dusty recitational services. As laity they are called to be the Church they seek. And it can be done.

Just planting seeds of hope . . .

Blessed are the merciful for mercy shall be theirs.

Oops - all thumbs on the keyboard (typo correction and translation didn't come through):

Sainte Vierge Marie, vous qui avez conçu sans pécher, faites-moi maintenant la grâce de pécher sans concevoir. (Holy Virgin Mary, who hast conceived without sinning, grant that I might now sin without conceiving.)

Eren,

This is why the Catholic Church is not the true Church of Christ, because she preaches as Gospel truth that which is not.

And Joe, as you said, we must agree to disagree; but speaking only for myself I could never trust my inward thoughts if I were disagreeing with the Church on a doctrine mainly because I felt that that doctrine was inconveniently barring a particular course of action which I thought for my own purposes was a desirable one to take. This is the mistake which many are currently making in regards to torture: if the Church is forbidding it, then the Church must be wrong! they cry, unaware, as you so clearly point out, that the next step is to decide that if the Church is wrong it must be the wrong Church.

I'm a Good Girl, by RC definition. I'm still married to the same guy. We didn't use contraception. (Notice how all this has to do with sex?) Humanae vitae is a red herring. As is Gay Marriage, at least in my case.

A bunch of things, some of which I've encountered here on this blog. Erin criticized me here because I don't think that "priests", as such, have any more wisdom than anyone else necessarily. She was being true to the tradition. I don't think that. For example, I don't think that some 26 year old newly ordained priest knows everything (or ANYTHING) about marriage. How could he?? These are men, some of whom are wise, some of whom are fools. All of whom are limited by their experience and by their gifts. Give over already about "the holy priest."

Also I see among the RC tradition the impulse to structure my own religious experience for me. To the increase of their psychological power (and, financial power) of course. "This" kind of experience is OK, (be sure it exalts the hierarchy now!), and "that" kind isn't. Built deep into the RC structure is the idea that the hierarchy (that means, ordained men, PRIESTS) have a sort of direct link to God which the rest of us do not have, and that we MUST go through them. Serious sin CANNOT be forgiven without the permission of these men. (God is thereby limited.) Plus the notion that whatever the "Church" (to wit, the RC hierarchy) says is The Very Word Of God.

Erin and everyone else so inclined is hereby invited to refute all these notions. Remember though that I began being an Roman Catholic in 1945. And that I represent as a lawyer a number of RC institutions, a sobering experience. Ya wanna talk greed and corruption? Go for it.

I come to the end of the business day and I want to go wash my hands. To the elbows. These men are spiritual leaders? Where can I go to throw up?

Sheilagh, I did hesitate before using the word "ignorant" because I only meant "Ignorant of what the Church is, what she teaches, and what the very real differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are." I certainly didn't mean that it's wrong to want a vibrant faith community, only that some people seem to be Catholic without really understanding the faith, and leave it for various other churches without ever reaching that understanding.

Perhaps the word "uninformed" would have been better, except that that word also carries its own negative baggage.

Thanks. well said.

Why did my husband and I leave?
1) treating parishioners like children, not thinking adults
2) valuing women only when subservient
3) abusing altar boys and then hiding the perpetrators
4) an unhealthy interest in amassing real estate and buildings.
5) theological differences relating to transubstantiation and similar issues.

oooo brutally on target.

Notice that women in the RC Church are valued only when they humbly wash the altar cloths. (That's why I don't go to the Orthodox. Same song, second verse.) Or sleep with the priest, and don't get me started.

Hey get it, we women are inferior beings (ref Thomas Aquinas, don't make me quote him the whole world knows) and so we should be grateful we're allowed into the building at all even. (Except when the monastery wants my help - for free of course - and then...oh, whatever.)

Erin, all this is OK with you, so God bless you, you will undoubtedly be rewarded in the next life.

If I had to guess, I'd say there were at least three possible mechanisms for departure at work: ignorance, spiritual abuse, and the attachment to sin I was talking about.

So it appears sincere disagreement with Catholic teaching/Dogma isn't possible. How convenient.

That's Erin all over.

I had more than a few conversations about women and the Catholic Church when I was younger. One thing that I heard stuck with me. The Church has alway honored women as Saints of the Church. Long before there were the essential calls for women's rights, there were women saints.

I'm in the midst of deciding which rite to have my youngest baptized into and I have to say the Eastern traditions are much more off putting. There's a part of the baptismal ceremony to call the evil out of a woman after she has a child that when you read it, really isn't cool. And the fact that women are not even allowed to stand in the alter area - unless men are not present at the mass. Tough stuff. No alter girls, no way.

Susan, two things.

First, if you want me to respond to you, don't mischaracterize what I've said, put words in my mouth, or otherwise engage in belittling tactics. You're far too smart to need to rely on that sort of thing, and I'm not much inclined to enter into any serious discussion with someone who seems more interested in tearing me down personally than actually debating any of these matters. As you're a lawyer, I'm sure you know that while these may be winning tactics on occasion they are not generally employed by the side with the stronger case.

Second, I'd like to agree with what Kimberly wrote above. I have sympathy for your deep bitterness and spiritual sufferings, and hope that you will find a place of peace. This is unlikely, though, while you're still so mired in such dark and destructive anger--if you don't believe me, at least listen to Rod who has addressed this topic many times before.

Kimberly, you are a good person, and far be it from me to argue against something that obviously works for you. I have to say that I envy you whatever quality it is that makes it possible for you to put up with this whole situation. Go for it.

The Church has never pretended to be pure built as she is on Paul - once a murderer of Christians and Peter who in Mark's Gospel doesn't flinch from dictating descriptions of his cowardice.

I'd encourage those who see faults to take charge themselves and work to correct problems in their parish.

Humanae Vitae must now be seen as prophetic given this http://www.demographicwinter.com/ .

It's is a necessary thing in a shepherd's teaching role to actually outline what is to be believed but remembering that to not adequately show how the teaching is good and true is not sufficiently to teach. Nor is it a shepherd's job to lay up burdens on the faithful without helping them to carry it. We have to help people in practical ways to fulfill the Church's teaching.

This is where our activity in local parishes is so important, we can help our communities flourish and be life promoting in practical ways. What about thinking more about the Temple paradigm. Connecting much more with the local church than just a school and a playground - why not much more in close proximity to the church?. Go you Crunchy Cons you.

In my case, it was disgust over the church's insistence on protecting pedarists.

But in the Orthodox Church, the old Slavonic chant is truly transcendental -- nothing like it in the West. You really feel that the good Lord Himself might drop in of a Sunday morning just to bask in the aesthetic sublimity of it all. Of course a lot of the Orthodox parishes have abandoned the Slavonic (or Greek) for an English-language liturgy. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Yes, how ridiculous to have the church prayers and hymns in a language the people can understand. :\

Erin,
You must realize that the catechism is not an infallible document.

And I suppose that even if it were, and does in fact consider contraception as grievously evil as torture, then the institutional church has far more sins to repent of than a loving married couple who choose not to have a family larger than they can reasonably care for.

That protector of pedophiles, the reprobate Bernard Law, according to a story in the Boston Globe at the time of the scandal, actually flew unto a rage at a some poor priest who wanted to leave the priesthood to get married. But he shuttled the molester Geoghan from parish to parish with equanimity until his iniquity was exposed in the secular press.

When you can show me the paragraph in the catechism which condemns that species of intrinsic evil, I'll send Ratzinger an email in good motu proprio Latin demanding he remove Law from St. Mary Major. Meanwhile, the victims of his malfeasance suffer the sting of the salt rubbed in their wounds.

Maybe there is simply supposed to be a sequence of evangelization before catechism (sp?). Far too many Catholics were never properly evangelized. When there are attempts to evangelize the real agenda is to get them out of the Church at all costs.

Evangelization , then Catechism.

So......the answer to those of us who didn't and don't use contraception would be what again?? And we're disaffected why exactly???

SO easy to drag us off on the "well you evil contraceptors so what did you expect" track. And so we ignore the real issues, and it becomes, "well, you are just all Bad People."

Erin dare not answer such challenges. We're "angry" according to her, without regard to whether we have good reason for anger. (Anger in itself is bad I guess.)

Erin is "not much inclined to enter into any serious discussion" with me, no surprises there.

She goes on:"Second, I'd like to agree with what Kimberly wrote above. I have sympathy for your deep bitterness and spiritual sufferings, and hope that you will find a place of peace."

Appreciate the sentiment.

" This is unlikely, though, while you're still so mired in such dark and destructive anger--if you don't believe me, at least listen to Rod who has addressed this topic many times before."

Rod left the RC Church. Hiya Erin, is that what you're suggesting? Thanks anyway, I already thought of it.

Erin, if this thing works for you, play it for all it's worth. Just don't start in on me because it doesn't work for me.

Roland, yes certainly, Jesus is only interested in people who can learn Latin/Greek/Slavonic/Russian.... did I miss the point? or just omit a language?

Surely the language of Shakespeare, Milton, and Whitman is suitable for proper worship, even if it means a bit of metrical mischief?

Don't miss Amy Welborn's conclusion about the Pew study, and why Catholics leave the church:

In the US, at least, the Church (we’re generalizing here) hasn’t made the case for Christ.

Hasn’t made the case for the necessity of Christ being the center of one’s life and the sure means of finding and staying connected to Christ being through His Church.

Part of what makes me cringe as I read studies like this is that I imagine the response of Church bureaucrats, ordained and lay - when they bother to respond. At that response always seems to involve “programs” that will “energize” and make everyone all “vibrant” and everything.

Which is not the answer.

Over on Amy's site, the Catholic evangelist Sherry Weddell has some pretty straightforward things to say to fellow orthodox Catholics about all this:

I know this is going to sound wild but we know that for every evangelical who becomes Catholic, roughly eight Catholics become evangelicals. What if those 8 Catholics left us because they actually wanted and needed what evangelicals do very well and we do rather poorly?

What if they don’t actually care much about liturgy? One could draw the conclusion with some confidence since they have moved in a strongly non-liturgical direction. What if they don’t care much or at all for history or Gregorian chant or high culture or fine doctrinal debates that mean so much to us?

What if they were looking for something else that is genuine part of the Christian faith and life but which we don’t do as well. A Christian community that was small enough to actually know who they were and would notice when they showed up - a stranger. What if they desperately needed to experience the transforming power of God in their life or their family’s life? What if they love and find profoundly reverent and moving worship that is full of emotion and movement and spontaneity? What if they needed to be supported and formed by a local community marked by a genuine culture of discipleship?

In other words, what if they really, really were seeking and hungering to encounter God in a way that evangelicals excel at and we do poorly? What if the most beautiful and reverent formal liturgy in the world (as we think of it) just leaves them puzzled or cold?

While it is natural that we keep talking about doing even more of what moves us (who are here and frequenting conservative Catholic blogs) of what drew many of us to the Church - what if it is irrelevant to those who left us?

Most evangelical converts to Catholicism I’ve met are historically and intellectually minded. They were often uncomfortable with the extroverted, more openly emotional and experiential “feel” of evangelicalism. It was a relief to get out of it.

But what if we evangelicals who are drawn to those aspects of the faith are unusual, a minority? What if many of the 8 Catholics who leave for the evangelical world for every evangelical who goes in the other direction are wrestling with quite different issues - perhaps with as much anguish and integrity as we did when becoming Catholics? What if the things they seek of God and the Church are legitimate?

Can we imagine it? How does that change the conversation?

We can go on and on here. It doesn't matter. The RC Church is completely controlled by priests. No one else has the vote. And the priests, so far as I can tell, are concerned only with keeping what they think is "power" within their own ranks. None of them have pondered the gospels any time recently.

You may think this, I may think that. It doesn't matter, unless we're priests. Everyone else's opinion could not possibly matter less.

Erin, when you get ordained, be sure to let us know what you think. Until then, wake up and realize that your opinion could not possibly matter less to these men, that they can (and will) do whatever comes into their heads next.

Why did I leave the RCC?

A friend came to me when I was 12 and asked me what I thought it took to get into heaven, etc. (Many of you know this same pitch.) When I found out that I didn't need to have my fanny planted on some magical pew for 45 minutes a week to ensure my salvation, I trusted Christ alone.

To be honest, very little about the Catholic overlay makes any sense to me. Strip it away, and you are left with Him. And that's all I need.

jeanette, with all due respect, I think that your explanation of mary not having more children unfortunately reveals what many people, even faithful christians, find off-putting about the catholic church and their views of women and sex. If sex is a gift from God which is a demonstration of the unity of God, the church and procreation is connected with the very creative and life giving nature of God, then how would Mary having other children be in anyway disrespectful of the place where Jesus "incubated", so to speak? Sex between a husband and a wife is a sacred act. Bearing a child is a sacred and sacrificial act. Saying that a womb which is not used is more sacred than one which is seems deeply wrong to me.

To me, discussions like these feel incomplete without attention to human personality as a primary influence on the expression (choice) of one's faith.

In my years of studying Christians and Christianity - as expressed in many different denominations, "personality" is always at the root of one's religious identity. Denominational claims to "truth" serve something more base in the human instinct.

I'd say, when the Kingdom of God is at last revealed in all of its glory in eternity, there's a good chance we're going to be surprised at who we see there.

"Do you have any conception of how, well, silly, calling artificial contraception EVIL sounds to a never-Catholic like me?"

Sure, but so what? It is what it is.

I think different people leave for different reasons, which is not particularly informative I know. I can only speak to my experience. I
have considered the idea of leaving because the modern Catholic Church, in America at least, stands for nothing but liberalism. There are pockets of traditional Catholicism, like my F.S.S.P. parish. But I can only stick my head in the sand and pretend that is the Catholic Church for so long. Every time I open a newspaper or turn on the TV some Catholic prelate is prattling on about his religion of liberalism. The problem is I am convinced that the Roman Catholic Church is Christianity, protestant sects are only pale imitations. I could never be a protestant. So leaving the RCC is leaving Christianity altogether.

To Kim: Christ didn't 'found' any church. Men did.

My Catholic concerns can be summed up in two words:

Opus Dei

'You seem to be forgetting Matthew 16:18: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church."'

Right, and let's not omit the verse in Timothy where St Paul calls the Church "the pillar and ground of the truth."

Jesus may not have founded a "religion," strictly understood, but he definitely founded a Church.

I immediately noticed a contradiction between Amy Welborn's comment that a vibrant church is not the answer. And the description of why Catholics leave to join Evangelical churches.

Maybe the fault is in Amy's understanding of vibrant. In my definition vibrancy only comes as a result of creating closer connections between the Faithful and Jesus Christ. It is not a diminishing of the value of the Eucharist but supporting the value of continued lifelong catechism.

Or maybe it's a failure to consider that different God-given temperaments are naturally inclined to different forms of worship. And Catholicity can and needs to continue to encompass all 'types'. I saw a study passed on to priests about Catholic Charismatics. Guess what? They're extroverts. :)

Contraception may very well be evil to its very core, but it is usually a stealth evil. And the effects of contraception vary from situation to situation. It usually ends up a slow poison, not a rapid killer.

I agree with that. Since the initial brouhaha in 1968, I suspect that very, very few people have left the Church because of its teaching on contraception. Getting divorced and remarried has a much more immediate effect on people.

But contraception -- which goes hand in hand with the prevailing culture's consumerist, self-actualizing, therapeutic mindest -- leads directly to lukewarmess. Lukewarmness leads people to fall away gradually from Catholic practice and devotion, and almost invariably prevents their children from internalizing the Faith or seeing anything attractive in it.

Roland, thank you for your clarification. I agree that English is not the prettiest of languages.

The Slavonic and Greek of the liturgy are understandable to native speakers of Russian and Modern Greek respectively, despite the archaic form used.

Perhaps. But there is a reason most American churches do their services in English -- they'll lose their children otherwise. Something is certainly lost in the transition to English, but you gotta have your priorities straight.

Reading the rest of this thread reinforces my belief that that there is no common ground for discussion between Catholics and non-Catholics on some issues. I agree with Amy Welbourn's analysis that the most glaring problem is that the Catholic Church, on a day-to-day basis, does not preach Christ. I just simply do not see the Gospel being preached in Catholicism. What I do see is great hierarchical anxiety over having power and control and a need to define and control every aspect of human existence. That is why I am very happy to be free from Roman control. When I left Catholicism I found that for the first time in years, I could actually worship Christ with humility and trust in His grace and mercy; without constantly fearing that I was going to hell. I have also noticed in myself that I have absolutely no desire for reunion between the Churches. When I was Catholic, I yearned for reunion with Orthodoxy. Now that I am Orthodox and happy, I have no interest in ecumenical relations with Catholicism. I think that the Roman need to control everything and have absolute power ensures that there will never be reunion between the Churches and there ought not to be reunion until Rome repents of her heresies.

"I don't think of Mary's perpetual virginity as a requirement of God's plan -- it's just what it is. A historical fact, if you will."

If one takes the prophecy of "the gate" in Ezekiel 44 as referring to the Theotokos and Jesus' virgin birth, as the Catholics and Orthodox do (following the Church Fathers) then the perpetual virginity and the virgin birth (and thus, the identity of the messiah) are all wrapped up together.

Ok. I didn't make it up. I did read it in the Bible. The reference is in Matthew 13:54-56 and in Mark 3:6. Today's English Version.
Here's Matthew. And I was just thinking about it. The scripture on it's own without interpretation seems pretty clear.

. . . "Where did he get such Wisdom?: they asked. "And what about the miracles?" Isn't he the carpenter's son? Isn't Mary his mother, and aren't James, Joseph, Simon and Judas his brothers? Aren't all of his sisters living here? Where did he get all this?" And so they rejected him. Jesus said to them,"A propet is respected everywhere except his hometown and by his own family."

Mary's perpetual virginity is universal tradition in the early Church. That is sufficient for me to believe in it.

Ok well the Orthodox explanation of Mary as Stepmother to 4 plus additional children is tenable at least.

The explanation I'd heard prior was something along the lines of "Oh brothers doesn't mean brothers, it means cousins". Or "Everyone is Jesus' brother."

Sheilagh -

Orthodox generally believe that Jesus' brothers were Joseph's children from a prior marriage, Catholics tradition generally maintains that "brother" is equivalent to kinsman or cousin. Catholics are free to accept either theory. Both traditions have always maintained Mary's perpetual virginity, however.

I read Ez 44 just now and at first blanch, it strikes me as prophesy as good as any prophesy based on numerology. Sorry Rob :-/

I do not doubt that Mary's perpetual virginity was held by tradition from the beginning, and I don't doubt that careful mining of the Old Testament could discover all kinds of prophesies. (Didn't Rod link to a kooky evangelical who interpretted OT to say that men should never urinate sitting down?)

The church teaches "We CAN'T be wrong (about doctrine and morals) because the Holy Spirit won't let us be wrong." Yeah, right. Awfully convenient teaching for them isn't it? That is what I doubt. So while I am glad that Tradition rightly prevents most kookiness, I can't quite believe it prevents all error.

The church and its tradition from the beginning was run almost entirely by celibate men, many with a deep mistrust of sexuality and, by extension, all women. Augustine taught that the ideal marriage is a celibate one. Jerome was infamously misogynist. Celibacy is strangely their answer for so many difficult questions. How can Jesus have siblings? "Oh, Mary was celibate - those were cousins/step siblings." My husband beats me brutally in front of the kids. "Leave him but remain celibate." My wife left me and is happily married to someone else, had kids by him, and swears she'll never speak to me again. "Be celibate." I have lots of kids already and can barely make ends meet. "Be celibate."

Celibacy is a noble choice; I'm not knocking it. I just doubt that it is as vitally important for the entire world as our celibate leaders say it is.

Furthermore, I agree that licentiousness is directly related to divorce/abortion/materialism, but it is a false dichotomy to say that you either accept church teaching on contraception, or you are an utter materialist.

When I read the Gospels, I do not get this message. This message that deeply distrusts sexuality seems to me like a human artifact and a false one. Only very recently did the church recognize the unifying nature of sex in marriage. That is a good development, but because the church is also hamstrung by the We-CAN'T-be-wrong dogma, that teaching did not go far enough.

To clear the air here (or muddy the waters) regarding the brothers of the Lord: the NT uses the Greek word adelphoi, the primary meaning of which is children of the same womb, related to delphys, meaning womb. (The term in the Ave Maria for "blessed is the fruit of thy womb" is "koilia" which is more a euphemism, meaning "intestines, cavity of the body". It sounds worse in English!)

Adelphos may have a wider connotation as well, as does English "brother".

The word for cousin is "syngenês" which is the word used when Mary meets her cousin Elisabeth.

Given the heavy emphasis on virginity in the early church, it is not surprising that the Fathers took the term in a wider sense. Whether they did so "anti-semantically", so to speak, is another question. It is also surprising that Paul, virginity booster par excellence, does not mention the virginity (perpetual or otherwise) of Mary, and the Isaian "prophecy" which uses the Greek word "parthenos" in the LXX.

In passing, it might be noted that neither Greeks nor Jews would have been particularly keen on the virginity issue, which is probably why Paul got a less than welcome reception in many locales.

In passing, it might be noted that neither Greeks nor Jews would have been particularly keen on the virginity issue, which is probably why Paul got a less than welcome reception in many locales.

Absolutely.

Just as the Cross was scandal and foolishness to both.

No Messiah was expected to die such an ignoble death.

I too am so happy to be an ex catholic. I got so tired of the guilt,fear and shame. Everything about going to hell. and belittling the catholic people.

What exactly is this "guilt" business, anyway? I'm over 40, have been Catholic all my life, and have never had any hangup about guilt -- aside from the honest recognition that I am a sinner, completely dependent on God's grace and mercy. But that recognition leads to humility, joy, and gratitude to our Father God, not any lingering sensation of guilt.

At least for the past 40 years, a distinguishing feature of Catholic life in the Western world has been very little talk about hell or sin -- too little, frankly. Even so, one would think that frequenting sacramental confession would be enough to free anyone of hangups about guilt. And yet ex-Catholics, often of an older generation, regularly talk about how they are "recovering" from this supposed "Catholic guilt". What is this all about, anyway?

Do they really think that the catholics are the only ones going to heaven.

No. The Catholic Church does not claim, and has never claimed, that salvation is limited to members of the visible Church on earth.

Good point Rob. I apologize to them too. I truly wish I could have more faith in their judgment. I'm listening.

Christine, I agree with everything you said there. If you were responding to my comments re celibacy, then you've entirely missed my point.

Simon, the Church is clear on that one these days. The widespread "misconception" before VII that "all protestants burn in hell" was not without warrant; it was firmly preached from many a pulpit and in many a CCD class and with all the apparent authority that contraception is taught now.

My real point was not to question Church teaching or to be 'Sola scriptura' as Christine concludes.

My point was to raise the idea and implications of Mary as (step)mother to more than one child. This is not explored very often in Christian meditation and could be perhaps fertile ground and edifying to Christian mothers of larger families - and others. Too many look down on larger families and in fact raise up the zero population growth as the model family.

Perhaps I stretched it a little too far. But I think it's an interesting perspective on Mary - about whom very little of her daily life is currently known. I'm basing that meditation on the scriptures. But please don't assume I'm sola scriptura. I'm not.

My husband is an ex-Catholic. He recently became an Episcopalian (my denomination). I think what did it for him was the whole pedophile priest thing, and the way the church hierarchy moved them around from parish to parish, leaving them yet more opportunities to do it again. Actually, he had not set foot in a Catholic church in 30 years. He wasn't even religious when we married, 8 years ago. When I would ask him why he didn't attend church, he would tell me stories of Catholic school and sadistic Brothers who meted out harsh punishments for the most minor of infractions. He would tell me of lists the Church would hand out telling you what movies you could see and what movies were forbidden. And guilt....being made to feel guilty about everything! The Catholic church ruined it for him, for many years. He is now 54 years old. I ask him occasionally if he misses the Catholic church, and he always gives me an emphatic 'NO' !

(And, by the way, the perpetual virginity of Mary was a big struggle for me in converting to Orthodoxy. I'm still not sure I "get it", but I've come to the conclusion that a faith cannot be at once bigger than me and subject to the limits of my understanding. That's not, I don't think, the same thing as checking one's brain at the door; that's just simply acknowledging that there isn't going to be a satisfactory explanation for everything, but that doesn't make it untrue. To paraphrase Chesterton, it is the insane man who can explain all things perfectly.)

Richard,
Ok I won't take it as flip. But I don't consider myself as 'rewriting' as you say. Since Orthodox doctrine says Mary was a step-mother and the Bible says Jesus had 4 brothers and x sisters. I'm just looking at something the Church doesn't talk about much. At least I haven't heard anything. Is the idea that these people mentioned in the Bible as Jesus' brothers a 'my way or the highway' issue?

I'm just starting to really explore the Marian history. Maybe I should know this but I don't. Is perpetual virginity something said infallibly in the RC church? Or an interpretation? Versus the stepmother idea of Orthodox Christianity?

If anyone knows the answer I'd like to hear it.

[And directly to your question. Not to shoot to big a hole but There's no mention of a married Jesus in scripture either. In Mary's example it seems the Church is asking us to reinterpret something directly stated. In yours, it's less direct,yes?]

I don't want to wade too deeply into a debate on various Marian teachings, which is not an area I've studied much. But I've heard many teachers say that the Scriptural evidence for Mary's perpetual virginity comes in her response to the angel's message (Lk 1:34). Clearly, if Mary had simply meant that she was *currently* a virgin and unmarried, there would not have been any objection on her part to the angel's message: she, like any other person, would have assumed that this message to her was a foretelling of future events (i.e., that once she did get married and have a child the angel's message would be fulfilled). But instead, she objects: how can this be, since I know not man? In other words, since I have made a promise to remain celibate? And far from replying that God intends for her to marry and have a child, the angel's response uses an unusual word, when he says that the power of the Most High will "overshadow" her; again, those I've heard discuss this passage have pointed out that this word "overshadow" is used to indicate the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant.

I'm sure someone more qualified than I am could do a better job of explaining this.

I'm not an ex-Catholic, but I'm not a terribly good one either. I haven't been to Mass on a regular basis in years. I had every intention of going regularly again when Lent started but didn't make it last Sunday either. Why? Laziness, partly. I like sleeping in on Sunday morning. I believe in God and the Trinity, though I tend to envision the Holy Spirit as feminine. If I'm being honest, I don't believe in everything that the Church teaches, but I'm too Catholic to go to one of the Protestant churches either. I'm very much a cafeteria-style Catholic, which doesn't really feel right to me because I'd prefer to be a whole-hearted something or other. But again, I'm too Catholic to become a whole-hearted Episcopalian/Catholic-Lite, even though I probably agree more with the teachings of that church, and I'm too introverted/reserved/formal, what have you to like touchy-feely liberal style of church. But then, The modern Catholic Church Mass bothers me on aesthetic level. I hate joining hands with strangers and swaying to an off-key rendition of the Our Father sung out loud. I hate the horrible music in so many of the Masses I've been at. I prefer a liturgical, formal worship. So, there are two sides of my character in complete opposition, but I'll probably make another attempt to get to Mass at the neighborhood Catholic Church again this Sunday anyway.

"The matter is simple, but at the same time very difficult: learning to trust their collective judgment rather than your own individual lights."

Thanks Rob, seems to me that "learning to trust" is the crux of that. As I get older, I value humility more and embrace it more too. For example, my own sinfulness and need for redemption is more apparent. Maybe in time I'll be able to submit to these difficult teachings.

Someday, I'll try learn more about Orthodox faiths, their Tradition and authority.

Out of all this discussion about the Immaculate Conception, I see nobody giving praise and glory to God for it.

What, you think Mary chose to be immaculately conceived? Who can choose such a thing?

Moreover, nobody understands that once Christ was born, the Immaculate Conception became a moot point! I mean, if Mary weren't chosen by God to bear Christ, what purpose would the Immaculate Conception have?

Why not place the focus on Christ's redemptive act rather than on Mary's conception? It's Christ who saves, not Mary.

BTW, Susan, I completely understand your cynicism about and disgust with Church leaders. The Catholic hierarchy is abominably corrupt because it has discouraged accountability for centuries. Most Catholics (and Orthodox) refuse to recognize the fact that corruption is a natural consequence when a group of utopians claim privledged status, demand blind deference and isolate themselves from the people they claim to serve. This isn't just a Catholic/Orthodox problem; the apparachiks in the USSR behaved much the same way.

People are leaving the Church because they're fed up with all the games, the hypocracy and the lack of concern from Catholics who stay.

Susan writes "Ignore the fact that Jesus almost certainly didn't speak or understand Latin, who cares about htat get it"

Jesus spoke some polished Latin to Pilate in Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". In this movie Pilate was stunned when Jesus answered in polished Latin a question he gave to Jesus in Aramaic.

Jesus spoke Aramaic. He probably spoke and understood Greek and Hebrew. He may have understood and could speak Latin. Most of the Roman soldiers in the area spoke Greek but certainly some spoke Latin, especially the Centurian officers. Pilate and his wife certainly spoke Latin along with other people in Ceaseria.

"Well, why put up with Mass when the good Hindus and atheists are going to get there too?"

Mass isn't something to be "put up with." Besides that if something is beautiful and true it should be worth believing for that. Not because "if I don't believe it I'll be punished for eternity." The Catholic Church is supposed to be about reason and revelation of God, not something bordering on extortion. In Catholic thought if a good Hindu gets to Heaven it has nothing to do with his being Hindu. Hinduism doesn't get anyone to Heaven and priests are still excommunicated if they say it does. They are either forgiven for invincible ignorance or were ultimately inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Anyway I mentioned some reasons elsewhere, but there might be one other. In my experience Catholics are often not equipped to communicate with people of other religions. The documents I read from before Vatican II kind of indicate they were often discouraged from talking about religious matters with people of other faiths. This is no longer true, but no preparation existed for the cultural change. Instead Catholics who encounter Evangelicalism or atheism have little or no response to its claims. I know of Catholics who ended up believing some of the more crude anti-Catholic ideas because they had little sense of the history or teaching of the Church to contradict it.

Still reading some of the actual things in the nineteenth century Church, like Edgar Mortara, did shake me up a little. The basic beliefs strike me as right, but I can see why some of the actions can be unnerving. I don't think many Catholics though develop doubts because of Mirari Vos or whatever.

Another issue is that Catholicism is larger then these other denominations. In percentage terms Methodists, Anglicans, and Jehovah's Witnesses showed an even lower retention rate. JWs compensated this some by having a relatively high conversion rate and also Hispanic immigrations aids them as well.

Re the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus:

Fr. Feeney was correct that this was the teaching of the Church; it originally applied to Christian heretics and schismatics but was extended to Jews and pagans at various councils (IV Lateran, Ferrara-Florence). It was the Jesuit concept of "Baptism of Desire" that attempted to include those outside the church among the saved.

Fr. Feeney was NOT excommunicated for promulgating this teaching. The Boston hierarchy and the Vatican expressly tried to tap-dance around the issue precisely because he was securely planted on theological terra firma. What he WAS excommunicated for was disobedience both to his Jesuit superiors and to Cardinal Cushing of Boston.

Cardinal Cushing's brother-in-law was Jewish and a good friend of Cushing's as well; among the Irish, family ranks above religion even for a "Prince of the Church." (Cushing, by the way, had excellent relations with the Jews of Boston, who were very generous to his various charities. When a Boston nightclub owned by a Jewish friend of his burnt to the ground, Cushing raised the money to help him rebuild.)

Feeney was not an admirable character particularly in his later years. But he was reconciled to the church and the excommunication rescinded.

The Vatican II "subsistit in" phraseology attempts to recognise elements conducive to salvation which are present in other Christian churches and non-Christian religions. Wojtyla was and Ratzinger is particularly anxious to recognise the salvific nature of Judaism sans Christianity; this posture is of course not without its recusants.

Right. That sentence wasn't very clear. I'd just finished reading an article on Lourdes where Mary was saying "I am the Immaculate Conception". I should've said I believe in the IC and the VB. But . . .

Now. The unanswerable question. Were those step-children already grown or did Mary helped raise them? We'll never know. A one child family or an eight(+)is enough? Interesting how both are now possibilities.

Is perpetual virginity something said infallibly in the RC church? Or an interpretation? Versus the stepmother idea of Orthodox Christianity?

Um, Sheilagh, the Orthodox also believe in Mary's perpetual virginity.

The church and its tradition from the beginning was run almost entirely by celibate men, many with a deep mistrust of sexuality and, by extension, all women. Augustine taught that the ideal marriage is a celibate one. Jerome was infamously misogynist. Celibacy is strangely their answer for so many difficult questions. How can Jesus have siblings? "Oh, Mary was celibate - those were cousins/step siblings." My husband beats me brutally in front of the kids. "Leave him but remain celibate." My wife left me and is happily married to someone else, had kids by him, and swears she'll never speak to me again. "Be celibate." I have lots of kids already and can barely make ends meet. "Be celibate."

Celibacy is a noble choice; I'm not knocking it. I just doubt that it is as vitally important for the entire world as our celibate leaders say it is.

Allegedly celibate leaders. The truth is, some of these men are celibate some of the time. But that could be said of any group of people.

I can't help but think that the comments of Erin, Simon and other ultra-traditionalists who CAN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND why people would leave the Church -- except for their own hopeless wickedness, of course -- come from the place a poster I can't recall mentioned, of the priests just out of seminary who are in the "small world" of doctrine and dogma and have no pastoral sense whatsoever of how to relate to real people's messy, (yes) sinful, and all-too-complicated lives.

Larry, that's either a cheap shot or a really lazy reading of what others here have posted. Neither I nor anyone else here has expressed incomprehension at the idea that people would ever leave the Church or attributed it to "their own wickedness." That's absurd, and you know it.

What I genuinely can't understand is the insistence by many ex-Catholics they were afflicted with some sort of pervasive sense of "Catholic guilt." How exactly does the Church make you feel "guilty?" By preaching that X, Y or Z is sinful? Okay, but pretty much all serious religions do that -- and yet I don't hear people talking about "recovering" from "Southern Baptist Guilt" or "Orthodox Jewish Guilt" or "Mormon Guilt" or "Orthodox Christian Guilt".

The reality is that most Catholics know the Church teaches officially that X, Y and Z are wrong -- but have rarely if ever heard any priest or catechist say so, much less correct them personally. A core practice of any Catholic life is sacramental confession -- in which any sin, no matter how heinous, can be forgiven by Christ in a matter of moments. And in general, Catholic piety, with its strong emphasis on God as Father (in contrast to the stern judge characteristic of a certain strand of Reformed theology) and the Church as a supernatural family doesn't strike me as conducive to any sort of oppressive sense of generic guilt.

And yet I hear this "Guilt" stuff all the time. Which makes me think that either (1) the person saying it has a very distorted understanding of the Catholic Faith, or (2) the spiritual formation provided in many parishes and Catholic schools has been sorely inadeqate. Or both.

Thoughts?

Christine:

Once again -- celibacy is more the requirement that a priest not be married. A celibate priest who commits a sexual indiscretion (I'm talking here about consenting adults) is in the same position as a married man or woman who commits adultery.

Both can be forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (yes, priests go to confession, too) presupposing a firm purpose of amendment.

Of course. (Golly, I wish it were always "consenting" adults, a problem you are all too ready to gloss over.)

But as I remember it, the penitent was also required, as a condition of forgiveness, to make amends to the person or persons harmed by the sin. Which is common sense. I cannot lift $10,000 from my employer, confess the crime, be "forgiven," and still keep the money.

The Catholic Church has, as a policy, accepted "back" into its ranks priests who have not only abused their position of trust by having sexual relations with vulnerable people, but who have also fathered children in the process. That no apology was ever offered goes without saying.

At that point, the Church has taken the position that it's just too bad for the mother of the child (not to mention the child, an innocent third party). Please don't make me cite particular cases. But if you must you must. (And don't gloss over this. If you want to know, I will tell.) I have the stories, and not a few of them. Trust me on this. (Or, don't, and email me.) Whatever you think of the mothers, I'd be interested in how you think the children are responsible for this situation.

Being forgiven is one thing. Cleaning up after your sin is something else. What I was taught in the 1950's is that if you're not willing to do the latter, well, you can forget about the former.

Unless you're a priest. In which case you are off the hook.

What [Benedict] is saying is that, in order for the Church to truly evangelize the world, it will need to be creative, countercultural and made up of people who are intensely dedicated to Christ.

Certainly. But of course we need to look more closely at the term "countercultural". What part of the "culture" are we "counter" to?

The current secular culture, for all its faults, has a few things right. One of them is the idea that if you father a child you are obligated to support that child through the child's period of minority.

The Catholic Church is indeed "countercultural" in this way, in that priests who father children are taken back into their priesthood, and the mothers and children are then on their own. Good luck to them.

I know you-all are like, "oh well, some people in the structure" (like, ALL the bishops) "don't do the right thing so what, that doesn't compromise....whatever."

I am personally at the end of my rope on this. Know that I have not myself been abused in any way by a priest. BUT I HAVE EYES.

The disciples of Jesus said, "How do we know the truth-tellers from the phonies?" He said, "Look at the fruits."

I rest my case. If you-all would be interested in contributing to the support of the children of priests who have been abandoned by their fathers, feel free to email me, sefoley@foleyfoleylaw.com. I have a long list. (If not, well, and you claim to be Catholics, you're part of the problem.)

If anyone here thinks all this is OK, or that it validates the RC Church as the One and Only True Church, well, OK.

Does the term "evil" mean anything to anyone any more? Erin, I should overlook all this, all this undeserved suffering, why? I met Germans in Germany in 1965 who thought Hitler was OK because he built a lot of freeways. OK?

i>What I genuinely can't understand is the insistence by many ex-Catholics they were afflicted with some sort of pervasive sense of "Catholic guilt." How exactly does the Church make you feel "guilty?" By preaching that X, Y or Z is sinful? Okay, but pretty much all serious religions do that -- and yet I don't hear people talking about "recovering" from "Southern Baptist Guilt" or "Orthodox Jewish Guilt" or "Mormon Guilt" or "Orthodox Christian Guilt".

The reality is that most Catholics know the Church teaches officially that X, Y and Z are wrong -- but have rarely if ever heard any priest or catechist say so, much less correct them personally.

I was OK with it until I figured out that it only applies to me, not to the priests.

Larry, my friend, it's necessary to preface this with an offer of heart-felt compassion for your pain, and an assurance that I am not trying to get you ex-Catholics back to the Church. (If the truth be known, I am uncharitable enough to wish you all would stay away, especially on Christmas and Easter when your hypocritical thundering hoards unfailingly ruin my looked-forward-to Mass--if I can even get in the door.)

So here it is: You probably don't realize how obvious you and some other ex-Catholics come across to those of us ordinary, authentic Catholics you insultingly call ultra-traditionalist Catholics.

No offense intended, but you come across as saying you were just minding your own business when bang!-- "guilt" was inflicted upon you by Catholicism. It seems so obvious, however, that it's simply your conscience; you believe in your heart some teaching or other is true and you don't like it, so you wait in the grass for opportunities to complain about the Church, as if that will make you feel better. Your pre-Jesuit faith and reason have clashed with the horsepucky you picked up at Georgetown; e.g., Paul VI in Humanae Vitae was wrong to be guided by the Holy Spirit and 2,000 years of belief rather than the advisory committee which recommended the approval of birth control.

It appears obvious to this "ultra-traditionalist" that you are merely trying to sooth your conscience when you blame your ex-Catholic status on things like, "... the priests just out of seminary who are in the 'small world' of doctrine and dogma and have no pastoral sense whatsoever of how to relate to real people's messy, (yes) sinful, and all-too-complicated lives."

I have respect for people whose conscience mandated their leaving the Church because they never believed in the first place, or because they lost their faith in Her doctrine.

As an aside, I have only disgust for those who stay, physically, and complain loudly that the doctrine of the Church is "wrong." See Call to Action, DePaul University, Catholics for a Free Choice, and a portion of the Georgetown faculty as examples. Christ will live up to His promises about those who harm the innocents, and teaching moral error to children falls in that category.

I was raised a Catholic on my mothers side and Baptist on my fathers. My maternal Grandmother was a very devout Catholic who put me through Catechism classes and Made all my sacrements that I should have.Now,My paternal Grandfather was a baptist preacher who was very much against Catholicism. About when I was 15, I left Catholiscism because I felt there was no power in the faith. Being young and wanting a faith that was upbeat and "contemporary" I joined a non-denominational church and right away felt accepted and happy.After seeing alot of things that were happining in that church and knowing they were not practicing what they preached I left it for a Pentecostal church where things could not be any more upbeat and lively.I was a member for over 5 years before returning to a faith over 2000 years old. The Catholic Church is now my official home and it is where I really belong.The reason most people leave Catholicsm is for the same reason I did at the time. It is because they do not want tradition they want "contemporary". I was fooled into believing Catholism is nothing but rules and control but it is the very opposite. It is about love and ,honor and most importantly obediance. Obediance to God. The word of God says "narrow is the way" and that is not the way most people want to take. Also, people now days are liberal and feel no need for God which is sad, but it is a reality we cannot ignore.These are trully the days of Noah and people are not listining to the voice of God and do not want his "rules" and help if they in turn have to give back to him honor.Lastly, People who leave Catholicism leave because they were not in it for the right reason to begin with. May God bring all who left back home with a full understanding and not SELFISHNESS because Christ Jesus is always there with welcoming arms and forgiveness.God Bless all.

"Cleveland: no doubt you are correct, if not charitable, in your characterization of many who leave the church. No doubt also that it doesn't fit everyone. Some folks really do earnestly pray, seek guidance, inform their conscience, read scripture, consult natural law, study history, and yet do not have your gift of faith in a Tradition unsullied by human error." J Dave G

Why do you think I would dispute that? Please finish your thought "that it doesn't fit everyone." Are you talking about Catholics who leave the RC Church because they don't believe (the ones I respect), or the ones who don't believe but stay and complain loudly that she is wrong (the ones I don't respect)?

BTW, I thank God every day for the "gift of faith in a Tradition unsullied by human error." And listen up, I believe that God will grant that same gift to anybody who wants it and asks for it, and that all heaven will rejoice for that person.

Trouble is, my friend, some people don't want my gift; too costly. So they opt for the world and the flesh. And don't think I am judging them subjectively. Sure as hell, however, I think their choice is wrong objectively. Even that will pizz off half the people on this board. So be it.

Cleveland, you must realize that, as a lawyer, Susan is bound by attorney-client privledge and confidentiality. Any cases she could cite likely would be those in which the statue of limitations has expired.

Regarding her lacking a "fear of God," Cleveland, do you seriously believe that the corrupt bishops have any? I'm not saying that every single solitary Catholic bishop is corrupt. I am saying, as is Susan, that the institution's tendency is to protect its own at all costs -- even at the cost of its fundamental moral credibility, as the clerical sex-abuse crisis demonstrated.

Moreover, Cleveland, let me remind you that malfeasant bishops will be judged severely by God because they have abused the authority they held in His name. That fact -- and it is a fact, Cleveland -- is something that the majority of Catholics who are infatuated with their hierarchy don't seem to understand.

Susan, as I said earlier, I empathize with and share your anger. You can be sure that God is far angrier at these episcopal bastards than you ever could be. One question: Why do you continue to represent any Church officials? You seem to be an intelligent person. Surely someone with your talents can get another job in the legal profession that does not tax your emotions. Why represent people for whom you have no respect, regardless of who they are?

Cleavland,

When I talk to people about fearing God I qualify it. We shouldn't fear God. We should be in awe of God's goodness and holiness. It should be more about reverence and awe of his majesty than about terror or potential punishment. I like to think of our relationship with God as a parent-child relationship.

Does a parent truely want the child to be cowering in fear, or does the parent want the child to respect their wisdom and judgement and be reverent. I believe it should be the later. Sure a parent has to punish a child, but in general the child shouldn't be fearful that everything they do will be punished.

Churches and God are 2 different entities. You can be in awe of God and not be in awe of the Church. Whether or not you believe that there isn't a church cover up policy is immaterial. There was a cover up in several cases of clergy misconduct. There were several court cases that show that the church did indeed try to keep secrets.

On this the most recent news article I found was:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=713306

Search cnn if you don't believe they have articles too.

I pray that you will understand that there is a legitmate concern here. And I pray that you will have a greater understanding of what it means to fear God.

-neo

Why do you think I would dispute that? Please finish your thought "that it doesn't fit everyone." Are you talking about Catholics who leave the RC Church because they don't believe (the ones I respect), or the ones who don't believe but stay and complain loudly that she is wrong (the ones I don't respect)?

Sure. I didn't know that you would dispute it; I just thought it deserved some attention. I respect those that leave and those that stay to challenge out of love. Even the bishops aren't as keen as you seem to be to drive all dissenters from the pews (some conservatives are soooo cranky, sheesh). I also acknowledge that some complain too loudly and too long, and I do not respect those who are clearly motivated by anger or pride, but not love.

Many surely believe that challenging the Church is wrong, and I am not disputing that here. It is, however, at worst an error that I can respect.

Thomas R: I think you've hit the nail right on the head. Thanks.

"...people are so dogmatic that they lose sight of the true idea of Christ..."

I think it's the other way around. people lose sight of the fact that dogma is like the banks of a river, keeping the water directed and moving, which keeps the current strong and the water drinkable.

No banks and the water would spill out on all sides, with no direction and eventually no movement, becoming stagnant, becoming a swamp.

Dogma is a good thing. Refinement of doctrine over a long period of time (2,000 yrs in this case) results in something beautiful and focused.

Why do people leave the Catholic Church? There are probably as many reasons as there are people who leave. You said that being Catholic "gets into your bones." Darn right it does! I am also Italian and I could no more deny being Catholic as I could deny being Italian. It's what and who I am.

It's interesting that when asked the question, "What is your religion?" Every former Catholic I have ever had a conversation with always qualifies the answer by saying "I used to be Catholic, but now I am..." I have not experienced that with a person of any other religion, i.e. "I used to be Methodist, but now I am..."

Well, all I can say is God bless us all and the gift of free will that he has given us so that we might honor him in whatever manner fills our hearts, be it Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Buddist....

What creates more ex-Christians than anything else is un-Christian-like behaviour from those that claim the name of Christ.

I could give examples, but it would get me banned. In fact, I don't have to name them, they know who they are, and so do the people that used to be in their pews and the readers of their blogs.

i am no longer a RC because i came to believe in the teachings of the Protestant Reformers.
that was why i left-
also- i cannot tolerate it's protection of child abusers-

The "love of power and authority" is much of what was behind the protection of cild abusers.

also- i cannot tolerate it's protection of child abusers-

The protection enraged me as well. But here's something to think about:

If you found out the guy down the street sexually abused his child, you'd want that individual in prison (preferably for life) right? And anyone who helped him get away with it should be sent that way, too, you'd probably say. And I totally agree with you.

But you probably wouldn't say, "That's it, all dads are evil, fatherhood is a false concept, and this idea of 'family' has got to go."

You wouldn't say that, because you realize that "fatherhood" and "family" exist outside of what people who happen to be fathers might do.

It's the same with the Church. Any priest who is found guilty of abuse deserves the harshest punishment the government can hand out. And any bishop who was complicit should get the same.

But the actions of a handful of bad men do not change what the Church and Sacred Tradition have stood for for 2,000 years. The actions of a few awful popes over the course of history doesn't change it either, and neither do the shortcomings of the average parishioner.

Also, in response to another poster who talked about being turned off by Un-Christian behavior of Christians, all I can say is that doctors are for the sick, not the health, and Christ came for the sinners, not the perfect people. And the Church, being an extension of Christ (or so we Catholics believe) is here for the same thing.

Susan, old friend, Holy Mother Church has no written or unwritten policy "that the children of priests are to be financially abandoned by the Church." I would love to play poker with you, Susan; your bluffs to cite cases that show such policy are obvious.

To begin with, the number of priest-fathered children is so statistically insignificant as to be a cause for wonder why an objective person would even make an issue of it.

Moreover, you would not be willing to wager that cases of minister-fathered children happen more in the RC Church than in the Episcopal church or in the 31st and Main Street Antioch Reformed Church of the Redeemer. So why try to make an issue of it?

The fact is that the RC Church or one of its priests would be LESS immune from state law than some other less "newsworthy" (in the eyes of the media) denomination. Even some jerk priest-in-name-only would assume financial responsibility rather than face exposure by the media.

And what about the diocesan or other liability policy? How would it fail to provide recompense to a child? And are you telling me that a Bishop would throw a child and mother out into the snow just so he could see his face plastered on the front page?

As to the mothers you are in touch with, in this age of paternity tests, what's stopping them from hiring you and having their children's futures assured? I'm not looking for a fight, Susan, just trying to show you why a sworn enemy of rotten apple priests and prelates is incredulous.

Cleveland, you're right, there are few children of priests. Just as there are (relatively) few pedophiles and other sexual abusers in the priesthood. Furthermore, at no time this side of the Kingdom will any church - or any other organization, for that matter - be able to reduce any of those numbers to zero.

Most people who are upset with the Catholic Church on account of the "Scandal" know all this perfectly well. It's been said often, but it bears saying again - the problem for most of us was not that there were and are what you call a few "rotten apples" in the priesthood, it's the way the institution reacts to these situations. And that has been by closing ranks and protecting these men insofar as humanly possible. It's an attitude, it's the culture of the priesthood, a priesthood which at bottom thinks itself different from and better than the common run of humanity.

My emotional problems with the priesthood and my theological problems with it won't come apart cleanly. I can't always tell whether I'm using my head or my heart. But as for my head, I see that deeply woven into Catholicism is the idea of the priest as a mediator between me and God. A required mediator in many cases. Serious sin cannot be forgiving without the help of a priest (unless one is just unavailable); the eucharist is likewise dependent entirely on the priesthood. (This power has been repeatedly abused, as in the "interdict" of entire regions for political reasons back in the day, and as in more recent threats to deny communion to people who don't vote as the bishops think they ought to; but it's even the alleged existence of this power that seems wrong to me.)

I'm well aware of all the theological justifications or alleged justifications for this situation, but I just don't buy them. I don't think Jesus intended us to be required to go through human mediators. That the human mediators who are available to us have a sort of we're-something-wonderful collective opinion of themselves doesn't help.

But back to what I said before. Cleveland, if this thing works for you, then work it for all it's worth.

(As for the paternity cases, they have been brought, not by me (I'm not a litigator) and the Orders especially have taken the position that the man has vowed "poverty" and so he's off the hook on child support, be the organization ever so wealthy. Sometimes courts buy this, sometimes not. The situation is analogous for diocesan priests, who aren't necessarily poor, but who also do not tend to be rich, and most of whose compensation is provided in kind. But in almost all cases I am aware of, the institution, be it Order or diocese, has bent over backwards to protect the priest, and to prevent the payment of adequate child support. WHY do they do this, instead of holding their men accountable? Who knows. The one exception I am aware of is Maryknoll.)

"Because if they believed that"

Sorry, I meant "Because if they DON'T believe that.."

Some people actually believe in believe in transubstantiation?

They're gullible at best and objectively insane...

Per J Dave G: "Pedophiles are 'a few bad apples.' Consistent coverups and institutional protection are pervasive matters of de facto policy. It is definitely not a 'few bad apples', it is widespread institutional injustice and corruption. Susan's right on this one."

Of course Susan's right about that, but that's not what she and I are debating. Clever woman that she is, she's just trying to change the subject from an alleged Church policy regarding children fathered by priests.

In any case, I never said that pedophiles are a few bad apples. Nor would I, because the church never had a "pedophile" scandal--it had a homosexual predator and cover up scandal.

Susan, contrary to your assertion, I am not of the opinion you are insane; I wouldn't waste my time debating you if I did, and we are on the same page in many areas; transubstantiation and lousy bishops to name two. It's just that women are from Venus while men are from Mars.

Emotion, thy name is woman. Who loves you, Susan?

"Some people actually believe in believe in transubstantiation?"

Yes. For 2,000 years we've believed in it.

If you're a Christian of some denomination, check out the Gospel According to St. John, chapter 6, and you'll see that as Christians, Jesus doesn't leave us much choice in the matter.

Kenneth is correct; I believe in transubstantiation, which, as "science" judges things, makes me objectively insane.

But I prefer my brand of simple insanity to the science-supported double insanity which holds that everything came from nothing (first insanity) and that the first insanity is true even though scientifically impossible (second insanity). Now THAT'S insanity.

Objective history records that the man who told us to believe in transubstantiation said He would rise from the dead to prove we could trust Him, and then he did so. The doubly insane people, however, are telling us to trust them; not recorded history or common sense or science which knows that something can't come from nothing.

Because scientific atheism does not acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural (e.g., miracles), such things are written off simply as "things we can't YET explain".

It is a religion--pure faith, Sheilagh. If an atheist admitted the existence of the supernatural, could transubstantiation be all that insane? That's why the objective truth of the incidents you linked to can't be admitted by atheists.

The insane religion of atheism is insulting to rational, intelligent, open-minded people, but there it is. Atheists will say in response that I'm being uncharitable, but charity itself is God-based; charity, like all morality, is counter-macroevolutionary (counter-survival of the fittest) and has no meaning apart from a supernatural God.

History, reason and the indisputable existence of the type of miracles you linked to--and many, many more--is why my Catholic faith is strong. God willing, I never will become so proud as to become an ex-Catholic.

I am a recovering Catholic and I only know my reasons for leaving. Mainly the politics within my own diocese. The activities of many priests and Bishops who do not practice what they preach. The continous attitude towards women. The attitude towards birth control. The building of such outlandish Church complexes. Plus the basic fears that were passed on from pulpits. There are also many good things about the faith and one I especially appreciate is you can be conservative,or liberal and individual Spirituality is generally supported. I.e. Centering prayer, meditation,an individual relationship with God. This is why I refer to myself as recovering and appreciate this forum to speak and for individual acknowledgment. I believe God is an awesome,Loving, inclusive God who wants to have a relationship with each of us, no matter what faith or tradition. God Is......

Cleveland, all, I'm off for ten days in solitude in the desert. I mean literally the desert, the Mohave. No computers, needless to say.

Discussion is always invited. sefoley@foleyfoleylaw.com. Messages there will be stored until I return.

May we all hear the "spirit" (wind) which blows from far away in that country, where you do not know where it comes from or where it goes, as Jesus said. The peace of Christ of the desert, the vision of Moses "behind the wilderness" (as the Hebrew reads literally), of the bush that burns but is not consumed, be with you all.

Susan, I hope your batteries are recharged and that you enjoyed the desert.

Try not to dismiss too lightly the fact that priests are just flesh and blood--like you and I are. It should help to remember that that's the way He wanted it (when you get to Heaven you can ask Him why), and that the great majority of the harvesters are truly alter Christus.

"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'" Matthew 9

The reality that needs to come across is that God loves Us all. Catholic, ex-Catholic and everyone else for that matter. Right where you are and who you are, in front of the computer screen you're reading today. People fall short. They have. They do. And they will. But God can give us the Grace and Love to forgive them all. And He can help us to forgive ourselves as well when we fall short.

The love of God and the Gift of the Holy Spirit are waiting to be poured out into the hearts of those that seek Him.

"Look, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and he with me." Rev.3:20

Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful. Enkindle in us the fire of your love.

V.Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created,

R. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray.
Loving God, help us to hear your voice ever more clearly and to open the door wider to you. Be our strength. We offer to you our suffering, caused knowingly or inadvertently, by the Catholic Church and it's members, as a sacrifice united to your Holy Cross. May it be for the redemption and healing of our souls and bodies. And may our Hope in your undying love for us be rekindled and renewed this day. Through Christ Jesus Our Lord. Amen

Pax Christi.

Here is my story why I left Catholicsim. I was raised in a very Catholic home. My mother was a kind and devout Catholic. My father was an alcoholic who ruled the family with an iron hand, including my mother. I give my mother credit for pointing the way, but unfortunately she could only tell me what she had been told by those who taught her. I went to confession and communion regularly and celebrated all the feast days. I prayed the rosary, did novenas, and was always in awe at the "holiness" in church especially when the priests wore their white robes and walked down the aisle swinging the incense. I thought to myself that must be God." As a child I remember kneeling in church staring at the statues hoping they would move, or smile or wink or something. I so wanted to know God and speak to Him, other than just by rote prayer or repetitious words of the rosary, and often I would ask questions of my mother. I asked, "Mamma, if Jesus died on the cross for our sins, why would we need to go to purgatory?" Her answers always came straight from the catechism. She answered, "because Jesus' death only opened the gates of heaven (which had been closed) and we still have to be punished for our sins." "Oh" I said.

I grew up believing these teachings and tried my best to follow the teachings, and was always frustrated by my inability to keep from sinning and always full of guilt. The confessional was a place to feel like I was absolved as long as I did the 3 hail mary's or whatever the prescription was for "punishment." I made my first communion and then my confirmation. These events were centered around the awe of the experience and never around the person of Jesus christ. Jesus was always spoken of as part of a family--Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the saints. The priests were considered to be super holy and you didn't dare misbehave or be casual in their presence.

I married a non-believer (of anything) at the age of 25. I didn't even question that this was a mismatch. He promised not to interfere in my beliefs by signing some kind of waiver and we married in a Catholic ceremony. The marriage was all wrong from all standpoints and ended in divorce. During the last few years of our marriage I had become nvolved in the Catholic charismatic renewal movement. Some friends invited me to be prayed over for the "baptism in the Holy Spirit." While the friend was talking to me about the Holy Spirit, as I was asking many questioins, I experienced a very real and supernatural thing. I could feel and hear (not audibly)the Lord speaking to me, and with almost every heart beat, I heard the words "repent." I really don't even remember what the person was saying, I just heard the word, "repent" inside and was emblazened in my heart. She asked me if I wanted to be prayed over and I jumped at the opportunity. I stood in a circle with the other believers (all Catholics) holding hands.le there. I suddenly knew what to say without ever having any kind of teaching (which sounded "Protestant" to me), but I found myself saying, "Jesus, walk into my heart." I had a mind's eye vision of Jesus, standing at the end of a path with his arms outstreatched. Moments afterward I was completely changed. I had the biggest smile on my face (even have pictures to prove it). For months afterward I was fully of joy and peace and had an insatiable urge to read the Bible!!! No one told me I had to, I wanted to read it so bad that I would jump out of bed in the morning and do my daily chores quickly so I could run in and read my Bible. The words in the Bible seemed to jump off the page at me. In addition, I changed. I found myself doing things I would never have thought of doing before this experience. I prayed solely to Jesus and had wonderful conversations with HIm. One day I read in the paper about a family whose house burnt down and lost their baby in it. Unlike my former self, I started to weep. I went to their home and took clothing to them..something I would never have done before. My husband even noticed the difference. He saw me reading the Bible, and he said to me, "I don't know what you are doing, but keep on reading that book." The experience felt like being in love for the first time. I remained in the Catholic church, but mass didn't seem to satisfy me. I wanted more. Even the teachings I got at the Catholic charismatic meetings were not enough. I wanted more of Jesus. I no longer had a desire to pray to saints and to the Virgin Mary. It felt wrong to me and contrary to the Word I had been reading. As I said, my husband and I divorced, and I was very sad. I went to the priest for solace and he offered me none, except to say "go get marriage counseling" and walked away. I was desperate for spiritual guidance and so I decided to go to a small Protestant church where one of my friends attended. I called the pastors of this church for guidance and counseling and when I spoke to them, I could not believe the love and acceptance they showed me. They were in love with Jesus too and it reeked out of every pore! I went to a service and I was absolutely blown away at their church service. I remembered how it was in Catholic church where a few people sang. In this church EVERYBODY was absolutely in love with Jesus! No one had to be coaxed to sing. They raised their hands with such enthusiasm and sang with no abandon like they were in such awe and love with Him. I could not understand why this didn't happen in the catholic Church. I loved it there and started attending, but I continued to go to mass every sunday along with this church. I heard teachings there about how Jesus paid the FULL PRICE for our sins. He took our punishment!!! For the first time I knew the answer to the questions of my childhood. There is nothing we can do to pay for our sins but accept what Jesus did. It is not what we do, but what Jesus did to set us free and stand boldly before the throne of the Father because Jesus is our advocate. I stayed Catholic for years until one day I decided that I was being double minded. I was going through the motions of being a Catholic and yet believed many of the tenets of that faith were false. I had to make a decision and so I did. I did not return. My family took it hard, but I had to decide what was the right thing to do. They still remain in the Catholic faith stronger than ever. Our conversations about God are strained because if it ever comes up about why I don't pray to the Virgin Mary, it evokes tears in them. The funny part is this. Whenever there is a time for family group prayer. They always ask me to lead it.

As a Catholic, I believe that the tremendous changes in the Church since Vatican II have resulted in a Church that in many cases does not "feed the sheep." This is a critical problem because the unwillingness of the bishops to recognize the mistakes brought by disrupting over a millenium of religious tradition is the same intransigence that one hears about in their unwillingness to deal with the crises brought about by the same Council, namely the defection from religious life, child-sex scandals, etc, etc, etc. Only when the bishops themselves are able to reconnect with the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola, Francis of Assisi, and Theresa will the defections end. Personally, I don't think this will happen, and we will have a situation like France in a few generations. The few remaining bishops will be fat and satisfied, living in their palatial mansions, without having to work very hard because there won't be much to do. Then possibly another Ignatius or Francis or Thersa will come along.....

I was raised in a rabidly conservative, mentally castrating, Roman Catholic family in Mexico. My family is affiliated with the Opus Dei cult. I joined the Opus Dei as a numerary at a young age in order to serve Christ. The more I followed the rules, kept prayer vigils, fasted and even used the cilice in order to practice mortification of the flesh for my sins, the more anxiety-ridden and depressed I became. I reached a breaking point where I considered suicide. Nothing I did was ever "right". When I went to confession, the laundry list of sexual sins that I was subjected to by a MALE priest was humiliating. Confession was a sleight of hand, a game of voyeuristic pleasures on his part, not mine. He asked the questions within the context of a highly sexualized male power structure. I was at a disadvantage.

Serving Christ in the Opus Dei left me anorexic and severly depressed. A kind stranger gave me a poetry book by Rilke. The poetry spoke to my anxiety and for the first time in my life I began to question. When you have many questions on your mind and you finally have a chance to ask them, the questions tend to crowd together and trip over one another like passengers on a crowded train when it reaches a popular station. I questioned why I was taught to hate my flesh, my sexuality, my femaleness...why I was constantly reminded that my body was worthy of abuse in order to gain a "heavenly" reward. I began to question this "reward" and "God" and "damnation" and even the existence of Christ. In the "here and now", I had bruises on my thighs from the cilice. In the "here and now", the cilice was painful. In the "here and now", I was malnourished. Pain for God, scarring on my thighs, fasting to feel pain, made no sense: even an animal avoids such brutality.

I left the Opus Dei. I came to the U.S. on an academic scholarship in order to escape my ultra religious family. I finished college and two masters degrees. However, I did go through a "girl gone wild" phase and ended up having an abortion which automatically excluded me from any possible return to Catholicism. I do not regret my choice. I am now an atheist, raising an freethinking daughter, but I still harbor a lot of anger towards the Catholic church as well as my family. The anger is toxic and has poisoned many of my relationships. I am only now learning to take responsibility for the blind rage against the Catholic church as I launch myself headlong into the world with something resembling joy and lightness and vigor. I don't owe "Jesus" or "God" or the Opus Dei anything. I owe it to my daughter to let go of the rage and continue questioning.

I am basically a fence sitter. I am one of those who left mainstream Christianity for the Catholic faith as an adult. I felt it was a good fit but then so much came out about the abuses of the Catholic Church towards young people and adults throughout the years that I felt it would be wrong to attend Mass. It would seem to me that I would be stepping on peoples necks that have suffered due to the abuses they suffered from the church. I still feel Catholic but don't know where to go from here.

I cannot IMAGINE leaving the Catholic Church! For one thing, I am a strong cultural Catholic. I am not a Catholic in the sense that a Presbyterian is a Presbyterian or a Methodist is a Methodist. I am a Catholic in the same way a Jew is a Jew. Even if I never set foot in a Catholic Church for years, I'd still be a Catholic (as I was for about 7 years in my youth.) I was raised in an Italian-Irish culture and when I was invited to attend a nondenominational "Bible" church during my years away from Catholicism, I just got turned off by all those people with last names like Smith and Jones going around smiling and using terms like "he sure loves the Lord," and worst of all "When I was SAVED" Made me want to barf! Most most importantly, I believe only the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ when he told Simon: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church." I believe it is absolutely essential for someone to be a Catholic to be saved, except due to invincible ignorance. Since I had over 12 years of Catholic education, I cannot use the ignorance cop- out, so I have two choices: be a faithful Catholic until death and go to heaven, or burn in Hell for all eternity. Sort of a no-brainer! :)

I left the Catholic Church long before I ever became a Protestant. I left the RCC after 12 years of Catholic school. My brother had studied for the priesthood (and is now an atheist) and my sister was a nun that finally left the convent in disgust of the hypocrisy. I walked away from Catholicism after I began reading a Bible given to me by a priest. I found no reason to pray to the dead, follow the pope or many other believe in many other unbiblical teaching I was taught. (Thanks Fr. D!)

Unfortunately, when I left the RCC I did not seek God but engaged in a wicked lifestyle. I reaped the consequences of my failure to seek God elsewhere. Finally after many years of sinful living I came to the conclusion that I really did need God. By grace alone I came in contact with a Protestant pastor that showed me, in the Bible, than I needed to be born again. I began attending his church, not out of hatred to Catholicism, but because I was being taught from Scripture that Jesus Christ alone was what I needed.

I have been a very happy Evangelical Protestant for almost 30 years now. Christ has changed my life completely. I pastor a church and have no greater desire than to love God with all my being. I raise my children to live in gratitude for Christ and I praise God every day for His infinite mercy to me a sinner.

I believe that one must belong to the church if one truly belongs to Christ. But I have never looked back with a desire to return to Rome. I look to no other mediator or head of the Church than Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior.

I was raised a Catholic and attended Church most of my adult life. Last year I left Catholicism after bad experiences with 4 parishes in a row, and a falling out with a parish youth director. I joined a nondenominational church and it couldn't be better.

The Catholic Priests were dogmatic, uncaring, unreasonable, and impersonal. Church was a non stop guilt trip & fundraiser. The music was dull. The masses were boring. Sermons were ill planned and lacking in depth. Scarcely a week went by without Ratzinger saying something which rubed me the wrong way. The catholic hierarchy is accountable to no one. There is no interest in involving laity in governance or listening to the needs or ideas of its flock.Pope Benedict has gone out of his way to crush dissent and invite anyone who disagrees to leave. I took him up on his invitation, and left on Christmas Day. Wish I had packed up sooner.

The non denominational church has been terrific. Every sunday has new prayers and teaching. Sermons are dynamite. There is an embracing of art & new technology esp. Internet and Video which make liturgy meaningful to modern society. The music is alive. The people are open and welcoming. There are many ways to get involved. The weekday programs are inspiring and pastors always have time to talk and listen. The nondenominationals practice radical charity and go out of their way to help those in need. People are sincere about Christ, prayer, and living the faith. I feel lead by God in the path that I am taking, and would encourage burned out Catholics to look beyond the Vatican for spiritual growth and inspiration.

Aftr 60 years as a Catholic I became an Episcopalean-there is a lot of 2 way movemnt on this conversion Street-Why-basically the 2000 member RC Church-no one cared really if you came or went -since no one new you anyway and I finally got honest about doctrine -the Episcopal Church encourages one to use your brain-a smaller conregation is more intimate and no endless plees for money-

the vast majority of Cathollics practice birth control-have little formal Scripture education-most catholics do not go to individual Confession-the EC has general confession although you can go to individual as well-more use of a healing ministry-no birth control prohibition-and shock of shock Woman Priests -so Mary Magdalene was not worthy to be a Priest?

The pedophile scandal in Ireland was the last straw