As my screen-name suggests, I am a traditional Catholic. I hold to every doctrine and dogma taught by the the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and I recognize His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI as the Vicar of Christ. I prefer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the traditional Latin Mass), though on occasion I will attend the Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo Missae) or an Eastern Rite Divine Liturgy.
I am a convert from atheism. My father is ethnically Jewish, as was my mother’s father. My parents are agnostics. The only other religious person in my family is my great-great uncle, who is an Orthodox Jew.
If there is anything that you have ever wanted to ask a traditional Catholic, please ask away.
I’m an ex-Catholic so I’m basing my question on my personal experience.
Do you complete the full penance after Confession each and every time? Do you feel absolved of sin after penance? Do you tell the priest all of your sins?
That’s pretty interesting. Why did you convert to Catholicism from atheism? What brought about the desire to do so?
I remember reading about the great sculptor Frederick Hart who was driven to convert to Catholicism after doing work on the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. It could be said that he found God through his art, and wanted to be part of the religion which had inspired such spectacular works of sculpture and architecture.
I certainly don’t wish to take focus away from the OP, but I am a practicing Catholic in union with the Holy See myself (although I have no heartburn with the Novus Ordo Missae), and this question struck me as perhaps arising from some confusion that I could help settle.
For a practicing Catholic, there’s no particular reason for sex to be solely in the missionary position.
Nor is there any reason for sex to be had solely with the intention to procreate. Indeed, you can and should have sex as an expression of the unity of your marriage, even if your intention is most certainly NOT to procreate.
You must always be open to the possibility of procreation, which essentially means that you may not use artificial barriers to conception. But I trust you see the wide gulf between that and “Have sex only with the intent to procreate.”
And having dived into the thread, I’ll take a stab at this one, again with the note that I certainly don’t wish to foreclose the OP from his answer.
The Church’s position derives from their view of what the ordained priesthood is. Ordination, Holy Orders, is a sacrament, the conferring of which guarantees that it really is Christ who acts in the conferring of other sacraments through the Holy Spirit for the Church. The mission entrusted by God to his Son on Earth was given first to the apostles, via the Holy Spirit, and through them to their successors. They receive the Spirit of Jesus; they can act in his name and in his person. The ordained priest is the bond that connects the action of administering the sacraments to what the original apostles did, and connects these acts and deeds to the words and actions of Christ, the ultimate source of the sacraments and the grace that flows from them.
Because the original apostles were all, without exception, men, the Church takes the position that this is the requirement for receipt of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Critics of this position argue that the original apostles were all men not because of an intent to forever limit the reception of Holy Orders to men, but only a reflection of the attitudes of the times.
That may well be true. But the best judgement of the Church leadership today is that it isn’t so; that the selection of men only was a deliberate act intended to indicate that men alone may receive this sacrament. And while you may be a Catholic in good standing and disagree with the accuracy of this conclusion, you may not be a Catholic in good standing and disagree that the Pontiff has the authority to make it.
To what extent is there salvation for those outside actual membership of the Church? To what extent are Protestant & Orthodox churches part of the Church?
This is the part I never understood. I can see why people can accept Jesus is the son of God and revere what he said, but why trust what the clearly non-God disciples wrote.? Anyone can claim to hear the voice of God. Why do they have any more authority than Warren Jeffers?
The apostles were all men because the church has decided to call only these 12 men (and 1 boy) apostles. The women who were with Jesus constantly during that time, like Mary Magdalen, for example, are not called apostles. Why not? Because they were women.
I always complete my penance. Sometimes I feel absolved, and sometimes I do not. I tell the priest all the sins that have committed that I can remember.