Thanks for the honest and intelligent summary of how you've come to your present position. It helps to understand where you and many others stand. It also forces me to look at things I'd rather ignore.
Hi Steve. I am re-reading this piece today, and find it heartbreaking. I am a 55-year-old Roman Catholic who was raised in Catholic school, taught to receive Communion in the hand, and endured many years of guitars and felt banners. My parents were divorced when I was 5, and my sister and I lived with my lapsed-Catholic mother (who never went to church) and my grandmother (who went without fail). My mother was an alcoholic, and had other personal issues I won't put in writing here which caused her to stay away from the Church, although she did ensure my sister and I were raised Catholic. Nonetheless, I never felt quite as "Catholic" as some other students at my school, due to my family situation. (Nobody ever made me feel that way; I was just comparing my family life to others. And looking back now, I realize that other people's home situations were just as messy.) I can honestly say I never suffered any abuse at the hands of any clergy or religious, although we did have our share of odd priests and nuns at the schools and parishes I attended over the years. Most were great though, honestly, even if I always imagined they looked down on my family a bit. (There was not a hint of this externally; just my own insecurity.) My father, with whom my sister and I spent every Sunday afternoon and one full weekend per month, kept going to Church but remarried (civilly) when I was 13. (He and my stepmother had their marriage blessed after the death of my mother 11 years ago.) As a result of all this family irregularity, I always felt like a bit of an outsider at Church, but again, this was a self-imposed view. My faith faltered a bit in my 20s but never disappeared, honestly thanks to EWTN and Mother Angelica--may God rest her soul. I've had a LOT of ups and downs in the faith department over the past few decades, but felt incredibly blessed to discover the TLM about 5 or 6 years ago. I fell in love with it immediately, and at the same time, had this terrifying feeling that it was going to be taken away...just because I love it. (I'm a pessimist at heart...always imagining the worst. Probably from childhood trauma, but knowing that doesn't make the annoying habit go away.) Because my husband's work schedule prevents him from going to Mass on Sunday mornings, I almost always attend the NO with him on Saturdays or Sunday evenings at our home parish. Even so, I like having the TLM option available and was horrified when my worst fears came true with Traditionis Custodes. We are lucky enough to have an actual TLM parish (staffed by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest) only about 1/2 hour away--one of the few surviving ones--and so far, our bishop is not showing any signs of doing away with it. I imagine it's only a matter of time, though, as it appears Pope Francis is on a mission to completely do away with the TLM. The entire papacy of Francis has caused me no end of doubts, and I am sorry to say I have not resolved any of them. I believe the Church doctrines, but I am not sure what to think about the validity of Francis. I am NOT a sede; I didn't even know those folks existed until after I discovered the TLM and the associated factions. I loved Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, but Francis has thrown me for a loop. It's hard to believe he is a valid pope, given some of his words and actions, but I've not been able to go so far as to say I am certain he's INVALID, either. I know a very holy Ukrainian Catholic priest who maintains that Francis himself is a chastisement on the Church, and that does make sense to me, in a way. Personally, if I had to state my own tenuous, personal beliefs about the reality of what we are going through, it would be that (as predicted in many, many Marian apparitions) the Church and the world are in the midst of a chastisement right now--due to rampant sin in the world that has been increasing exponentially for decades, with little sign of repentance on the part of humanity. I'm talking about abortion, all manner of sexual sins (rampant fornication, homosexuality and other deviant behaviors, adultery, child sexual abuse), greed, violence, corrupt clergy (at all levels), you name it. This view is probably non-sensical to you and makes you believe that a God who would allow it is a cruel God, but it's my personal sense of what is happening. My hope is that we are going to come out the other side the better for it, but it will be long and painful. I base this at least partly on what befell Israel every time they strayed and would not listen to the prophets God sent to call them back. After decades of ignoring his calls to repentance, he would allow the Israelites to experience the consequences of their sins. I think that's where we are right now, sadly.
So I have not lost my faith, but I am struggling and sometime I fear that I could, which scares me to death. I'm hanging by a thread some days, and I do NOT envy you, nor do I look down on you for what you have expressed. Given what you've been through, it's remarkable that it took so long for you to reach the breaking point.
I am not holding myself up as any kind of example here, as I have my own struggles. That being said, if you have not already read them, may I recommend the novels of Michael D. O'Brien? I don't think I have ever read another author whose characters endure such profound spiritual, emotional and even physical pain and doubt in the midst of their Catholic faith. They sometimes experience cruelty, abuse (sometimes as the hands of priest and religious), neglect, indifference, abandonment, and struggles with faith. While that probably sounds like an awful thing to read, it found it to be quite the opposite experience. I will admit that while there are places in some of his novels that should have been shortened quite a bit, overall they are some of the best novels I have ever read, with some of the most memorable characters. If you will give them a chance, I think you may find profound solace in them. They are not preachy, and they do not minimize the pain of the human condition, nor the struggle to maintain faith in a world that is at times evil, and in which God seems silent--or even absent altogether.
Steve, HI a glaring omission - you're leaving out Christ, who said "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life - no one comes to the Father except through Me." I guess he's not very inclusive for you because he leaves out lots of folks. And "He who is not with Me is against Me." What have you done with HIM? He is not "nice". So have you consigned Him to the cauldron of your anger and hurt too? I too was damaged by wicked clergymen; 3 priests and a bishop. But there was still Christ and His Church. I was a revert Steve. I left the Church in my twenties and embarked upon a search of 25 years and practically all Eastern and Western religions, including the cults. (I started out as an atheist, but it was too religious for me).But Buddha delt with pain by meditating it away, the pantheists claimed that pain and everything else was merely Maya - nothing, and the gurus followed suit. I was later to realize that only ONE of the world's gods dealt with it by jumping into it. The Word. The Alpha and Omega. the Nazarene. After 35 years, I was stuck with Christ. And I wasn't initially happy about it.
I believe now that the Catholic Faith is a love affair with Jesus Christ. I wish that some day you will see it that way. I won't say "I am praying for you" because I know how damned irritating it can be.But I've loved you before, and I love you now. I don't care if I'm irritating you now.. It's just true.
I'm not leaving him out. It's the other way around. I gave him over 40 years of my life, and when my faith evaporated, and I begged for that not to happen, he ignored me. Which, come to think of it, is what he's always done.
Less damaging to conclude that he probably isn't there than that he just doesn't care.
I've undergone several crises of faith too. The desolation is agonizing. I was a. foster baby and child, which made me hypersensitive to rejection. When God seems to go away, I feel that there's no point to anything. Notice that I said "feel". Subjective. Objectively, that's just not true. The saints have gone through periods like ours, where they too felt ignored - and these people have experienced ecstatic states before. But they feel rejected too, maybe for their sins, or Like Therese of the Holy Face, because of atheist philosophers. She endured this trial for most of her life. Her feelings told her that there was no God, so she made constant acts of her will to faith. She never gave up. (Calling this steel-willed woman "Little Flower" is tantamount to calling Hulk Hogan "Tinkerbell")
The problem as I see it is our reliance on feelings to determine reality. You seem to have done your best to validate yours by bringing up all the negative things about the Church and building a cement wall against it. There is another thing involved here (you're going to laugh) and that;s the demonic. Much has been written about it in the last 20 years by psychologists, non-Christians and other scholars and the consensus is that oppresson is real. People who have been examined by shrinks who initially thought they were dealing with mental illness have been forced to admit the presence of the demonic. (See "Demon possession" edited by John Warwick Montgomry.) The point is that demons don't bother with bad people, they have them already. But people who serve Christ, especially by their preaching, writing, and general holiness, are the targets. The saints bear this out. THEY are the enemy which must be stopped. Even possessed people are good people.
I think there is more to your plight than you know. Just keep an open mind before you throw this missive in the trash!
I much prefer empiricism to feelings. I want data that confirms beliefs, not beliefs that exist independently of any data.
But lacking data, facts, sensory perceptions, etc., the religious man is relegated to pure feeling. How many times do you hear it? "I was praying a lot about this, and I just really feel that God is calling me to do X."
We project our interior thoughts onto God and call it his prompting. Some of us do that to elevate what we want to his will; others think God likes to throw curveballs so we embrace the opposite of what we want and call it his will.
But none of us are actually receiving instructions from him.
I've been around people who manifested the demonic. There's something to it, no doubt. What it is, though, and how it fits with any particular variety of theology, and what it proves are all still up in the air. But it sure is convenient to believe that people who have taken a path we think is the wrong path are probably doing it because they're under the influence of demons.
Even Catholic exorcists say that demons only have the freedom to do what God allows. So it comes back to him. Why make a bunch of sensate, corporeal, temporal creatures and then demand that they believe in things that are insensible, incorporeal, and outside of time as we understand it? There's nothing about any of it that makes any sense. Why would a loving God allow demons to tempt his beloved children who are already laboring without any real sense of God and in a world riddled with concupiscence and evil? What father sees his children struggling to figure out a problem and then unleashes rabid dogs on them to see how they handle the increased challenge? (The answer is certainly not "a loving father.")
I simply came to a point in my life where I decided to stand my ground and say, "If I'm expected to believe in this and give up all worldly pleasures and riches and esteem and embrace suffering to have it, it had better damned well make sense to me."
And it doesn't, so I won't. If God wants to change that, he knows how to reach me. It's not that I haven't asked enough. But I've also realized I'm done chasing relationships with anyone who doesn't feel like it's worth putting in their half of the effort. As far as I can tell, he doesn't.
"What if things simply are what they are, and I needn't question whether I am living up to a great and scarcely scrutable demand placed upon me, with ultimate, unfathomable consequences attending?"
There's a kind of freedom in that. A relief. A peace.
"Would I trade Heaven for this handful of delicate moments that are my very own during the time that remains to me?"
Honestly, I think I would trade the loss of a heaven for a world where nobody has to burn forever in hell.
I agree with your three premises as to why Traditionalism in the Catholic Church is a dead end. I would add a fourth: It is the sense of having the only correct view of reality which is knowing, or unwittingly, conveyed by many traditionalists. This is most especially apparent among the numerous online trad apologists. The trads’ constant pronouncements betray an underlying belief that they alone have the true interpretation of history, the fathers, Thomas Aquinas, the Councils, theology, the Catechism, Cannon Law, proper practice and the true way of Catholic daily life.
In the fifty years since my conversion, I have met and come to know, a number of priests, religious and lay scholars, protestant and evangelical ministers. Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Holy Cross Fathers, Sisters of Mercy, many highly educated and extremely well read. Almost none of them approach the questions faith, tradition, interpretation of scripture and the magisterium, with the view that they, and they alone, have it all figured out, or that their interpretation is the only correct one.
This operational certainty in many Trad commentators displays itself to an ‘outsider’ as an almost gnostic (we have the only, secret way) attitude of superiority. I know that most trads would deny this and that they sincerely do not intend such a result. However, the constant harping about the horrors of the Novus Ordo, the heresy of the Pope, the destruction of tradition by Vatican II, the unpiety and non-traditional life styles of all other Catholic and Christians leaves the non-trad, non-insider, with a sense that these folks really see all others as sinful, unfaithful, lesser beings. (It also makes an outsider wonder if all this constant berating of others comes out of some deep sense of insecurity by the trads in their own beliefs.)
I am not against tradition. I love the pre-Vatican II form of the Mass. It is holy, reverent and is an important part of the faith. However, it must stand (and I believe it can and does stand) upon its own worth and beauty, not by denigrating everything and everyone that is not tradition, or traditional.
Having said all that, there is a far deeper issue in your posting. After reading you latest comment I hesitate to state what comes next. You don’t know me, and I only know you through your postings. It is terribly presumptuous of me to think I have any real sense of your life, or that I can give advice. Nevertheless, I am going to proceed. If what I say does not apply just let it pass.
None of this makes any sense, none of this has any relevance, without a deep and abiding relationship with God, with Jesus, who is the incarnation of God with us, without a sense of the manifestation of God as Holy Spirit working in your life. My conversation from the atheism of my late teens was not to the Church but to God. After looking, questioning, seeking, for a number of years I found myself convicted of God’s existence, of God’s presence and of Jesus being God having come among us. I did nothing to receive this except to ask and seek. The rest was a gift.
He is there. You are not abandoned.
For me, the Church, and, all of its messy, complicated and frankly, often irrational, reality came later (and is still being worked out, one day, one issue at a time, with little hope that all my questions and doubts will be resolved before I die.)
I hope you can find this gift. I pray that you will. I pray for you and your family every day.
I can only reply to the first half of your comment. There's nothing I can do about God's unwillingness to have a relationship with me. There are entire books on the problem of Divine Hiddenness and nonresistant nonbelief. It's one of the most compelling cases against theism. I will never stop hunting for the truth, but I can't just let it consume me when there's no way to get definitive answers, either.
So, to your first point, it's interesting, because I was looking through an old post of mine and the similarities are fascinating. You said:
"It is the sense of having the only correct view of reality which is knowing, or unwittingly, conveyed by many traditionalists. This is most especially apparent among the numerous online trad apologists. The trads’ constant pronouncements betray an underlying belief that they alone have the true interpretation of history, the fathers, Thomas Aquinas, the Councils, theology, the Catechism, Cannon Law, proper practice and the true way of Catholic daily life.
[...]
This operational certainty in many Trad commentators displays itself to an ‘outsider’ as an almost gnostic (we have the only, secret way) attitude of superiority. I know that most trads would deny this and that they sincerely do not intend such a result. However, the constant harping about the horrors of the Novus Ordo, the heresy of the Pope, the destruction of tradition by Vatican II, the unpiety and non-traditional life styles of all other Catholic and Christians leaves the non-trad, non-insider, with a sense that these folks really see all others as sinful, unfaithful, lesser beings. (It also makes an outsider wonder if all this constant berating of others comes out of some deep sense of insecurity by the trads in their own beliefs.)"
I wrote, in my old post about heavy-handed faith:
"Marvel’s Loki, at one point in his eponymous show, somewhat humorously proclaims that he is “burdened with glorious purpose!” That’s a decent summary of the feeling in question. “I have the right answers and others don’t, so I have a moral obligation to argue them into submission so they, too, do the right thing.”
This idea really is a burden. Almost a messianic complex. And it really does get ugly if you let it. The love of your fellow man becomes inconsequential compared to your “God-given” mission to go on an “unflinching pursuit of truth.”"
I am not a follower of Marvel, so I had not previously heard of Loki's claim of being "burdened with glorious purpose". It is an interesting statement. Going back to my undergrad days, I hazily remember that Milton's depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost did not use the same exact phase but bordered on the underlying idea. It seems to me that many zealots throughout history were operating under the presumption that they
were required to bring their version of reality to everyone else up to and including using deadly force. Of course, pride in thinking that you are the only one with the correct answers, also clouds the minds of these folk.
Keep up the search for truth. I do admire your courage to face your issues. Do not think less of me, but I will continue to pray for you and your family. It is my way.
My experience is the total opposite of yours. I was raised in a super fluffy, social justice-minded parish in Brazil. A lot of the "Catholic guilt", fear of authority and inability to question stuff is just not something I have really experienced at all. The main issue there was really catechesis. I don't think I ever heard about the Church's teaching on sexuality or anything. I mean, I was raised on liberation theology, folks! I went away from the faith big time in my teens, because while my personal experience was good, I encountered the Church's official teaching and didn't know what to make of it. Then came back in college. So while I certainly don't think the fluffiness is where people should stay, and the relationship with God is really what we should seek (and that's found neither in liberation theology nor trad circles), I think so much of our ability or inability to accept the Church's teaching is clouded by our own experiences. If your experience is one of abuse, than some teachings will just look abusive. To someone for whom that's not the case, they will interpret it differently.
My parents were swept up in the Protestant speaking in the tongues of the 70’s. The heretic lectured down to us about sin all the time. He resigned after admitting he was homosexual years later. The priest that married myself and wife was banned from the Church do to child creepiness. When I was in rehab in Colorado I went to Fr. James Jackson’s parish. I wore jeans with a belt, tennis shoes, and a long sleeve t shirt tucked in. In the parish bulletin the next week Fr. James Jackson lectured how t shirts were COMPLETELY absurd. I gave a confession to Fr. James Jackson.
Think you have it bad? I have a wife that threw me under the bus and is currently fucking one of the groomsman for the last 8 years. Try raising your kids with that.
Your theology is shit. Quit wasting time on it.
The infallible Pope with his infallible Council with the infallible Written Documents says that babies go to Hell. They are correct.
Do you think Mary allows this?
“Ummm…....no God.” Is He going to deny Her request?
Read True Devotion to Mary and tell me I’m wrong.
I recommend saying 3 Hail Mary’s a day. I have tried selling my children to take 30 second out of their day for it and they laugh at me…. because they are so smart.
P.S. To put it another way. Do you think the beautiful churches built in Europe for over a 1000 years were built for Jesus, the Pope, and Councils?
He is talking to you. But you have built up so much against Him, you can't hear Him. He speaks, but there is so much chaos in your soul, He is drowned out. When I'm in that state, all I can hear is my anger against Him. When I can, with help, return to sanity and peace. I can "hear" Him, and Love Him. This happened to me last year. I projected my inner feelings of anger and rejection onto Christ...but I knew I that was what I was doing, due to years of therapy. So I willed myself to stop (it can be done). Eventually, it stopped.
The sun can't shine on a raging body of water. It can only shine on water that is peaceful.
Sounds very much like you're suggesting I'm more powerful than God.
When my kids are acting up, I know how to get their attention without being cruel. There's no reason the God you believe in couldn't do the same even if he thinks his creations are acting unreasonably. But he doesn't.
Do you have a better word than "cruel" to describe the refusal to answer years of fervent prayers from a faithful son for no more than faith and understanding and the graces of the sacraments?
I begged not to lose my faith, because I saw the effect that it would have. I wasn't just some anonymous person toiling away in secret to grow in the spiritual life. I was the father of many young children with a Catholic audience of millions.
I didn't want to take this path. But like trying to hold a scoop of water in your cupped hands, you can only retain what little you can grasp for a short time before it's all gone. Faith, for me, was like that. And no aid came.
"Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." This is a lie. He did not give it to me.
"What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Thanks for calling us evil, by the way, but stones and scorpions and serpents are all we get.
My rage and grief are over a stolen life, given to an undeserving cause. Over a lifetime of anxiety and fear that crippled me emotionally and affected the people closest to me.
But if God is real, he could heal that. He has chosen not to show up, and I don't owe it to anyone to pretend that a lack of evidence that he cares should be enough for me.
Thanks for the honest and intelligent summary of how you've come to your present position. It helps to understand where you and many others stand. It also forces me to look at things I'd rather ignore.
Yes, it hurts to have ones eyes opened. Thank you for thinking this through enough to explain the problem so well.
Thank you for always sharing your heart so generously brother. You are a man of integrity.
Hi Steve. I am re-reading this piece today, and find it heartbreaking. I am a 55-year-old Roman Catholic who was raised in Catholic school, taught to receive Communion in the hand, and endured many years of guitars and felt banners. My parents were divorced when I was 5, and my sister and I lived with my lapsed-Catholic mother (who never went to church) and my grandmother (who went without fail). My mother was an alcoholic, and had other personal issues I won't put in writing here which caused her to stay away from the Church, although she did ensure my sister and I were raised Catholic. Nonetheless, I never felt quite as "Catholic" as some other students at my school, due to my family situation. (Nobody ever made me feel that way; I was just comparing my family life to others. And looking back now, I realize that other people's home situations were just as messy.) I can honestly say I never suffered any abuse at the hands of any clergy or religious, although we did have our share of odd priests and nuns at the schools and parishes I attended over the years. Most were great though, honestly, even if I always imagined they looked down on my family a bit. (There was not a hint of this externally; just my own insecurity.) My father, with whom my sister and I spent every Sunday afternoon and one full weekend per month, kept going to Church but remarried (civilly) when I was 13. (He and my stepmother had their marriage blessed after the death of my mother 11 years ago.) As a result of all this family irregularity, I always felt like a bit of an outsider at Church, but again, this was a self-imposed view. My faith faltered a bit in my 20s but never disappeared, honestly thanks to EWTN and Mother Angelica--may God rest her soul. I've had a LOT of ups and downs in the faith department over the past few decades, but felt incredibly blessed to discover the TLM about 5 or 6 years ago. I fell in love with it immediately, and at the same time, had this terrifying feeling that it was going to be taken away...just because I love it. (I'm a pessimist at heart...always imagining the worst. Probably from childhood trauma, but knowing that doesn't make the annoying habit go away.) Because my husband's work schedule prevents him from going to Mass on Sunday mornings, I almost always attend the NO with him on Saturdays or Sunday evenings at our home parish. Even so, I like having the TLM option available and was horrified when my worst fears came true with Traditionis Custodes. We are lucky enough to have an actual TLM parish (staffed by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest) only about 1/2 hour away--one of the few surviving ones--and so far, our bishop is not showing any signs of doing away with it. I imagine it's only a matter of time, though, as it appears Pope Francis is on a mission to completely do away with the TLM. The entire papacy of Francis has caused me no end of doubts, and I am sorry to say I have not resolved any of them. I believe the Church doctrines, but I am not sure what to think about the validity of Francis. I am NOT a sede; I didn't even know those folks existed until after I discovered the TLM and the associated factions. I loved Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, but Francis has thrown me for a loop. It's hard to believe he is a valid pope, given some of his words and actions, but I've not been able to go so far as to say I am certain he's INVALID, either. I know a very holy Ukrainian Catholic priest who maintains that Francis himself is a chastisement on the Church, and that does make sense to me, in a way. Personally, if I had to state my own tenuous, personal beliefs about the reality of what we are going through, it would be that (as predicted in many, many Marian apparitions) the Church and the world are in the midst of a chastisement right now--due to rampant sin in the world that has been increasing exponentially for decades, with little sign of repentance on the part of humanity. I'm talking about abortion, all manner of sexual sins (rampant fornication, homosexuality and other deviant behaviors, adultery, child sexual abuse), greed, violence, corrupt clergy (at all levels), you name it. This view is probably non-sensical to you and makes you believe that a God who would allow it is a cruel God, but it's my personal sense of what is happening. My hope is that we are going to come out the other side the better for it, but it will be long and painful. I base this at least partly on what befell Israel every time they strayed and would not listen to the prophets God sent to call them back. After decades of ignoring his calls to repentance, he would allow the Israelites to experience the consequences of their sins. I think that's where we are right now, sadly.
So I have not lost my faith, but I am struggling and sometime I fear that I could, which scares me to death. I'm hanging by a thread some days, and I do NOT envy you, nor do I look down on you for what you have expressed. Given what you've been through, it's remarkable that it took so long for you to reach the breaking point.
I am not holding myself up as any kind of example here, as I have my own struggles. That being said, if you have not already read them, may I recommend the novels of Michael D. O'Brien? I don't think I have ever read another author whose characters endure such profound spiritual, emotional and even physical pain and doubt in the midst of their Catholic faith. They sometimes experience cruelty, abuse (sometimes as the hands of priest and religious), neglect, indifference, abandonment, and struggles with faith. While that probably sounds like an awful thing to read, it found it to be quite the opposite experience. I will admit that while there are places in some of his novels that should have been shortened quite a bit, overall they are some of the best novels I have ever read, with some of the most memorable characters. If you will give them a chance, I think you may find profound solace in them. They are not preachy, and they do not minimize the pain of the human condition, nor the struggle to maintain faith in a world that is at times evil, and in which God seems silent--or even absent altogether.
Thanks for this, Ann. I unfortunately don't have time at the moment to address all of this, but please know that I read every word, and I hear you.
If there's something in particular you'd like me to respond to, please let me know and I'll try to do that tomorrow.
Steve, HI a glaring omission - you're leaving out Christ, who said "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life - no one comes to the Father except through Me." I guess he's not very inclusive for you because he leaves out lots of folks. And "He who is not with Me is against Me." What have you done with HIM? He is not "nice". So have you consigned Him to the cauldron of your anger and hurt too? I too was damaged by wicked clergymen; 3 priests and a bishop. But there was still Christ and His Church. I was a revert Steve. I left the Church in my twenties and embarked upon a search of 25 years and practically all Eastern and Western religions, including the cults. (I started out as an atheist, but it was too religious for me).But Buddha delt with pain by meditating it away, the pantheists claimed that pain and everything else was merely Maya - nothing, and the gurus followed suit. I was later to realize that only ONE of the world's gods dealt with it by jumping into it. The Word. The Alpha and Omega. the Nazarene. After 35 years, I was stuck with Christ. And I wasn't initially happy about it.
I believe now that the Catholic Faith is a love affair with Jesus Christ. I wish that some day you will see it that way. I won't say "I am praying for you" because I know how damned irritating it can be.But I've loved you before, and I love you now. I don't care if I'm irritating you now.. It's just true.
I'm not leaving him out. It's the other way around. I gave him over 40 years of my life, and when my faith evaporated, and I begged for that not to happen, he ignored me. Which, come to think of it, is what he's always done.
Less damaging to conclude that he probably isn't there than that he just doesn't care.
I've undergone several crises of faith too. The desolation is agonizing. I was a. foster baby and child, which made me hypersensitive to rejection. When God seems to go away, I feel that there's no point to anything. Notice that I said "feel". Subjective. Objectively, that's just not true. The saints have gone through periods like ours, where they too felt ignored - and these people have experienced ecstatic states before. But they feel rejected too, maybe for their sins, or Like Therese of the Holy Face, because of atheist philosophers. She endured this trial for most of her life. Her feelings told her that there was no God, so she made constant acts of her will to faith. She never gave up. (Calling this steel-willed woman "Little Flower" is tantamount to calling Hulk Hogan "Tinkerbell")
The problem as I see it is our reliance on feelings to determine reality. You seem to have done your best to validate yours by bringing up all the negative things about the Church and building a cement wall against it. There is another thing involved here (you're going to laugh) and that;s the demonic. Much has been written about it in the last 20 years by psychologists, non-Christians and other scholars and the consensus is that oppresson is real. People who have been examined by shrinks who initially thought they were dealing with mental illness have been forced to admit the presence of the demonic. (See "Demon possession" edited by John Warwick Montgomry.) The point is that demons don't bother with bad people, they have them already. But people who serve Christ, especially by their preaching, writing, and general holiness, are the targets. The saints bear this out. THEY are the enemy which must be stopped. Even possessed people are good people.
I think there is more to your plight than you know. Just keep an open mind before you throw this missive in the trash!
I much prefer empiricism to feelings. I want data that confirms beliefs, not beliefs that exist independently of any data.
But lacking data, facts, sensory perceptions, etc., the religious man is relegated to pure feeling. How many times do you hear it? "I was praying a lot about this, and I just really feel that God is calling me to do X."
We project our interior thoughts onto God and call it his prompting. Some of us do that to elevate what we want to his will; others think God likes to throw curveballs so we embrace the opposite of what we want and call it his will.
But none of us are actually receiving instructions from him.
I've been around people who manifested the demonic. There's something to it, no doubt. What it is, though, and how it fits with any particular variety of theology, and what it proves are all still up in the air. But it sure is convenient to believe that people who have taken a path we think is the wrong path are probably doing it because they're under the influence of demons.
Even Catholic exorcists say that demons only have the freedom to do what God allows. So it comes back to him. Why make a bunch of sensate, corporeal, temporal creatures and then demand that they believe in things that are insensible, incorporeal, and outside of time as we understand it? There's nothing about any of it that makes any sense. Why would a loving God allow demons to tempt his beloved children who are already laboring without any real sense of God and in a world riddled with concupiscence and evil? What father sees his children struggling to figure out a problem and then unleashes rabid dogs on them to see how they handle the increased challenge? (The answer is certainly not "a loving father.")
I simply came to a point in my life where I decided to stand my ground and say, "If I'm expected to believe in this and give up all worldly pleasures and riches and esteem and embrace suffering to have it, it had better damned well make sense to me."
And it doesn't, so I won't. If God wants to change that, he knows how to reach me. It's not that I haven't asked enough. But I've also realized I'm done chasing relationships with anyone who doesn't feel like it's worth putting in their half of the effort. As far as I can tell, he doesn't.
Such a thoughtful reply.
"What if things simply are what they are, and I needn't question whether I am living up to a great and scarcely scrutable demand placed upon me, with ultimate, unfathomable consequences attending?"
There's a kind of freedom in that. A relief. A peace.
"Would I trade Heaven for this handful of delicate moments that are my very own during the time that remains to me?"
Honestly, I think I would trade the loss of a heaven for a world where nobody has to burn forever in hell.
I agree with your three premises as to why Traditionalism in the Catholic Church is a dead end. I would add a fourth: It is the sense of having the only correct view of reality which is knowing, or unwittingly, conveyed by many traditionalists. This is most especially apparent among the numerous online trad apologists. The trads’ constant pronouncements betray an underlying belief that they alone have the true interpretation of history, the fathers, Thomas Aquinas, the Councils, theology, the Catechism, Cannon Law, proper practice and the true way of Catholic daily life.
In the fifty years since my conversion, I have met and come to know, a number of priests, religious and lay scholars, protestant and evangelical ministers. Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Holy Cross Fathers, Sisters of Mercy, many highly educated and extremely well read. Almost none of them approach the questions faith, tradition, interpretation of scripture and the magisterium, with the view that they, and they alone, have it all figured out, or that their interpretation is the only correct one.
This operational certainty in many Trad commentators displays itself to an ‘outsider’ as an almost gnostic (we have the only, secret way) attitude of superiority. I know that most trads would deny this and that they sincerely do not intend such a result. However, the constant harping about the horrors of the Novus Ordo, the heresy of the Pope, the destruction of tradition by Vatican II, the unpiety and non-traditional life styles of all other Catholic and Christians leaves the non-trad, non-insider, with a sense that these folks really see all others as sinful, unfaithful, lesser beings. (It also makes an outsider wonder if all this constant berating of others comes out of some deep sense of insecurity by the trads in their own beliefs.)
I am not against tradition. I love the pre-Vatican II form of the Mass. It is holy, reverent and is an important part of the faith. However, it must stand (and I believe it can and does stand) upon its own worth and beauty, not by denigrating everything and everyone that is not tradition, or traditional.
Having said all that, there is a far deeper issue in your posting. After reading you latest comment I hesitate to state what comes next. You don’t know me, and I only know you through your postings. It is terribly presumptuous of me to think I have any real sense of your life, or that I can give advice. Nevertheless, I am going to proceed. If what I say does not apply just let it pass.
None of this makes any sense, none of this has any relevance, without a deep and abiding relationship with God, with Jesus, who is the incarnation of God with us, without a sense of the manifestation of God as Holy Spirit working in your life. My conversation from the atheism of my late teens was not to the Church but to God. After looking, questioning, seeking, for a number of years I found myself convicted of God’s existence, of God’s presence and of Jesus being God having come among us. I did nothing to receive this except to ask and seek. The rest was a gift.
He is there. You are not abandoned.
For me, the Church, and, all of its messy, complicated and frankly, often irrational, reality came later (and is still being worked out, one day, one issue at a time, with little hope that all my questions and doubts will be resolved before I die.)
I hope you can find this gift. I pray that you will. I pray for you and your family every day.
JT
I can only reply to the first half of your comment. There's nothing I can do about God's unwillingness to have a relationship with me. There are entire books on the problem of Divine Hiddenness and nonresistant nonbelief. It's one of the most compelling cases against theism. I will never stop hunting for the truth, but I can't just let it consume me when there's no way to get definitive answers, either.
So, to your first point, it's interesting, because I was looking through an old post of mine and the similarities are fascinating. You said:
"It is the sense of having the only correct view of reality which is knowing, or unwittingly, conveyed by many traditionalists. This is most especially apparent among the numerous online trad apologists. The trads’ constant pronouncements betray an underlying belief that they alone have the true interpretation of history, the fathers, Thomas Aquinas, the Councils, theology, the Catechism, Cannon Law, proper practice and the true way of Catholic daily life.
[...]
This operational certainty in many Trad commentators displays itself to an ‘outsider’ as an almost gnostic (we have the only, secret way) attitude of superiority. I know that most trads would deny this and that they sincerely do not intend such a result. However, the constant harping about the horrors of the Novus Ordo, the heresy of the Pope, the destruction of tradition by Vatican II, the unpiety and non-traditional life styles of all other Catholic and Christians leaves the non-trad, non-insider, with a sense that these folks really see all others as sinful, unfaithful, lesser beings. (It also makes an outsider wonder if all this constant berating of others comes out of some deep sense of insecurity by the trads in their own beliefs.)"
I wrote, in my old post about heavy-handed faith:
"Marvel’s Loki, at one point in his eponymous show, somewhat humorously proclaims that he is “burdened with glorious purpose!” That’s a decent summary of the feeling in question. “I have the right answers and others don’t, so I have a moral obligation to argue them into submission so they, too, do the right thing.”
This idea really is a burden. Almost a messianic complex. And it really does get ugly if you let it. The love of your fellow man becomes inconsequential compared to your “God-given” mission to go on an “unflinching pursuit of truth.”"
So yes. I think we're onto something here.
I am not a follower of Marvel, so I had not previously heard of Loki's claim of being "burdened with glorious purpose". It is an interesting statement. Going back to my undergrad days, I hazily remember that Milton's depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost did not use the same exact phase but bordered on the underlying idea. It seems to me that many zealots throughout history were operating under the presumption that they
were required to bring their version of reality to everyone else up to and including using deadly force. Of course, pride in thinking that you are the only one with the correct answers, also clouds the minds of these folk.
Keep up the search for truth. I do admire your courage to face your issues. Do not think less of me, but I will continue to pray for you and your family. It is my way.
JT
I never think less of someone who offers sincere prayers. It is a kind and generous gesture, and I always take it that way.
Yes, it hurts to have ones eyes opened. Thank you for thinking this through enough to explain the problem so well.
My experience is the total opposite of yours. I was raised in a super fluffy, social justice-minded parish in Brazil. A lot of the "Catholic guilt", fear of authority and inability to question stuff is just not something I have really experienced at all. The main issue there was really catechesis. I don't think I ever heard about the Church's teaching on sexuality or anything. I mean, I was raised on liberation theology, folks! I went away from the faith big time in my teens, because while my personal experience was good, I encountered the Church's official teaching and didn't know what to make of it. Then came back in college. So while I certainly don't think the fluffiness is where people should stay, and the relationship with God is really what we should seek (and that's found neither in liberation theology nor trad circles), I think so much of our ability or inability to accept the Church's teaching is clouded by our own experiences. If your experience is one of abuse, than some teachings will just look abusive. To someone for whom that's not the case, they will interpret it differently.
Again.
For the record: I will put enmity between you and the Woman.
So the Doctors of the Church say babies go to hell.
But Mary is 10000000000000000000000000000x above the Doctors.
And 10000000000000000000000000000000x above Angels.
Pretty sure what ever she request happens.
Do you think she allows babies to go to Hell?
Hello Steve
I can assure. I get it. The cult part.
My parents were swept up in the Protestant speaking in the tongues of the 70’s. The heretic lectured down to us about sin all the time. He resigned after admitting he was homosexual years later. The priest that married myself and wife was banned from the Church do to child creepiness. When I was in rehab in Colorado I went to Fr. James Jackson’s parish. I wore jeans with a belt, tennis shoes, and a long sleeve t shirt tucked in. In the parish bulletin the next week Fr. James Jackson lectured how t shirts were COMPLETELY absurd. I gave a confession to Fr. James Jackson.
Think you have it bad? I have a wife that threw me under the bus and is currently fucking one of the groomsman for the last 8 years. Try raising your kids with that.
Your theology is shit. Quit wasting time on it.
The infallible Pope with his infallible Council with the infallible Written Documents says that babies go to Hell. They are correct.
Do you think Mary allows this?
“Ummm…....no God.” Is He going to deny Her request?
Read True Devotion to Mary and tell me I’m wrong.
I recommend saying 3 Hail Mary’s a day. I have tried selling my children to take 30 second out of their day for it and they laugh at me…. because they are so smart.
P.S. To put it another way. Do you think the beautiful churches built in Europe for over a 1000 years were built for Jesus, the Pope, and Councils?
Built by folks that did not know how to read?
It was all for Mary.
He is talking to you. But you have built up so much against Him, you can't hear Him. He speaks, but there is so much chaos in your soul, He is drowned out. When I'm in that state, all I can hear is my anger against Him. When I can, with help, return to sanity and peace. I can "hear" Him, and Love Him. This happened to me last year. I projected my inner feelings of anger and rejection onto Christ...but I knew I that was what I was doing, due to years of therapy. So I willed myself to stop (it can be done). Eventually, it stopped.
The sun can't shine on a raging body of water. It can only shine on water that is peaceful.
Sounds very much like you're suggesting I'm more powerful than God.
When my kids are acting up, I know how to get their attention without being cruel. There's no reason the God you believe in couldn't do the same even if he thinks his creations are acting unreasonably. But he doesn't.
From where do you come to that conclusion ? -God is not being being "cruel".I put the onus on you.
Do you have a better word than "cruel" to describe the refusal to answer years of fervent prayers from a faithful son for no more than faith and understanding and the graces of the sacraments?
I begged not to lose my faith, because I saw the effect that it would have. I wasn't just some anonymous person toiling away in secret to grow in the spiritual life. I was the father of many young children with a Catholic audience of millions.
I didn't want to take this path. But like trying to hold a scoop of water in your cupped hands, you can only retain what little you can grasp for a short time before it's all gone. Faith, for me, was like that. And no aid came.
"Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." This is a lie. He did not give it to me.
"What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Thanks for calling us evil, by the way, but stones and scorpions and serpents are all we get.
Your empiricism is smothered by the fumes from your rage and grief.
My rage and grief are over a stolen life, given to an undeserving cause. Over a lifetime of anxiety and fear that crippled me emotionally and affected the people closest to me.
But if God is real, he could heal that. He has chosen not to show up, and I don't owe it to anyone to pretend that a lack of evidence that he cares should be enough for me.