Calling Oneself Catholic While Rejecting Church Teaching

[CrossCuT]

So, I had a thought, for what it's worth:

 

If someone calls themselves Catholic and his beliefs differ from the Church's, I believe we have a word for this, which also aptly describes everyone who calls themselves Catholic: sinner. IMO, as lay people it's probably more helpful to pray for people who behave in this fashion than to constantly point out how they can't possibly be part of the Body of Christ, and on an internet forum, no less.

 

Thank you Arfink for commenting! It has been my experience as well as a few others I will not name that feel certain attitudes on PM have almost driven them away from the church. I have lessened my participation in this thread because I really dont think the approach "Youre wrong and Im right" is a good way to deal with people who feel differently on certain issues regarding the church...especially when the goal is unclear as to whether or not your trying to push these people away or bring them back.

 

All I know is that I want to lessen my connection to these attitudes...not lessen my connection to the church. My experiences have colored my thinking on this as I have on numerous occasion been in the company of "good" Catholics while they rail on minorities or homosexuals in a way that repulses me. I want to sever my ties to that. I dont want people to think of Catholics and associate me with those people. 

 

I think this thread highlights well the attitudes I dislike in the laity right now.

 

 

But anyways, I appreciate your comment. I am more inclined to engage in a conversation with you about these topics than the others in the thread.

[John Ryan]

There is literally nobody active on the forum right now who identifies as sedevacantist. I am not sure where you get that idea from.

 

Except that they think everything since Vatican II has been heresy. 

 

Why cannot others take the Non serviam approach that you have taken and reject the teachings they do not like? Why should it work for you and not others?

 

I am not hating on the conservatives who disagree with the direction the Church has taken, with all its "you do not have to be Christian to have salvation" theology. All I am saying is, don't hate on me, then. 

[John Ryan]

Thank you Arfink for commenting! It has been my experience as well as a few others I will not name that feel certain attitudes on PM have almost driven them away from the church. I have lessened my participation in this thread because I really dont think the approach "Youre wrong and Im right" is a good way to deal with people who feel differently on certain issues regarding the church...especially when the goal is unclear as to whether or not your trying to push these people away or bring them back.

 

All I know is that I want to lessen my connection to these attitudes...not lessen my connection to the church. My experiences have colored my thinking on this as I have on numerous occasion been in the company of "good" Catholics while they rail on minorities or homosexuals in a way that repulses me. I want to sever my ties to that. I dont want people to think of Catholics and associate me with those people. 

 

I think this thread highlights well the attitudes I dislike in the laity right now.

 

 

But anyways, I appreciate your comment. I am more inclined to engage in a conversation with you about these topics than the others in the thread.

 

This is a great Catholic attitude. Here is the thing for me. I do not care if somebody obeys the Magisterium. I am not preaching that people should disobey the Magisterium. I have good Catholic friends who are faithful to the Magisterium. All I say is that, I have these certain beliefs in variance with the Magisterium, and I cannot, in good conscience, adhere to certain beliefs. 

[Credo in Deum]

A Plea for Intolerance

 

Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation.  A want of intellectual backbone makes him straddle the ox of truth and the ass of nonsense...Fulton J. Sheen

 

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance.  It is not.  It is suffering from tolerance:  tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos.  Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broad-minded.  The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot; but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broad-minded.

 

A bigoted man is one who refuses to accept a reason for anything; a broad-minded man is one who will accept anything for a reason—providing it is not a good reason.  It is true that there is a demand for precision, exactness, and definiteness, but it is only for precision in scientific measurement, not in logic. The breakdown that has produced this natural broad-mindedness is mental, not moral.  The evidence for this statement is threefold: the tendency to settle issues not by arguments but by words, the unqualified willingness to accept the authority of anyone on the subject of religion, and lastly the love of novelty.

 

The science of religion has a right to be heard scientifically through its qualified spokesmen, just as the science of physics or astronomy has a right to be heard through its qualified spokesmen.  Religion is a science despite the fact the some would make it only a sentiment.  Religion has its principles, natural and revealed, which are more exacting in their logic than mathematics.  But the false notion of tolerance has obscured this fact from the eyes of many who are as intolerant about the smallest details of life as they are tolerant about their relations to God.

 

Another evidence of the breakdown of reason that has produced this weird fungus of broad-mindedness is the passion of novelty, as opposed to the love of truth.  Truth is sacrificed for an epigram, the Divinity of Christ for a headline in the Monday morning newspaper.  Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation.  A want of intellectual backbone makes him straddle the ox of truth and the ass of nonsense, paying compliments to Catholics because of “their great organization” and to sexologists because of “their honest challenge to the youth of this generation.”   Bending the knee to the mob rather than God would probably make them scruple at ever playing the role of John the Baptist before a modern Herod.  No accusing finger would be leveled at a divorce or one living in adultery; no voice would be thundered in the ears of the rich, saying with something of the intolerance of Divinity: “It is not lawful for thee to live with thy brother’s wife.” Rather would we hear: “Friends, times are changing!”  The acids of modernity are eating away the fossils of orthodoxy.

 

Belief in the existence of God, in the Divinity of Christ, in the moral law, is considered passing fashions.  The latest thing in this new tolerance is considered the true thing, as if truth were a fashion, like a hat, instead of an institution like a head.

 

The final argument for modern broad-mindedness is that truth is novelty and hence “truth” changes with the passing fancies of the moment.  Like the chameleon that changes his colors to suit the vesture on which he is placed, so truth is supposed to change to fit the foibles and obliquities of the age.  The nature of certain things is fixed, and none more so than the nature of truth.  Truth may be contradicted a thousand times, but that only proves that it is strong enough to survive a thousand assaults.  But for any one to say, “Some say this, some say that, therefore, there is no truth,” is about as logical as it would have been for Columbus who heard some say, “The earth is round”, and others say “The earth is flat” to conclude: “Therefore, there is no earth.” Like a carpenter who might throw away his rule and use each beam as a measuring rod, so, too, those who have thrown away the standard of objective truth have nothing left with which to measure but the mental fashion of the moment.

 

The giggling giddiness of novelty, the sentimental restlessness of a mind unhinged, and the unnatural fear of a good dose of hard thinking, all conjoin to produce a group of sophomoric latitudinarians who think there is no difference between God as Cause and God as a “mental projection”; who equate Christ and Buddha, and then enlarge their broad-mindedness into a sweeping synthesis that says not only that one Christian sect is as good as another, but even that one world-religion is just as good as another.  The great god “Progress” is then enthroned on the altars of fashion, and as the hectic worshippers are asked, “Progress toward what?” the tolerant comes back with “More progress.”  All the while sane men are wondering how there can be progress without direction and how there can be direction without a fixed point.  And because they speak of a “fixed point”, they are said to be behind the times, when really they arebeyond the times  mentally and spiritually. 

 

In the face of this false broadmindedness, what the world needs is intolerance.  The world seems to have lost entirely the faculty of distinguishing between good and bad, the right and the wrong.  There are some minds that believe that intolerance is always wrong, because they make “intolerance” mean hate, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry.  These same minds believe that tolerance is always right because, for them, it means charity, broadmindedness, and American good nature.

 

What is tolerance?  Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil and a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment.  But what is more important than the definition is the field of its application. The important point here is this:  Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth.  Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.  Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error. 

 

America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad-mindedness.  Greater tolerance, of course, is desirable, for there can never be too much charity shown to persons who differ with us.  Our Blessed Lord Himself asked that we “love those who calumniate us, for they are always persons,” but He never told us to love the calumny. 

 

In keeping with the Spirit of Christ, the Church encourages prayers for all those who are outside the pale of the Church and asks that the greatest charity be shown towards them.  Charity, then, must be shown to persons and particularly those outside the fold, who by charity must be led back, that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.  Shall God, Who refuses to look with an equally tolerant eye on all religions, be denied the name of “Wisdom” and be called an“Intolerant” God?

 

The Church is identified with Christ in both time and principle; She began thinking on His first principles and the harder She thought, the more dogmas She developed.  She never forgot those dogmas; She remembered them and Her memory is Tradition.  The dogmas of the Church are like bricks, solid things with which a man can build, not like straw, which is “religious experience” fit only for burning.  The Church has been and will always be intolerant so far as the rights of God are concerned, for heresy, error, and untruth affect not personal matters on which She may yield, but a Divine Right in which there is no yielding.  The truth is divine; the heretic is human.  Due reparation made, the Church will admit the heretic back into the treasury of Her souls, but never the heresy into the treasure of Her Wisdom. Right is right even if nobody is right; and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. 

 

The attitude of the Church in relation to the modern world on this important question may be brought home by the story of the two women in the courtroom of Solomon.  Both of them claimed a child.  The lawful mother insisted on having the whole child or nothing, for a child is like truth—it cannot be divided without ruin.  The unlawful mother, on the contrary, agreed to compromise.  She was willing to divide the babe, and the babe would have died of broad-mindedness.

BISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN

VENERABLE SERVANT OF GOD

PRAY FOR US

PRAY FOR OUR CHURCH

Edited by Connie Bagnoli for The Remnant from Old Errors and New Labels (1931)

 

 

 

 

TL;DR, you say?  Well your loss. 

Edited June 24, 2014 by Credo in Deum

[KnightofChrist]

I am not hating on the conservatives who disagree with the direction the Church has taken, with all its "you do not have to be Christian to have salvation" theology. All I am saying is, don't hate on me, then. 

 

So they can rebel as you have rebelled, so long as 'they' don't 'hate on you'?

[Perigrina]

I post this as an ex-Catholic.
I think people call themselves Catholic when they appear to disagree in how to apply fundamental principles. For example, how to apply charity when faced with loving the sinner but hating the sin.

The gay wedding cake issue is great. At what point is it better to be loving and support their desire to celebrate a loving partnership of two people versus the danger of equating that relationship as equal to a hetero family that can procreate in a loving family. There is plenty of room to argue both sides and the effects of your actions.
There is plenty of other laudable and desirable aspects of Catholicism that is not easily abandoned. Especially when one is attempting to sincerely follow their thoughtful conscience to be as good a person as you can be, eating with the tax collector and showing kindness and respect to the multi-married woman while aware of your own shortcomings.

You can easily find priests, bishops, and SD, that will acknowledge exceptions to the rule based on charity and human imperfection. That's why the Church and Jews allow divorce.

 

The gay wedding cake issue is one in which it is legitimate, according to the Church's teaching, for Catholics to reach different conclusions.  It is a matter of prudential judgment in applying Catholic moral principles to a specific situation.  

 

This is not at all like situations in which people who call themselves Catholics reject dogmas and clearly defined doctrines.  This is what I had in mind when I  started the thread.

[Nihil Obstat]

Except that they think everything since Vatican II has been heresy.

The closest attitude you will find to that is with Mortify, and I am willing to bet that he would refuse to be labeled as such as well.

[Perigrina]

Heterodoxy - well the church has that view based on the merits of manifested beliefs, not emotions. So it can proclaim that certain ideas are more valid than others. But this doesn't mean it reacts in a way that is destructive when it is challenged. It would seek to support, teach and be alongside other people, as is Christ. I actually think much of the work the church does is in this spirit of being, on the whole anyway. Not all individuals are in the same place though, which isn't a surprise considering our numbers and other secondary differences.

In terms of priests and SD's - I guess people are human, not cardboard cut outs. I think it's up to Jesus, but I see nothing in their faith and action that deserves any such notion. There are far more pressing problems than people not adhering to a couple of peripheral ideas.  Not agreeing with this is, IMHO, the least of the worlds problems.
 

 

Heterodoxy is spiritually and intellectually destructive.  Heresy can destroy people's souls.  The emotional health of the people espousing heretical positions does not affect this.

 

The idea that the Church teaches authoritatively and, in some cases, infallibly is not a peripheral idea.  It is fundamental to the Church's self-understanding.

[Perigrina]

I find it hilarious that I get in trouble for disagreeing with some of the points of the Magisterium, and I am considered out of Communion, but such Sedevacantism which is in blatant rebellion with the Holy Father is tolerated and applauded.

 

I took KnightofChrist's reference to "false pontiffs" to refer to people who set themselves up as the highest authority in the Church rather than submitting to magisterial teaching.  I can see, however, how his comment could have been misunderstood as sedevacantism.  

 

For the record, sedevacantism is a completely unacceptable position and endangers people's communion with the Church.

[Perigrina]

This is a great Catholic attitude. Here is the thing for me. I do not care if somebody obeys the Magisterium. I am not preaching that people should disobey the Magisterium. I have good Catholic friends who are faithful to the Magisterium. All I say is that, I have these certain beliefs in variance with the Magisterium, and I cannot, in good conscience, adhere to certain beliefs. 

 

As I understand it, you are obliged in such a situation to follow your conscience while also striving to bring it into conformity with Church teaching. People in such situations should ensure that they have correctly understood Church teaching, discuss their problems with a priest and pray.  I would be glad to add my prayers, if you would like.

[Perigrina]

Thank you Arfink for commenting! It has been my experience as well as a few others I will not name that feel certain attitudes on PM have almost driven them away from the church. I have lessened my participation in this thread because I really dont think the approach "Youre wrong and Im right" is a good way to deal with people who feel differently on certain issues regarding the church...especially when the goal is unclear as to whether or not your trying to push these people away or bring them back.

 

There cannot be any question that the goal is always to bring people back.  Christ died so that all people could be saved.  

 

But sometimes showing people that they are taking positions that could cut them off from the Church is a first step before bringing them back.  People are not likely to come if they do not realize that they have left.

[John Ryan]

As I understand it, you are obliged in such a situation to follow your conscience while also striving to bring it into conformity with Church teaching. People in such situations should ensure that they have correctly understood Church teaching, discuss their problems with a priest and pray.  I would be glad to add my prayers, if you would like.

 

You are always welcome to pray for my soul.  :smile3:  The primary difference I have with the Church is that my conscience and intellect cannot abide the narrowly defined understanding of natural law in which each sex act has to be open to procreation. I am somewhat learned in philosophy, so I actually understand the Church's argument. I just cannot assent to it. If I did, I would be lying to both God and the Church, because there is not one inch of my soul that believes it. 

[Perigrina]

You are always welcome to pray for my soul.  :smile3:  The primary difference I have with the Church is that my conscience and intellect cannot abide the narrowly defined understanding of natural law in which each sex act has to be open to procreation. I am somewhat learned in philosophy, so I actually understand the Church's argument. I just cannot assent to it. If I did, I would be lying to both God and the Church, because there is not one inch of my soul that believes it. 

 

One cannot assent with a lie.  But you can recognize that your lack of assent is a problem and pray for the grace to assent.  Also, in some situations, one can obey without assent..  For example, one could refrain from using artificial contraception even while being unable to think the teaching against it is correct.  Obedience can help people to find assent.  At any rate, you have my prayers.

[John Ryan]

One cannot assent with a lie.  But you can recognize that your lack of assent is a problem and pray for the grace to assent.  Also, in some situations, one can obey without assent..  For example, one could refrain from using artificial contraception even while being unable to think the teaching against it is correct.  Obedience can help people to find assent.  At any rate, you have my prayers.

 

I have terrible health problems that can be inherited if I ever have a child, so I intend to adopt if I am ever married. I would get a vasectomy if I were ever in the position to have a sexual relationship with a significant other.

[Credo in Deum]

You are always welcome to pray for my soul.  :smile3:  The primary difference I have with the Church is that my conscience and intellect cannot abide the narrowly defined understanding of natural law in which each sex act has to be open to procreation. I am somewhat learned in philosophy, so I actually understand the Church's argument. I just cannot assent to it. If I did, I would be lying to both God and the Church, because there is not one inch of my soul that believes it. 

 

Start praying:  "Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.  Amen."

 

 

Our Lady, seat of Wisdom.  Pray for us!

[John Ryan]

Start praying:  "Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.  Amen."

 

 

Our Lady, seat of Wisdom.  Pray for us!

 

I say that prayer every night with my Green Scapular of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

[Perigrina]

I have terrible health problems that can be inherited if I ever have a child, so I intend to adopt if I am ever married. I would get a vasectomy if I were ever in the position to have a sexual relationship with a significant other.

 

If you were to use NFP instead, you could gain the graces that come with obedience.

 

Disobeying because obedience is difficult or inconvenient is a completely different from being unable to assent.

[Perigrina]

I say that prayer every night with my Green Scapular of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

 

Then your situation is very hopeful.

[CrossCuT]

But sometimes showing people that they are taking positions that could cut them off from the Church is a first step before bringing them back.  People are not likely to come if they do not realize that they have left.

No that should NOT be the first step. You need to gauge where that person is and who they are and if they would benefit from such a tactic. I think people on here are more likely to go with that route not because they have genuine care for the persons soul, but because they enjoy touting their knowledge and feeling superior. 

[Perigrina]

No that should NOT be the first step. You need to gauge where that person is and who they are and if they would benefit from such a tactic. I think people on here are more likely to go with that route not because they have genuine care for the persons soul, but because they enjoy touting their knowledge and feeling superior. 

 

I did say "sometimes".  I agree with you that is not necessarily the best approach, even when people mean well.  I think that it is difficult to communicate genuine care for souls in an online discussion setting, since that sort of thing is primarily expressed through tone of voice and body language.  But you are right about how important it is.  We really need to make the extra effort to get this across even in this more challenging medium.