Giving up on the Church (Main Forum)

Last Sunday's Gospel:

Gospel Mark 6:1-6

A prophet is despised only in his own country

"Jesus went to his home town and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, 'Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us?' And they would not accept him. And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house'; and he could work no miracle there, though he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith."

Just wondering!

Peter

Hi CathyT

I enjoyed your post and very much agree with your sentiments.

Much of the criticism that abounds on Catholica is directed at the RCC administration and its preoccupation with power and money. It's action (or inaction) in regard to sex abuse is a scandal that must be put right through humility, honesty and apology. It is a barrier to hope (ref Enda's earlier post).

Real Catholicism is based on Jesus Christ, Christian principles and honest traditions - all of which are found in the Scriptures.

What dresses up as catholicism is based on an aloof and apparently ego-centric clerical minority in a far-away land, power structures to keep people in line, and a hankering for medieval practices where their word was law - all of which are codified in Church Law with no reference to Jesus' teachings.

Unfortunately, today these two views of "catholic" appear to be mutually exclusive rather than complementary.

Thank God for the scriptures and those who are gifted enough to help us learn from them.

Thank God for the gift of Eucharist - the sacrament that helps us to unite through time and space with God, those around us and those who have gone before us in honesty.

Thank God for the opportunity to vent our frustrations through vehicles like Catholica. It is a good thing to be able to criticise the excesses and yet maintain the core beliefs that let me say "I am proud to be a Christian Catholic".

The ship may be sitting low in the water ... but I can see the lifeboats and previous generations of Catholic teachers and mentors have taught me how to swim.

Render unto Rome what is Rome's. Render unto God what is God's. Being Catholic in 2012 means knowing the difference.

... well ... that's my opinion anyway.

cheers
BobL

Cathy, the good that I still find in Catholicism is the hard work being done by priests and other religious today.

These people are quietly going about God's work and not taking too much notice of Rome, just like the rest of us, except that many of them have to keep looking over their shoulders for the Temple Police element.

I am amazed at the new spiritualities coming forth in Christian people, not just Catholic, and these are enriching my personal faith.

So, despite invitations from my local Lutheran parish to join them, I prefer to stay and stir Catholics.

Sadly. a great deal of Church history reflects very badly on our leaders, and some horrible things have been done to good people supposedly in the name of the one true and holy church. Too many of our buildings have grown out of the blood, sweat and tears of our people who made heroic sacrifices to build churches, but were not allowed to build church. Too many good people have been turned away and told they were not worthy to come to share in the Eucharist because circumstances in their lives were not in line with the Church's teaching. Far too many children have been harmed, doubly so, by those in whom we trusted.

My dream is to see the Roman Catholic Church disappear and be replaced by the catholic - universal and all-embracing - church dedicated to learning and following the teachings of Jesus, recognizing and accepting that all are God's people and only He has the right to cast anyone aside, regardless of their conduct.

J A Holznagel

Cathy,

If Catholica is no longer a place for Catholics, I think I'll go elsewhere. Maybe Muslimica. Or Evangelica. There is nothing so tedious as like minded people patting each other on the back. That's the way I feel about Richard Dawkins blog and other similar blogs. And that is one of the dangers of all this "social networking".

There was a very good article by Hector Abad Faciolince in Colombia's El Espectador in July last year, called "Navel Gazing". It's worth repeating.

I’m a Twitter novice but I have started to notice something similar there. People tend to follow and be followed only by those who are “like you”. Twitter itself suggests to you that you look for those “like you”: by profession, by ideology, by the type of followers....
Instead of being open to the world with different stimulants, the personalized network can turn us into egocentrics that fool ourselves by navel gazing. Because not only are our consumption patterns personalized, but so are our ideological predilections and thinking patterns.
It is very serious that we might be living on pure feedback for our own egos, in a bubble of mutual admiration. It is in fact a blessing to have enemies, people who disagree with us ideologically. It is one’s antagonists who will tell you with complete brutality when you are having yourself on, and in this way our enemies are our best involuntary allies. They are the ones who give us the best idea of our distortions and defects.
If we limit ourselves to reading and following those who think like us and to repeating (through the web’s algorithms) our ideological patterns of reading, there will be a serious impoverishment in our capacity as citizens to think and criticize.

So, for that reason alone, I hope that Catholics don't abandon Catholica. And the other good thing about Catholica, which has been admired by a number of South American authors whose articles I have posted here, is there is very little of the aggression, insults and ad hominem argument that often passes as comment on newspaper columns on other publications. There can be vigorous discussion here, of course, and strong differences of opinion. And that is the way it should be.

Cathy, thank you for pinpointing once again this forum’s preoccupation with the negative aspects of the Catholic bureaucracy.
There is so much in Catholic communities that is very positive.
However the unfortunate facts are that in media, even this forum, anything to do with ordinary people doing wonderfully good things, is just boring.
Only the extraordinary and the abnormal draw our attention and thus get sensationalised.
You say: “Surely there is much that is good that we could also focus on, at least occasionally?”
I know there is!
Perhaps much of the good that is being done is by people who are far too busy to even read the posts to this forum. Perhaps!

You say: “But for me it is vitally important to feel connected with a world-wide movement that directly connects me with millions of other people, not just across space but also across time. Similarly, I strongly believe that change in the Church needs to grow out of - not discard - our rich heritage that has developed over the centuries."
I agree!
However this “growing out of our rich heritage...” is a process that is being frustrated by the current bureaucracy.
It is a bit of a vicious circle.
It means that we struggle within our own parishes and small groups to develop that growth in spite of the bureaucracy!

You say: “I see the Church as being all of us, not just the hierarchy.”
I agree!
And the wonderful contributions of the people who make up the “all of us” just do not get into the headlines.
Those stories are just plain good, lacking any kind of the abnormal or the sensational and therefore just boring!
Isn’t it sad?

You say:..... “they are inspired by their faith to live this way, and so in that sense they are the Catholic Church in action! I am proud to feel a sense of identity with them.”
I agree!
And there are also many others who do not profess to be Catholic, who also lead inspirational lives.
They have those same great values that the Gospels dwell on.

You say: “It'd just be good if those of us who still identify as Catholics can just sometimes find a more positive view of Catholicism here!”
I agree!
This issue has been raised a number of times over the last few years in this forum.
Wouldn’t it be a reasonable thing to ask that contributors share a positive and constructive story for every negative one that they raise? ......Or, let us be generous, for every 2 or 3 negative contributions they make??

Cathy, thank you again for your contributions to this forum.
Your points of view are so important, because without them this forum would diminish and sink into a quagmire of negativity rather than a celebration of all the good that is going on everywhere!

Cathy, sorry I've been too caught up with a series of technical problems, as well as my own incompetencies, to spend much time on the forum in the last day or so. I've only just read your post. I have already mentioned that I went back and edited the video to indicate that the target audience for Catholica is not simply those who have left but also those who are still "hanging in" (and perhaps thinking about joining the rest who have already left). This is "the bottom line": in the course of about a century the participation rates of adult baptised in the educated, affluent, socially sophisticated, Western world have almost reversed. At the end of the First World War about 80% of the baptized went on to participate regularly in their adult lives. Today the figure is about 86% who DO NOT PARTICIPATE. You may feel quite comfortable with Holy Mother Church but self-evidently from those figures a heck of a lot of people in the world do not feel the same as yourself. I simply think it is a fascinating question as to why this has occurred. Never before in the entire two thousand year history of this institution has there been a decline that comes anywhere remotely close to this. If it continues on at the rate it has been going very soon Pope Benedict will truly have his "smaller, purer Church". Are you not concerned about this? Are you not intrigued as to why so many have given up? I don't know if you have children and whether they are participating but I do, and so does Amanda, and we literally did do all the things the Pope and the Bishops told us to do and we look at our adult children today and we do ask the question "why didn't the 'magic formula' work?"

Some, like Benedict, blame it all on secularism, relativism, consumerism. I don't know if he's one of the ones who blames the Devil but I know some in high places in the Vatican put the blame on "Old Nick". Myself, I think Benedict is partially correct. I do think many have vamoosed because they have become distracted by affluence, consumerism and a lot of other things in modern culture. For some of them I have little doubt it just became too much of a mental strain "to think it all through". But a lot of them haven't. They are evidently still interested in the big spiritual questions but they simply no longer find nourishment within the institution. That is the target audience we are seeking to attract to our endeavour and to serve. Is that some "sin"?

How do you define a "Catholic" today?

I sense that one of the things that comes through in your post (and probably in mine) is the question of how you define a "Catholic". I honestly no longer believe it is about believing in the Virgin Birth and a whole lot of stuff. As I've written I don't even believe it is about "creeds" and "beliefs" anymore in the sense of "believing in creeds or dogma". Neither do I believe it is some game of whipping ourselves up into some emotional frenzy over certain styles in language, ritual, music and liturgy. Some honestly do seem to believe, as others similarly wrap themselves up in dogma and rules, that it is the correct performance of liturgy that brings us (or them) salvation.

I did believe a lot of that once. After long reflection though I don't believe Jesus was essentially about rules, and dogma, liturgy or creeds. His game, or objective, it seems to me was about showing and teaching people how to behave and think half intelligently — intellectually intelligently, emotionally intelligently and also intelligently in the actions we take in life as a result of our thinking, and our emotional drives and anxieties. "Being Catholic" to me is this long — "life-long" — endeavour of learning how to behave (think/act and feel) intelligently. Catholicism is NOT some set of rules we all learn at school and then the rest of our lives is some kindergarten level game of obeying all the rules. It is a life-long and difficult endeavour of learning how to make intelligent decisions in the nitty-gritty of everyday life. All of us constantly make stupid decisions. Often we can only see them in hindsight. Even with all the best application of our minds and emotions we make decisions but only later learn they were not the best decisions we could have made. To me "being Catholic" in a sense could be described as a "game" of learning from our mistakes — or, to use churchy language, learning from our sins. That is a very different "game" to running around trying to pretend how holy you are and how you never make mistakes and wrong choices in your life.

Some people seem to think "being Catholic" is some game of running around trying to constantly prove how holy and sinless you are. The person who never sins, or thinks they never sins, doesn't have much scope to learn from their mistakes, their errors of judgment, or their "sins", do they?

Even when I was still employed within the institutional structure I urged on a number of leaders to try and set up an endeavour like Catholica eventually turned out to be which would be an outreach to this now vast population that has now deserted the pews — or at least the thinking and reflective sectors within that population. In the end, as I slowly discovered, there was no place for Catholica within the institution ranks. You simply cannot make any criticisms whatsoever from within the ecclesial ranks if you want to keep your job. You've either got to wait until you retire or you have to get out. They even persecute bishops today who speak out in the most mild of manners as we've seen in the case of +Bill Morris. Both my wife and myself have now been "shown the door" by institutional hierarchs on a number of significant occasions that placed our liverlihoods at risk. After a while "the message does sink in". If some of them were "the last lifesaver on a beach" and I was drowning out in the ocean I simply would not put my hand up to be saved by some of them as I literaly would fear that they would set out to drown me as much as save me. It is not a pleasant lesson to learn in life. While I never experienced sexual abuse from anybody in the church, these experiences have given me a deep sense of empathy for what the victims of clerical abuse have gone through.

If anyone believes the the dwindling core of "true believers" still participating are the only one's who can read "the mind of God" and are the one's who are going to fulfil Christ's last great command to go out and "bring the 'Good News' to ALL nations or ALL people" well good luck to them I say. On the evidence of the last century I am simply not convinced they are either "on the right track" or they have the proverbial snowflake's chance in Hades of fulfilling that command of Jesus. I think the question we all have to ask is the very simple one: "what are you going to do about it?"

I do continue to believe in the insights of Jesus Christ. Frankly I continue to believe he was the most insightful person who ever lived — or rather this mythological figure who, down through two centuries, has been "draped in the wisdom of the ages" is the most insightful figure who ever lived. I do believe he was indeed "the Son of God" such is the level of wisdom contained in that "package" we label as "Jesus the Christ". I explained to my own children when they were about 18 and about to emerge into the adult world that while I found many things to disbelieve about the Church I had not yet found anything to disbelieve about the wisdom of Christ. When I find something truly "disbelievable" about Jesus Christ that will be the time when I give up on Catholicism or Christianity and see if any of the other seven or so great religious paradigms in the world make better sense. I haven't found anything to disbelieve about Jesus yet — except things like if he was truly concieved without sexual intercourse, or whether he truly did walk through walls and walk on water but all of those things are not "the essential Jesus". They are not the things we learn from Jesus that help us, in the words of Gregory of Nyssa, to be like God — to think and act intelligently as if we had the wisdom and insight of this "mystery" we try to condense into the word "God"!

Welcome to an exciting different way of looking at faith and spirituality!

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Wish there was a "LIKE" button on Catholica.

Cathy thanks for the wonderful balance you bring to Catholica.

Maitland

Another couple, from the Uniting Church, got to the point where they couldn't stand the drivel being talked from the pulpit, so they have their own communion service on Thursday nights with friends . . . and they tell me it's a much more positive experience.

Thanks for your in depth reply Robert. I too have got together with other Christians to gather in small groups - it is far better than leaving all together and not having a community, how ever small, of people to join together in a meaningful liturgy.

As I said in a previous post, if this makes me a 'protestant' then so be it.

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

As I said in a previous post, if this makes me a 'protestant' then so be it.

If giving up on the Church really means giving up on the Vatican then maybe you are truly blessed. . . . The Christlike church will live on in various ways but the prognosis for the Vatican is very very cloudy.

To Helen and Cazza,
I have a sense that the labels we apply to ourselves. . . Catholic, Anglican, Hindu etc etc . . . for the thinking spiritual person (or adult believer, if you prefer) are labels we took on as a young person. They were, in fact, second-hand because they were given to us by significant others such as parents, schooling or clergy or all of the above.

The mark of maturity is that, later on in life, a person thinks through this early stuff, and decides that some of it matches the world-view they have, and some of it does not . . . and this world-view will change as time marches on. In other words, Creeds and Magisteriums are nothing more than defining starting points . . . each person needs to examine these for themselves.

An extreme example might be the Bodily Assumption of Mary at the end of her life . . . As most of us (all of us?) have not had experience of this happening to anyone we know, we learn (speaking for myself only) to jettison this as a literal part of our worldview. It is a nice pious belief, but people don't get assumed . . . well . . . not in my limited experience . . . although it is a bit like the new-age rapture where the elect would all disappear on the same day zapped up into spaceships . . . "Beam me up Scotty" on a mass scale. I have heard about that one a lot, but it does not seem to have happened yet!

That is a single example, but I think that there are many other parts of "the faith" that each individual should have a look at for themselves . . . ie faith needs to be personalised, and made first-hand.

The Ratzinger type clergy will sneer at what I have just said, and dispense yet another "label". . . that of "Cafeteria Catholic" . . . I see it as a mark of immaturity to be otherwise . . . parts of it you will accept . . . parts you won't. If you are not a "Cafeteria Catholic" then you are just wearing the blinkers the Good Ole Boys tell you to . . . unless that you make a personal choice to do so.

And one of the other joys of living in this time is that via the internet, we have easy access to the holy books of other religions . . . the Bhaghavad Gita is worth some consideration. I think Peter Dresser said as much in those wonderful articles he wrote for Catholica. Reading this material will change your perspective.

I think that we are all called to go beyond the Vatican, and to reinvent Christianity. I think that our founder (Jesus) never intended it to be a straight-jacket controlled by blokes. The famous quote from William Blake comes to mind . . . and having studied Blake a little,and knowing he is a mystic, he is talking about both matters carnal AND mental . . .

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

No-one . . . No-one can bind you unless you give them the power.

Now , back to labels . . . Helen, you said, ". . . if that makes me a 'protestant'then so be it." Most of us who read and write to Catholica would be catholics by habit and culture. But what I have felt strongly in my own life is a call to go beyond this starting point . . . what do you do with a worn-out suit of clothes? Are we protestant-catholics . . . catholic-protestants . . . or (here's a new one) "pan Christians"'or what?

I began life as a very sin and guilt-drenched catholic . . . only "the church" could "save" me. My understanding has gone well beyond that.

It is importnt to say that I don't know if what I think is "right" and it does not matter to me whether it is or isn't "right" . . . it just needs to work for me.

I say this because, being a puny human being in the vast scheme of things (the Universe/Multiverse?), I don't think that any human being can arrive at ultimate truth. We can only finish up with what works for us.

We are the Church ... the People of God .... if you give up anything then give up the hierachy and not justfor Lent!

Check this out, its a start...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-barrett/a-slum-priests-perspective-on-the-effing-cat...

Hi Sue, This is a link to an interview done by Brian with me a few years ago giving some details of my work in the church.

http://www.catholica.com.au/specials/interviews/005_int_220508.php

You can also contact me privately on my web site.

http://users.tpg.com.au/barrymor/

or Email me at barrymor@tpg.com.au

I hope this helps.

BarryS

I live for those that love me
For those that know I am true
For the heaven that smiles above me
& awaits my coming too
For the cause that needs assistance
For the wrong that needs resistance
For the future in the distance
& the good that I can do.

ABC Compass tonight.

Bishop Undercover - Part 1

Church of Ireland Bishop Trevor Williams goes undercover to find out what the people in his dwindling patch want from their church

Barry that only applies for people who have chosen the "order" link at the top of the forum. The default — which is how most people see the index page — is the strings appear in the date order of the original post in a string (unless I pin a string to the top of the index page). People are free to choose to see the strings in the order of the last contribution to a string by clicking that little "Order" link that can be found at the top of the index page.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]