I hope you're not the Liam who gave me hell on Joe's blog. Jeff says your not, so here goes. For three years I have been trying to become a RC but with no luck. I could give you reasons but this is not the place. I have never had a "god" experience but I think RC might be the path. I'm going to be corny, but when the new RCIA statutes camed out and I became aware of them 3 years ago I actually believed that in a way they were meant for me. I have read and reread them and each time I hear someone speaking[ just a metaphor]. these statutes are saying "Jack, we want you. You can come to us with dignity."
Then I go to a blog or a church and they either laugh or give me a good bawling out. The Church put these statues out for me and other like me, but the blogs and churches just laugh."Yeah" , they all say" we're vaguely aware of these rules, but we don't pay any attention to them Too complicated; we do it another way and we ain't gonna change. So take that." So I[ the crawling protestant] says "Thank you Church < I accept your invitation on YOUR terms" But then every else says "Jack, just joking..To hell with Vatican2!! You'll do it the way we want here at St. Golliver's and stop citing Church pronouncements. After all you're the only idiot that look up statutes; no one else knows and we sure ain't gonna tell 'em."
The point is NOT should the statues read that way, but why does the big CHURCH {pope and all] say do this and no one pays any attention.
What difference does it make. Okay Liam, let me find a charismatic protestant church[ snakes or not, your preference] and just for fun you march down the aisle, fall on the floor, shake, cry, speak in a strange tongue and get your goiter healed; then look me in the eye and say that 's not demeaning. Of course, Catholics are in better taste. So they make me leave the church like an errant third grader, undergo scrunities intended for 'pagans', sign books , say I can only become a catholic on one day of the year, attend endless classes to be told some important points,yes, and then tell us the nativity story. BUT Church that's not what you said when you invited me in.
Of course, I'm out of control in a way[ but just in a way]. In the last year no one has meant more to me than Jeff[my confessor], b, Anna, Joe, and now you. I'm older now, but if you look at my picture on my blog, I once was young and now I'm not. But I think I still recogmize fairness. I don't like changing the rules in the middle of the game. Why do I side with the Church and catholics line up against the church and they're in and I'm locked out unless I do what the Church says not to do.
Liam, I said a few days ago this will soon all be over. Can you see anyway out. The issue: The Church asks. I accept. Then they say:Just joking!! Thank you. Jack
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Jack,
ReplyDeleteI'm not Liam, but perhaps you won't mind me answering.
Why do you feel like this must be resolved soon? A couple times you have said that it will all be decided, one way or the other, within a few days. Why the rush? I think you should feel free to take as much time as it takes. Perhaps in a few days or a few months something will change, and your path will be made smooth.
Perhaps you feel you are running out of time because of your age or poor health. If God means for you to join the RCC, he will give you time to do so.
Your experience of feeling called by the new RCIA statues sounds very much, to me, like the way God works. If your parish hasn't taken the statutes seriously, that doesn't mean that God or the Church are laughing at you. It probably means that the time is not right yet. It might mean you should look for a different parish, one which follows the statutes.
Give the Church time to catch up with itself, time for the statutes and the ideas in them to percolate down into the consciousness of the average Catholic, time for the statutes to be turned from a theory into reality. It's not an quick process. Some parishes will adopt it faster than others. The Church is an unwieldy group (being made up of real people); people do not take kindly to being made to do things in different ways than before, even if the new ways are better. (Just look at all the people who are still pining for the Church to go back to pre-Vatican II days, and that was more than 40 years ago).
God bless you, Jack.
On a not particularly related note, I notice that you think charismatic practices are demeaning. I'm trying to write a paper on a biblical take on speaking in tongues. Assuming I ever finish it, would you be interested in reading it?
Anna, thank you for responding. I look several times a day for some response, but you are the first. You see I think people think I'm a 'whiner', but I'm really not. If you were to ask my family they would say that in the last three years with my health problem I have not complained once, even though there is some real physical and psychological strees. Always a new test and the worst part waiting for the response.
ReplyDeleteBut kudos to you. I think you understand where I'.m coming from. All of us have things that we feel are demeaning and this happens to be mine.
I say a few days because of health, yes, but I hope to beat that. It's that I think I am becomming tiresome.
I think what 'stings'most is that people have a higher opinion of me than I deserve. You can read between the lines. And now this is causing me problems. The Jack people think they see was a good deal more of a rascal as a young man. That was a long time ago but now some things are coming back. See, I'm just getting more confusing.
I would love to see your article, but get ready for a real difference of opinion.
I must repeat thanks for your interest and being one among not many that see my point. Jack
I think what 'stings' mos
Jack,
ReplyDeleteI don't think you're a whiner. I think you're struggling with matters of the heart. Nothing trivial about that.
Anna, thanks again. Got some very good religious news yesterday. Think it may work. A crazy request: If you have a minute to think of me, could you look at my picture with child dated 1958. Why? Because I want you to know I was 'young' once. And that was where my big mistakes were. No excuse. But age gives some wisdom. Thanks Jack
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is, I've never seen you looking old. That young picture of you is the only one of you I think I've seen! So when it comes to picturing you now, I just kind of vaguely add a couple wrinkles and some greyish whitish hairs onto the "young" you.
ReplyDeleteAnna, since my profile says 72 and I'm not exactly Charles Atlas today, for some reason I didn't want you to think of me just as an "old geezer". Instead of an old "goat" I wanted you to think of me as a younger man who made some mistakes. Jack
ReplyDeleteI'm less interested in what mistakes you may have made in the past and more interested in what lies in your future. I especially think you would benefit from having a more personal relationship with God; a "God experience", if you will. I think it might bring you a healing of your heart in a way that is beyond your imagination.
ReplyDeleteAnna, thanks for recognizing a person in 'trouble'. Don't worry, not legal trouble!!. I have quoted this before on a blog so please excuse a repetition.
ReplyDeleteFor that is the real character of the enthusiast; he expects more evident results from the grace of God than we others. He sees what effects religion can have, does sometimes have, in transforming a man's whole life and outlook; these exceptional cases, so we are content to think them, are for him the average standard of religious achievement. He will have no 'almost christians', no weaker brethern who plod and stumble who, if the truth must be told, would like to have a foot in either world , whose ambition is to qualify, not to excel.
I am trying, with your help. to "qualify." Jack
Jack,
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Joe's blog, so that must be a different Liam.
I'm sorry I haven't responded until now. I've been swamped with dissertation work lately and have barely had time to graze blogdom. I didn't see your post until late last night. At any rate, I see that Anna has make some excellent comments. In the end what matters is not how certain individuals in the Church act or the knowledge they have about the statutes, or the statutes themselves. What matters is what God wants.
I myself was away from the Church most of my life. One of the things that inspired me to return was the way certain Catholics lived their faith, and a lot of it conflicted with the conservative point of view of what it is to be Catholic. If I were to get my idea of what it means to be Catholic from most blogs I've seen and some parishes I've visited, it would have been much harder to reconcile the calling I felt with the frail human reality that makes up the day-to-day reality of the Catholic church and every other religion as well.
There are many reasons I returned to Catholicism, but if there was some impediment to me being Catholic, I could probably feel comfortable in an Orthodox or Episcopal congregation as well. I have a fairly ecumenical outlook at things and I never see another Christian as being outside the Church just because they're not Catholic.
I don't know what advice to give you. Your faith seems very sure, which is the most important thing. Ask yourself how much God is calling you to be Catholic. See if there's another parish somewhere where the people understand you better. If not, you have to decide how to deal with the place you're in. If you think that you can't possibly play by their rules with integrity, maybe you should quit. If you think this may be a moment to accept humbly things that you don't agree with, then you should continue. I'll be praying for you.
Liam, the 'other' liam raked me over the coals for using the verb "blog" when I should have said "comment."
ReplyDeleteMy dispute with RCIA was not so much personal, although that was part of it, but over the ecumenical outreach that Rome and the bishops wanted and the ignoring over this reaching out just because it was easier the other way, and was also demeaning on careful analysis. See I was defending what the church wanted but was being discouraged because catholics thougt the 'reaching out' was too much trouble.
Thanks for responding and for NOT being the other Liam. Jack
Jack,
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say? Sometimes the enthusiast is right. :) Or at least partly right.
Let me start by saying that I'm never trying to condemn you for where you're at now. Everyone goes through times when just struggling to qualify, as you quote, is the best they can do. Nor do I think that there is some level of outward achievement that distinguishes those who "excel" at being Christian from those who only "qualify". What I think I'm objecting to is the idea that Christian life is meant to normally be a matter of merely struggling along with hope that someday after we die we'll finally achieve some level of happiness or life. This attitude is better than nothing, and it's along the right lines; but what God promises us is more. And we should expect that more.
I'm going to recommend that you read a book called Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. He is definitely an "enthusiast", and for that reason I'm not sure if you'll like it. But I think that if you pay attention to the logic of his argument, especially as it relates to what the Bible is saying, (i.e. what God is promising) then perhaps he can convince you that God intends fullness of life, now, for you. I have a couple of quotes for you, but I'm going to stick them on my own website, because they are so long. You can find them here.
God bless.
Anna, your quotes were great. I'll look for the book. An enthusiast, of course, is not always wrong. The danger is, as we see in the middle east, those who claim to operate under the day to day direction of God{Bin Laden and Bush] assume their position is always right and they then get in dangerous territory. If A hears directly from God and B doesn't. then A would have to be right.
ReplyDeleteAssuming you were talking to Joseph Smith and he said angels had brought him tablets 'written' by God, how would you answer him.
Actually Anna, I do not believe you are an 'enthusiast'. I don't think you are saying I'm right because God directly told me. I believe your position is much more nuanced. Jack
Jack,
ReplyDeleteIf Joseph Smith came up to me and said he had tablets from God, I'd probably say "I don't believe you."
But the reason wouldn't be that I don't think people can encounter God. The reason would be that I don't think God has any reason to give people tablets these days. Moses' tablets were given for the sake of the Israelites, for the sake of the public, the people of God. People don't generally need God to give them tablets if the revelation is for themselves or for someone they know.
It's basic Catholic teaching that there is to be no more public revelation of God. There can't be, because Christ is God, and you can't reveal yourself any more than by the fullness of you.
But that doesn't mean there isn't any revelation left at all. Catholics reject further public revelation, but too often that becomes a rejection of any further revelation at all. We think of private revelation as inconsequential, and it isn't. Private revelation can refer to anything God tells us, and if we don't hear God talking to us at all in any way whatsoever at any time, then we aren't doing a very good job of listening.
The Bible calls us to a personal relationship with the Most High, calls us to be friends of Jesus. It's hard to have a relationship with someone who never speaks to you. Mother Theresa may have found meaning in such a relationship the way a person might find meaning in being faithful to a comatose spouse; but neither one is supposed to be the norm for spouses or Christians.
Bin Laden and Joseph Smith are examples of people who falsely claim to speak for God. Probably there are examples of that in Christianity too. But that doesn't mean that people can't actually hear from God. It means we ought to be careful about who and what we believe is from God, but if we then go into believing that it is unlikely or impossible for we ourselves to hear from God, then we have cut off the ultimate source of Wisdom from our lives. We are left with the Bible or the doctrines of the Church - which are good and will tell us everything essential - but they cannot tell us that we need to step outside and talk to our neighbors; they cannot wake us up at 3 in the morning because a friend of ours needs praying for.
Also, I might point out that what I am encouraging - that all Christians believe that God talks to them and learn to distinguish his voice from other voices - is very antithetical to the kind of divine authority that Bin Laden or Joseph Smith try to take on for themselves alone. The more people learn to actually listen for God's voice (and believing it can happen is the first step of learning to listen), the less power any false prophet is going to have.
Your approach to the dangers of "I alone speak to God" types has been to disbelieve or distrust the idea of anyone speaking to God. My response to that danger is to tell everyone that they can speak to God for themselves and encourage them to learn to recognize his voice. (As Jesus says in that parable, 'my sheep know my voice'.)
Discernment, of course, is a major issue, and Eldredge probably addresses that better than I can, since it's still something I'm working on.
Anna, again another fine comment. My only point is that a person could be a christian, maybe a "plodding" one, without private revelation. And claimes of private revelations must be treated with the greatest of care.I do not deny the possibility of private revelation, but with Newman say we find God through holiness. we do not find , in most cases, God then holiness. As I said on another blog, this is an important distinction of emphaasis between catholic and protestant.
ReplyDeleteI'm still right on the edge. Just waiting and hoping for a phone call. Jack
Jack,
ReplyDeleteA person can definitely be a Christian without private revelation.
You say we should treat claims of private revelation with care. If they are public claims of private revelation - claims where someone is telling wide audiences that God has a message for them, then I would agree with you. When it comes to private revelations that are in our own lives or that happen to people we know, I think we need to have a fundamental willingness to believe that it happens, even while we learn to test it to see when it's real.
we do not find , in most cases, God then holiness.
I'm not so sure. "finding God", that is, having an experience of God, doesn't have to be an overwhelming experience. It might be a mild experience that we forget all about, but which started us on the road to holiness and God.
I don't think that, in general, God waits for us to be holy before he presents himself to us. I do think he waits for a certain openness. There may be many other reasons he waits for.
Perhaps all you want to get at is that, in Catholic theology, you don't have to have an experience of God in order to grow in holiness. And that's certainly true. All the experiences in the world mean nothing if the person does not grow holier. Whereas, if a person grows holier, they grow closer to God whether they "feel" his presence or not. And I agree with that wholeheartedly.
But I still think that the norm is supposed to be for Christians to have experiences of God's presence. Such experiences build us up, strengthens our heart and our relationship with God, much the way experiencing the presence of a spouse or a friend helps build up those relationships.
If such experiences are rare, I think it is often due to the fact that we don't really expect them to happen. We haven't been raised to expect those experiences, so in our deepest hearts, it never occurs to us to believe they will happen to us.
I pray you get your phone call.
Anna
Anna, well said as always. We ocassionally discuss this with friends. None of them feel with any certainty that God "has spoken to them personally." Newman again. He once said that in listening to a certain Beethoven piece he would get a "faint" glimpse of something beyond.I've had those "faint" momentary experiences in religion but not clear enough to say with certain they are not just psychological "twinges."
ReplyDeleteBtw if you ever look at Liam's blog the last one has some questions from three young men, one my nephew's son. Alice and I promise them we would not read their comments.
But a blog below that, I have added some information. I can't use his current blog because I would see the boy's questions, so I use the next older blog. I would be very interested in your opinion. I think it's right in your expertise. Jack
Jack,
ReplyDeleteI commented over there.
If you do read Eldredge's book, I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it.
Anna
Anna, our library system which is usually well stocked does not have Walking the Dead. I'll try a book store tomorrow. Be sure to check Alice's comment on Liam. Maybe another miracle. Jack
ReplyDeleteJack,
ReplyDeleteTo be sure, the title is Waking the Dead, not Walking the Dead. I saw Alice's comment. Very cool.
Anna
Anna, no I'm not senile, but you remember the movie Dead Men Walking; I assumed this was a 'play' on that theme. Yes, our library system has many copies. I have reserved one. Alice says thanks for your comment on the 'mysterious caller.' Jack
ReplyDeleteJack,
ReplyDeleteGood grief, if I thought you were senile for turning "Waking" into "Walking", I'd have to declare myself senile several times over. :) Heck, I think when I first saw the title, I had to look at it a couple times to be sure what I was seeing, anyhow.
Tell Alice she's welcome.
Anna