Why I became a Catholic in spite of everything I heard

[rug]

Whatever the Protestants' arguments against becoming a Catholic, the unique and exemplary sinfulness of Catholics was not one



David Mills
December 30, 2016

I had told the story to illustrate some thoughts about mercy, but it was also a story that helped me into the Catholic Church. It’s the story of a small old-fashioned Baptist-y church I got to know as a secular-minded teenager, because friends brought me. (I told it here on Aleteia.)

It was the New England country church out of a fifties movie. A beautiful young woman started coming to the youth group, and because she had been abused by her father, some church members quickly drove her out. No one resisted very hard. People said, “She’s no better than she should be.” They worried that she might be promiscuous and might seduce the boys.

I don’t remember hearing a merciful word said about her or to her. Out she went. It was a wicked thing to do.

Catholics Acting Badly

Soon after I became a serious Christian, Protestant friends must have sensed in me a dangerous Catholic leaning I didn’t know I had. Out of the blue, they would tell me stories of Catholics acting badly. Even people I barely knew would do this. This went on for years, and some kept telling me the stories after my family and I had entered the Church.

http://aleteia.org/2016/12/30/why-i-became-a-catholic-in-spite-of-everything-i-heard/

Mark 2:

13 Once again he went out along the sea. All the crowd came to him and he taught them.
14 As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
15 While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him.
16 Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors and said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 Jesus heard this and said to them (that), “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. Well, I am on the verge of leaving the Catholic Church.

It's difficult. I have invested a lot of my heart and my soul in the Catholic Church over the years. I have seen love in many of my fellow Catholics, love that has sustained me over the years, love that I have needed to keep me going.

I have tried to convince myself that such evils as the institutional sexism and homophobia will be overturned. But the election of Trump with the support of so much of the hierarchy and laity, forces me to take a much harder look at the Church. I see that it is not living up to the ideals it preaches, and this is not likely to change. It makes me ill. Writing this literally makes me nauseous, I am actually glad I am doing so on an empty stomach.

I loved the Church. It is breaking my heart to leave. There will be some who say that my leaving is a failure on my part. But it's not. I have come to the realization that the beautiful lady I love can be a whore. I hate saying that, but an institution that supports Trump, that rejects its LGBT sons and daughters, that relegates women to inferior status and pretends it doesn't, that covers up the sexual abuse of children has failed me. For the good of my own soul, I have to get out.

[rug]

2. There is nothing unique about the present state of the Church.

Trump is a pimple in the pantheon of brutes. The Church is not expelling whole peoples as it did five centuries ago.

I wouldn't leave the Church because of trump. I wouldn't change my tie because of trump.

You know why you stayed. If you stayed despite all that people in the Church have done over centuries, there is nothing worse it's doing now. You know the litany of abuses is a small part of the Church. The good it's done, and the human needs it fills are still there.

Leaving is not always the hardest path. More often staying, integrity intact, and speaking your mind and doing what your integrity compels, is often harder. Phil left. Dan stayed. Both were good men, inside or outside the Church.

Happy New Year.

[shrike]

3. The church itself isn't supporting Trump

I am confident Pope Francis does not.

Fifty two percent of Catholics, mostly white, supported Trump whlle forty-five percent didn't.

I think we get caught up so much in the American church we forget there's a whole world out there -- and some news of it is very encouraging, frankly.

[shrike]

4. "Francis is one of us."

"Francis is one of us. He has made liberation theology the common property of the church and he has, moreover, extended it," Boff said. "Whosoever speaks of the poor nowadays must also speak of our planet Earth, which is being plundered and desecrated. To hear the cry of the poor means to hear the cries of animals, trees and the whole of tortured creation and Pope Francis says we must hear the cry of both the poor and of creation. That is what is principally new in Laudato Si'."

According to Boff, Francis asked the theologian to send material for the pope to use in the environmental encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home." Francis called and thanked Boff the day before the encyclical was published in May 2015.

Boff admitted that Francis is experiencing fierce opposition from within his own ranks, "particularly from the USA."

U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, along with German Cardinal Joachim Meisner, has "once again" written to the pope, said Boff, who called Burke the "Donald Trump of the Catholic church." But unlike Trump, Boff said, Burke has now been "sidelined" in the Roman Curia.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/brazil-may-soon-have-married-priests-says-leonardo-boff