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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’m confused. Do you believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ or not?
Shouldn’t it all follow from there? It appears it doesn’t in your case, and this reads like you’re upset your new social club became lame.
Were you lying about your beliefs to these other Catholics? You’re open to rejoining the church when the correct people once again associate themselves with your parish?
Does being near more Jesuit-friendly believers suddenly make it once again true that Jesus died on the cross and rose again?
This is an epistemic mess, and you make me wonder how many of you are on the pew next to me, agitating for my church to update its interpretation of holy scripture.
Yes I do. But it doesn't all follow from there unfortunately because the church is built on much more than just Jesus' passion, resurrection, and death. It's largely built on Pauline interpretations of the Gospels, and the entirety of the Old Testament which is largely contradictory to the New Testament. It's not as simple as just "repent and believe the gospel" because so many things have been grafted on top of that are required to be part of the church.
I think you're reading me extremely uncharitably here (as the other catholics that I complain about do too), and actually makes me want to leave more than I already do (which is perhaps what you would want anyway, which I have some sympathy with). Things empirically do not just follow from reading the scriptures (or else why would there be so many denominations of Christianity). I believe in Papal Authority and church hierarchy which is one of the reasons why I am catholic. The Jesuits' have a much more open interpretation to theological problems where I struggle with the Dominican positions.
I agree I was too harsh. In my defense it wasn’t clear whether you were quibbling with your local expression of Catholicism or if you had simply thrown out the whole faith because your friends moved away. You say yourself you converted for the books and incense and are leaving because of your own ideas of animal welfare or other unarticulated abstract philosophical objections.
I’m not even Catholic myself. But my eyebrows do jump up when I read “I believe in Papal authority and hierarchy but don’t think I’ll do what they say or follow to them to their conclusions.” Also isn’t weekly Mass, like, super required?
Yeah, if they believe in papal authority, it would follow that they have to believe and do all the rest.
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