How difficult is it to be a Catholic now?

Hi back 'Mishap'!
Many thanks your kind reply which is full of so much wisdom & common sense. Yes, I think it's not what you 'believe' but rather how you 'love' which seems to be what Jesus & other religious figures taught.
I shall bear in mind what you say & thanks again.
Have a nice day!
Om shanti.
Dave x

I hope you find someone on here who can share your journey dave. For my part, I decided that the journey was taking up to much of my time and that living might be a better option. The "meaning of life" and the existence or otherwise of a deity are not obvious and a whole lifetime could be spent searching for these, when one could just be getting on with living a decent life and being kind to one's neighbour. Rather than searching for meaning I try and concentrate on spreading a little happiness where I am able within my limitations.

Good morning & namaste!

I'm a 'newbie' & not sure if I'm in the right place right now.

I was baptized RC & educated at a Jesuit boarding school during the 1950s.

I'm currently experiencing a 'crisis of Faith' & would love to 'dialogue' with 1 or 2 empathetic/sympathetic people who might understand my difficulties but I don't do well with the evangelical fundamentalist type. I am, however, deeply ecumenical & have studied a bit of eastern religions like Buddhism & Hinduism. I practice christian meditation.

I am disabled & housebound but a lady Deacon from the 'Church in Wales' visits every 2 or 3 weeks & I find her most uplifting.

I have had a long but tortuous faith journey so far & too complicated to explain here.

Meanwhile, thanks for listening.

God bless, om shanti!

Dave.

PS I am/was a trained advisor/advocate in Mental Health

Exactly! They always thought we could be brought back into the fold. No chance.

Yes, or some sort of memory failure...

Joan we used to be called 'lapsed Catholics' which in my view made it sound faintly medical.

I'm starting to notice people referring to themselves as 'recovering Catholics'.

I'm also an ex-catholic but I don't feel that I'm recovering - I just feel I've moved on.

The history of church child abuse world-wide utterly horrifies me, though the priests I knew were fine, and our lads never suffered abuse at our local catholic primary and secondary schools. One of my lads is now a teacher at that same secondary school.

I do remember that when the AIDS crisis first hit, and the various protestant fundamentalists such as the JWs were crowing about God punishing those sinners, the local Catholic church simply set about looking after the Aids victims, and reducing their suffering as much as possible. This was before much progress had been made in treatments.

My leaving the church had nothing much to do with other people: it was simply that I ceased to believe any of the tenets of religion - it had all been demoted to myth in my mind, for many years.

It would have been big enough to accommodate the effluent from a workhouse - quite a big building maybe.

TriciaF Perhaps by septic tank they really mean a cesspit. Not so technically constructed so could be bigger and not so likely to get blocked.

The Irish government have announced an official enquiry. Irish government enquiries often go on for years. So we won't hold our breath. The one fact is that there were an awful lot of deaths registered in this one institution. Apparently lively rumours that the children were used for vaccine trials! Doubt this is cause of high death rate somehow. Sounds like the vaccine conspracists at work.
And we have not heard a lot about the Magdalen laundries in the UK - but it's ongoing news in Ireland. Incarceration and enslavement of many thousands numbers of young women who became pregnant, some of them no doubt would have been the victims of rape, incest and abuse by priests, who are now middle aged and speaking out about the cruelty they suffered. So against that background the idea that their babies were not well cared for is not implausible.

None of us have any idea about whether this story is true and there is a lot of stuff flying about - some choose to believe some "facts", others to believe others. The truth is that we do not know what really happened and maybe never will.

I am however inclined to believe those catholic posters on here and my friends who were brought up as catholics who found it all oppressive. I have no reason to think that they might be lying.

Good to have that link MiceElf.
I was sceptical about the story from the start partly because I couldn't believe they would be so wicked, and partly because we have a septic tank and it would hardly hold one small body never mind 800, and is easily blocked.

Facts, Mishap. A lot of what has appeared in the media about the Tuam story has been speculation and misreporting.

I'm not Catholic and don't know much about it other than what I read, including on these forums. But I went along to a talk recently by Father Christopher Jamison, a Benedictine monk, as part of a week-long “Happiness Project” in my local area - he has written a book called Finding Happiness, Monastic Lessons for Everyday Life. I didn’t know anything about him at all but he has had some TV shows “The Big Silence” and another one, I can’t remember. He was such an inspirational speaker, I found myself making notes of some of the things he said:

“Hope is the remedy for sadness and we have to make a conscious effort to sustain it in ourselves and others”.
“Two things you have to do always – contemplate; and do good things”.
“Shun forgetfulness … especially about your blessings, because if you do not acknowledge your blessings, you will always be ‘looking beyond’ for ‘fleeting happiness’ and miss joy, which is the product of being blessed”.

And I learnt a new word: “acedia”.

Apologies for slightly going off topic.

Facts or beliefs?

Thanks for this link, MiceElf. I hope some of the posters who've added comments since you posted it will actually read the whole piece. But why confuse a good story with facts?

As stated in the article, the west of Ireland was desperately poor, disease would spread rapidly in a community. Perhaps a search of the infant mortality rate in the general population at the time should be made.

As I stated in a previous post, my DH who grew up in Ireland came from a very poor background and had nothing but praise for the nuns and brothers who taught him, strict yes but no cruelty. He told me stories of how at Christmas, when there were no presents and little food in the house there would always be a parcel delivered by the local nuns containing food and some small gifts.

Yes I agree. It's not where they were buried, septic tank or common ground. But why were there so many? And this was while these babies and very young children were under the care of, in this particular case, the Catholic Church.

Surely the true scandal is the deaths of so many children in the 'care' of the church, not the disposal of their remains.

No hysteria on this thread that I have seen. People relating their experiences and expressing their concerns.

I regard myself as an agnostic and try to look at all sides. But I cannot pretend that things are right when they are wrong.

I do not intend to comment further on this thread but this article by a libertarian atheist sheds light rather than hysteria.

www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tuam-tank-another-myth-about-evil-ireland/15140#.U5aqUGt5mSP

Granjura - I can read Hebrew and we have Hebrew texts with commentaries, including Genesis. But the main thing about the creation story is that it's very poetic, allegorical almost, so interpretations vary a lot. And as Lilygran said there are 2 versions.
I've had another look and there are in fact 3 words for man, and 3 for woman, if you include one phrase "ezer negdo" which means sort of helpmeet with complementary abilities.
The interesting bit, to me, is when Adam is accused by God of eating from the forbidden tree, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent - typical!
Genesis 3/ verses 11 to 13.

Being brought up as a Catholic [though I always questioned it] as lots of things seemed barmy to me, but amazingly, I was an adult before I realised that Jesus had brothers and sisters.A normal family! They kept that quiet, it was taught to us that he was an only child. I think that JessM and Granjura and TriciaF and TerriBull's posts are spot on.
We are not Catholic bashing by the way, and I still know and like very much, various Catholic friends just as I like Jewish friends and Hindu friends, while not particularly admiring their religions.What we need to see is where there is wrong doing, particularly against children , the church coming out strongly against those priests and getting rid of them [after they have been prosecuted by the police of course] and not sending them for a spell in the naughty cell in the Vatican before sending them to a new parish.In short, no more cover ups.The Catholic Church has been very arrogant in this respect.

It means that in Hebrew there were 2 words for man and mankind- and that both were used in the initial story- and woman was never mentioned. Translators all the way down the line have deliberately changed the Bible, and perhaps sometimes by mistake too (I was a translator, so know that we can make mistakes too). In this case it seems it was very deliberate. Translating from language to language does slowly turn into Chinese whispers anyhoe- but it is clear that the Catholic Church did do so very deliberately- as well as get rid of what did match up to their needs and expectation.

I went to a lecture a few years ago, given by a Jesuit expert in Hebrew, here in Switzerland. Sadly I never got his notes, or made notes myself- which I truly regret. I will speak to the Catholic friend who invited me and see if she can get anything for me.

Oh lilygran I think you do know what distorted in translation means - I cannot believe that you do not. All ancient holy books have the same problem. Camels and eyes of needles spring to mind.