Our (relatively) new friend, Jim, poses an excellent question on his blog, and as it is one we wrestle with here, I’d advise anyone interested to read his interesting treatment of it. He is not saying that doctrinal differences do not matter, but he is posing the question as to whether they are not rather more important to us than they are to God? I suspect that must be true; we the creature and the finite cannot see as the Infinite and the Creator sees it. Splendid though it would be to have been born into circumstances where all one had to do was to accept the plain truth of the Church into which one was born, for many of us this has not been possible. Some were not born into a Church at all and have had to find their way to Christianity through their own efforts, or, as I would see it, their own efforts with guidance from the Spirit. Others, of which I am one, were not born into a place where the religion to which they were exposed as a child, held up when they began to think as a man.
That said, there may, here, be a sort of answer to Jim’s question. My father was a militant anti-theist; calling him an atheist does scant justice to the contempt in which he held all religious belief. His own hard life had left him with the conviction that there was no God, or if there was, he was a God who hated him personally and had condemned him to an existence which brought far more sorrow than joy; his reaction was violent, and on the one occasion a group of Latter Day Saints called round to the house to take us to church, he exploded in one of his great rages; the Mormons beat a hasty retreat – an irate former sergeant-major in a fury was something from which the Germans had fled in North Africa; the Mormons were right to flee. I have two brothers, both of whom imbibed his view of these things. I did not; I have no idea why.
I recall, as a child, going along with friends to a Catholic service, that must have been in the mid 1960s. I found it oppressive and a bit spooky; at that stage of my development there was no way I could have gone into that church. The mild Methodism to which my mother exposed we was a different matter. I liked the ‘God is love’ banner about the preacher’s head, and I like Sunday School and the cheerful songs; I was a child, and I though as a child, and I have always been, and always will be, grateful to Methodism for bringing me a knowledge of Jesus and the Gospel.
At University I gravitated to high Church Anglicanism. As a young adult I came to understand about symbolism and about the ‘Real presence’ and why liturgy mattered; the Anglican tradition nurtured me and spoke to me in a way nothing else could have done. It drew me very close to Orthodoxy, so close that when the Church of England moved off to pursue (as I saw it) other interests (social work, equality for women, fighting the Thatcher government, saving the whale and whatnot), the move into the Orthodox Church was easy enough. There I came to a better understanding of ecclesiology and of Apostolicity and the importance of authority – so good, indeed, that my questioning took me across the Tiber.
One reason I remain well-disposed to my former churches is that they led me to where I am now; without them I do not know how I could have reached across the Tiber. God knows us, broken and battered as we are, and perhaps in his compassion he provides milk and water until some of we weaker brethren are ready for the stronger stuff? I don’t know, but that’s my story, and I would hazard a guess I am not alone here in something like it?
NEO said:
I like very much the way you describe your journey. Mine although much simpler, is also more superficial. But, I think your point is critical, the emphasis in each church is somewhat different, and appeals to us in different stages of our life, and perhaps to different people as well, on Jim’s post, i referred to it as akin to a marketing plan, and while yes, that is a bit crass, perhaps, it also, I think valid.
I have a very soft spot for Methodism, simply because they have always been the church, that when I couldn’t find my brand, were always there, and while much of their doctrine I disagree with, I have always dearly loved their joy in the faith, and their friendliness to the stranger.
My first introduction to the Catholic church was a much different kettle of fish. But it was either pre V II or very shortly after, and the Latin and all the ceremonial bells and smells, I found very off putting, like the good Reformed Protestant I was. Now? I suspect were I 20 years younger, I might end up there, and I find myself tending up the Lutheran candlestick more and more to the point that I’ve become too Catholic for my synod.
Like all journeys, I suppose, it continues until we reach the destination, if we’ve taken the right route, of course.
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chalcedon451 said:
Thank you Neo. I had not intended it to go down the personal route, but that was what it did, and like you, my first experience of the RCC was pre-Vatican II and very off-putting. It took a long and circuitous route for me to get there 🙂
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NEO said:
I figured you didn’t, I rarely do either but, I think it more effective when we do 🙂
Yes, I understand that, and banging around the country as I did for years put a hold on most kinds of growth, I doubt I’ll get to where you are but I easily understand how you did.
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chalcedon451 said:
It was a surprise to me when it did!
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NEO said:
I know that feeling well!
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Servus Fidelis said:
An interesting journey C, and yes, many of us have similar stories as we grew older and questioned ever more boldly.
Jim’s questions, posed well in his post, is one that many of us tangled with at one time or another. I often wondered, like a Calvinist, that once God died on the Cross and He already knows who will be saved and who will not, why then should there be any more births in this vale of tears? For it seemed to me that only a cruel God would force us to live in doubt and bear with the trials and tribulations of this life when He could simply take our souls (that He has known from the beginning) and place us directly in Heaven or Hell where we each belonged. It did seem that God wants our cooperation with our Salvation; a participation in His passion and death for our sins.
As far as divisions go? It is a mystery. But I know that if I were running a kennel that produced a thoroughbred dog or horse, a female pregnant with a bad genetic line would be separated so that her offspring might not contaminate the pure line of the breed. In such a case, division is not a bad thing but an essential part of the the process to maintain the purity of the animals being bred. Our problem today is recognizing a genetic defect and trying, as best we can, to identify the purist breed we can find.
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chalcedon451 said:
Very true, SF. It is, indeed, a great puzzle.
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Servus Fidelis said:
It is indeed.
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chalcedon451 said:
They think they do, and in a way, not the way they think, they may well do so. I certainly should not have been a Roman Catholic without what those churches gave me. It was when they gave me what they had that I knew there was more – and eventually, where to find it.
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chalcedon451 said:
I’m sure that is so, but whether I would have taken my faith seriously, well, I wonder?
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Jim said:
I’m sure there is at least one person on this blog that has figured it all out! 🙂
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Servus Fidelis said:
Jim, I think what we have figured out is the same as what you have figured out yourself; that a mystery remains by its nature unknowable. 🙂
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Servus Fidelis said:
Yes indeed QVO, thanks to revelation and especially the incarnation of our Lord and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But the Mystery of God at the moment of our Beatitude will be sufficient for us to explore and marvel at for all eternity. There will always be more to discover, love and to contemplate. An infinite delight for the soul which is a mystery that will never be fully exhausted. Thus our eternal happiness will also be endless.
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Servus Fidelis said:
As do I, and to the second, I am happy with your acceptance though I am not too happy with the man either.
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Servus Fidelis said:
Indeed so. We don’t have to like it and others have had to live through much worse until the Church corrects itself once again. It happens. We bear with it and continue with our spiritual progress lived in obedience to faith. That is all we can do. Pray, hope and don’t worry is a saying for our days. I think Padre Pio knew we needed a simple way to deal with these times.
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Servus Fidelis said:
They may. All I know is we are living in interesting times. Ever read about Our Lady of Good Success? She might be a good intercessor for these times.
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Servus Fidelis said:
Appropriate, I would say. 🙂
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chalcedon451 said:
Bosco thinks he has – which means he hasn’t!
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St Bosco said:
Yeah, I can see why someone would want to join the CC. maybe 50 yrs ago, but not now.
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mkenny114 said:
This is a very interesting reflection. It is strange, because (I would suppose) that a great deal of the reason people find it hard to accept Catholicism in the UK is because it is a Protestant country and so all there will have, to a certain extent, imbibed the principles of that movement. Wrt Anglicanism and the English identity in particular, the two are deeply interrelated ideas. So the reluctance to embrace Catholicism and instead going through a process of joining other churches on the way there instead is itself something that is a product of the divisions caused by the Reformation – thus although now we can see God using the virtues of other churches to lead one to the Catholic Church (and try to understand those divisions in that light), it is still the case that this process is only necessary because of the divisions.
Similarly, one could argue that the Reformation, with it’s embracing and bringing to the forefront of private judgement, is greatly responsible for the way we in the West think about decision making – i.e.; in an individualistic way and sometimes with a slightly arbitrary idea of the will. So, the process of making our way through churches due to what felt right or appealed at the time could also said to be a product of that event too. Either way, we are still left with the difficulty of why those divisions should have been allowed in the first place. That God can still use the broken pieces of the Reformation to guide us back to the Church is testament only to His great ability to work good from evil though – it can certainly never be an endorsement of the situation itself.
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chalcedon451 said:
Very true – but as Servus has reminded is, He writes straight with crooked lines 🙂
He has mercy on us in our folly and pride.
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mkenny114 said:
He does indeed, and I thank God for His mercy – what Saint John Paul II rightly referred to as ‘love’s second name’ – without it there would be no hope at all. It is a strange paradox that it is very often in and through the sins and sufferings of mankind that His mercy is most powerfully brought to our attention – the mystery of iniquity, the most compelling (and perhaps the only really cogent) argument against God’s existence and/or goodness, is strangely the field in which the depths of His mercy are made most real to us, and also the times in which our capacity for love is given the most scope to work.
The sins and scandals of division are perhaps just one particularly forceful example of how this can be – again, no one would I think want to say that the falling away of various groups from the unity of the Church is a good thing per se, nor is it God’s will, but in the mystery of His Providence, we are thereby given a great vision of how the Spirit can work through a situation of brokenness and sin to both display the great mercy of God and perhaps to recall us from a sense of complacency – to remind us just how important unity is to Him, and the costliness of reestablishing it (so also the costliness of Love).
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chalcedon451 said:
I agree Mike.
We find ourselves where we find ourselves, which is not where we might wish; but God will find us all the same 🙂
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mkenny114 said:
Absolutely 🙂
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