I had an aunt who was an extremely nice person- would help anyone in need. Had no use for non-Catholics. I asked if someone who was Christian but not Catholic was OK and she said they weren't. That was a big surprise and I decided there was no use trying to debate that. I later found out what the RC church did through the centuries and that caused me to stop any association with it. Spanish Inquisition? Pope being the leader of government? Hoarding gold, money, artwork and real estate but not paying tax? That's a big nope.
Think of the people who could have been helped if the Catholic Church would sell off it's worldly possessions and abide by the vow of poverty that they force their priests and nuns to follow......
Life-long Catholic …
agnostic now … here; not by choice but by birth.
At its core, like many religions, the teachings/morals are something to strive for. Sadly though what they preach and what they practice are two different animals. I saw it first-hand, having gone thru RC elementary & high schools.
Back in the late 60’s, early 70’s, you couldn’t get a better liberal/scientific based education in this country. No creationism or any of that crap. We were blessed you might say with the level of intelligence of our teachers; lay, nuns & priests. They knew the bible was just a fanciful story to teach us moral lessons, not the gospel truth. A vast majority of them could’ve easily taught in public schools or colleges and earned two to three times what they made teaching in the RC school system but they made the sacrifice for us, to become better people/citizens.
And then they made the tragic error of getting involved in politics, more so than normal at the behest of Rome/Pope, based on abortion, in the early 80’s, by telling us how to vote from the pulpit. I had become an agnostic by the time I was 14 anyway but I still believed in the core truths of the religion. I continued to go to church to please my parents and my newly minted fresh-faced bride but telling me how to vote, or I would go to hell, was the breaking point.
Like a majority of Catholics nowadays we believe in the core truths but the church itself is divorced from reality and people rarely attend church, outside of getting their children baptized, married and funerals.
My father often said that the biggest mistake the RC church made was not letting nuns/priests marry. Ironically in the early days of the RC church they could get married until the Second Lateran Council, in 1139.
They just have no idea what it’s like to raise a family every day and the tough decisions that come along with it.
