Independent Catholics...A summary (Main Forum)

by Sue, Sydney, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 21:38 (345 days ago) @ Sue

Dear Friends,

Thank you everyone for your thoughtful responses. So much good, positive stuff there.  I've tried to distil and condense the points you have made.  Let me know if you think I have left out anything important, or think of something else that should have been added.

Being an independent Catholic means:

- having gone through the sacraments of initiation

- having Catholicism as one's religious mother-tongue

- being part of a community, a community of saints both past and present, from which one cannot be excluded, or enslaved, by any priest or bishop.

- being part of a community that respects individual conscience as the voice of the spirit and seeks to understand the teachings of Jesus as a way of life, rather than a set of beliefs and rules

- moving beyond Catholicism as a belief system, a tribal system, or as a security blanket, and seeing it more as a way to a fulfilling life

- discarding many traditional Catholic beliefs and dogmas, and rethinking others, including fundamental beliefs about God and Jesus.  A search for truth.

- being able to openly share our thoughts, hopes, disappointments and discuss the big questions about the meaning of life

- recognizing that pain and suffering are a part of life and seeking wisdom and consolation in our sacred books, prayer practices and liturgy, and sometimes beyond those, in other traditions

- being pilgrims in the company of other pilgrims, seeking new ways of being community as we walk together

- having a sense that the Church has left us, rather than that we have left the Church.

I'd like to end with Jane's post which I think summed it all up pretty well.

"Whatever Catholica is seeking to do, the one thing I admire about it is that it gives people a chance to reflect and converse about their faith lives, the institutional Church and what's going in the world. It's beyond individual isolation and a much much better community environment than what is offered by the institutional church. Its neither about being socially isoalted or communally overwhelmed. In a nutshell, it puts the catholic back into the Catholic."

Sue