Read this letter by Al Kimel in response written by a women in RCIA inquiring about the Episcopal Church since it is more in line with stance on stance on divorce, birth control, abortion, homosexuality and women as priests. The letter gets down to the root of the question of what the Catholic Church is and our response to it. The whole letter is very good and is the essence of what a pastoral letter should look like I especially liked this part.
… For the Catholic, the decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the decision to accept the authority of the Church is one decision. They cannot be separated, for the risen Christ will not be separated from his mystical body.
and
… If the Catholic Church is who she claims to be, then she speaks to me with an authority that binds my conscience. Because she is indwelt and guided by the Holy Spirit, she is protected from error in her formal teachings. She speaks truth. She can be relied upon. And so I trust her and seek to think with her. I do not ask her, must not ask her, to accept my views; she asks me to accept her views. One enters the Catholic Church in order to change; one enters the Catholic Church to be changed.
This is one of the fundamental things that a convert should be asking themselves about the nature of the Church. Too often we have our own shopping list of doctrinal likes and dislikes where we look for a church that most closely matches them. We put the cart before the horse. To very loosely paraphrase Flannery O’Connor; either the Catholic Church is the one true Church with the authority to teach and bind our consciences or to hell with it. I certainly wish that I had thought of this first during my conversion. I have described elsewhere why I was like Mr. Magoo and thankfully blundered into the Catholic Church. My military background did help me though to focus on the issue of authority and eventually this helped me to see what St. Augustine meant when he said "I would not believe the Gospels if it were not for the Church." This of course meant that many opinions and ideas that I held that were contrary to the faith had to be ejected before crossing the Tiber, especially since I had a boat load of them. So I can definitely sympathize with those who had had to change their world view and what they took for what had appeared to be societal common sense. When I came to understand that the Church is true it became much easier to see all the holes and misunderstandings in what I had accepted previously as true. I also found that on many issues I had just never really thought them totally through. I can’t count the times I read something on the faith that suddenly illuminated for me the truth that it contained. I also have no doubt this will continue until my death.
6 comments
I was a victim of the whole 1970’s – women’s studies – blah,blah,blah movement and had to do a 180 degree turn on just about everything. Good thing God doesn’t call only the qualified – he qualifies the called.
I just read your Mr. Magoo post, and I’ll be printing out the other article you link to here.
You said you moved to Florida…are you still there? Which diocese? I used to live just north of Orlando and left just before Bishop Wenski took full control of the diocese. I’m happy because I’ll be visiting next week and get the chance to visit with one of my favorite priests from my old parish who is now a pastor in Oviedo (west of Orlando). His parish is having a parish community party next Friday night that starts with Mass, then moves to three hours of Adoration, then two sessions of the Stations of the Cross (one for children, one for adults). *sigh* I miss that kind of stuff.
Ayway, in case I’ve never said it before, thanks so much for your blog and all the posts and links to conversion stories and such. As a cradle Catholic, I’m ashamed that I know so little, but converts such as you help me better understand my faith, our faith. God bless you.
Dear Mr. Miller – I cannot seem to find an e-mail link to you so I am forced to post int his comment box although what I have to say is not strictly speaking a comment to your post on Al Kimel’s reply to the intending convert who changed his mind.
I do not know if you read Italian, and if you do, whether you saw Sandro Magister’s blog from yesterday (3/16/05) on http://blog.espressonline.it/weblog/stories.php?topic=03/04/09/3080386
I was horrified at the story, and appalled (too weak a word) at the extent of misguided or simply blind “political corectness” or “spirit of “Assisi” or whatever the extreme liberals are calling their heedless laissez-faire attitude towards the excesses of some Muslims. And just in case you need a translation, here it is –
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Apologia for Islamic terrorism
Signed by….
Take a guess where the following quotations come from:
�Many persons have been branded as terrorists, whereas in reality, they could simply be persons who are fighting for justice and their own human rights.�
�Countries like Iraq or Palestine cannot fight a conventional war against enormously superior forces. Wherever, in a similar context, oppressed and subjugated people resort to non-conventional forms of war � human bombs are one type of weapon used in these cases � to label them as terrorists is abisolutely devoid of validity.�
�One can therefore look with understanding on the kamikaze who have realized (homicide/suicide) attacks against Israel or against the coalition of Western nations in Iraq. The fact is that these muhjaheddin are not trained killers or people who have a taste for violence, as some protagonists for instance in the Northern Ireland conflict, but are profoundly religious individuals who have usually had no practice in the arts of war and violence.�
�The fact is that whether in Iraq or Israel, justice has been trampled on, and so, the acts that have been labelled terrorism can be interpreted as legitimate warfare. In the end, the suffering of civilians can simply be considered � to use American jargon � collateral damage.�
All of these quotations were taken from issue number 5/2005 of the international theological journal Concilium which was dedicated completely to Islam, with articles by Hans Kueng, the Jesuit Thomas Michel (secretary for inter-religious dialog of the Society of Jesus), and other scholars, mostly Dutch, starting with the editors of the issue, Erik Borgman and Pim Valkenberg.
In its March 8 issue, the Osservatore Romano published an article critical of Borgman, who is a lay Dominican, for his �superficial reading� of John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio. But that is a venial sin compared to this apologia for homicidal mujahiddin who have caused massacres (including that of their fellow Muslims) in mosques, buses, schools and business places!
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THESE ARE ‘INTELLECTUALS’ GONE BONKERS! They should be rounded up, put in straitjackets, muzzled and kept in maximum-security psychiatric wards!
What staggers me is that anyone who differs from the Church on all these issues was ever interested enough to join RCIA. I mean, it isn’t as if we keep these things dark; everybody knows what the Church teaches about abortion, contraception, divorce, and so on.
“either the Catholic Church is the one true Church with the authority to teach and bind our consciences or to hell with it.”
this is exactly the reason why these “progressive” baby boomer religious orders are not getting any vocations. Young people know this and they are saying “to hell with it” rather than obeying anyone.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/2623-.html
Need 19,000 acres in Botswana for hunting? Mr. Free Market can tell you how.We are close to full employment. But the French would never stoop to learn from us. They have been trained to want a free ride, not a chance to excel.From RTLC:�I have a dream tha