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Maybe better suited for the culture war thread, but I think I'm leaving the Catholic Church. I converted in 2022 for a number of reasons. I had already felt drawn to Catholic literature/aesthetics for almost as long as I could remember (I loved Silence and A Canticle for Leibowitz), was incredibly dissastisfied with the secular attitude towards spirituality and morality, and was drawn to the simplicity of Jesus' simplification of the Jewish Law: Love thy neighbor as thyself, and Love God. I choose the Catholic Church over other denominations because it was not woke, open to revising stances on scripture (evolution), and concerned more with works over just belief.
It's been three years since I went through RCIA and converted, and a combination of contradictions between the church and my other beliefs about the world has become difficult to resolve. This center around two big areas. The first revolves around veganism/animal rights/environmentalism. Although this certainly wasn't always the case historically within the church (St. Francis and the Benedictines come to mind), there seems to be this attitude at least in my parish that animals and nature were only created for us to do with as we please. This is backed up by an interpretation of Genesis that suggests that God created man to rule over animals and nature. Not only do I think this is wrong ethically, we know many animals have conscious experiences and shouldn't be treated "however we want" (not to say that they should be treated like humans necessarily), but it also seems to have led to disaster in relationship to our environment. Even if you don't believe Climate Change is a serious issue, we have replaced most of the vertebrate biomass on land with us and our (maltreated) farm animals. Certainly there are many in the Church who would see this as wrong (the Pope included), but it doesn't seem to be so in parishes I've been to, and to justify it scripturally it seems like you have to jump through a bunch of hoops.
The second issue has to do with the relationship between divine revelation, philosophy, and science. It's not the church hasn't historically changed its position on things (slavery, evolution, not doing everything in Latin), it's that any change has to conform to certain core dogma and be based in an interpretation of scripture. But the more I read of philosophy, the more I've started to believe that certain tenets of catholic theology don't agree with objective reality and are poorly argued for by the "greats" (Augustine, Aquinas). The problem is not necessarily that these tenets are wrong: more so that they can't be interrogated in a reasonable philosophical manner because divine revelation is unquestionable.
The final unrelated reason that I'm leaving is the people. When I first joined the parish, we had a much more vibrant young adult community that actually did stuff together, had interests beyond theology, and generally was much more concerned with works than beliefs. Through a combination of people moving away and/or leaving the church, it seems the only people really left are trad-caths who I find boring, close-minded, and fail to see the core of what Jesus was trying to say. The Dominicans who run the parish, while being excellent administrators, and kind people, aren't much better when it comes to intellectual openness.
Anyway, I'm open to coming back to the church when/if I move away from the current parish I'm in to more Jesuit-friendly pastures. But without massive reform, both philosophically and practically (being much more concerned with environmentalism and non-human life on this planet), I think this era of my life is over. I'm not sure where to go next spiritually, but hopefully that will come with time.
I don't know if this is because you're a convert, but it seems like your problems are not with the Catholic Faith, it's with the people in the pews next to you. Ultimately, I only really need from the Church access to the Sacraments. 99% of my spiritual development has happened at home. How often do you go to Confession and receive Communion in a state of Grace?
I recommend reading Fire Within to see what the end result of spiritual progress would look like. Having an idea of the goal in mind can help a lot. If you already have a goal, what is it? From what you wrote, it seems like your biggest goal of becoming Catholic was to flee an Atheistic Identity while still holding Atheistic Suppositions about the world.
There have been times and parishes where I don't interact with anyone at all, pray silently instead of paying attention to the homily, receive the sacraments, and walk away. It's wonderful when the Church can also provide social opportunities, but it's not often that this happens.
Augustine and Aquinas are not infallible and their philosophy isn't infallible. The Church has not committed herself to their philosophy, even in cases where she uses the phrase "Transubstantiation" there is no commitment to the Accidents/Substance distinction of Aquinas.
If you really need a change of scenery (and a church that doesn't treat Aquinas like Scripture) see if there are any Eastern Catholic churches near you. A benefit of finding an Eastern Catholic Church over converting to Orthodoxy is that Orthodoxy will make you go through initiation again, while you'll be able to just go to an Eastern Catholic Church without a fuss. But I would rather you try Orthodoxy than disappear.
Before I stopped going to mass completely (~2 months ago), I would go to confession every couple weeks and not usually receive Communion unless I did so (I too am a miserable sinner that tells stupid lies and masturbates).
My goal in converting to Catholicism was to try and connect with the divine that I know is out there in the world. I didn't write this in my post but I had a mystical experience at the church of the holy sepulcher in 2019 that convinced me that something around Jerusalem/Jesus/Christianity was special and true. I've very rarely felt this at mass, but this is perhaps from trying too hard to connect with other parishioners/the institution rather than what I came there for (God).
This is all true and helpful and has inspired me to make another effort to find Christ. I'm going to return to mass and read the book that you suggested and see if it helps me overcome my philosophical doubts and recenter myself on the sacraments and a connection with God.
Did confession lead you to self reflect or even change behavior? And what is the situation like? Is it like in the (Italian mafia) movies? Does the priest ask questions or explore an issue or just led you talk? Do you feel strange going in or going out of the confession box?
I don't think it really did unfortunately. I still masturbate and lie despite not wanting to and go to confession. The priest will say things but you kind of lead the conversation.
It always feels weird good in, but I always felt good after confession.
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Thank you for hearing me out, I was worried I came across as too harsh, but it looks like I'm only medium harshness comparatively.
If you ever want to talk with someone about your doubts, philosophy, the Bible, etc, feel free to DM me. I also highly recommend Jimmy Akin for a rational (though he was doing it before the Rationalists, he's just likely autistic) explanation of Catholic teaching. And I have Joe Heshmeyer and Dr. Brant Pitre to thank for making the Bible seem coherent and reasonable. All three are all over Youtube and have books out.
One of the biggest difficulties smart people run into with Catholicism is that a lot of what you find in books and online is classified as "acceptable theological opinion." It's a small "t" tradition and hasn't been made dogma. Even a Nihil Obistat on a book doesn't mean that everything in it is 100% dogmatically true, it simply means "nothing (currently) obstructs," there's no outright heresy in it. That doesn't stop people from acting like their particular theological hobby horse is 100% set in stone and disagreeing with it is tantamount to leaving the Catholic faith.
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