Confused...

[Guest Tinana88]

I grew up in a non-Catholic family. My dad's athiest, and my mom's buddhist. My uncle and aunt introduced me to the Church when I was 12 years old. I started going to church with them every Sunday for almost a year then they enrolled me in RCIA for Children. For my whole life, I've attended public school so I never really learned about the Bible or about God or anything. Before I turned 14, I was baptized and confirmed. I believe I was too young to really reflect on the teachings of the Bible to really analyze if I believed it or not. I was baptized because everyone in the RCIA class was... and because I thought it was cool to go to church and to be Christian. Throughout all the years up to now, I've attended church almost every Sunday. Never really listening or paying attention to what the priest was saying. I go to confession once or twice a year. I tried not to sin.. but having a boyfriend at a young age and being easily influenced by my friends, I often had premarital sex and got drunk on several occassions.

Not until university did I really learn more deeply about the Catholic teachings from a campus club I joined at my university. I attended mass on campus once or sometimes twice a week, plus on Sundays. I also enrolled myself in the bible studies the club offered. There I was finally able to ask my questions and really reflect on my own beliefs and the Church's teachings.

After reading and learning more about the Catholic church, I realized I am full of a lot of sins. Feelings of guilt was what lead me astrayed from the Church. I've been attending Church maybe once a month or sometimes once in a few months. I haven't been to confession in over a year and a half now. I have stopped having communion because I know my heart is not pure and that I can not fully believe and accept God and the Catholic Church. I avoid going to confession because I KNOW I will commit the same sins over and over. I am especially troubled over the sin of premarital sex and cannot simply force myself to believe that sex is just for reproduction. I am currently sexually-active, using contraceptives. which are sins according to the Church. But I personally don't believe any of those things are wrong.

I've tried to do the right thing. I've tried not to hurt anyone on purpose. Trying not to use God's name in vain. I've never stolen anything. Tried to obey my parents.

I feel like my commitment to the Catholic Church is so empty because I do not truly believe and I'm not willing to change my lifestyle for reasons that I think are unreasonable. I believe in God. I believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that as long as someone is not hurting themselves, or not hurting others, or not harming society, and if they have good intentions, that is enough.

I'm very troubled and confused. I want to be able to worship God without feeling the pressures of restricting myself and changing my lifestyle. Please offer any advice, comments, or anything. Thanks and sorry for the long post.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Tinana88' post='1483841' date='Mar 25 2008, 03:22 PM']I grew up in a non-Catholic family. My dad's athiest, and my mom's buddhist. My uncle and aunt introduced me to the Church when I was 12 years old. I started going to church with them every Sunday for almost a year then they enrolled me in RCIA for Children. For my whole life, I've attended public school so I never really learned about the Bible or about God or anything. Before I turned 14, I was baptized and confirmed. I believe I was too young to really reflect on the teachings of the Bible to really analyze if I believed it or not. I was baptized because everyone in the RCIA class was... and because I thought it was cool to go to church and to be Christian. Throughout all the years up to now, I've attended church almost every Sunday. Never really listening or paying attention to what the priest was saying. I go to confession once or twice a year. I tried not to sin.. but having a boyfriend at a young age and being easily influenced by my friends, I often had premarital sex and got drunk on several occassions.

Not until university did I really learn more deeply about the Catholic teachings from a campus club I joined at my university. I attended mass on campus once or sometimes twice a week, plus on Sundays. I also enrolled myself in the bible studies the club offered. There I was finally able to ask my questions and really reflect on my own beliefs and the Church's teachings.

After reading and learning more about the Catholic church, I realized I am full of a lot of sins. Feelings of guilt was what lead me astrayed from the Church. I've been attending Church maybe once a month or sometimes once in a few months. I haven't been to confession in over a year and a half now. I have stopped having communion because I know my heart is not pure and that I can not fully believe and accept God and the Catholic Church. I avoid going to confession because I KNOW I will commit the same sins over and over. I am especially troubled over the sin of premarital sex and cannot simply force myself to believe that sex is just for reproduction. I am currently sexually-active, using contraceptives. which are sins according to the Church. But I personally don't believe any of those things are wrong.

I've tried to do the right thing. I've tried not to hurt anyone on purpose. Trying not to use God's name in vain. I've never stolen anything. Tried to obey my parents.

I feel like my commitment to the Catholic Church is so empty because I do not truly believe and I'm not willing to change my lifestyle for reasons that I think are unreasonable. I believe in God. I believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that as long as someone is not hurting themselves, or not hurting others, or not harming society, and if they have good intentions, that is enough.

I'm very troubled and confused. I want to be able to worship God without feeling the pressures of restricting myself and changing my lifestyle. Please offer any advice, comments, or anything. Thanks and sorry for the long post.[/quote]

Okay, this is a bit lengthy, but please read it all.

First, the fact that you are asking these questions shows that God is working in your life for your good. Take joy in knowing that God loves you and wants the best for you.

Second, there are a lot of issues here, so I would encourage you to more than anything else to go and speak with a priest about these issues. It's always better to discuss things like this with someone who has gotten to know you a little personally.

Third, you went out of your way to say that there were factors of peer pressure involved in the things you admit doing. I wonder, if you really believed that these things were okay, why you would bother pointing out that you were pressured into those things. I don't mean to make this point in a judgmental way, but it seems to me that you aren't entirely convinced that these things aren't wrong. Please, take some time to think about this, taking in what I have to say...

There are no sins that don't hurt ourselves and others. I'll focus on the two main issues you pointed out: premarital sex and drunkenness. Premarital sex is what Pope John Paul II called "lying with our bodies." The body is an expression of the soul; for instance, our tongue and lips, which are of course part of our body, are used for talking, and they express the things that are in our soul...our thoughts, ideas, fears, joys, hopes, dreams, etc. Our hands are capable of making great works of art, writing beautiful poetry or stories, or playing instruments, all which comes from our soul. Some parts of our body are less articulate, but take for instance our feet, not particularly special, but they can be used to bring us closer to others or to places we want to go, and so they express our the desires of our souls. The sexual parts of the body also express our souls. Now, no one will say that the sexual organs aren't related to the experience of love in the soul, so I'll just assume you'd agree with that. What Pope John Paul II pointed out was that is that if our bodies express our souls, sort of like our bodies express in their own language what our souls do not say, then our bodies are capable of lying as well. The most obvious thing is that I can use my tongue and lips to tell a lie. Less obviously, though, I can use my sexual organs to tell a lie. If I sleep with someone who is not my wife, am I expressing love, which is what the sex organs were made to express? No, of course not. If I engage in premarital intercourse, what am I expressing with my body? I am not expressing love, even though I seem to be, because love is permanent and committed, and without a marriage, there is no true commitment. If I use sex as a way to train my spouse (if she's been bad, no sex for her), am I expressing love? Certainly not; love is unconditional.

Telling a lie hurts the person who is lied to as well as the liar. The other person is most obvious: that person expects something, in this case, love, and they are not truly getting it. What they are getting is sex, and certainly some limited replica of love, but it has parts of it missing, and so it is against their dignity: that person deserves to be loved. The liar is hurt because lying makes a person false; it actually, over time, changes a person's heart and turns them away from what is true and good.

As for drunkenness, it's a sin simply because it impairs the person's ability to be fully human; reason, intellect, judgment, will, and other parts of humanity are impaired when a person gets drunk. It is essentially demeaning to human dignity. It is also capable of great harm to others, especially when a person gets violent or drives while intoxicated.

To say that something is okay as long as nobody gets hurt is a problem because there are things that are wrong regardless of their results. Sin is an offense against truth because it is always using ourselves and our abilities for something we weren't made for.

Good intentions also don't excuse bad actions. A thing isn't just wrong because of bad intentions, a thing is also wrong because it is, as I said above, an offense against truth. If I do something that I'm not supposed to do, even if I have good reasons for it, it's still wrong. If I steal an iPod from Walmart because I want to raffle it off and give the money to the poor, I still stole an iPod from Walmart. What I intended to do (to steal the iPod) was wrong, regardless of my intended outcome (to help the poor).

Finally, I noticed a minor point that needed to be corrected. You said that you don't agree with the Church that sex is just for procreation. The problem is that the Church doesn't teach that. The Church teaches that sex is for both union (of the spouses) and procreation. What did God make sex for? Well, we can look to what sex does for an answer: sex brings two people together bodily (union) and produces children. It doesn't always produce children, but we can say that it is normal for sex to do this. Now, as I said before, the body expresses the soul, so a bodily union must go deeper, it must be meant as a union of two whole persons, not just the bodies. What about pleasure? Does pleasure need to be present in order for sex to accomplish its goals? No, it doesn't. Therefore, pleasure is something that is an additional effect (although certainly something we can desire to give and receive in sex), and I would say that it is an unessential aspect of union. Sex isn't just for procreation; it is for union, it is for pleasure, it is for anything else that also naturally comes from sex, in addition to procreation. To limit sex to any one of these factors is to cripple it, and turn it from love into lust. Naturally, God wanted us to have every possible good thing that could come from sex, which is why people must be married (so that they can truly experience the union sex brings about) and must be open to life (so that they can truly experience the fruitfulness of sex), to have sex the way God intended it (and if you ask any of the people who had premarital sex, had a change of heart, got married, and did things God's way, they will all tell you that sex the way God intended it is far more exciting and pleasurable than sex the way we try to make it).

I hope that I've at least clarified for you a bit why we believe as we do. You're more than welcome to send me a message for more clarification, or to discuss it further in [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showforum=12"]Transmundane Lane[/url] or debate it in the [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showforum=3"]Debate Table[/url]. Unfortunately, this phorum only allows certain people to answer questions, so it won't let you reply to this thread.

Please stay open to the teachings of the Church. Allow yourself to examine them with an open mind and an open heart, and be willing to change if you discover that you should. I will promise you one thing: neither God nor the Church want you to be anything other than the most complete version of yourself. You will find that your own personality shines all the more clearly and profoundly the more you draw close to God.

God bless,

Micah