The idea that if I just believed harder, if my faith was just stronger, the clouds of doubt would clear and everything would come together and would make sense is one that’s been haunting me for months. And of course it’s accompanied by all the guilt of feeling I’m responsible for my lack of faith and my refusal to see “what’s really going on.” And the more insistent those around me become that I’m missing some huge piece of my life, my faith, my relationship with God, the less sure I feel about everything. Everything sucks right now, that’s all I can say. But please keep writing because it’s resonating on so many levels.
We're inundated with the idea that everything that's bad in our lives is because of us, and everything good is because of God. This can really break people down when faced with a situation they have no control over, like how much faith they have. When you ask for something like this, something you know God wants you to have, for YEARS, and you don't get it, it's hard not to wonder if he's even there at all. And if he is, it's almost worse, because why would he ignore your request -- not for riches or power -- but for faith?
I’ve noticed this too, and you see it in the news and social media on a daily basis- people thanking God or their guardian angel for saving them from some catastrophe, and everyone replying yes, God is so good. But what about all the others who suffered or died in that same catastrophe??
Also on the death of infants you cite the Council of Florence. The Church commonly teaches a limbo for the babies, and is still debating the point up to Vatican 1 and beyond. Please be correct and thorough when making claims.
Limbo has never been official teaching. Ever. And as the document you link states, "The idea of Limbo, which the Church has used for many centuries to designate the destiny of infants who die without Baptism, has no clear foundation in revelation."
It is, instead, only "a possible theological opinion."
If you’re serious about this one topic, please look over the link. It is a very widely discussed topic in the history of the Church. While Baptism is necessary in the economy of salvation, we leave the fate of the unbaptized innocents to the mercy of God to a large degree. This is no opportunity to accuse the Church of cruelty or hypocrisy.
We all suffer and we all die. God times us out on his own choosing. People are given a set number of mortal sins, for example, and after we hit the allotted number we go straight to hell. But before this we are given every grace and opportunity to turn the other way, and to receive our birthright as adopted children of God, eternity in Heaven. It doesn’t matter how or when we die, it matters the state of our soul in the present, so when the unpredictable and inevitable time of our death comes, we are fully prepared to enter into the joy of Heaven. Memento mori, to escape all vain illusions.
St. Alphonsus Liguori quoting many Church fathers. It’s based on the axiom that God numbers all things. It makes sense… God wants to save us desperately, look at the Cross. When he sees we simply will not accept it, according to our free will, no matter what… What choice is left?
“FAITH, ACT OF. The assent of the mind to what God has revealed. An act of supernatural faith requires divine grace, either actual or sanctifying or both. It is performed under the influence of the will, which requires its own assistance of grace to render a person ready to believe. And if the act of faith is made in the state of grace, it is meritorious before God. Explicit acts of faith are necessary, notably when the virtue of faith is being tested by temptation or one’s faith is challenged, or one’s belief would be weakened unless strengthened by acts of faith. A simple and widely used act of faith says: “My God, I believe in you and all that your Church teaches, because you have said it, and your word is true. Amen.”
Okay, but who are you to take issue with the truth given by the Holy Ghost, the author of life, recorded here in the dictionary? And if you do take issue with it, what is the substance of your contention?
How could your theological perspective, which is what you compare to his to find it wanting, be any loftier than revealed truth?
There were real problems in Catholicism that needed addressing in the 20th Century. Among them were the seeming eclipse of love by fear in the common spiritual life of many, something completely unbiblical and unacceptable. That had to change. But love doesn’t seem to motivate like fear, you know that and have pointed that out in your fundraising efforts. Collective fear seems to build strong if dysfunctional communities. Dysfunctional because that fear is generally leveraged for control.
The thing that disappoints me the most about trad life at this moment is watching people try to resurrect all of the worst aspects of life in the 1950s, while ignoring the legitimate progress and contributions of the second half of the 20th Century. There is stuff that should have died with the “greatest generation”, and basically did (effective authoritarian caprice of clergy, dystopian mind-numbing un-think by laity, the view that women are inherently inferior to men in most ways, etc.). But now you have people trying to bring those things back, at least in practice. I really cannot stand it.
I have horrible memories of growing up in a TLM community and I refuse to bring my kids into that. We have a wonderful parish we love. How do you teach holiness when the community and the priests make you feel as though you’re the most horrible sinner of all. It was all fear based and I fell away for a very long time. I’m having to relearn how to accept love and love God not out of fear only but to truly know Him . Fulton Sheen said how can we love Christ without knowing him? The comments the rad trad men have online about women and this virginity obsession and condemnation if you had ever sinned in this aspect was heart wrenching. Not even God would look at me in my worst sins as they do. And many wonder why they can’t find wives. The things said to me by a TLM priest about my toenail color and the condemnation made me have hatred towards my religious upbringing . The comments about women with tattoos made me never want to step into a TLM parish again. The comments from men were that only “easy” women get tattoos. What is this culture? Or the obsession about a wife’s obedience to the point it sounds like a slave master scenereo. I came from a domestic violence marriage as a teen and have had to relearn even basic trust. I have even seen if a husband abuses you, just tell your priest….. not call the police. I am thankful for Steve opening up a page for those who truly struggle to bring forth their struggles. I am a fragile human and I need to know others are fragile like myself and hurting.
This reminds me of chapters in Von Hildebrand’s Trojan Horse in the City of God, which you suggested to me. It isn’t an easy book to find but I “borrowed” a digital copy online and compiled screen shots into a PDF. It needs to be published again.
One of the first “trad” books I read when I started to get the sense that things were amiss. I am glad it was my introduction because it set the context of later things I read (like Iota Unum), which, though valuable, had I read them first, might have introduced a lot of problems in my thinking. Another good one, easier to find, is HJA Sire’s Phoenix from the Ashes. He takes the time to deal with what were the problems the Church faced in the early 20th Century and what reforms really should have happened and what a useful council might have looked like. He also spends a good amount of time detailing what went right with the council we did get. It is a long book but I recommend it, and you can actually buy it!
I’ll get a copy, I just picked up The Rhine Flows into the Tiber. We could discuss it elsewhere, but I’m really not sure I’m aware of cultural problems in the Church or society in the 1950s. I don’t have a source on the details but my impression is that it’s a time of stability, order and decency with a focus on family life. Priests were also, as I understand it, a real force in American society. It’s difficult to see how any aspect of life is improved now, when it seems it’s all a downward spiral into the abyss.
This post is very powerful - it will surprise you to know that while reading it I felt deep joy "for" you. I know all to well how painful this is to you. Over 20 years ago I watched my amazingly good and holy husband (and father of my our 2 children) suffer and die a painful death from cancer at the age of 46. I not only raged at our Lord for letting this happen but then struggled to accept that he didn't go straight to heaven but was in purgatory....fortunately I have a wonderful spiritual director who simply walked with me during that painful time. My rage and grief was intense and yet in time my choice became clear. Cling to the Lord, my faith and the Catholic church or despair and depression unto death (a spiritual death). Since that time I have seen others suffer greatly with their faith and the Church only to realize it was purifying grace. I have no wise advice to give you but only encouragement. If you didn't love God and his church so deeply you wouldn't be suffering this much. Again as I write these words I feel a deep joy for you similar to the joy I felt before I gave birth to my children. As my spiritual director said while I sat in a fog of pain and grief - God is so close to you - as close as your hand on your cheek - his love will break through and with that will come a deep lasting peace and "belonging". I truly struggle with this Pope, my McCarrick Bishop and the state of our church - but I know who I am and I know who I belong to and that brings such comfort and gives strength for these troubling times.. I hold you in prayer
I converted but was poorly catechized and so reverted at 18. A lot of things happened providentially that led me to a really good Catholic college and a good community within that college. I was blessed to be taught by serious Catholics who were trying to figure things out and weren't ideologues. They'd let you go left field for a bit and then gently instruct but they'd also hear you out. I got some resistance for straying off of more rigid paths by other students but while discouraging, they could safely be ignored after a while.
I was coming back to Catholicism because I knew Christ from a young age; I knew him as a person in my life; not because I was taught ( I wasn't, according to my parents) but because I experienced Him in a quiet, intimate way. I wonder if rigid, overly rule bound Catholicism stifles this experience either because it instills a kind of pride or more likely perhaps, because you are told to believe all sorts of mystical stories but told to doubt your own experiences because they weren't given an impramatur (SP?). I'm not attacking trads or conservative Catholics here, only that stripe of thinking that demands perfect safety in manualized faith.
Thinking of your hard truths, perfect obedience is not perfect belief in matters of faith because that's impossible; when we're baptized, we don't get Denzinger installed in our brains and hearts. Rather, we owe docility and trust to the truths of the Faith which also requires figuring out what those truths are. Imagine if leniency was never given to St Peter, there'd be no deposit of faith.
While you're stepping back from 1P5, explore the Faith mostly in the presence of the eucharist and good teachers. Be like a good Jew; spend time in the synagogue and in the temple so to speak.
I didn't mean to sound preachy; I'm not coming from a place of great strength. Only, I've experienced Christ and I've been saddened by how few of my friends have had the same experiences because I want them to feel His presence and not just know it. Liberal Catholicism misses the mark but so does rigid Catholicism and it hurts to see people in either because the Faith isn't something dead and rule bound. I hope you find Christ in a different way, a closer way within the Church. When I converted, I accepted the pope and bishops but even then could see the rot, the lack of care for souls in many diocese and parishes. Being formed to the Church changed my life because I knew Christ more and was able to stop acting in many ways that hurt me and started to do more works out charity and I made solid friends in whom I knew Christ even more. You don't have to have it perfect, heck Augustine had to correct his works and it turns out Origen was dead wrong about some things. Seek Christ. Seeing your journey from afar, it looks like Christ is scraping off the barnacles; that happens because you get so mucked up that you can't see or move well; it comes with being a spirit and a body - we require experience to change and to learn. I'm praying for you Steve; please say a prayer for me because life has been beating me up.
"I'm not attacking trads or conservative Catholics here, only that stripe of thinking that demands perfect safety in manualized faith. Thinking of your hard truths, perfect obedience is not perfect belief in matters of faith because that's impossible; when we're baptized, we don't get Denzinger installed in our brains and hearts."
This is good stuff.
I don't know if God is listening, but FWIW, I'll ask him to help you out.
Once again, Steve, you have given form to a lot of my thoughts. If I were younger I would feel a need to find answers to these questions, to find a spiritual home for my family, but they are adults and I’m getting too old for grand gestures. 27 years ago, with four children 10 and under we found that we couldn’t deal with the reality that Mass at most parishes was lisped by a priest who was either incompetent or heretical. The fact that in an emergency we would definitely prefer to leave our children with a complete stranger than a Catholic priest was stultifying. As pioneer homeschoolers we were exposed to the publications of Rod and Staff, the conservative Mennonite Church. Our parish priest actually advised us to leave and join them, “they certainly live what they believe” was his comment, “don’t let the door hit you in the *** “ was his meaning.
We stuck it out for six years. Black stockings, long sleeves, head coverings, black cars, canning, gardening, baking, sewing quilting, competing to prove we could “make it” as converts, something almost no one does. When I needed back surgery from the hard work, when my husband was removed from teaching Sunday school because he was too good at it, when I realized I couldn't sentence my 16 year old daughter to such a hard life, we left. We had prayed more devoutly than at any time since about what to do, both when we joined and when we left, and both decisions seemed like God’s will. We always knew if it failed we would just return to the Church. We knew too many families who went through a dozen or more anabaptist fellowships in search of the perfect church, which we knew didn’t exist.
Our problem was never with Catholic theology, it was with trying to find an atmosphere of holiness for our children. The ways in which you have to cripple them to stay in a plain church proved unacceptable, particularly the tenth grade education. But it was profitable for us. We would never look for perfection in anything run by human beings again. And we all learned a great deal about the Bible, which was priceless.
I thought that I was pretty toughened up to not expecting much from the Church hierarchy. We ended up at the TLM 20 years ago just looking for a decent Mass which wouldn’t turn into a near occasion of sin, with my husband rolling his eyes and making faces at the priest. Ours was a weird one of a kind thing that dated back to the 70’s, ostensibly to promote Latin, originally with a Latin Novus Ordo alternating with the Tridentine Mass each week. With the lifting of restrictions by Benedict it changed to the TLM each week. We were the youngest people there and one of only two families with children. Now most of the founders have passed on and the church is full of young families, filling pews as we used to do. Over the years we have been blessed with amazing priests.
The latest action of Pope Francis, effectively banning the Latin Mass, has deeply unsettled me. I do not think I can continue to consider myself even a tangential and insignificant part of an organization that acts as the Catholic Church has. My son lived in China for years and married a Chinese woman. He considers what Francis has done in his deals with China to have created thousands of martyrs. He took money, which the Vatican seemingly always needs to fund abhorrent hedonistic activities, in exchange for the names of committed Christians, who had already given up a lot in order to be Catholic. Now not only their prospects but their lives and those of their relatives are in the hands of an evil government. This is not acceptable. I choke over the words “holy Catholic and apostolic church” in the creed. I don’t know what that makes me, where that leaves me. I have a “good” Mass to go to but it is clear this is fragile and temporary in a way that true religion can’t really be. Our Pope has denounced us as bad Christians, while defending the indefensible.
We have always been very open and honest with our children, about our doubts, our spiritual homelessness. We have never pretended to a strength of faith we do not possess. They all consider themselves Catholics but only our eldest and youngest attend regularly. Whether this is because of our ambivalence, the interlude of actually leaving the church for six formative years of their lives, or the negative experiences they each have had with the church, and there are many, I do not know. I’m sure it’s a combination. They all get along and hold similar views on morality, which is a blessing. I hope that each of us find a way to eternal salvation but I don’t have any real conviction as to what that entails. I think we all, especially traditionalists, need to practice humility on this one. Fear for our children’s temporal and eternal welfare is a powerful motivator of bad decisions. In joining a “plain” community we went farther than most to try and secure this and learned it is an ephemeral target and one not entirely given into our control.
I wish I could still make myself believe in something but I can’t anymore. I really do appreciate your writing on this, it needs to be said. A lot of people are not honest with themselves or they would acknowledge the truth of the things you are saying.
I'm cradle Episcopalean, so take this with a grain of salt as you will.
I grew up with a "high church" liturgical tradition (common in many Episcopal churches in the diocese of Chicago). That is, we often used incense and would ring the Sanctus bells at various points before and during the consecreation of the elements. This has sometimes been referred to as "smells and bells". I remember feeling a real and tangible sense of the sacred during that service, especially the first that when I was old enough to move from 2nd acolyte to 1st acolyte (who helped the prist with the lavabo bowl, and who was reponsible for ringing the bell), and the first time I was allowed to serve as the thurifer.
I also remember our priest doing a special series where we celebrated the service as it would have been held during the early church (before Emperor Constantine), during the Medieval periods, etc. So we got to see the reason behind the Sanctus bell --- when many of the attendees didn't speak latin, and couldn't see the priest because the entire altar was hidden behind a veil, the sound of the bells was the only way attendees could understand where they were in the service.
It also impressed upon me why it was so important to undertand the underlying symbolism behind various liturgical actions --- if one doesn't understand why the priest, deacon, and subdeacon change where they stand during the Gloria, it could easily seem like football players shifting formations before the snap. It's not the motion, but what it helps to inspire in the participants of the service. I don't believe the use of incense, sanctus bells, etc., is pleasing to God except insofar that it helps to evoke a sense of the sacred for the participants. The liturgy was made for man, not man for the liturgy.
I've also seen and participated in eucharists where the music was provided by a guitar, and the altar was a conference room table. It had a different sense of the sacred, but insofar as it was (for example) during Diocesan Council retreat, where we had a large number of lay and clergy people who were working towards strengthening our particular corner of God's Kingdom, I also felt very close to God in that moment. We didn't need an organ, or incense, or sanctus bells, or elaborately clothed deacons and subdeacons.
At least for me, the liturgy is a tool, but it is not itself "religion" ---- just as in the Eastern Church, icons are viewed as windows to the sacred, but the icon is not worthy of worship of itself. As such, a particular liturgical setting is not necessary "true", and just as theater critics can argue whether a modern revival of a golden age musical is "more powerful" or "better" than other versions of that musical --- there is a large part which is ultimately going to come down to personal taste, and the important question is whether a particular theatrical production moves you and helps you to get a glimpse of the Truth. (And having worked with my priest in a church on how to stage the lighting of the Easter Fire for an Eastern Even service for maximum impact, I strongly believe that there is an element of the theatric which is an important part of the work of the liturgy committee --- all for the Glory of God. The trick is not setting off the fire alarms or burning down the sanctuary while you are at it. :-)
In my religious tradition, we don't have a Pope who can dictate a single liturgical form. Perhaps because we have a lot more freedom in that regard, we also tend not to fetishize a particular liturgical form to have more importance than it seems some traditional catholics would seem to attach to it. I appreciate a good liturgy, but it's unlikely that a priest's liturgical choices would in and of it self cause me to change churches or cause me to travel hours to attend a particular church. Things like the priest's sermons, the priests pastoral skills, and the quality of the community of the congregation would be far more important to me personally.
I think we just romanticize history too much. I think that the cultural and societal aspects of religion are much more fluid than we imagine they are. I am not a historian, except by hobby, but my readings of church history tell me that people in different times and places expressed their Catholicism both privately and publicly very differently. All you have to do is pick something like “fasting” and ask, what is the “traditional” practice? Once you go to do the research you quickly realize there is no such thing as a “traditional” fast. Basically every diocese had its own practice that changed over time. Did it matter to any of those people? It did not. I don't mean to sound glib, but I think perspective matters. As you said in your essay, it matters what questions you’re asking, it also matters what things you are concerned over.
Right, but it’s a matter of penance. We have to fast in some effective way as a penance. Maybe without a good, strong Catholic environment we are left to our own devices and getting legalistic. This is why I just live according to 1962 era norms. Catholicism, before the modernist takeover.
Yes. I understand why we fast, and I am not advocating against it (though I confess I don't really like fasting!). The point I was trying to make was that the instability of religious practice both, approved and otherwise, isn’t something shocking and shouldn’t speak against the veracity of a religion. I know a lot less about other religions, but I would be willing to bet that the situation is exactly the same everywhere else. The uniformity and standardization of stuff is all late modernity (last two centuries) because it was only then that such uniformity was even remotely possible. We shouldn’t project our circumstances on other eras, I guess, and then be worried the past doesn’t look like the present.
I see, but the unfortunate times we find ourselves in are not Catholic with its horizontally different ways of practice, by locality and time. Instead it’s vertical and we’re lower than the correct standards of Catholic practice. Perhaps I miss the point of what you’re saying.
I agree that, relatively speaking, we fast much less than most Christians of the past. And I am not saying that we don’t need to look to the past as a form of inspiration for renewal.
The point I was trying to make here is that when you actually sit down to do your homework and look at the past to be inspired as to what you might do now, you quickly find out that the past is messy and diverse. For example, the “traditional” Lenten fast in some parts of Switzerland involves eating donuts on Fridays. A practice which to reformist trads sounds like decadence. Or, the “traditional” Lenten fast in Quebec involves eating beaver meat on Fridays because beavers “live in the water” like fish and so the local bishops approved it as an acceptable protein source. So when you look to the past and see things like that and then think to yourself, “well none of this fasting business is possibly true because it was practiced so differently and incompatibly in different times and places”, you are thinking about the question in the wrong way. The Lord asked you to fast, so fast. But don’t get too caught up in comparisons.
The longer I avoid reading Church news, the more at peace I become with the Church. We're in the middle of a hypocrisy crisis from the top all the way down. I don't need to reiterate all the ways the hierarchy is failing to anybody here.
Your old girlfriend/babysitter's family is everything I try to avoid being with my kids. I refuse to demand more of them than the Church does. We have some absolute expectations: Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, confession at least every month, and learning about the faith. The last includes daily readings and prayer in the morning.
Everything else they do has been their choice. I didn't make my oldest daughter veil. I veil at our Novus Ordo parish. She asked if she had to and I told her it was not required. She asked why I did it and I told her. A year or so later, she asked me to buy her a veil. Same with the scapular. They knew I wear one. Two of the older kids asked about it. I explained it. Years later, they asked to get them.
A lot of our discussions about the faith concern how difficult it is to be Catholic. I don't try to dress it up. We talk a lot about the bad times in Church history, about the corruption and scandal. I feel like it's better for them to see it, warts and all. No surprises down the road, right? And we completely avoid private revelations that frankly don't make any sense. Such as Three Days of Darkness. That whole thing seems contra to Revelation.
I hope and pray that all my children remain faithful. I hope and pray that I remain faithful. I do feel like I've turned a corner in the past couple of months. My Imitate Medieval Peasantry strategy seems to work. The less chatter I hear concerning Church politics, the more I'm able to focus on God.
"The longer I avoid reading Church news, the more at peace I become with the Church."
I can't overstate how much this notion bothers me. If the Church really is the Mystical Body/Bride of Christ, the more I know about her, the more I should love her. But I've found that the reality is quite the contrary.
I've gotten advice both in and out of the confessional that if knowing what's going on is a challenge to my faith, I should ignore it. But that sounds like denial to me. Knowing what's going on should be able to be addressed and sorted in a way that makes sense, even if it's depressing. I'm not interested in a religion that asks me not to look to closely at how it works lest I become convinced it's something other than what it claims to be.
As for the rest, I agree wholeheartedly with your approach with your children. It's the healthiest way.
Oh, but I don't avoid reading about the faith. I avoid the news! It's the constant squabbling and bickering and questioning and futile debate that has affected me the most. The more I stick to just reading old books and the Bible, the better I feel.
If the enemy attacks the kingdom, don’t fight the kingdom fight the enemy! Of course they’re wearing the clerical collars and bishop miters, and inside they’re ravening wolves and fruitcakes. It’s a case of confusion, to see the villains and the cowards occupying the priesthood as truly being priests. They’re a disappointment one and all.
If the body is invaded by a virus, don’t attack the body but attack the virus, correct?
Yes, let’s engage the problem and sort it out. It’s the manful way to conduct ourselves.
“I'm not interested in a religion that asks me not to look to closely at how it works lest I become convinced it's something other than what it claims to be.” Could I ask you to clarify?
I don't know what there is to clarify. It's like the Wizard of Oz. If paying attention to the man behind the curtain causes the illusion to break, then all it ever was was an illusion.
Either the Church can bear the deepest scrutiny and come out with the appearance of truth, or it can't.
Sol, please don’t denigrate priests in the confessional. Tradition-minded priests are highly competent doctors of souls. They’ve saved my life more than once.
Nate, do you have any other brush in your toolbox than a broad one?
I've had very negative experiences with traditional priests in the confessional, and also very positive. But Sol is absolutely correct about the tendency towards legalism and clericalist, "I may be a lot younger than you, but I'm the doctor of your soul so you'd best listen, son" type attitudes. (This last is especially amusing when priests in their mid-30s get upset when informed by long-married men that their counsel on marital issues is woefully naïve.)
I don’t know a lot about FSSP priests, you could be right.
Forget broad brushes, this came off of a paint roller, <far worse a theology which contains within it the self-destruction of the institutional church itself.> Sol is talking about his white whale, the concept of original sin.
My general impression of the SSPX priests who I know and their colleagues is dedication and competency. I’ve been given two pieces of advice in the confessional for my marriage: very simple but complete. “Don’t have bad thoughts about her” (resentment due to conflict—this from a NO priest), “Don't speak to her with impatience.” Our marriage wasn’t all roses, it was a lot of fighting. The priests put the ball in my court, and maybe I would have liked to put more responsibility on her but I was required to take the initiative. Just my own experience.
Speaking of… my wife hates the time I spent on Twitter and also here the last couple days. She sees it as a time drain when I should be involved in family things. I can’t say I blame her.
Anyway, it might be good for us married men to have a way to talk about it. There’s a scarcity of guidance and advice on marriage and family, at a time when the devil is attacking marriage and the family as his front line.
I don’t have a reason to consider my priests incompetent on leading me to a peaceful marriage.
Would you happen to have advice for priests, from your experiences as a married man.
It occurs to me if you had a medical doctor in his 30s, they often act the same way.
"Sol is talking about his white whale, the concept of original sin."
He isn't wrong to bring it up. It fundamentally violates our innate concept of justice. Which is why any 7 year old boy learning his catechism will mad dog you and say, "How is that fair?!"
You just have to accept on faith that it's true, and then try to swallow the bitter pill when people tell you, "and God is perfectly just."
I guess there must be some concept of justice that we can't understand, then. Which is pretty weird, because it's a pretty straightforward idea.
(Oddly, most people who believe in original sin also think it's unjust when the descendants of former slaves start talking about reparations, but it's the exact same concept.)
"It occurs to me if you had a medical doctor in his 30s, they often act the same way."
Ah yes, but they don't get to claim "grace of state" and "God-given authority" and they can't withhold something from you that you've been taught your whole life is the only means of attaining salvation.
Wow, Steve, I was where you are now about three years ago. Letting go of my Catholic faith (I prefer that term to “losing my faith” ) was excruciating. But when I look back on the things I believed, and the way I ordered my life and that of my family, I almost can’t believe it. Those things are so strange to me now that my mind is free. I hope you will find that freedom.
I’ve been exploring Buddhist thought and it really resonates with me, and seems consistent with the things we are discovering in physics/science, as well as common sense, once you begin to understand them. As far as Christianity goes, the lectures of Bart Ehrman have been eye opening.
This is apostasy. Why would you want to leave the ship, when the world has ever been more evil or insane? If I could help resolve any doubts about Catholic teaching, please tell me.
Then you're going to have to actually evangelize and persuade, not merely admonish. Admonishments have never turned a man intellectually convinced that aspects of the faith were wrong into a true believer.
Nate, the ship is just as much a part of the evil and insanity. And, no, you can’t help resolve any doubts, as they are no longer doubts, they are certainties.
Thomas, may I ask what it was with Ehrman that was eye opening? He is extremely mainstream so his opinions really are the same as the standard view in the field.
Gosh, a lot was eye opening to me-things that I had never realized like, for example, how you can see the progressive deification of the person Jesus as time goes by in the New Testament writings and how OT prophecies later read as prophecies about Jesus by Christians really had nothing to do with him.
“The progressive deification of the person of Jesus as time goes by” is a myth. The earliest Christian witness has a fully deified Yeshua. This is explained well in the Case for Christ by Strobel.
“It stopped feeling like this larger-than-life divine institution ordained and led by God, and more like the sniping and sordid activity of men who wanted to be in control,”
This right here is the problem. Tell me how this doesn't compeltly describe Roman Catholicism today? They craft dogmas of Faith that you have to belief, and if you doubt any of them, then you go to hell. And if you dare to leave the club of Rome, you go to hell. And if you dare question any of them or their 'revealed dogma' then you are a heretic questioning the very will of God, the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church to keep her from error...... and you're going to hell.
You've hit the nail on the head. The ontological gun to your head that hell represents makes a mockery out of the legitimate exercise of free will.
I was reading an article about Religious Trauma Syndrome that I found very interesting:
"Within many dogmatic, self-contained religions, mental health problems such as depression or anxiety are considered sins. They are seen as evidence of not being right with God. A religious counselor or pastor advises more confession and greater obedience as the cure, and warns that secular help from a mental health professional would be dangerous.
God is called “The Great Physician” and a person should not need any help from anyone else. Doubt is considered wrong, not honest inquiry.
[...]
With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was understood. It is a huge shock to the system, and one that needs to be recognized as trauma."
The fear of hell is one of the big instigators here. It makes you feel completely trapped, even when you hit a wall where you can't honestly say you believe. And if you were to actually leave your religion, that would only intensify.
It seems wrong that coercion should be necessary with something beautiful and true. Just one of the things I'm trying to better understand.
This resonates deeply. PTSD is real and trauma without professional help and just relying on spiritual direction can be even more damaging. I try to heal from a lot of domestic violence and I keep telling myself if I would just pray more or try to be more holy then I won’t have panic or intrusive thoughts and heal myself. It’s very complex and the idea that you pray the trauma away is not ok. Trauma changes the brain and how we respond. It’s been the biggest internal struggle since coming back to the church.
Coercion isn’t necessary for the one who loves the beauty and truth of the Church. Salutary fear of hell is necessary when we start to turn to the vanities of the world.
“It stopped feeling like this larger-than-life divine institution ordained and led by God, and more like the sniping and sordid activity of men who wanted to be in control,” It describes the corrupt gay mafia to a t. That’s why we need them thrown off the bus.
Lastly no one has issues if you question the Catholic faith, even if you doubt points of it. It’s the open denial which will set one outside of it. If that’s the conscious choice one makes…
It's not just the gay mafia. The endless trad wars, the clericalism of the priest who refused to baptize my son in violation of his duty and canon law, etc. These are also manifestations. As is the totalitarianism of Traditionis Custodes. Clericalism is a cancer.
A young man belonging to a Catholic family in Holland, as a consequence of imprudent reading, had the misfortune to lose the treasure of faith and fall into a state of complete indifference. It was a subject of the bitterest grief for his parents, especially his pious mother. In vain did this other Monica give him the most solid lectures, in vain did she admonish him with tears to come back to God; her unhappy son was deaf and insensible. Yet, at last, to satisfy his mother, he was pleased to consent to spend a few days in a religious house, there to follow the exercises of a retreat, or rather, as he put it, to ret a few days and smoke tobacco, and enjoyment he loved. So, he listened with a distracted mind to the instructions given to those making the retreat, and speedily after began again to smoke without thinking further of what he had heard. The instruction on hell, to which he seemed to listen to like the rest, came on, but being back again in his little cell, while he was taking his smoke as usual, a reflection arose, in spite of him, in his mind. “If, however, it should be true,” he says to himself, “that there is a hell! If there be one, clearly it shall be for me! And in reality, do I know, myself, that there is not a hell? I am obliged to acknowledge that I have no certainty in this behalf; the whole ground of my ideas is only a perhaps. Now, to run the risk of burning for eternity on a perhaps, frankly speaking, as a matter of extravagance, would be to go beyond the bounds. If there are some who have such courage, I have not sufficiently lost my senses to imitate them.” Thereupon, he begins to pray, grace penetrates his soul, his doubts vanish, he rises up, converted.
Ah yes. Always the threat of hell to make sure we stay in line. Because I suppose the truths of the faith aren't compelling enough without the reminder of eternal torment if we don't see it.
Meanwhile, what of those of us who, fearing hell, "begin to pray" but grace does NOT penetrate the soul, our doubts do not vanish, and we do not rise up, converted?
I've been praying for years to overcome my own doubts, and to come to love God rather than simply fear he will damn me for being unable to do so. I wish it were really as easy as this little fairy tale vignette.
God will not damn you for your doubts. Could you please tell me, are you aware of anything beside doubts, in your life, that could be acting as an obstacle to grace?
I've been reliably informed otherwise. Here's an email I got a while back from a dogmatic theologian of some reputation:
"Maybe I'm misreading it, but over on Facebook you seem to be flirting with outright rejection of Vatican I's teaching on papal infallibility. Please tell me that's not true. Even to doubt a dogma of the faith obstinately is heresy, which is a damnable sin. I'd love to help clear up any questions if I can."
Except that he didn't even attempt to clear up the questions I sent him. Perhaps he couldn't. Just left me hanging. He apologized a year later for not doing so, so I asked again. And again, no reply.
Steve it just is not true that doubt is damnable! Where dies that leave apostle Thomas? Some of the greatest saints have wrestled lifelong with doubt and spiritual darkness. Jesus felt abandoned by God as he died on the Cross. Was it true? No. But He still felt it. He was fully human as well as fully divine.
Doubt IS NOT despair. Doubt seeks answers. Seeks truth.
Steve, your struggles ARE your faith, seeking to shake off the shackles of fear and see God as He really is in relation to us.
Your husbandly and fatherly heart, as well as your well honed logic, is crying out against the ghastly notion of a God who won't go all out to the last breath in our body to bring us home to Himself.
Some dreadful people might be lying in wait for you to fail their cruel judgey tests, but God isn't. He's always watching and waiting, yes - for the one moment of faith that He can grab us by and use to haul us to heaven.
He is inviting you deeper into his heart through your truth-seeking suffering.
You know what Jesus said about people who place unbearable burdens on poor mens backs and don't raise a finger to lift them. Matt 23:4
Hold on. You’re using this as a rationalization, or are you. I won’t tell you doubt is going to damn you, because God is merciful and won’t punish us for a crisis if we’re of good will. Could you get the question to me please… I will do my best to research it and come up with an answer.
Steve, you articulate the same cri de coeur as countless others of us out here. My tentative advice is to not throw out the baby with the bathwater and leave the Church too quickly. Instead of citing docs from the middle ages as you do in your piece, start a mature study of the documents of Vatican 2. Also read Benedict XVI's "Introduction to Christianity". Saved my bacon. The Irish Church that colonised the US and my home Australia had a strong streak of Jansenism that had to go. Take a breather, relax with your family, eat, drink, have fun together. See how your younger children love, and open your heart to learn that way of loving. Focus on love and on the Person of Jesus. Delve into the Gospels imaginatively to see how he acted, what he said(and didn't say), who he chose to hang out with, why he came as a man and not a woman, why he chose a celibate wandering life. So much to ponder. Dont be in a hurry to make a decision. He'll wait for you, he knows everything about being a man. God bless you and yours.
"Instead of citing docs from the middle ages as you do in your piece, start a mature study of the documents of Vatican 2."
The problem is the lack of consistency. If the Church can teach something infallibly in the 16th century and then go and essentially reverse it 400 years later, why should we listen to either thing?
As for the rest, I agree that there's a lot to be gained from just living, and learning from children how to laugh and play and love.
Steve its a common misconception that V2 changed doctrines of salvation. It didnt. It restated them with a move away from a rigidified Scholasticism that had dominated since Trent. Lumen Gentium - and the Catechism - still state that outside the Church is no salvation. But they give a much more rational, more charitable , less fearful and more hopeful, and far less narrow interpretation of what that actually means. I strongly recommend thoughtful reading of Lumen Gentium at least, and some investigation of ressourcement thinkers especially Joseph Ratzinger. The Church is ever ancient, ever new. Don't ditch it until you REALLY know what you are ditching. So much more beautiful and rich but you have to dig a bit.
It might be instructive to back away from the Church, any church, for a while. After all, our faith is in Jesus, not primarily in the Church. (Good thing too, given how churchmen usually behave.) I've been a Catholic for all of my long life, and sometimes I've tried very hard to keep all those rules, but when I realized that most of the people who run the institution are not even TRYING, I sought to learn to focus my attention on the Trinity, not on any churchy thing.
It can be done, though it seems difficult at first. It's so easy that it's hard. Really all it involves is listening, really listening, with the ears of the heart, as St. Benedict puts it. To listen one must first, stop talking (!), and then silence all the other voices, many of them churchy voices, demanding that one think or do or not do something or other about all this. Just sit there and wait.
What is important is what God says. He has quite a bit to say, but He won't shout down the mob. His language is all about love, and like a human lover, if you refuse to drag your attention away from the phone, from the computer, from the "world," He's not going to grab you by the throat and force you to listen.
What our children do with all this is beyond our control. Of my 4, all long grown, I have an autistic techno-genius, a crazy man (literally) and a gifted lawyer lighting DC on fire....and a mystic. This last one has found her way, and I struggle to follow. And she's a Catholic, not because of us, but because of her own discovery. God loves all of them, and me, and you too Steve.
I don’t mean to be offensive and won’t argue on this forum, but I’m responding to the idea I saw, which is that faith in Jesus Christ alone is able to save. Isn’t this the basic error of Protestantism? Jesus Christ is embodied in His Church. He’s present in the Sacraments.
Yes, I’m not sure where we disagree. The Eucharist is consecrated by priests in Holy Orders, both are Sacraments given by Jesus animating the ecclesial body of the Church.
"It’s an excruciating dilemma when something you’re obligated to believe just doesn’t make sense, but faith demands your assent…or else.
...
What do you do when you ask God over and over to help you to see clearly, to help you to believe, to help you to love Him despite his seemingly unfathomable aloofness, but no perceptible aid arrives? How do you convince yourself that you’re not just talking to…yourself?"
As Catholics, we do not subscribe to a system of dogmas. We begin with a Person, the Person of our Lord continued in his mystical body the Church. What is faith? Faith is the meeting of two personalities. You and the Lord. There is no adhesion to an abstract dogma, but rather a communion with a Person who can neither deceive nor be deceived. The authoritarians start with a party line. We start with our Lord, the Son of the living God, who said, “I am the truth.” In other words, truth was identified with his personality. Remember when you were a child. What did you consider your home? Just a sum of commands given by either your mother or your father? It was more than that, was it not? It was the love of their personalities. Our faith, then, is first and foremost in Christ, who lives in his mystical body the Church. It is only secondarily in the explicit beliefs. If our Lord did not reveal them, we would not believe them. If we lost him, we would lose our beliefs. He comes first.
Is your philosophy set up only as opposition to St Augustine?
You have rash assumptions. Bp. Sheen DOES NOT contradict the classical definition of the theological virtue of Faith. He is only framing it in personal terms.
I think your theology is, like all heresies, a distorted and incomplete version of Catholic doctrine. Could I ask if it’s a personal objection you have to the Catholic idea of sin?
You’ve touched on epistemic humility in the past, and I think it’s a big piece of the puzzle you’re working on right now. Without it, we paint ourselves into corners where our reason and basic humanity are pitted against each other. I think this is why many “devout” religious people are so weird: they have suppressed their reason and/or their basic humanity to salvage their ideology, when they should have suppressed (or rethought) their ideology to salvage their reason and basic humanity.
The biggest area I see Christians painting themselves into corners in this way is the “will many be saved?” debate. I think the nastiness and misanthropic behavior the Phelps-Ropers of the world exhibit is a defense mechanism: if you are convinced that pretty much everyone is destined to end up in hell, then the only way to not go insane with grief and despair is to assume that pretty much everyone has it coming. Have fun trying to hold that belief without it negatively impacting the way you treat other people.
Does this mean we are forced to choose between becoming universalists, or becoming pricks? This is the origin story of many a universalist. While I can sympathize with their plight, they too have paid a price too high. Whereas the Phelps-Ropers of the world have sacrificed their basic humanity to maintain their intellectual consistency, the Rob Bells of the world have sacrificed their intellectual consistency to maintain their basic humanity. Anyone familiar with the gospels knows that it’s better to err on the side of being a Rob Bell, but it would be better still to not to err at all.
I think the saints (even ones who were more pessimistic in their views on the number of the saved) are the ones who succeeded in walking this tightrope. They had healthy spiritual and intellectual boundaries: rigid enough to not succumb to the intellectual gymnastics necessary to believe that all are saved, but flexible enough admit that we aren’t in a good epistemic position to know the state of any particular person’s soul, or their culpability for not meeting the ideal standards of Christian behavior, or the extent of God's intervention in their life. This epistemic humility afforded them the crucial flexibility to live and thrive in the tension of this paradox: not falling into life negating pessimism, and not settling for empty optimism. The result was genuine supernatural hope, hope which flowered into a joy and serenity that irresistibly rang true.
The questions about how to raise your children in the faith do largely, in my experience, come down to what kinds of people you wish them to become. If you try to raise them to never question anything, they might just become that, but so inflexible as to also be brittle and unable to relate meaningfully to those who don't share their beliefs, which sort of obviates our call to be salt and light. The other response is often, as Steve says, they will run so hard in the other direction once they have a chance that they don't give a fair hearing to the truth of what they were raised in, thus throwing out the baby with the bath water. I saw both in spades while attending what is often called the Christian Harvard.
A different option, which my own parents seem to have taken, was to live out their faith without much fanfare but making it clear to us kids that's what it was, inculcate in us the core, key, beliefs of Christianity while holding the rest loosely -- "don't major in the minors" as my dad used to say -- and provide us with both the tools and resources, and a safe environment, within which to explore Christianity -- and everything else -- to our hearts' content. I should also say that we were given the advantage of meeting genuine saints, inside and outside our family, and shown how to actually get to know Jesus as a living person. That we were even allowed, and encouraged, to do the latter I now find to be a minor miracle in and of itself.
In the end I've worked to do the same with my own children, and to raise genuinely good adults who work to make the world a better place. They have very serious issues with the Church, as they experienced it growing up, and particularly now, but have not in general terms left their faith or a strong sense that God exists. They just struggle to know how to let Him be real in their lives, absent a church community that also does that. But I always knew that if they could not find their own faith and make it their own, there was also no hope at all that I could make it happen for them. It had to be theirs.
Final thought: at one point I had some teenage kids of friends, who had grown up Evangelical, then moved into the Anglican/Episcopal/Catholic world, say that how they remained believers was due to the fact of their first being formally trained in the faith, THEN moving into a part of Christendom which allowed it to essentially blossom more fully and round itself out -- but where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual. They said that without that, they would have left the Church long before. That path happens also to have been my own.
"say that how they remained believers was due to the fact of their first being formally trained in the faith, THEN moving into a part of Christendom which allowed it to essentially blossom more fully and round itself out-- but where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual "
This statement is pretty curious to me, it's hard for me to draw a connection between being formally trained and "moving into a part of Christendom...... where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual"
How did they grow in their faith through those communities? Was it solely under their own efforts at seeking holiness?
I'm not being critical, just asking. I followed much the same path, but I would say my faith has grown in the Catholic Church in spite of the Church and not because of the Church. My experience as a Catholic has been that almost everything is setup against being holy, from the theology (with the emphasis on the judgemental nature of God), to the liturgy (mostly the new, but even the old in the sense that I don't speak fluent ecclesiastical Latin) and most especially in the life of the Church since your average catholic now a days doesn't even both trying to live basic Christian principles, much less seek after holiness.
Eric, you've actually nailed it. You DO understand. What I didn't say was these are children of artistic parents, who also approach the world and their faith through a more creative, i.e. incarnational understanding of life. This is not to be found in the Evangelical world, where such things are actively minimized or denigrated, unless of course the "arts" can be ""useful" in some way. Yes, their solid catechetical upbringing enabled them to move into a spiritual space where they could actively and freely embrace their sacramental and incarnational understanding of the Faith, and grow. Even though what else you say is quite true. That has all been --and is -- my struggle, as well, but it was important to at least be in a place where I'm not continually having to justify my existence, and there is more of a common understanding of Christianity "in the round". That said, one of my greatest and best spiritual life experiences was spending a brief time around charismatic Catholics in 1979 in Ann Arbor. They knew unapologetically who they were historically, how their faith relates to the world practically and theologically, that God is alive and active, and who they are as God's children.
I saw a priest lately who said we want our children to be saints, which means “to think, speak and act according to right reason and the supernatural teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Absolutely! Most of us find it difficult to both believe something is possible and know how to achieve it if we don't see it. Teaching isn't just passing on head knowledge.
Fr Hilderbrand is making a fair point in a deliberately obtuse way. I know no family - and I really do mean that - for whom lapsation isn’t a constant concern and even threat. The claim that “TLM devotees” might somehow be shocked by that is just stupid.
As for Br Martin: just obtuse too. Of course TLM-going Catholics lapse. I personally know a good number.
But then that’s Catholic Twitter for ya. It’s dumb, it’s instant and it’s all got to be contained in 140 characters or you will lose your opportunity to gain tradlarp points.
For the rest of this post: I think you’re absolutely on the money. The best odds of success lie in the middle way. There are so many ways of doing this that I don’t think there’s any way to cover them here but if I had to pick one thing from my own experience (and my parents have 5 adult children who are all still very actively practicing, so they must have done something right):
Be open to discussions about the faith - and the state of the Church. As we grew up, dad openly discussed his qualms about the contents of the sermons and readings, about politics, the news, the state of the Church. We were encouraged to have an opinion - a judgement - on what we had heard and our understanding of it. When I first met my father in law, I proudly told him that my dad had taught us to “question everything” when he asked me about various topics where I had unorthodox opinions. “Rubbish, you’re a Catholic,” he snorted in derision. He was a lapsed Catholic at the time. He’s now back in the Church.
The idea that if I just believed harder, if my faith was just stronger, the clouds of doubt would clear and everything would come together and would make sense is one that’s been haunting me for months. And of course it’s accompanied by all the guilt of feeling I’m responsible for my lack of faith and my refusal to see “what’s really going on.” And the more insistent those around me become that I’m missing some huge piece of my life, my faith, my relationship with God, the less sure I feel about everything. Everything sucks right now, that’s all I can say. But please keep writing because it’s resonating on so many levels.
We're inundated with the idea that everything that's bad in our lives is because of us, and everything good is because of God. This can really break people down when faced with a situation they have no control over, like how much faith they have. When you ask for something like this, something you know God wants you to have, for YEARS, and you don't get it, it's hard not to wonder if he's even there at all. And if he is, it's almost worse, because why would he ignore your request -- not for riches or power -- but for faith?
I’ve noticed this too, and you see it in the news and social media on a daily basis- people thanking God or their guardian angel for saving them from some catastrophe, and everyone replying yes, God is so good. But what about all the others who suffered or died in that same catastrophe??
We're not supposed to think too much about these things.
Also on the death of infants you cite the Council of Florence. The Church commonly teaches a limbo for the babies, and is still debating the point up to Vatican 1 and beyond. Please be correct and thorough when making claims.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html
Limbo has never been official teaching. Ever. And as the document you link states, "The idea of Limbo, which the Church has used for many centuries to designate the destiny of infants who die without Baptism, has no clear foundation in revelation."
It is, instead, only "a possible theological opinion."
If you’re serious about this one topic, please look over the link. It is a very widely discussed topic in the history of the Church. While Baptism is necessary in the economy of salvation, we leave the fate of the unbaptized innocents to the mercy of God to a large degree. This is no opportunity to accuse the Church of cruelty or hypocrisy.
We all suffer and we all die. God times us out on his own choosing. People are given a set number of mortal sins, for example, and after we hit the allotted number we go straight to hell. But before this we are given every grace and opportunity to turn the other way, and to receive our birthright as adopted children of God, eternity in Heaven. It doesn’t matter how or when we die, it matters the state of our soul in the present, so when the unpredictable and inevitable time of our death comes, we are fully prepared to enter into the joy of Heaven. Memento mori, to escape all vain illusions.
"People are given a set number of mortal sins, for example, and after we hit the allotted number we go straight to hell."
According to whom?
St. Alphonsus Liguori quoting many Church fathers. It’s based on the axiom that God numbers all things. It makes sense… God wants to save us desperately, look at the Cross. When he sees we simply will not accept it, according to our free will, no matter what… What choice is left?
What's juvenile about wanting a father to act like one?
“FAITH, ACT OF. The assent of the mind to what God has revealed. An act of supernatural faith requires divine grace, either actual or sanctifying or both. It is performed under the influence of the will, which requires its own assistance of grace to render a person ready to believe. And if the act of faith is made in the state of grace, it is meritorious before God. Explicit acts of faith are necessary, notably when the virtue of faith is being tested by temptation or one’s faith is challenged, or one’s belief would be weakened unless strengthened by acts of faith. A simple and widely used act of faith says: “My God, I believe in you and all that your Church teaches, because you have said it, and your word is true. Amen.”
Excerpt From
Catholic Dictionary
John Hardon
https://books.apple.com/us/book/catholic-dictionary/id590717769
Okay, but who are you to take issue with the truth given by the Holy Ghost, the author of life, recorded here in the dictionary? And if you do take issue with it, what is the substance of your contention?
How could your theological perspective, which is what you compare to his to find it wanting, be any loftier than revealed truth?
There were real problems in Catholicism that needed addressing in the 20th Century. Among them were the seeming eclipse of love by fear in the common spiritual life of many, something completely unbiblical and unacceptable. That had to change. But love doesn’t seem to motivate like fear, you know that and have pointed that out in your fundraising efforts. Collective fear seems to build strong if dysfunctional communities. Dysfunctional because that fear is generally leveraged for control.
The thing that disappoints me the most about trad life at this moment is watching people try to resurrect all of the worst aspects of life in the 1950s, while ignoring the legitimate progress and contributions of the second half of the 20th Century. There is stuff that should have died with the “greatest generation”, and basically did (effective authoritarian caprice of clergy, dystopian mind-numbing un-think by laity, the view that women are inherently inferior to men in most ways, etc.). But now you have people trying to bring those things back, at least in practice. I really cannot stand it.
Well said ☺
I have horrible memories of growing up in a TLM community and I refuse to bring my kids into that. We have a wonderful parish we love. How do you teach holiness when the community and the priests make you feel as though you’re the most horrible sinner of all. It was all fear based and I fell away for a very long time. I’m having to relearn how to accept love and love God not out of fear only but to truly know Him . Fulton Sheen said how can we love Christ without knowing him? The comments the rad trad men have online about women and this virginity obsession and condemnation if you had ever sinned in this aspect was heart wrenching. Not even God would look at me in my worst sins as they do. And many wonder why they can’t find wives. The things said to me by a TLM priest about my toenail color and the condemnation made me have hatred towards my religious upbringing . The comments about women with tattoos made me never want to step into a TLM parish again. The comments from men were that only “easy” women get tattoos. What is this culture? Or the obsession about a wife’s obedience to the point it sounds like a slave master scenereo. I came from a domestic violence marriage as a teen and have had to relearn even basic trust. I have even seen if a husband abuses you, just tell your priest….. not call the police. I am thankful for Steve opening up a page for those who truly struggle to bring forth their struggles. I am a fragile human and I need to know others are fragile like myself and hurting.
This reminds me of chapters in Von Hildebrand’s Trojan Horse in the City of God, which you suggested to me. It isn’t an easy book to find but I “borrowed” a digital copy online and compiled screen shots into a PDF. It needs to be published again.
One of the first “trad” books I read when I started to get the sense that things were amiss. I am glad it was my introduction because it set the context of later things I read (like Iota Unum), which, though valuable, had I read them first, might have introduced a lot of problems in my thinking. Another good one, easier to find, is HJA Sire’s Phoenix from the Ashes. He takes the time to deal with what were the problems the Church faced in the early 20th Century and what reforms really should have happened and what a useful council might have looked like. He also spends a good amount of time detailing what went right with the council we did get. It is a long book but I recommend it, and you can actually buy it!
I’ll get a copy, I just picked up The Rhine Flows into the Tiber. We could discuss it elsewhere, but I’m really not sure I’m aware of cultural problems in the Church or society in the 1950s. I don’t have a source on the details but my impression is that it’s a time of stability, order and decency with a focus on family life. Priests were also, as I understand it, a real force in American society. It’s difficult to see how any aspect of life is improved now, when it seems it’s all a downward spiral into the abyss.
Read Sire and you will see! It really is a valuable text.
Okay, just got a copy
This post is very powerful - it will surprise you to know that while reading it I felt deep joy "for" you. I know all to well how painful this is to you. Over 20 years ago I watched my amazingly good and holy husband (and father of my our 2 children) suffer and die a painful death from cancer at the age of 46. I not only raged at our Lord for letting this happen but then struggled to accept that he didn't go straight to heaven but was in purgatory....fortunately I have a wonderful spiritual director who simply walked with me during that painful time. My rage and grief was intense and yet in time my choice became clear. Cling to the Lord, my faith and the Catholic church or despair and depression unto death (a spiritual death). Since that time I have seen others suffer greatly with their faith and the Church only to realize it was purifying grace. I have no wise advice to give you but only encouragement. If you didn't love God and his church so deeply you wouldn't be suffering this much. Again as I write these words I feel a deep joy for you similar to the joy I felt before I gave birth to my children. As my spiritual director said while I sat in a fog of pain and grief - God is so close to you - as close as your hand on your cheek - his love will break through and with that will come a deep lasting peace and "belonging". I truly struggle with this Pope, my McCarrick Bishop and the state of our church - but I know who I am and I know who I belong to and that brings such comfort and gives strength for these troubling times.. I hold you in prayer
Thank you Ailene. I'm so sorry to hear of such a difficult loss.
I converted but was poorly catechized and so reverted at 18. A lot of things happened providentially that led me to a really good Catholic college and a good community within that college. I was blessed to be taught by serious Catholics who were trying to figure things out and weren't ideologues. They'd let you go left field for a bit and then gently instruct but they'd also hear you out. I got some resistance for straying off of more rigid paths by other students but while discouraging, they could safely be ignored after a while.
I was coming back to Catholicism because I knew Christ from a young age; I knew him as a person in my life; not because I was taught ( I wasn't, according to my parents) but because I experienced Him in a quiet, intimate way. I wonder if rigid, overly rule bound Catholicism stifles this experience either because it instills a kind of pride or more likely perhaps, because you are told to believe all sorts of mystical stories but told to doubt your own experiences because they weren't given an impramatur (SP?). I'm not attacking trads or conservative Catholics here, only that stripe of thinking that demands perfect safety in manualized faith.
Thinking of your hard truths, perfect obedience is not perfect belief in matters of faith because that's impossible; when we're baptized, we don't get Denzinger installed in our brains and hearts. Rather, we owe docility and trust to the truths of the Faith which also requires figuring out what those truths are. Imagine if leniency was never given to St Peter, there'd be no deposit of faith.
While you're stepping back from 1P5, explore the Faith mostly in the presence of the eucharist and good teachers. Be like a good Jew; spend time in the synagogue and in the temple so to speak.
I didn't mean to sound preachy; I'm not coming from a place of great strength. Only, I've experienced Christ and I've been saddened by how few of my friends have had the same experiences because I want them to feel His presence and not just know it. Liberal Catholicism misses the mark but so does rigid Catholicism and it hurts to see people in either because the Faith isn't something dead and rule bound. I hope you find Christ in a different way, a closer way within the Church. When I converted, I accepted the pope and bishops but even then could see the rot, the lack of care for souls in many diocese and parishes. Being formed to the Church changed my life because I knew Christ more and was able to stop acting in many ways that hurt me and started to do more works out charity and I made solid friends in whom I knew Christ even more. You don't have to have it perfect, heck Augustine had to correct his works and it turns out Origen was dead wrong about some things. Seek Christ. Seeing your journey from afar, it looks like Christ is scraping off the barnacles; that happens because you get so mucked up that you can't see or move well; it comes with being a spirit and a body - we require experience to change and to learn. I'm praying for you Steve; please say a prayer for me because life has been beating me up.
"I'm not attacking trads or conservative Catholics here, only that stripe of thinking that demands perfect safety in manualized faith. Thinking of your hard truths, perfect obedience is not perfect belief in matters of faith because that's impossible; when we're baptized, we don't get Denzinger installed in our brains and hearts."
This is good stuff.
I don't know if God is listening, but FWIW, I'll ask him to help you out.
Thanks!
Once again, Steve, you have given form to a lot of my thoughts. If I were younger I would feel a need to find answers to these questions, to find a spiritual home for my family, but they are adults and I’m getting too old for grand gestures. 27 years ago, with four children 10 and under we found that we couldn’t deal with the reality that Mass at most parishes was lisped by a priest who was either incompetent or heretical. The fact that in an emergency we would definitely prefer to leave our children with a complete stranger than a Catholic priest was stultifying. As pioneer homeschoolers we were exposed to the publications of Rod and Staff, the conservative Mennonite Church. Our parish priest actually advised us to leave and join them, “they certainly live what they believe” was his comment, “don’t let the door hit you in the *** “ was his meaning.
We stuck it out for six years. Black stockings, long sleeves, head coverings, black cars, canning, gardening, baking, sewing quilting, competing to prove we could “make it” as converts, something almost no one does. When I needed back surgery from the hard work, when my husband was removed from teaching Sunday school because he was too good at it, when I realized I couldn't sentence my 16 year old daughter to such a hard life, we left. We had prayed more devoutly than at any time since about what to do, both when we joined and when we left, and both decisions seemed like God’s will. We always knew if it failed we would just return to the Church. We knew too many families who went through a dozen or more anabaptist fellowships in search of the perfect church, which we knew didn’t exist.
Our problem was never with Catholic theology, it was with trying to find an atmosphere of holiness for our children. The ways in which you have to cripple them to stay in a plain church proved unacceptable, particularly the tenth grade education. But it was profitable for us. We would never look for perfection in anything run by human beings again. And we all learned a great deal about the Bible, which was priceless.
I thought that I was pretty toughened up to not expecting much from the Church hierarchy. We ended up at the TLM 20 years ago just looking for a decent Mass which wouldn’t turn into a near occasion of sin, with my husband rolling his eyes and making faces at the priest. Ours was a weird one of a kind thing that dated back to the 70’s, ostensibly to promote Latin, originally with a Latin Novus Ordo alternating with the Tridentine Mass each week. With the lifting of restrictions by Benedict it changed to the TLM each week. We were the youngest people there and one of only two families with children. Now most of the founders have passed on and the church is full of young families, filling pews as we used to do. Over the years we have been blessed with amazing priests.
The latest action of Pope Francis, effectively banning the Latin Mass, has deeply unsettled me. I do not think I can continue to consider myself even a tangential and insignificant part of an organization that acts as the Catholic Church has. My son lived in China for years and married a Chinese woman. He considers what Francis has done in his deals with China to have created thousands of martyrs. He took money, which the Vatican seemingly always needs to fund abhorrent hedonistic activities, in exchange for the names of committed Christians, who had already given up a lot in order to be Catholic. Now not only their prospects but their lives and those of their relatives are in the hands of an evil government. This is not acceptable. I choke over the words “holy Catholic and apostolic church” in the creed. I don’t know what that makes me, where that leaves me. I have a “good” Mass to go to but it is clear this is fragile and temporary in a way that true religion can’t really be. Our Pope has denounced us as bad Christians, while defending the indefensible.
We have always been very open and honest with our children, about our doubts, our spiritual homelessness. We have never pretended to a strength of faith we do not possess. They all consider themselves Catholics but only our eldest and youngest attend regularly. Whether this is because of our ambivalence, the interlude of actually leaving the church for six formative years of their lives, or the negative experiences they each have had with the church, and there are many, I do not know. I’m sure it’s a combination. They all get along and hold similar views on morality, which is a blessing. I hope that each of us find a way to eternal salvation but I don’t have any real conviction as to what that entails. I think we all, especially traditionalists, need to practice humility on this one. Fear for our children’s temporal and eternal welfare is a powerful motivator of bad decisions. In joining a “plain” community we went farther than most to try and secure this and learned it is an ephemeral target and one not entirely given into our control.
I wish I could still make myself believe in something but I can’t anymore. I really do appreciate your writing on this, it needs to be said. A lot of people are not honest with themselves or they would acknowledge the truth of the things you are saying.
You wrote a lot, but this stood out:
"I have a “good” Mass to go to but it is clear this is fragile and temporary in a way that true religion can’t really be."
I have had such similar thoughts so many times. It really seems to work against the idea of it being true.
I'm cradle Episcopalean, so take this with a grain of salt as you will.
I grew up with a "high church" liturgical tradition (common in many Episcopal churches in the diocese of Chicago). That is, we often used incense and would ring the Sanctus bells at various points before and during the consecreation of the elements. This has sometimes been referred to as "smells and bells". I remember feeling a real and tangible sense of the sacred during that service, especially the first that when I was old enough to move from 2nd acolyte to 1st acolyte (who helped the prist with the lavabo bowl, and who was reponsible for ringing the bell), and the first time I was allowed to serve as the thurifer.
I also remember our priest doing a special series where we celebrated the service as it would have been held during the early church (before Emperor Constantine), during the Medieval periods, etc. So we got to see the reason behind the Sanctus bell --- when many of the attendees didn't speak latin, and couldn't see the priest because the entire altar was hidden behind a veil, the sound of the bells was the only way attendees could understand where they were in the service.
It also impressed upon me why it was so important to undertand the underlying symbolism behind various liturgical actions --- if one doesn't understand why the priest, deacon, and subdeacon change where they stand during the Gloria, it could easily seem like football players shifting formations before the snap. It's not the motion, but what it helps to inspire in the participants of the service. I don't believe the use of incense, sanctus bells, etc., is pleasing to God except insofar that it helps to evoke a sense of the sacred for the participants. The liturgy was made for man, not man for the liturgy.
I've also seen and participated in eucharists where the music was provided by a guitar, and the altar was a conference room table. It had a different sense of the sacred, but insofar as it was (for example) during Diocesan Council retreat, where we had a large number of lay and clergy people who were working towards strengthening our particular corner of God's Kingdom, I also felt very close to God in that moment. We didn't need an organ, or incense, or sanctus bells, or elaborately clothed deacons and subdeacons.
At least for me, the liturgy is a tool, but it is not itself "religion" ---- just as in the Eastern Church, icons are viewed as windows to the sacred, but the icon is not worthy of worship of itself. As such, a particular liturgical setting is not necessary "true", and just as theater critics can argue whether a modern revival of a golden age musical is "more powerful" or "better" than other versions of that musical --- there is a large part which is ultimately going to come down to personal taste, and the important question is whether a particular theatrical production moves you and helps you to get a glimpse of the Truth. (And having worked with my priest in a church on how to stage the lighting of the Easter Fire for an Eastern Even service for maximum impact, I strongly believe that there is an element of the theatric which is an important part of the work of the liturgy committee --- all for the Glory of God. The trick is not setting off the fire alarms or burning down the sanctuary while you are at it. :-)
In my religious tradition, we don't have a Pope who can dictate a single liturgical form. Perhaps because we have a lot more freedom in that regard, we also tend not to fetishize a particular liturgical form to have more importance than it seems some traditional catholics would seem to attach to it. I appreciate a good liturgy, but it's unlikely that a priest's liturgical choices would in and of it self cause me to change churches or cause me to travel hours to attend a particular church. Things like the priest's sermons, the priests pastoral skills, and the quality of the community of the congregation would be far more important to me personally.
I think we just romanticize history too much. I think that the cultural and societal aspects of religion are much more fluid than we imagine they are. I am not a historian, except by hobby, but my readings of church history tell me that people in different times and places expressed their Catholicism both privately and publicly very differently. All you have to do is pick something like “fasting” and ask, what is the “traditional” practice? Once you go to do the research you quickly realize there is no such thing as a “traditional” fast. Basically every diocese had its own practice that changed over time. Did it matter to any of those people? It did not. I don't mean to sound glib, but I think perspective matters. As you said in your essay, it matters what questions you’re asking, it also matters what things you are concerned over.
Right, but it’s a matter of penance. We have to fast in some effective way as a penance. Maybe without a good, strong Catholic environment we are left to our own devices and getting legalistic. This is why I just live according to 1962 era norms. Catholicism, before the modernist takeover.
Yes. I understand why we fast, and I am not advocating against it (though I confess I don't really like fasting!). The point I was trying to make was that the instability of religious practice both, approved and otherwise, isn’t something shocking and shouldn’t speak against the veracity of a religion. I know a lot less about other religions, but I would be willing to bet that the situation is exactly the same everywhere else. The uniformity and standardization of stuff is all late modernity (last two centuries) because it was only then that such uniformity was even remotely possible. We shouldn’t project our circumstances on other eras, I guess, and then be worried the past doesn’t look like the present.
I see, but the unfortunate times we find ourselves in are not Catholic with its horizontally different ways of practice, by locality and time. Instead it’s vertical and we’re lower than the correct standards of Catholic practice. Perhaps I miss the point of what you’re saying.
I agree that, relatively speaking, we fast much less than most Christians of the past. And I am not saying that we don’t need to look to the past as a form of inspiration for renewal.
The point I was trying to make here is that when you actually sit down to do your homework and look at the past to be inspired as to what you might do now, you quickly find out that the past is messy and diverse. For example, the “traditional” Lenten fast in some parts of Switzerland involves eating donuts on Fridays. A practice which to reformist trads sounds like decadence. Or, the “traditional” Lenten fast in Quebec involves eating beaver meat on Fridays because beavers “live in the water” like fish and so the local bishops approved it as an acceptable protein source. So when you look to the past and see things like that and then think to yourself, “well none of this fasting business is possibly true because it was practiced so differently and incompatibly in different times and places”, you are thinking about the question in the wrong way. The Lord asked you to fast, so fast. But don’t get too caught up in comparisons.
The longer I avoid reading Church news, the more at peace I become with the Church. We're in the middle of a hypocrisy crisis from the top all the way down. I don't need to reiterate all the ways the hierarchy is failing to anybody here.
Your old girlfriend/babysitter's family is everything I try to avoid being with my kids. I refuse to demand more of them than the Church does. We have some absolute expectations: Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, confession at least every month, and learning about the faith. The last includes daily readings and prayer in the morning.
Everything else they do has been their choice. I didn't make my oldest daughter veil. I veil at our Novus Ordo parish. She asked if she had to and I told her it was not required. She asked why I did it and I told her. A year or so later, she asked me to buy her a veil. Same with the scapular. They knew I wear one. Two of the older kids asked about it. I explained it. Years later, they asked to get them.
A lot of our discussions about the faith concern how difficult it is to be Catholic. I don't try to dress it up. We talk a lot about the bad times in Church history, about the corruption and scandal. I feel like it's better for them to see it, warts and all. No surprises down the road, right? And we completely avoid private revelations that frankly don't make any sense. Such as Three Days of Darkness. That whole thing seems contra to Revelation.
I hope and pray that all my children remain faithful. I hope and pray that I remain faithful. I do feel like I've turned a corner in the past couple of months. My Imitate Medieval Peasantry strategy seems to work. The less chatter I hear concerning Church politics, the more I'm able to focus on God.
"The longer I avoid reading Church news, the more at peace I become with the Church."
I can't overstate how much this notion bothers me. If the Church really is the Mystical Body/Bride of Christ, the more I know about her, the more I should love her. But I've found that the reality is quite the contrary.
I've gotten advice both in and out of the confessional that if knowing what's going on is a challenge to my faith, I should ignore it. But that sounds like denial to me. Knowing what's going on should be able to be addressed and sorted in a way that makes sense, even if it's depressing. I'm not interested in a religion that asks me not to look to closely at how it works lest I become convinced it's something other than what it claims to be.
As for the rest, I agree wholeheartedly with your approach with your children. It's the healthiest way.
Oh, but I don't avoid reading about the faith. I avoid the news! It's the constant squabbling and bickering and questioning and futile debate that has affected me the most. The more I stick to just reading old books and the Bible, the better I feel.
If the enemy attacks the kingdom, don’t fight the kingdom fight the enemy! Of course they’re wearing the clerical collars and bishop miters, and inside they’re ravening wolves and fruitcakes. It’s a case of confusion, to see the villains and the cowards occupying the priesthood as truly being priests. They’re a disappointment one and all.
If the body is invaded by a virus, don’t attack the body but attack the virus, correct?
Yes, let’s engage the problem and sort it out. It’s the manful way to conduct ourselves.
“I'm not interested in a religion that asks me not to look to closely at how it works lest I become convinced it's something other than what it claims to be.” Could I ask you to clarify?
I don't know what there is to clarify. It's like the Wizard of Oz. If paying attention to the man behind the curtain causes the illusion to break, then all it ever was was an illusion.
Either the Church can bear the deepest scrutiny and come out with the appearance of truth, or it can't.
This is so vague! My man, spit it out! I can’t even start to understand… Is it the current state of the Church?
The teaching of the Church has been the target of every heretic born under the sun. It can and has survived.
Sol, please don’t denigrate priests in the confessional. Tradition-minded priests are highly competent doctors of souls. They’ve saved my life more than once.
Nate, do you have any other brush in your toolbox than a broad one?
I've had very negative experiences with traditional priests in the confessional, and also very positive. But Sol is absolutely correct about the tendency towards legalism and clericalist, "I may be a lot younger than you, but I'm the doctor of your soul so you'd best listen, son" type attitudes. (This last is especially amusing when priests in their mid-30s get upset when informed by long-married men that their counsel on marital issues is woefully naïve.)
They mean well. Doesn't mean they always DO well.
I don’t know a lot about FSSP priests, you could be right.
Forget broad brushes, this came off of a paint roller, <far worse a theology which contains within it the self-destruction of the institutional church itself.> Sol is talking about his white whale, the concept of original sin.
My general impression of the SSPX priests who I know and their colleagues is dedication and competency. I’ve been given two pieces of advice in the confessional for my marriage: very simple but complete. “Don’t have bad thoughts about her” (resentment due to conflict—this from a NO priest), “Don't speak to her with impatience.” Our marriage wasn’t all roses, it was a lot of fighting. The priests put the ball in my court, and maybe I would have liked to put more responsibility on her but I was required to take the initiative. Just my own experience.
Speaking of… my wife hates the time I spent on Twitter and also here the last couple days. She sees it as a time drain when I should be involved in family things. I can’t say I blame her.
Anyway, it might be good for us married men to have a way to talk about it. There’s a scarcity of guidance and advice on marriage and family, at a time when the devil is attacking marriage and the family as his front line.
I don’t have a reason to consider my priests incompetent on leading me to a peaceful marriage.
Would you happen to have advice for priests, from your experiences as a married man.
It occurs to me if you had a medical doctor in his 30s, they often act the same way.
"Sol is talking about his white whale, the concept of original sin."
He isn't wrong to bring it up. It fundamentally violates our innate concept of justice. Which is why any 7 year old boy learning his catechism will mad dog you and say, "How is that fair?!"
You just have to accept on faith that it's true, and then try to swallow the bitter pill when people tell you, "and God is perfectly just."
I guess there must be some concept of justice that we can't understand, then. Which is pretty weird, because it's a pretty straightforward idea.
(Oddly, most people who believe in original sin also think it's unjust when the descendants of former slaves start talking about reparations, but it's the exact same concept.)
"It occurs to me if you had a medical doctor in his 30s, they often act the same way."
Ah yes, but they don't get to claim "grace of state" and "God-given authority" and they can't withhold something from you that you've been taught your whole life is the only means of attaining salvation.
Form follows function. If I could add to your sentiments, the function needs to be the love and salvation of souls.
Wow, Steve, I was where you are now about three years ago. Letting go of my Catholic faith (I prefer that term to “losing my faith” ) was excruciating. But when I look back on the things I believed, and the way I ordered my life and that of my family, I almost can’t believe it. Those things are so strange to me now that my mind is free. I hope you will find that freedom.
May I ask what you believe now?
I’ve been exploring Buddhist thought and it really resonates with me, and seems consistent with the things we are discovering in physics/science, as well as common sense, once you begin to understand them. As far as Christianity goes, the lectures of Bart Ehrman have been eye opening.
This is apostasy. Why would you want to leave the ship, when the world has ever been more evil or insane? If I could help resolve any doubts about Catholic teaching, please tell me.
Nate, apostates are allowed here. I want to hear their opinions, too. Like I said, I'm tired of always begging the question.
Yes, I’d just like to see him in the safety of the Church.
Then you're going to have to actually evangelize and persuade, not merely admonish. Admonishments have never turned a man intellectually convinced that aspects of the faith were wrong into a true believer.
Nate, the ship is just as much a part of the evil and insanity. And, no, you can’t help resolve any doubts, as they are no longer doubts, they are certainties.
Thomas, may I ask what it was with Ehrman that was eye opening? He is extremely mainstream so his opinions really are the same as the standard view in the field.
Gosh, a lot was eye opening to me-things that I had never realized like, for example, how you can see the progressive deification of the person Jesus as time goes by in the New Testament writings and how OT prophecies later read as prophecies about Jesus by Christians really had nothing to do with him.
“The progressive deification of the person of Jesus as time goes by” is a myth. The earliest Christian witness has a fully deified Yeshua. This is explained well in the Case for Christ by Strobel.
Read Bart Ehrman and you’ll understand.
“It stopped feeling like this larger-than-life divine institution ordained and led by God, and more like the sniping and sordid activity of men who wanted to be in control,”
This right here is the problem. Tell me how this doesn't compeltly describe Roman Catholicism today? They craft dogmas of Faith that you have to belief, and if you doubt any of them, then you go to hell. And if you dare to leave the club of Rome, you go to hell. And if you dare question any of them or their 'revealed dogma' then you are a heretic questioning the very will of God, the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church to keep her from error...... and you're going to hell.
You've hit the nail on the head. The ontological gun to your head that hell represents makes a mockery out of the legitimate exercise of free will.
I was reading an article about Religious Trauma Syndrome that I found very interesting:
"Within many dogmatic, self-contained religions, mental health problems such as depression or anxiety are considered sins. They are seen as evidence of not being right with God. A religious counselor or pastor advises more confession and greater obedience as the cure, and warns that secular help from a mental health professional would be dangerous.
God is called “The Great Physician” and a person should not need any help from anyone else. Doubt is considered wrong, not honest inquiry.
[...]
With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was understood. It is a huge shock to the system, and one that needs to be recognized as trauma."
The fear of hell is one of the big instigators here. It makes you feel completely trapped, even when you hit a wall where you can't honestly say you believe. And if you were to actually leave your religion, that would only intensify.
It seems wrong that coercion should be necessary with something beautiful and true. Just one of the things I'm trying to better understand.
This resonates deeply. PTSD is real and trauma without professional help and just relying on spiritual direction can be even more damaging. I try to heal from a lot of domestic violence and I keep telling myself if I would just pray more or try to be more holy then I won’t have panic or intrusive thoughts and heal myself. It’s very complex and the idea that you pray the trauma away is not ok. Trauma changes the brain and how we respond. It’s been the biggest internal struggle since coming back to the church.
Coercion isn’t necessary for the one who loves the beauty and truth of the Church. Salutary fear of hell is necessary when we start to turn to the vanities of the world.
“It stopped feeling like this larger-than-life divine institution ordained and led by God, and more like the sniping and sordid activity of men who wanted to be in control,” It describes the corrupt gay mafia to a t. That’s why we need them thrown off the bus.
Lastly no one has issues if you question the Catholic faith, even if you doubt points of it. It’s the open denial which will set one outside of it. If that’s the conscious choice one makes…
It's not just the gay mafia. The endless trad wars, the clericalism of the priest who refused to baptize my son in violation of his duty and canon law, etc. These are also manifestations. As is the totalitarianism of Traditionis Custodes. Clericalism is a cancer.
Okay woah. Who won’t baptize your son? What is this?
The trad wars, yes a lot of the individuals are obnoxious.
A young man belonging to a Catholic family in Holland, as a consequence of imprudent reading, had the misfortune to lose the treasure of faith and fall into a state of complete indifference. It was a subject of the bitterest grief for his parents, especially his pious mother. In vain did this other Monica give him the most solid lectures, in vain did she admonish him with tears to come back to God; her unhappy son was deaf and insensible. Yet, at last, to satisfy his mother, he was pleased to consent to spend a few days in a religious house, there to follow the exercises of a retreat, or rather, as he put it, to ret a few days and smoke tobacco, and enjoyment he loved. So, he listened with a distracted mind to the instructions given to those making the retreat, and speedily after began again to smoke without thinking further of what he had heard. The instruction on hell, to which he seemed to listen to like the rest, came on, but being back again in his little cell, while he was taking his smoke as usual, a reflection arose, in spite of him, in his mind. “If, however, it should be true,” he says to himself, “that there is a hell! If there be one, clearly it shall be for me! And in reality, do I know, myself, that there is not a hell? I am obliged to acknowledge that I have no certainty in this behalf; the whole ground of my ideas is only a perhaps. Now, to run the risk of burning for eternity on a perhaps, frankly speaking, as a matter of extravagance, would be to go beyond the bounds. If there are some who have such courage, I have not sufficiently lost my senses to imitate them.” Thereupon, he begins to pray, grace penetrates his soul, his doubts vanish, he rises up, converted.
The Dogma of Hell, Fr. F.X. Schouppe — https://www.ecatholic2000.com/hell/hell.shtml
Ah yes. Always the threat of hell to make sure we stay in line. Because I suppose the truths of the faith aren't compelling enough without the reminder of eternal torment if we don't see it.
Meanwhile, what of those of us who, fearing hell, "begin to pray" but grace does NOT penetrate the soul, our doubts do not vanish, and we do not rise up, converted?
I've been praying for years to overcome my own doubts, and to come to love God rather than simply fear he will damn me for being unable to do so. I wish it were really as easy as this little fairy tale vignette.
God will not damn you for your doubts. Could you please tell me, are you aware of anything beside doubts, in your life, that could be acting as an obstacle to grace?
I've been reliably informed otherwise. Here's an email I got a while back from a dogmatic theologian of some reputation:
"Maybe I'm misreading it, but over on Facebook you seem to be flirting with outright rejection of Vatican I's teaching on papal infallibility. Please tell me that's not true. Even to doubt a dogma of the faith obstinately is heresy, which is a damnable sin. I'd love to help clear up any questions if I can."
Except that he didn't even attempt to clear up the questions I sent him. Perhaps he couldn't. Just left me hanging. He apologized a year later for not doing so, so I asked again. And again, no reply.
But remember: doubt is damnable.
Steve it just is not true that doubt is damnable! Where dies that leave apostle Thomas? Some of the greatest saints have wrestled lifelong with doubt and spiritual darkness. Jesus felt abandoned by God as he died on the Cross. Was it true? No. But He still felt it. He was fully human as well as fully divine.
Doubt IS NOT despair. Doubt seeks answers. Seeks truth.
Steve, your struggles ARE your faith, seeking to shake off the shackles of fear and see God as He really is in relation to us.
Your husbandly and fatherly heart, as well as your well honed logic, is crying out against the ghastly notion of a God who won't go all out to the last breath in our body to bring us home to Himself.
Some dreadful people might be lying in wait for you to fail their cruel judgey tests, but God isn't. He's always watching and waiting, yes - for the one moment of faith that He can grab us by and use to haul us to heaven.
He is inviting you deeper into his heart through your truth-seeking suffering.
You know what Jesus said about people who place unbearable burdens on poor mens backs and don't raise a finger to lift them. Matt 23:4
Hold on. You’re using this as a rationalization, or are you. I won’t tell you doubt is going to damn you, because God is merciful and won’t punish us for a crisis if we’re of good will. Could you get the question to me please… I will do my best to research it and come up with an answer.
With respect, Nate, you're not going to find an answer I can't find. I've been doing this a long time, and I know where to look.
Stop trying to save me. It's not your job.
Steve, you articulate the same cri de coeur as countless others of us out here. My tentative advice is to not throw out the baby with the bathwater and leave the Church too quickly. Instead of citing docs from the middle ages as you do in your piece, start a mature study of the documents of Vatican 2. Also read Benedict XVI's "Introduction to Christianity". Saved my bacon. The Irish Church that colonised the US and my home Australia had a strong streak of Jansenism that had to go. Take a breather, relax with your family, eat, drink, have fun together. See how your younger children love, and open your heart to learn that way of loving. Focus on love and on the Person of Jesus. Delve into the Gospels imaginatively to see how he acted, what he said(and didn't say), who he chose to hang out with, why he came as a man and not a woman, why he chose a celibate wandering life. So much to ponder. Dont be in a hurry to make a decision. He'll wait for you, he knows everything about being a man. God bless you and yours.
"Instead of citing docs from the middle ages as you do in your piece, start a mature study of the documents of Vatican 2."
The problem is the lack of consistency. If the Church can teach something infallibly in the 16th century and then go and essentially reverse it 400 years later, why should we listen to either thing?
As for the rest, I agree that there's a lot to be gained from just living, and learning from children how to laugh and play and love.
I think that Thomas Pink's essays on "official theology" might be helpful (https://thejosias.com/2018/11/02/vatican-ii-and-crisis-in-the-theology-of-baptism-part-i/). Honestly, the concept changed my understanding of the way the Church teaches and has allowed me to deal with a lot of objections.
Steve its a common misconception that V2 changed doctrines of salvation. It didnt. It restated them with a move away from a rigidified Scholasticism that had dominated since Trent. Lumen Gentium - and the Catechism - still state that outside the Church is no salvation. But they give a much more rational, more charitable , less fearful and more hopeful, and far less narrow interpretation of what that actually means. I strongly recommend thoughtful reading of Lumen Gentium at least, and some investigation of ressourcement thinkers especially Joseph Ratzinger. The Church is ever ancient, ever new. Don't ditch it until you REALLY know what you are ditching. So much more beautiful and rich but you have to dig a bit.
... and examine your sacrificial, fatherly love for your children. A huge insight into how God loves us, his children.
Agreed
It might be instructive to back away from the Church, any church, for a while. After all, our faith is in Jesus, not primarily in the Church. (Good thing too, given how churchmen usually behave.) I've been a Catholic for all of my long life, and sometimes I've tried very hard to keep all those rules, but when I realized that most of the people who run the institution are not even TRYING, I sought to learn to focus my attention on the Trinity, not on any churchy thing.
It can be done, though it seems difficult at first. It's so easy that it's hard. Really all it involves is listening, really listening, with the ears of the heart, as St. Benedict puts it. To listen one must first, stop talking (!), and then silence all the other voices, many of them churchy voices, demanding that one think or do or not do something or other about all this. Just sit there and wait.
What is important is what God says. He has quite a bit to say, but He won't shout down the mob. His language is all about love, and like a human lover, if you refuse to drag your attention away from the phone, from the computer, from the "world," He's not going to grab you by the throat and force you to listen.
What our children do with all this is beyond our control. Of my 4, all long grown, I have an autistic techno-genius, a crazy man (literally) and a gifted lawyer lighting DC on fire....and a mystic. This last one has found her way, and I struggle to follow. And she's a Catholic, not because of us, but because of her own discovery. God loves all of them, and me, and you too Steve.
This… is the Protestant error
I don’t mean to be offensive and won’t argue on this forum, but I’m responding to the idea I saw, which is that faith in Jesus Christ alone is able to save. Isn’t this the basic error of Protestantism? Jesus Christ is embodied in His Church. He’s present in the Sacraments.
If you reject original sin, what reason is there to be a Christian at all? It seems to obviate the need for a redeemer.
Yes, I’m not sure where we disagree. The Eucharist is consecrated by priests in Holy Orders, both are Sacraments given by Jesus animating the ecclesial body of the Church.
"It’s an excruciating dilemma when something you’re obligated to believe just doesn’t make sense, but faith demands your assent…or else.
...
What do you do when you ask God over and over to help you to see clearly, to help you to believe, to help you to love Him despite his seemingly unfathomable aloofness, but no perceptible aid arrives? How do you convince yourself that you’re not just talking to…yourself?"
Wow! So on point.
Good writing and insightful. As an aside, are you aware of Frank Schaeffer’s story and journey?
Thanks. And no, I'm not.
Not dogma, a Person
As Catholics, we do not subscribe to a system of dogmas. We begin with a Person, the Person of our Lord continued in his mystical body the Church. What is faith? Faith is the meeting of two personalities. You and the Lord. There is no adhesion to an abstract dogma, but rather a communion with a Person who can neither deceive nor be deceived. The authoritarians start with a party line. We start with our Lord, the Son of the living God, who said, “I am the truth.” In other words, truth was identified with his personality. Remember when you were a child. What did you consider your home? Just a sum of commands given by either your mother or your father? It was more than that, was it not? It was the love of their personalities. Our faith, then, is first and foremost in Christ, who lives in his mystical body the Church. It is only secondarily in the explicit beliefs. If our Lord did not reveal them, we would not believe them. If we lost him, we would lose our beliefs. He comes first.
—Bp. Fulton Sheen
Is your philosophy set up only as opposition to St Augustine?
You have rash assumptions. Bp. Sheen DOES NOT contradict the classical definition of the theological virtue of Faith. He is only framing it in personal terms.
I think your theology is, like all heresies, a distorted and incomplete version of Catholic doctrine. Could I ask if it’s a personal objection you have to the Catholic idea of sin?
Gen. 2:16-17. Gen. 3:11-19. Rom. 5:12-19. 1 Cor. 15:21-23. Eph. 2:1-3. et al
You’ve touched on epistemic humility in the past, and I think it’s a big piece of the puzzle you’re working on right now. Without it, we paint ourselves into corners where our reason and basic humanity are pitted against each other. I think this is why many “devout” religious people are so weird: they have suppressed their reason and/or their basic humanity to salvage their ideology, when they should have suppressed (or rethought) their ideology to salvage their reason and basic humanity.
The biggest area I see Christians painting themselves into corners in this way is the “will many be saved?” debate. I think the nastiness and misanthropic behavior the Phelps-Ropers of the world exhibit is a defense mechanism: if you are convinced that pretty much everyone is destined to end up in hell, then the only way to not go insane with grief and despair is to assume that pretty much everyone has it coming. Have fun trying to hold that belief without it negatively impacting the way you treat other people.
Does this mean we are forced to choose between becoming universalists, or becoming pricks? This is the origin story of many a universalist. While I can sympathize with their plight, they too have paid a price too high. Whereas the Phelps-Ropers of the world have sacrificed their basic humanity to maintain their intellectual consistency, the Rob Bells of the world have sacrificed their intellectual consistency to maintain their basic humanity. Anyone familiar with the gospels knows that it’s better to err on the side of being a Rob Bell, but it would be better still to not to err at all.
I think the saints (even ones who were more pessimistic in their views on the number of the saved) are the ones who succeeded in walking this tightrope. They had healthy spiritual and intellectual boundaries: rigid enough to not succumb to the intellectual gymnastics necessary to believe that all are saved, but flexible enough admit that we aren’t in a good epistemic position to know the state of any particular person’s soul, or their culpability for not meeting the ideal standards of Christian behavior, or the extent of God's intervention in their life. This epistemic humility afforded them the crucial flexibility to live and thrive in the tension of this paradox: not falling into life negating pessimism, and not settling for empty optimism. The result was genuine supernatural hope, hope which flowered into a joy and serenity that irresistibly rang true.
The questions about how to raise your children in the faith do largely, in my experience, come down to what kinds of people you wish them to become. If you try to raise them to never question anything, they might just become that, but so inflexible as to also be brittle and unable to relate meaningfully to those who don't share their beliefs, which sort of obviates our call to be salt and light. The other response is often, as Steve says, they will run so hard in the other direction once they have a chance that they don't give a fair hearing to the truth of what they were raised in, thus throwing out the baby with the bath water. I saw both in spades while attending what is often called the Christian Harvard.
A different option, which my own parents seem to have taken, was to live out their faith without much fanfare but making it clear to us kids that's what it was, inculcate in us the core, key, beliefs of Christianity while holding the rest loosely -- "don't major in the minors" as my dad used to say -- and provide us with both the tools and resources, and a safe environment, within which to explore Christianity -- and everything else -- to our hearts' content. I should also say that we were given the advantage of meeting genuine saints, inside and outside our family, and shown how to actually get to know Jesus as a living person. That we were even allowed, and encouraged, to do the latter I now find to be a minor miracle in and of itself.
In the end I've worked to do the same with my own children, and to raise genuinely good adults who work to make the world a better place. They have very serious issues with the Church, as they experienced it growing up, and particularly now, but have not in general terms left their faith or a strong sense that God exists. They just struggle to know how to let Him be real in their lives, absent a church community that also does that. But I always knew that if they could not find their own faith and make it their own, there was also no hope at all that I could make it happen for them. It had to be theirs.
Final thought: at one point I had some teenage kids of friends, who had grown up Evangelical, then moved into the Anglican/Episcopal/Catholic world, say that how they remained believers was due to the fact of their first being formally trained in the faith, THEN moving into a part of Christendom which allowed it to essentially blossom more fully and round itself out -- but where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual. They said that without that, they would have left the Church long before. That path happens also to have been my own.
"say that how they remained believers was due to the fact of their first being formally trained in the faith, THEN moving into a part of Christendom which allowed it to essentially blossom more fully and round itself out-- but where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual "
This statement is pretty curious to me, it's hard for me to draw a connection between being formally trained and "moving into a part of Christendom...... where the teaching was almost nonexistent or at best ineffectual"
How did they grow in their faith through those communities? Was it solely under their own efforts at seeking holiness?
I'm not being critical, just asking. I followed much the same path, but I would say my faith has grown in the Catholic Church in spite of the Church and not because of the Church. My experience as a Catholic has been that almost everything is setup against being holy, from the theology (with the emphasis on the judgemental nature of God), to the liturgy (mostly the new, but even the old in the sense that I don't speak fluent ecclesiastical Latin) and most especially in the life of the Church since your average catholic now a days doesn't even both trying to live basic Christian principles, much less seek after holiness.
Eric, you've actually nailed it. You DO understand. What I didn't say was these are children of artistic parents, who also approach the world and their faith through a more creative, i.e. incarnational understanding of life. This is not to be found in the Evangelical world, where such things are actively minimized or denigrated, unless of course the "arts" can be ""useful" in some way. Yes, their solid catechetical upbringing enabled them to move into a spiritual space where they could actively and freely embrace their sacramental and incarnational understanding of the Faith, and grow. Even though what else you say is quite true. That has all been --and is -- my struggle, as well, but it was important to at least be in a place where I'm not continually having to justify my existence, and there is more of a common understanding of Christianity "in the round". That said, one of my greatest and best spiritual life experiences was spending a brief time around charismatic Catholics in 1979 in Ann Arbor. They knew unapologetically who they were historically, how their faith relates to the world practically and theologically, that God is alive and active, and who they are as God's children.
I saw a priest lately who said we want our children to be saints, which means “to think, speak and act according to right reason and the supernatural teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Agree, I think...we want them to desire to, and know how to BECOME saints.
Sure, but it’s our duty to teach them.
Absolutely! Most of us find it difficult to both believe something is possible and know how to achieve it if we don't see it. Teaching isn't just passing on head knowledge.
Good example is probably the number one teaching method. Teaching is important, but teach all day and do the opposite, and see what happens.
Fr Hilderbrand is making a fair point in a deliberately obtuse way. I know no family - and I really do mean that - for whom lapsation isn’t a constant concern and even threat. The claim that “TLM devotees” might somehow be shocked by that is just stupid.
As for Br Martin: just obtuse too. Of course TLM-going Catholics lapse. I personally know a good number.
But then that’s Catholic Twitter for ya. It’s dumb, it’s instant and it’s all got to be contained in 140 characters or you will lose your opportunity to gain tradlarp points.
For the rest of this post: I think you’re absolutely on the money. The best odds of success lie in the middle way. There are so many ways of doing this that I don’t think there’s any way to cover them here but if I had to pick one thing from my own experience (and my parents have 5 adult children who are all still very actively practicing, so they must have done something right):
Be open to discussions about the faith - and the state of the Church. As we grew up, dad openly discussed his qualms about the contents of the sermons and readings, about politics, the news, the state of the Church. We were encouraged to have an opinion - a judgement - on what we had heard and our understanding of it. When I first met my father in law, I proudly told him that my dad had taught us to “question everything” when he asked me about various topics where I had unorthodox opinions. “Rubbish, you’re a Catholic,” he snorted in derision. He was a lapsed Catholic at the time. He’s now back in the Church.
For many of us who don't get to have these conversations in person, it can be the only place where we discuss these things.