Going to Church Makes Me Mad

Oct 24 15:12 UTC 1993

I was raised a Catholic, but the only times I attend church
services these days are weddings and funerals.  Going to church
makes me mad.
 
The thing that bothers me the most is the way the Catholics I
know pick and choose the parts of the Gospel they choose to
believe in.  For example, even though Christ said that it is
harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is
for a rich man to enter heaven, no one I know, including the
priests, have given it all up to follow Him.  In my mind, it's
clearly a matter of Catholics clearly not getting the point, or
if they do, deciding that particular teaching is just too hard to
follow.
 
Another trend I deplore is the tendency to turn services into
musicals.  Much of the music I've heard would be just as much at
home on Broadway as in a Catholic Church.  I'm not against
liturgical reform or modernization of the hymnal, but I think
that some of this music obscures the message.
 
I guess I'm mad because Catholicism never lived up to its
promise for me.  There are many powerful ideas in the Gospels.  I
took much of this teaching to heart when I was a kid and even
considered joining the priesthood.  As I grew up, however, I saw
how the Catholic Church put some of these messages into practice
and became very disappointed.
 
Catholics, and probably other religions, twist the message to
suit themselves.  Instead of taking the message to heart, they
latch on to the easy stuff and rationalize away the hard parts.
That's why going to church makes me mad.

response 2 of 44:

Oct 24 20:18 UTC 1993

(Christ also said, in the same context, that with God all things are
possible!  But most people don't think of themselves as "rich", anyway)
  Churches are full of people and people are all sinners, not a perfect 
one in the bunch.  I've never been in a Catholic church myself except for
a few weddings, but I've attended a selection of Protestant churches 
(besides the one we're now members of) and they certainly have not all
been anything like your generalization.  There have been dead churches
for millenia (read the first 3 chapters of Revelation!) but they're not
all like that, and most of them are not homogeneous.  If I ever found a 
perfect church it would cease to be one the minute I joined; some of 
the imperfect ones around here are either imperfect enough or just
different enough from my taste that attending them regularly would
distract *me* from God, but there are indeed some real Christians out 
there working hard to obey the word of God as they understand it (and
not taking for granted that they have it right)   Don't tar us all with
the same brush, please.

response 4 of 44:

Oct 25 15:03 UTC 1993

I dropped out of the Catholic Church for many of the same reasons
cited in #0.  The smarmy secularizing of the Bible, and the absolutely
ghastly music were what finally did it.  If I ever hear another
"folk" mass I'll puke.  

If I ever start a new denomination, it'll feature: services lasting
no longer than fifteen minutes; no church property -- all services
would be held at the residences of members; services would be held
outdoors, twelve months a year, regardless of the weather; no money
contributions would be solicted or accepted; no official or unofficial
involvement in politics, domestic policy or foreign policy -- no
"church" position on any of these things; no ritual, sacrament,
rule, etc., not specifically prescribed in the Bible; and a bunch
of other stuff I'm probably forgetting.  I think anyone's "ideal"
religion is likely to start by discarding all the things you like
least about whatever religion you were raised in.

response 6 of 44:

Oct 25 22:58 UTC 1993

no

response 8 of 44:

Oct 26 15:52 UTC 1993

Re #5: I don't know any lapsed Catholics who still call themselves 
Catholics, but I'll bet such do exist.  Probably more common among 
those who haven't moved on to some other denomination.  

Re #7: Interesting story.  If a child is too young to take 
communion, a Lutheran minister will trace the sign of the cross on 
the child's forehead and say something like, "May the Lord bless 
you and keep you safe."  It's all a lot of mumbo-jumbo, of 
course...until something like this happens to you.  "Was the timing 
of his fever-break a coincidence?"  No doubt it was.  Jung 
contended that such coincidences are manifestations of the will of 
God.  (Wasn't it Jung who said the problem with religions isn't 
that they make God seem unlikely, but that they don't make God seem 
unlikely enough?) 

response 10 of 44:

Oct 27 22:01 UTC 1993

BTW, re #0, did you know that the "eye of the needle" was one of the 12
gates into the city of Jerusalem?  It was rather small--about 7 feet 
high and 4 feet wide.  Anybody rich enough to own a camel and baggage
would be able to coast right in through the other gates.  However, for
a rich man to pass through the eye of the needle, he'd have to unload
his possessions, have the camel crawl through, then reload it.  That's
not a process favored by anybody with something to hide!

response 12 of 44:

Mar 10 21:16 UTC 1994

I am not an atheist, nor am I an agnostic.  My position on god is that there 
must be something that "set things going" so to speak--I don't know if that 
would be god or not.  My position on organized religion is that if I find one
belivable enough, I will join.  The main way religion works for me is to give
me something to think about when life gets hard:  praying, even if it has no
religious significance for me, gives me the illusion that I am doing something
worthwile about my problems.

response 14 of 44:

Aug 1 18:17 UTC 1994

Gee, MD, that sounds pretty close to paganism (escept the Bible part, o
of course).  If you have a problem with the services, as some of you have
voiced, but like the tenets of Christianity (or any other religions, for that
matter), why not worship at home?  This might work best for those who live in
homes, and can set up separate church rooms.  

response 16 of 44:

Aug 19 01:30 UTC 1994

The main problem I have with the major organized religions is the doctrine of
faith -- in other words, that "affirming something to be true with greater
conviction than is strictly warranted by the evidence" has moral content.
Is there intelligent life on Mars? Maybe. Should someone be judged morally
based on one's answer to that question? Of course not. Now, what about the
basic religious questions: Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Should
someone be judged morally based on his or her answer to *those* questions?
I think not. Morality is something completely different, and does not involve
true/false knowledge questions. Morality is when you intentionally bop
your kid brother over the head, for example. And that's what true "religion"
should be about. Let's be honest: no one can be *sure* that his or her
catechism is true. Right? So why theologically reward the dishonest? Why not
instead focus on the free will choices that *do* have moral content?

(Sorry for my rambling. Hope someone can make sense of it.)

response 18 of 44:

Aug 19 08:11 UTC 1994

#16:  I believe you're misunderstanding faith, or you're using a 
definition of it used by some churches for political reasons.  Faith 
is not about judging others; it's about judging yourself.  

response 20 of 44:

Aug 20 20:19 UTC 1994

I read #16 to be saying " Faith is accepting other human's beliefs
about what will happen after death and on how to behave and what 
morality."  That is not faith on any definition of the word, I don't 
think.  We determine our own faith on what others say, surely, but
faith is -- or should be -- self-determined.  We may chose to take 
another person's faith, lock, stock, and barrel, and make it our own,
but that is not the only way (or even the best way) to express faith.

You will be rewarded ion the afterlife, or you will believe so,
if Creed X is "I will be rewarded in the afterlife for believing that
such-and-such behavior will reward me, and I do such-and-such 
behavior."

response 22 of 44:

Aug 21 17:43 UTC 1994

One more time, then I give up.
I have faith in beliefs X, Y, and Z.  I might have these beliefs because
(a) my minister told me that X, Y, and Z, and I believe everything he says,
(b) my minister told me X, a Jewish friend I had once told me Y, and I
figuerd out Z all by myself, and X, Y, and Z all seem cool to me.
(c) X, Y, and Z are hypotheses about the universe that I developed by
looking at the universe, and they jive with natural phenomena (but are 
not proven by them).
16 above seemed to define faith as only (a), when that is only fiath in a 
vicarious sense.

Part II:
Let us assume that I believe X and Y.  X is:  All those who follow Y will go
to heaven (whatever that is), and only those who follow Y will.
Y is:  A good person always eats their vegetables, whether they like them 
or not.
Then, I will go to heaven if I eat my vegetables.
That doesn't prove I will go to heaven or not, but I have faith that I
will be rewarded for having lived a certain way and believed a certain 
thing.
(BTW, I believe neither X nor Y.  Eggplant:  Ick!)

response 24 of 44:

Aug 23 16:54 UTC 1994

Yes, it makes sense.  It's not the choosing of the faith that makes the 

faith moral:  it's including in the faith the belief that choosing the 
faith is moral that makes it moral.  This can't be reasoned through 
logically because faith consists of beliefs outside of traditional
logic.  I don't believe my faith is any more moral than anyone else's;
therefore, for me, it isn't.