Catholics ...again..

In My Humble Opinion
21

Update.

Well I met with him last night, It was not as bad as I thought it would be. He did ask that I read about the Catholic religion to get a better understanding of the religion.
He had seemed to say that Catholicism is the right religion, the religion that Jesus created. I bit my tounge.

Would it have been better for him if I were a non practicing catholic, rather than a fairly active Methodist?

jjimm, That is what I expected to hear, I wish I had heard the same.

My fiancee is now really questioning her religion.
That is honestly the last thing I want… I don’t want her parents thinking that I took her away from her church. Her family is very religious, but they do realize a few faults of the Catholic church, but would still be very upset if their daughter started talking about leaving.

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I was the one doing it. The guy is a legitimate, if unorthodox, priest but his order is not part of the local diocese. His order is called Les Chevaliers de Notre Dame de Sion or something . But, I’ll tell you, if he was a crook and my mother in law fell for it, I would have paid much more if need be. My dad, the minister, was on hand to make sure it was legal. I don’t think there is a parish priest out there who wouldn’t have at least discussed the issue of raising the children Catholic and that was the main issue I found offensive - really, really offensive. I told this priest that and he was cool with it. One of the things he does is perform marriages that diocese priests won’t and mine would have been just that.

BTW, the reason I find it offensive is that I know most ministers don’t put people through the procedures my husband’s parish wanted to put me through. Plus, I wanted to get married at the restaurant, not in a church.

23

Very much not so. The Church has no problem with the children of parents not married in the Church being raised as Catholics.

I am the godparent of a child whose parents were married in a civil ceremony (they could not be married in the Church because both were divorced). The mother of the child is an active and observant Catholic (who wishes she could work out the divorce thing). The father of the child is Protestant in name, utterly non-religious in fact, but agreed that his son would be raised Catholic.

The child was baptized and confirmed, with no objection from the Church. I participated in the child’s First Communion preparation, and was his sponsor at his Confirmation.

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I’m guessing that this is rhetorical, but in truth, the former would be way preferable regarding the paperwork. I was baptised and confirmed Anglican, and it was a plus that I had been confirmed into a Christian church, but I had then to get the certificates (long lost, so duplicates had to be sourced from the records office of a city in England) or no wedding.

Then I was meant to get a certificate from every Catholic parish I’ve ever lived in to prove that I wasn’t married in any of them. Firstly, I’ve moved parish 28 times in my life. Secondly, I’ve never known which Catholic parish I was in because I’m not a Catholic. :smack: In the end I had to swear an affadavit with a lawyer that covered everything, which they eventually accepted under Canon law.

Total. Pain. In. The Ass.

It’s their right to behave like this, of course, but c’mon… Afterwards, mrs jjimm was saying we should have got married in a Proddy church - their attitude was “you want to get married here? Cool, when do we start!” Mind you, they need all the support they can get in the Republic of Ireland… :wink:

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One thing I have always respected about the RCC is their attitude of “Our church, our rules.” If you don’t like their rules, find yourself another church.

Always surprises me to know folk who appear to be (for lack of a better term) “cafeteria Catholics.” I wonder how they get off picking and choosing what parts they accept/reject.

I have had several in depth conversations with RC friends - including priests. IME intelligent introspective RCs are far less likely to paint things as black vs white than the priest appeared in his counsel to your fee-on-say. Explanations of actual RC positions are far more subtle and intricate than can be represented in soundbites.

However, IMO RCs are required to accept certain doctrine as truth. Their task is to find a way to understand that “truth” such that it makes sense to them and they can accept it.

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Well, I’d say they “get off” on picking and choosing what parts they accept/reject because catholic dogma sucks to live by, defies logic, and is out of date with modern times. The catholic church has a horrible reputation of scandals and abuse. The church can’t even follow its own rules.

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However, IMO RCs are required to accept certain doctrine as truth. Their task is to find a way to understand that “truth” such that it makes sense to them and they can accept it.

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That is my biggest problem with the catholic church right there. “Believe in this even though it makes no sense. Keep reading our lengthy and irrational reasons for believing until you believe it, too.” Then you’re left with a bunch of self-righteous brainwashed people. Many (not all) of the “hardcore” catholics I know are intolerant of any criticism of the church; a fun byproduct of the catholic church’s intolerant attitude toward everything.

I read an article not too long ago on CNN.com about religion in America. It discussed how Catholics believe in the ascention of Mary, in which her whole body was ascended by God straight into heaven. The article explained how the pope made this catholic dogma in the 1950’s, so it is a relatively new catholic belief, at least officially. The author went on to describe how there was no historical evidence that this occured. Belief ascention of Mary is 100% faith-based. So basically, the pope at the time said, “Hey, guess what? Mary ascended into heaven, okay? I just made it official church doctrine. So now you all need to believe that, okay?”

Being required to believe irrational things for no reason doesn’t allow people to think for themselves. Oh, and by the way, you should contribute 10% of your income to the catholic church.

27

Hmm… Do her parents know about THIS source of stress? But other than that, w/o having to brief them on the specifics, do you know what they DO think of your union? If they’re expecting indeed your conversion, and how much is it worth to them? This, you both should have at least a hint of by now. Maybe it was not such a good idea to get a friend-of-the-family priest…

OTOH she may need to honestly bring up with the priest her reaction, specially that she feels HIS way of putting it has placed an undue burden on her for achieving your conversion, and she needs clarification to whether she is indeed being tasked with this (Besides, the burden for the effectiveness of prayer cannot be placed on the person doing the praying: when Jesus himself prayed, and no-one could question his lacking faith, he said “Father, not MY will, but YOURS be done”).

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rhinostylee, as opposed to any of all the other reason-and-logic-based religions of Earth? :rolleyes:

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Let’s get this straight; you are a Methodist and you are getting married in a Methodist church, because you are an active Methodist churchgoer.
Your Methodist pastor is extending the hand of ecumenical friendship to the Catholic priest to come into his church and concelebrate your wedding service. The Catholic priest is now coming in and laying down the law and upsetting you and your fiancee.
A tad unreasonable, if you ask me

As you are not a Catholic in any way, shape or form, why should the opinions of the priest bother you? If you are religious and are happy with what your man is doing and saying, then surely that’s fine.

As your fiancee comes from a religious family, I can see how they might be worried that any grandchildren might not be raised Catholic, but as they can see their daughter getting married to a non-Catholic in a non-Catholic church, do they really think that their daughter holds the Catholic faith in the same high regard as they do?
It seems obvious to me that she does not - she is marrying outside of her own faith, in the church of another faith; more than a bit of a no-no to those who believe the letter of the law in Catholicism.

But you say that she is now questioning her faith.

Did she not know the Catholic viewpoint before she agreed to marry you in your church? If not, it sounds to me like she was questioning her faith long before all this started and if anyone needs to address the priest, it is her, because his remarks have brought her crisis of faith to the surface.
If he makes a mess of it and she does feel the need to leave her church, so be it. She is grown up enough to get married, so she is surely grown up enough to make up her own mind about what religion she chooses to follow, if any.

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IANACatholic, but the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan is.

I signed a paper during our pre-marriage counseling, that I would allow my children to be raised Catholic “as far as my conscience would allow”.

It doesn’t allow very far - we attend a Lutheran church, and my son is preparing to be confirmed there. We used to alternate between Catholic and Lutheran on Sundays, but after we moved, it was too much hassle, and we just stuck with Lutheran.

The advantage in our situation is that my wife and I agreed on what was important about Christianity, and what was not, and what were major sticking points (mostly for me) and what were not. We therefore are doing what we think is right to raise our children in the catholic (notice the lower case ‘c’) faith.

YMMV.

Regards,
Shodan

31

Is it entirely inaccurate for me to suggest that it is far easier to be a “casual” protestant, than a casual Catholic?

To my limited knowledge there are significant differences between the stated doctrines of various protestant faiths. Creeds vs deeds, predetermination, and whatnot. However, in practice, it seems that a great many prot churches and members are somewhat less strident in their insistence upon and adherence to such doctrine than their RC counterparts.

One aspect of this is that (some, not all) prots will choose their church based upon location, membership, activities and education, minister, etc., instead of strict adherence to a specific denomination. An RC would never do that. They must attend an RC church, no matter that any number of prot churches are more convenient or “socially” appealing.

I think this reflects the basic distinction between RC and prot, wherein RC requires the intermediary of the church between the individual and God, whereas prot believs the indiv can independently develop his relat w/ God.

Note - please excuse any ignorance or apparent disrespect towards religion from this nontheist. (In this thread only!) :smiley:

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Catholics believe that every time they attend mass, a miracle occurs and the bread and wine on the altar ACTUALLY and LITERALLY becomes the body and blood of Jesus. The priest waves his hands over the altar, everyone says the prayers, and then a miracle takes place in which God transforms the bread and wine.

The very nature of faith is that you believe without proof, or then it would be a science. But some religions are a lot more logical than others. To me personally, the catholic mass insults my intelligence. Some protestant religions take bread and wine only as a symbol of Jesus, and that seems a lot more logical to me.

Catholics also believe that the pope is infallible. That also insults my intelligence. The pope is human, and therefore he is fallible. And you can say all day that his actions in the church are what’s infallible and blah blah blah, but I refuse to believe that any human is infallible in any regard.

I also feel that it’s unreasonable to not allow women be priests, and to require priests to be celibate. That creates a nice atmosphere for all of the atrocious abuses that we have all heard so much about in the recent past.

While faith requires belief in something for which science cannot explain, some religions make quite a bit more logical sense than others. In my opinion, the catholic church makes the least sense, bordering on no sense at all.

So JRDelirious, to your :rolleyes: , I answer with :wink: .
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I started this practice just one post ago! But I do capitalize the ‘c’ when I use the word at the beginning of a sentence. I don’t want my disdain for the catholic church to start interfering with my use of proper grammar and punctuation!

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merge, condolences on drawing the short straw on priests. I went to a Catholic university, and my interaction with priests is nearly the exact opposite. Those at Notre Dame are young, excited about their faith, constantly question it, and are connected to the real world. It’s also been my experience that older parish priests are far too rigid in their beliefs to be in a position of counselor. If there’s time, I’d suggest finding a new priest. Is there a local Catholic college or high school nearby? Asking around at Villanova might be worth the trip if this is important to you.

rhinostylee, either you or the Catholics you know are vastly misinformed about a good deal of the Catholic faith.

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What did I state that was incorrect?

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Your interpretation of the infallibility of the Pope is way off. Care to guess how many times papal infallibility has been used in the history of the church?

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No, I don’t. Please fill me in.

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Her parents do not know everything yet… This was just 2 days ago so she hasn’t had a chance to talk about it with them. I suggested that she should.
Her parents are very excited about us getting married. The are liberal yet extremely faithful Catholics. hard to describe them really, I have just had a few conversations with them about thinking that suprised me. For example, they believe priests should be allowed to get married, and that women should be allowed to become priests.
They do not expect conversion and completely respect my faith.
They just know I am a person of good heart who will love and take care of their daughter, and that is all that matters to them.

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I beg to dfiffer. It sounds to me like you got a bad religion.

Like many other faiths, although not all, Catholicism teaches as a matter of doctrine that it is the one and only true religion, and all others are false. In my opinion, this is prejudice and bigotry, pure and simple. The fact that you have encountered a thoroughly bigoted attitude within the Church is, to me, no more remarkable than saying you went to a fish market and saw some fish. What else is one to expect?

The Catholics who are chiming in with the ‘Hey, you just got at bad example’ excuse don’t know their own theology. If this man has been ordained as an RC priest, then according to Catholic teaching he has been blessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are supposed to include wisdom. Anyone round here impressed with this guy’s wisdom? Nope, didn’t think so.

The requirement to raise any children within the Catholic faith comes as standard with any Catholic marriage. This is just a standard mechanism for trying to ensure the brainwashing process is carried out from an early age, before children develop the necessary emotional and intellectual defences to realise when people are shoving intolerant, superstitious medieval clatrap down their throats. It’s a very effective trick. Many people, infected with the meme at an early age, never manage to escape it.

In my opinion, it was perhaps a little naieve to expect any other response from this ‘man of God’ (ho ho ho). Do you expect an RC priest to say that although he has decided to follow Catholicism, there are nonetheless many other faiths that have just as much if not more going for them, are certainly one hell of a lot less neurotic about sexual relationships, are less irresponsible regarding the propaganda about birth control in developing nations with endemic levels of AIDS infection, and so you’re entitled to pursue a different faith (or none) as a thinking human being with an intellect and some adult common sense?

Also, in my opinion, going to an RC priest for advice about relationships is no smarter than going to Bill Clinton for advice about celibacy. You have to ask, what would HE know about it? The greatest teacher in this life is experience. By defintion, RC priests have no experience of marriage.

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The funny thing is that she has attended both a catholic high school, and College. She knows more about her religion, then I ever will about mine.

She was just suprised with the reactions so far to her getting married to a non catholic. She just has a bad taste left in her mouth… She still shares some of the beliefs, but it sounds like she is starting to think more about the beliefs she disagrees with.

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ianzin

I completely agree with what you just posted.

The priest did actually say to me that Catholicism is the only true religion, “The region created by Christ”…

kind of funny that this all comes up just after I just finished reading “The Da Vinci Code”

pretty good book btw…