Roman Catholic Still After All These Years

Yes, I am still Roman Catholic and not hanging my head down about it either. No, I do not condone or support the things the church has done in the past with its pedophile priests. This is simply horrible, and there is no excuse for it. Yet, these things involved a very small number of priests and an even smaller number of bishops. Does that excuse it? No, but it doesn't change my reasons for joining the church, either.

We are a people trying to become perfect; we know we all have a long way to go to get there. Most of us are just normal people getting through this life.

My reasons for joining the church have actually not changed through the years. I find this kind of funny, but there it is. All of us, regardless of what church we are raised in, we all have to at some point in our adult life make a choice about what religion we are going to practice. We may decide to stay with the religion we were born in, or we may decide to not practice at all, or even just delay the decision because we are busy. We will all make this decision though. My choice was to stick with the religion I was raised in.

I decided to begin with that I did believe in God. This is actually a big decision. One can believe there is no god, or in any of a combination of gods, even religions. I decided that if god were real, then it made sense to believe in the best god. So, my version of the best god was one that was all powerful and just. That left me believing in just one god. It made sense to me that something was guiding us, the non-man made things in this universe are so majestic I don't think they were actually left to chance. So now I had my God.

That left me with a decision about whether an established religion was necessary to worship my God. Did my God need worship exactly? Did he care about how he was worshiped? I decided that God would care; and that his worship should be thanking him and making repairs for our wrongs, and generally coming to be one with God. To me, this meant that God would want to be worshiped in the best way. It make sense while he might accept any worship, he would want us to worship him in the most effective way. We would be getting the most bang for our worship buck so to speak.

So, I didn't rule out established religions, didn't rule them in either. But then I came to another sticking point. Not only did I believe that God was real, and feel it with my whole being, I also believed in Jesus Christ as the savior of mankind. This belief then put a kink into my choices. It ruled out any religions that didn't believe in Jesus Christ as the savior. Judaism and Muslim religions were out as a matter of course. I knew the messiah had come, and I didn't like the Muslim treatment of women in terms of education and other matters. So, that left me with the dozens or so Christian and like religions, or simply on my own.

I decided then to look at what Jesus did while he was here. Did he in fact start a religion and did he intend to do so? I believe he did, and I believe the apostles thought so to. So what happened to it? Did it continue on directly in some form, or did it get lost of the centuries. Looking at most of the other Christan religions, I noticed that most of them started fairly recently; and most were started by a disgruntled minister with his current church. I decided that I did not want to join a church started by a disgruntled minister, even if it had been around for some time. I simply did not trust the origins. I also decided the recent churches were a little to recent for me, I did not want to join a church changing around me. Which was the most longstanding church that believed in Jesus as the Messiah? Turns out, it was the Catholic Church. Over two thousand years old, and going, despite persecutions that are still going on. The Catholic Church still has martyrs every year who die for their faith and those that try to destroy her. I don't know why they keep trying. The record of success, whether the destruction came from inside (and there have been some horrible ones) or came from the outside is no successes. So, the Catholic Church became my choice.

This church also gave me something else I wanted in religion; continuity. I wanted a church I could pass down to my children and grandchildren, and that I could reach back to my parents with. I wanted my family united in on faith if possible. This to me is what family is. The Roman Catholic Church fit this bill also. And so, it became my church, and after 50 years, still is. That is a great thing.