KnightofChrist Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 The most troubling thing about jerks is that they are every where on Earth. There is no organization religious, political or even fan club that doesn't have jerks within. To get away from them one would have to abandon all of society, not just the Church. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I am a cradle Catholic who was brought up not to respect Church teaching or authority. Not only did I have to choose for myself to take the faith seriously, I also had to justify why my family's laxity was no longer "good enough for me". Frankly it would have been easier if they were not even nominally Catholic, because then I wouldn't also have to overcome erroneous beliefs and preconceptions that were both implicitly and explicitly encouraged by nonexistent catchechesis and the ubiquitous secular humanist worldview with a bland theistic veneer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Credo in Deum Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Im not interested in discussing my current spirtual life or relationship with the church in public on this site because it is personal and people are jerks. If you are honestly curious, send me a PM. But I have a feeling youre more interested in putting me up as a spectacle and using my experiences as reasons to condemn me. Check your PM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anomaly Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I'd agree with Nihil to the extent that cradle Catholics are usually nominally Catholic with little or erroneous understanding of fundamentals. Converts usually start from a perspective of curiosity either to prove their negative opinions right, or just to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Era Might Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Gandhi was killed by Hindus. He was a scandalous Apostle of peace in a society where Hindus, Muslims, and Christians were violently divided (and under the yoke of a "Christian" colonial power). He was not at all sectarian and would have considered himself, if not a Christian, at least one with Christians (and all other religions) as a seeker of truth. I'm glad Oscar Wilde has also been mentioned, he was part of the same British/Christian society as Gandhi and was just as critical about the hypocrisy of Christianity: Like all poetical natures [Christ] loved ignorant people. He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea. But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God’s Kingdom. His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of Jerusalem in Christ’s day were the exact counterpart of the British Philistine of our own. Christ mocked at the ‘whited sepulchre’ of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man. He would not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals. He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should be set at nought. The cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless scorn. To us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a facile unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their hands, it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. Christ swept it aside. He showed that the spirit alone was of value. He took a keen pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always reading the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest idea of what either of them meant. In opposition to their tithing of each separate day into the fixed routine of prescribed duties, as they tithe mint and rue, he preached the enormous importance of living completely for the moment. --Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis" http://www.gutenberg.org/files/921/921-h/921-h.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrossCuT Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 The most troubling thing about jerks is that they are every where on Earth. There is no organization religious, political or even fan club that doesn't have jerks within. To get away from them one would have to abandon all of society, not just the Church. Explain what purpose this realization means in context of the situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Explain what purpose this realization means in context of the situation. That you associate with just as many jerks and all around bad people as an apostate as when you were Catholic. Nobody can escape them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrossCuT Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I see what youre saying. So oh well I guess? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anomaly Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 That you associate with just as many jerks and all around bad people as an apostate as when you were Catholic. Nobody can escape them. Not so. As an apostate I am around a lot fewer hypocritical Catholics that believe it's their obligation and right to tell me and others how disapproving God is of what-not while I and others try to belong to their version of the "Church". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Not so. As an apostate I am around a lot fewer hypocritical Catholics that believe it's their obligation and right to tell me and others how disapproving God is of what-not while I and others try to belong to their version of the "Church". What, are you saying you do not know any hypocritical or just plain rude atheists? Come on now. I do not live in some kind of insular commune; I know how people can be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anomaly Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 What, are you saying you do not know any hypocritical or just plain rude atheists? Come on now. I do not live in some kind of insular commune; I know how people can be. I am saying that I have greatly reduced the quantity of jerks I am forced to be around. I never said I have eliminated them, nor said that Catholics tend to have any more propensity to be hypocritical. I would say that Catholics tend to be less ignorantly hypocritical than the average atheist or Assembly of God member. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Wednesday Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Your words here do an enormous discredit to the sufferings many cradle Catholics endure. 'Converts' do not have the monopoly on struggles with faith. Being 'brought up in Catholicism' is never a guarantee that things are 'black and white,' nor is it a guarantee against apostasy. I agree. Things were absolutely not black and white for most of us raised in the Catholic faith that were born after the 60s. My religious education was pretty much a disaster. Most Catholics from my generation (born in the 70s) are uneducated sheep left to the wolves. I remember in the 8th grade, our religious education teacher got really angry and yelled at the class because we couldn't recite some of the most basic prayers. Looking back, I understand his anger, but I think he should have been more angry at the CCD curriculum than us. I didn't even know what a mortal sin was until I got into college and started learning more about my faith. I didn't even know that missing Mass was a serious sin. Out of my class of about 30 kids, last I recalled -- only 2 or 3 of us regularly practice the faith as adults. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I agree. Things were absolutely not black and white for most of us raised in the Catholic faith that were born after the 60s. My religious education was pretty much a disaster. Most Catholics from my generation (born in the 70s) are uneducated sheep left to the wolves. I remember in the 8th grade, our religious education teacher got really angry and yelled at the class because we couldn't recite some of the most basic prayers. Looking back, I understand his anger, but I think he should have been more angry at the CCD curriculum than us. I didn't even know what a mortal sin was until I got into college and started learning more about my faith. I didn't even know that missing Mass was a serious sin. Out of my class of about 30 kids, last I recalled -- only 2 or 3 of us regularly practice the faith as adults. The fact that the Church survived the 60s and 70s is, IMO, proof that we are divinely protected. No purely human institution could have survived that particular "smoke of Satan". Although, of course, we have yet to undo that damage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrossCuT Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Everyone's suffering is their own, lets not try to characterize it. Some things that are easy peasy for some are extremely difficult for others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightofChrist Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Explain what purpose this realization means in context of the situation. What Nihil said basically. But, if we allow jerks to separate us and Holy Mother Church, that gives the jerks power over our mind, body and soul. Effectively it allows them to control what we believe and what we do not believe. I still plead as I did before do not allow them to separate you from Mother Church, from Jesus Christ. If we look we will find jerks every where, sometimes it's harder to see them if we don't have fundamental differences of opinion and share common beliefs. But they are there, always, if we will not belong to an organization with jerks, then we can't belong to any organization. Anyway, don't let the jerks win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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