Re: As an outsider...

Date: 2014-08-02 04:07 pm (UTC)
Is this rhetorical? I'm not really being snarky; I'd like to know if you'd like an answer. The short answer is that Catholicism, in itself, is very varied. So you can't necessarily tell what a person will think about something when they proclaim, as I just did, "I'm a Catholic". There is, of course, some common ground. I'm not a theologian and I don't want to lead you astray, but these are the basics, as I understand them:
1. We believe that Jesus Christ (who, by the way, was an actual Palestinian Jew who lived under Roman occupation - Christ did exist, whether you think him divine or not) was the son of God.
2. We believe in God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit. We also believe that our Blessed Mother gave birth to Christ through the Holy Spirit.
3. We believe in the Sacraments instituted by Christ and the Apostles, We believe Jesus is really present to us in the seven Sacraments, and that He gave them to us to strengthen us and guide us. In particular, Christ is actually present in Communion.
4. We believe we are all, without exception, called to the Imitation of Christ and his Saints. Every human being has a particular calling and purpose in life, and all of us are required to further God's creation and begin building his kingdom here on earth.

That said (and there's a lot more. As I said, I'm a laywoman, and I haven't studied a lot of theology) - that said, I do believe that the Church is, in part, a human institution. And we humans are imperfect. In the long run, the Church will get things right. But, as a priest friend I love and respect said, we are still in our spiritual infancy. We have a long way to go.

Christ himself summed up the four points I made above into one. Love. We are to love each other as God loves us, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Christ said, "That is the whole of the Law. The rest is just commentary."

I honestly don't know, since it is a Sacrament, what I think about gay couples getting married in Church, I do feel strongly that all the other Sacraments (including ordination to the religious life) ought to be open to them, and I also believe strongly in civil unions and equal rights for gay couples. As to the role of women in the Church - as I said, the Church is a human institution. At the beginning, before the 10th century, we had deaconesses and at least one Abbess had a major voice in a synod (Mother Hild, at Whitby). We need to get back to that, and we're starting to. As I said, we have a long way to go, and the Church is imperfect.

And, alas, you can find legalists and literalists and people driven by fear and anger in all faiths - and, presumably in none.

The Church should not oppress anybody. Unfortunately, it often has. Flannery O'Connor, Cathollic writer, said, "The Church is the cross on which Christ was crucified. But you can't have Christ without the cross." I don't know what you'll think of this. I find it helpful, at least sometimes. At other times it can seem a cop-out.

That's really about as much as I can say about this issue. I hope it is helpful to you. Just ignore it if it's not.
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

mary_j_59: (Default)
mary_j_59

March 2024

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
242526 27282930
31      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 09:18 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios