Everyone is converting!

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='966835' date='May 1 2006, 12:42 PM']
The crazy thing about God is that he's really really big. He's so big that it can make your head hurt. Sometimes it takes a lifetime journey to discover the best path. Sometimes we get lucky and trip over it early. Sometimes we get distracted by other things, like saaaaaay.... women.

[/quote]

I agree. Left the Catholic Church when I was 6 or 7 with my family when my mom married a Lutheran and after the diocese sinned greviously against her. Then I became a Baptist (followed the cute girls, married one), and then I came home. I think if I was never a Baptist, I would have never found phatmass, I would have been content being in a Lutheran setting, both liturgical and alot like mass, and would have seen no reason to leave.

There is a difference between greiving over people who don't share in our faith and experience our joy, because we want the same hope for them that we have for ourselves, and actually judging them for their life decisions to which we cannot know the interior state of their heart and soul.

[Jaime]

Adam I couldn't disagree with you more

Its i before e in grieving


Other than that you're spot on!!

[thessalonian]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='966861' date='May 1 2006, 10:03 AM']
Thess

Yes of course its a grave matter. But its also a done matter. If they've left, then what you read as detachment is what is left. And while it can be reasonably argued that this is the biggest mistake of their lives, free will must be honored. That's not up to me. God's setting the example there.
We've all had friends who've left the Church. We're all held responsible because the primary reason anyone leaves is bad catechesis. But while my friends know that I don't agree with their actions, they also know that I love them. And that gives me ample opportunity to be the Church's example in their lives.

Others (and yourself) may disagree with my take and that's their right.
[/quote]

By all means be an example. By all means love them. It does no good to turn your back on them. If that is your point I agree. I just don't want people to become so cavalier about this as to say "let them be". I deal with a whole parish full of Catholics who have been told don't worry about your kids becoming protestant and I have to tell you they have become so indifferentized that I don't even think they pray for them. They feel they are okay where they are at. This is the perspective I am coming from. We need to gently help lead them back, through our prayers, words, and exmple. Yes, God is big and so we don't need to take on the whole load and therin for me comes the detachment. I don't think we disagree perhaps. I just want to focus from a little different angle and I am afraid of people becoming indifferentist in all of this. It is the same thing that I have seen happening many times when familes are confronted with a gay child. They start to think the Church is wrong and homosexuality is okay in order to find a detachment that is a false detachment and allows them to mentally handle the issue that their son or daughter has left the Church or is living a gay lifestyle. I'm not looking for a debate. Just presenting a perspective that I think needs to be heard these days. Leaving the Church is serious business.

Blessings

[AngelofJesus]

[quote name='Balthazor' post='966890' date='May 1 2006, 08:15 AM']
HEY!!!!!
NO Fighting on my thread!!!!!!
Stop it!

What am I to do?

I would really like to take them aside and ask them if they know what they left. I really do not think they have any clue.
The s are really nice s.....but I do not think they would ever convert.
[/quote]

Who is fighting? I am just really up-in-arms just like you in figuring out what to do for them. I mean should I sit them down and demistify catholicism for them or should I systematlically evanglize to them using the CCC.

[jasJis]

I think they may have more of a clue of why and what they left then you think. It's just not what you think it is.

Once one establishes a relationship with God and Grace, you want to live it. Catholic theology is pretty realistic about falling and needing Grace, but Catholic practice is either a very lax attitude where anything goes, or a real harsh and condemning attitude that shuts you out from the Sacraments.

I taught Confirmation classes for teens for years, including way back when phatmass was starting up. I tried to get a few teens interested here, but they pretty much didn't like it because of the pervasive more Catholic than thou feeling.

Catholicism in practice seems to know the rules so you can know how close you can dance to the edge. Face it, some people aren't real, real good, or real, real, bad and are just inbetween. Most don't know the letter of theology and all the nuances and stuff. The kids I know, at a number of different parishes, felt that the imperfect parish they attended, where handholding has been the norm for a decade, was considered WRONG, misleading, not-Catholic, improper, etc., etc. Definitely not pleasant.

Lot's of them do not see the Catholic Church practicing what it preaches. Some have left for sincere, but limited, Christianity in Prot Churches as apposed to the fuller, but insincere, Catholic Church. I'm on the cusp of doing that myself. Knowimg more about what the Church REALLY teaches (at least in my not always humble opinion) has me teetering on the edge. It's not a decision to walk away from the Eucharist, it's walking away from insincere hypocrasy.

[thessalonian]

[quote name='Brother Adam' post='966909' date='May 1 2006, 10:30 AM']


There is a difference between greiving over people who don't share in our faith and experience our joy, because we want the same hope for them that we have for ourselves, and actually judging them for their life decisions to which we cannot know the interior state of their heart and soul.
[/quote]

I go back and forth on this.
I agree the ultimate destiny is known only to God. Many "catholics" have been raised Catholic but perhaps have not ever really recieved adequate instruction in it. Only God can judge them. Yet we know that great grace has still been given to them in the Eucharist and the other sacraments. We know that there is a higher standard that Catholics will be held to. For in Luke 12 we are told that the unfaithful steward is treated as the unbeliever, while the one who perhaps did similar things, yet did not know, was given but few lashes. "To whom much has been given, much will be epected" the scriptures tell us. What more can be given than the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. To walk away from it has consequences.

Blessings

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='jasJis' post='966933' date='May 1 2006, 01:42 PM']
It's not a decision to walk away from the Eucharist, it's walking away from insincere hypocrasy.
[/quote]

Which is of course the worst possible decision anyone can make. "I'm sorry Jesus, but if you are around tax collectors and sinners, I can't be around you."

Catholics often need to be converted to Catholicism as much as anyone, but leaving the Eucharist is leaving Jesus. I don't know how anyone can rationalize leaving the Eucharistic Jesus because of the sorroundings.

[quote name='thessalonian' post='966940' date='May 1 2006, 01:48 PM']
I go back and forth on this.
I agree the ultimate destiny is known only to God. Many "catholics" have been raised Catholic but perhaps have not ever really recieved adequate instruction in it. Only God can judge them. Yet we know that great grace has still been given to them in the Eucharist and the other sacraments. We know that there is a higher standard that Catholics will be held to. For in Luke 12 we are told that the unfaithful steward is treated as the unbeliever, while the one who perhaps did similar things, yet did not know, was given but few lashes. "To whom much has been given, much will be epected" the scriptures tell us. What more can be given than the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. To walk away from it has consequences.

Blessings
[/quote]

I agree, which is why it comes back to what hot stuff had said - it can often be a matter of bad catechesis. My parents generation was expected to do the things they did because it was Catholic, and she was not to question it. She was Catholic schooled by Sisters. Asking questions was out of the question in their school. I've heard the same story over and over again. Their decision to leave often is not out of malice, but rather they genuinely do not believe they are doing anything wrong. That is why through my becoming Catholic and explaining the Catholic faith to her (much of which she was learning for the first time after being raised Catholic for 25 years in a large Catholic family) she is coming back home.

[thessalonian]

[quote name='AngelofJesus' post='966879' date='May 1 2006, 10:10 AM']
Thess,

What would you do in this situation? I really want to know, because I have relatives and friends that have converted as well. The fact that they were not all that religious before and suddenly they become Jesus freaks through being a Lutheran, per se. What approach would you take other than just praying for them?
[/quote]


Neither would my wife or mother in law. But when my wife started heading down the path, more by the grace of God and only in part by what I did, through his grace, my mother in law said she was taking herself and the kids to hell. Three years later she was sitting in the Church pews on Easter vigil herself.

1) pray.
2) pray.
3) Live you faith to it's fullest.
4) Love them. (same as 3 actually)
5) Be patient, set your goals long term.
6) Don't be afraid to speak the truths of the faith but don't get in to arguements. Don't give them too much at one time. Bits are better than chuncks for them to digest.
7) Read Patrick Madrid's "Search and Rescue".

[Balthazor]

Why are you so frustrated? Because you are intelligent and understand more than others? Your gift and your curse I suppose, I try not to be too much of a hypocrit, most of my frustration is aired here and into my mother's ears...not out of hate or judgement, but out of sadness and frustration.

I learned Catholicism out of Spite...I admit it not the best start, but I stayed Catholic out of Love.

As for this case, these guys might attend, but it is more than likely lip service at this point....perhaps they will go out of love eventually we can only pray. But right now the fact is their main motivation for going to Church, Luthern or otherwise, is for the appeasment of their wives.

After all God doesn't withhold sex if you don't go to church but wives can and will

[Balthazor]

Why are you so frustrated? Because you are intelligent and understand more than others? Your gift and your curse I suppose, I try not to be too much of a hypocrit, most of my frustration is aired here and into my mother's ears...not out of hate or judgement, but out of sadness and frustration.

I learned Catholicism out of Spite...I admit it not the best start, but I stayed Catholic out of Love.

As for this case, these guys might attend, but it is more than likely lip service at this point....perhaps they will go out of love eventually we can only pray. But right now the fact is their main motivation for going to Church, Luthern or otherwise, is for the appeasment of their wives.

After all God doesn't withhold sex if you don't go to church but wives can and will

[jasJis]

No, Adam. It's not saying 'Sorry, Jesus, I won't be around tax collectors." It's saying: "I'm not going to be around wolves in sheeps clothing that claim they speak for you. Their actions give witness to the opposite."

[thessalonian]

Who is frustrated?

[Balthazor]

the frustrtionline was for Jasjis.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='jasJis' post='966955' date='May 1 2006, 01:55 PM']
No, Adam. It's not saying 'Sorry, Jesus, I won't be around tax collectors." It's saying: "I'm not going to be around wolves in sheeps clothing that claim they speak for you. Their actions give witness to the opposite."
[/quote]

Exactly, sinners. And of course Christ said that the wheat and the weeds would be mixed until the end of time.

[Balthazor]

So I am confused now....am I a wolf?
Or a sheep?