Why I am not a Catholic
I thought about titling this "My problem with Catholicism." The problem is that I both do and do not have a problem with Catholicism, and the Catholic Church, and there are very many individual Catholics with whom I have no problem whatsoever even on religious grounds. But I've felt the need to discuss this lately, because it seems to me that the reasons I have for not being Catholic myself are the same reasons that the church has found itself in a disgraceful light in the recent past.
Firstly, here is the thing about Christians in general: we all have levels of understanding. When it comes to intelligence, or the understanding of the natural world, there are people who are mentally challenged, and there are people who are geniuses; there are people who see everything from an artistic viewpoint and are artistically brilliant, and people who are scientific and are brilliant scientists. There are as many approaches to understanding of the natural world as there are shades of color.
When it comes to the spiritual world, I think it is the same. Some people have a very simple faith. There isn't a direct correlation between simplicity of faith and intellect, but it may be easier to understand if you think of it in those terms. A mentally challenged person who loves God may not sit down with you and argue the finer points of the prophecies of Revelations. That person may only understand that he loves his parents and his friends and Jesus, and that faith is valid and valuable and in no way inferior to the faith of a genius and scholar. That childlike faith may be the highest faith there is, and is often what the rest of us should be aspiring to.
So when it comes to individual Catholics, I believe that their faith is different from mine, and that it is fitting to their understanding.
When it comes to priests and monks and nuns, I do not believe that God requires us to give up human relationships for Him, but if your understanding and your heart leads you to make that sacrifice, then I believe that God sees your heart, and accepts, values, and rewards your actions. I believe there are priests and nuns out there who have the kind of faith and live the kinds of lives that put mine to shame, and for that reason I feel that it would be wrong and self-righteous for me to make the unqualified statement, "I have a problem with your priesthood," or in some way to feel that I am more enlightened than they are.
Secondly, here is the thing about Christian churches in general: I don't think there is a church on the planet with which I would find myself in complete agreement 100% of the time. That is not a bad thing at all. It means that the people who wrote the founding documents were not blindly following me, and I am not blindly following them. We have both thought things over for ourselves and come to different conclusions. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I don't fully support Catholicism from a doctrinal standpoint, because I probably don't FULLY support anyone.
But doctrinally, there are some things that I just don't think matter. The Grace Brethren church, as far as I can tell, decided to split from the rest of Protestantism because they thought that when you are baptized in water, you're supposed to be dunked under three times--once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to only once in the names of all three. I really, really, really don't think God gives a rip about how many times you go under. I think he's concerned that you approach Him with a pure heart and want to do what you have to in order to demonstrate your commitment to Him. You could be dipped five times in Jello for all I care, and as long as you're sincere about it, I think He's fine with it, too.
Similarly, I don't think God gives a hoot about whether or not you eat bacon, worship on Saturday or Sunday, dance, or any number of other things that various churches get worked up about. I have gone to churches that frown on many of these things, but I didn't feel that my doctrinal dissent was enough to bar attendance.
But my doctrinal differences with Catholicism are actually on things that matter enough for me to not feel comfortable joining, because they have to do with my relationship with God itself.
Firstly, and perhaps least importantly, there's a big mess of stuff in Catholicism that was incorporated from random pagan religions and had nothing to do with Judaism/Christianity in the first place. Ages and ages ago (and much of this was down to Constantine), people wandered around, encountered people of other faiths, and did a lot of, "Oh, you worship this statue of Baal being held by his mother, Ashtaroth? Fine, you can still pray to them, but we're going to call them Mary and Jesus now," and that kind of thing. I don't really approve, and would rather have my faith and doctrine based solely on the Bible and the testimony of Jesus.
The reason I say "least importantly" is that I think the most important thing is where your heart is. There are people who will argue that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas because a) Jesus wasn't born anywhere remotely near December 25, and b) the original holiday on or about December 25 was a pagan one, and it was one of these pagan rites that Catholicism incorporated, yadda yadda yadda. I don't care. I don't think God cares. That all happened a long time ago. If we all take a day out of the year--any day at all--to dedicate to celebrating Jesus' birth, and we do so by giving one another gifts, then as long as we are doing it out of a pure heart, I think it's good in the sight of God.
On the other hand, this nonsense of praying to Mary and saints is RIGHT OUT, but I think it's God's business to smack people upside the head for that sort of thing if He wants to.
So to some degree, a lot of the things that were incorporated into the Catholic church might bug me, but they might not necessarily prevent me from becoming a member.
So what does?
It's the entire subject of leadership.
Prior to the time of Jesus, the only way to approach God was via a priest, who entered His presence in an area of the temple called the Holy of Holies. This area was accessible only to priests, and was separated from the areas available to the people by a VERY thick (as in inches thick) curtain. Blood sacrifices to cleanse the priest made this entrance possible.
When Jesus was crucified, this veil of division was torn from the top down. The tearing of the curtain from the top down signified the removal of the separation between us and God by Jesus' death--His sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice that cleansed us ALL enough to enter the presence of God. Always. Everywhere. He walks among us, and we walk in His presence.
The whole point now is that our faith has changed from one in which we had to rely on someone else. We have direct access, which is both a blessing and a responsibility.
We are REQUIRED to develop our own relationship with God. We are required to think for ourselves, and to take our instruction from Him. Yes, we still have pastors and rabbis and teachers, and these are good things. I don't have the time to study Hebrew and ancient texts and research and study what the finer points of this or that law are. That's why we pay our pastors and rabbis and teachers, just as we pay our math teachers to go off and do THEIR research. They do this study, and they present their findings to us, and help us to learn, but we are not to treat them as infallible. We are to weigh everything they say against what we know to be true--a certain amount of study and prayer is still vital on our part, and we need to know enough for ourselves to recognize when one of these teachers tells us something wrong.
So the whole concept of a pope with papal infallibility is fundamentally flawed. There is nothing wrong with having a heirarchy of teachers, just as at a school we have teachers and department heads and deans. And maybe those department heads and deans can make decisions about what those below them should teach, but we recognize that they are sometimes wrong and sometimes make mistakes. A pope is a human being, and none of us, under any circumstances, should ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever turn the responsibility for our souls over to another mere human being, or allow that person to stand between us and God. That curtain was torn, and it was torn by God Himself. ANY spiritual leader is only a teacher, and we should always weigh what a teacher says with what we know to be true.
Secondly, there is a whole mess of Scripture that tells us about how religious leaders and teachers are supposed to be appointed, and I'll tell you right now that I'm not eligible, because I don't measure up. Religious leaders are held to a higher standard than the rest of us.
God forgives, and we are supposed to forgive as well. Sure, no human being is perfect, but there's a whole list of stuff that makes you ineligible to be a leader or teacher. A lot of these things have to do with sexual sins. To put it bluntly, if you visit a prostitute, for example, you're no longer eligible to be a deacon in a church. Period. It doesn't mean God hasn't forgiven you, or that I haven't, it's just part of the eligibility criteria, like a conviction for embezzlement making you ineligible to work in a bank even if you've served your time and been rehabilitated. Far from saying that priests aren't allowed to marry, Paul actually suggests that they do so--to paraphrase, he says that if you're getting some at home, you're not going to be tempted to go get some where you shouldn't.
So that's the thing: the entire understanding that the Catholic church has regarding leaders--what their role is, how they should be appointed, how they should be regarded by the congregation--it's all counter to scripture. If you found out that a church leader was molesting anyone, that leadership is stripped, period. That is IN THE BIBLE. There is no question of a cover-up.
And when they appointed this last pope and he said, "Oh, yeah, I was in the Hitler youth, but you have to understand, I was young, and it was impossible to say no," uh, NO. I am sorry. Is it understandable to be in the Hitler Youth during that time? Yes. Was it impossible to say no? No. Other people did. Some of those people died.
Would *I* have said no? Who knows? Probably not; I'm a bit crap. However, I wasn't running for pope. The whole point is that LEADERS ARE HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD. For me to be the best thing you've got going, a lot of very good people would have to die first.
The standards for and role of teachers, and the fundamental nature of direct access to God say something very big about faith and the church. I can join a church that feels strongly about triple-dunking everyone or banning the Macarena. I don't feel that I can join a church that says that I have to blindly accept what the Pope or any other human being says about anything without talking to God about it.
God never said that our leaders would be perfect, or that their moral codes would be bug-free. He did say that if they taught something wrong, that they'd be punished dearly for it, which implies that it can happen.
If you tell people they're supposed to accept what their leaders say as coming from the mouth of God, then suddenly you run into trouble when they turn out to be flawed. You cover things up.
When you don't hold your leaders to a higher standard, and when your highest leader is someone who justifies his past mistakes by saying, "Well, you had to understand...the circumstances...they were difficult...." instead of acknowledging that these mistakes make him ineligible for leadership, then you can't really be surprised when you find out that this same approach is taken toward the cover-ups of the past.
What I am hoping is that these scandals cause the Catholic leadership to revisit the concept of leadership itself, and adopt the Biblical principles that were there to avoid all of this in the first place. Until then, you'll find me over here in Messianic Jew-land doing the Macarena.
I thought about titling this "My problem with Catholicism." The problem is that I both do and do not have a problem with Catholicism, and the Catholic Church, and there are very many individual Catholics with whom I have no problem whatsoever even on religious grounds. But I've felt the need to discuss this lately, because it seems to me that the reasons I have for not being Catholic myself are the same reasons that the church has found itself in a disgraceful light in the recent past.
Firstly, here is the thing about Christians in general: we all have levels of understanding. When it comes to intelligence, or the understanding of the natural world, there are people who are mentally challenged, and there are people who are geniuses; there are people who see everything from an artistic viewpoint and are artistically brilliant, and people who are scientific and are brilliant scientists. There are as many approaches to understanding of the natural world as there are shades of color.
When it comes to the spiritual world, I think it is the same. Some people have a very simple faith. There isn't a direct correlation between simplicity of faith and intellect, but it may be easier to understand if you think of it in those terms. A mentally challenged person who loves God may not sit down with you and argue the finer points of the prophecies of Revelations. That person may only understand that he loves his parents and his friends and Jesus, and that faith is valid and valuable and in no way inferior to the faith of a genius and scholar. That childlike faith may be the highest faith there is, and is often what the rest of us should be aspiring to.
So when it comes to individual Catholics, I believe that their faith is different from mine, and that it is fitting to their understanding.
When it comes to priests and monks and nuns, I do not believe that God requires us to give up human relationships for Him, but if your understanding and your heart leads you to make that sacrifice, then I believe that God sees your heart, and accepts, values, and rewards your actions. I believe there are priests and nuns out there who have the kind of faith and live the kinds of lives that put mine to shame, and for that reason I feel that it would be wrong and self-righteous for me to make the unqualified statement, "I have a problem with your priesthood," or in some way to feel that I am more enlightened than they are.
Secondly, here is the thing about Christian churches in general: I don't think there is a church on the planet with which I would find myself in complete agreement 100% of the time. That is not a bad thing at all. It means that the people who wrote the founding documents were not blindly following me, and I am not blindly following them. We have both thought things over for ourselves and come to different conclusions. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I don't fully support Catholicism from a doctrinal standpoint, because I probably don't FULLY support anyone.
But doctrinally, there are some things that I just don't think matter. The Grace Brethren church, as far as I can tell, decided to split from the rest of Protestantism because they thought that when you are baptized in water, you're supposed to be dunked under three times--once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to only once in the names of all three. I really, really, really don't think God gives a rip about how many times you go under. I think he's concerned that you approach Him with a pure heart and want to do what you have to in order to demonstrate your commitment to Him. You could be dipped five times in Jello for all I care, and as long as you're sincere about it, I think He's fine with it, too.
Similarly, I don't think God gives a hoot about whether or not you eat bacon, worship on Saturday or Sunday, dance, or any number of other things that various churches get worked up about. I have gone to churches that frown on many of these things, but I didn't feel that my doctrinal dissent was enough to bar attendance.
But my doctrinal differences with Catholicism are actually on things that matter enough for me to not feel comfortable joining, because they have to do with my relationship with God itself.
Firstly, and perhaps least importantly, there's a big mess of stuff in Catholicism that was incorporated from random pagan religions and had nothing to do with Judaism/Christianity in the first place. Ages and ages ago (and much of this was down to Constantine), people wandered around, encountered people of other faiths, and did a lot of, "Oh, you worship this statue of Baal being held by his mother, Ashtaroth? Fine, you can still pray to them, but we're going to call them Mary and Jesus now," and that kind of thing. I don't really approve, and would rather have my faith and doctrine based solely on the Bible and the testimony of Jesus.
The reason I say "least importantly" is that I think the most important thing is where your heart is. There are people who will argue that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas because a) Jesus wasn't born anywhere remotely near December 25, and b) the original holiday on or about December 25 was a pagan one, and it was one of these pagan rites that Catholicism incorporated, yadda yadda yadda. I don't care. I don't think God cares. That all happened a long time ago. If we all take a day out of the year--any day at all--to dedicate to celebrating Jesus' birth, and we do so by giving one another gifts, then as long as we are doing it out of a pure heart, I think it's good in the sight of God.
On the other hand, this nonsense of praying to Mary and saints is RIGHT OUT, but I think it's God's business to smack people upside the head for that sort of thing if He wants to.
So to some degree, a lot of the things that were incorporated into the Catholic church might bug me, but they might not necessarily prevent me from becoming a member.
So what does?
It's the entire subject of leadership.
Prior to the time of Jesus, the only way to approach God was via a priest, who entered His presence in an area of the temple called the Holy of Holies. This area was accessible only to priests, and was separated from the areas available to the people by a VERY thick (as in inches thick) curtain. Blood sacrifices to cleanse the priest made this entrance possible.
When Jesus was crucified, this veil of division was torn from the top down. The tearing of the curtain from the top down signified the removal of the separation between us and God by Jesus' death--His sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice that cleansed us ALL enough to enter the presence of God. Always. Everywhere. He walks among us, and we walk in His presence.
The whole point now is that our faith has changed from one in which we had to rely on someone else. We have direct access, which is both a blessing and a responsibility.
We are REQUIRED to develop our own relationship with God. We are required to think for ourselves, and to take our instruction from Him. Yes, we still have pastors and rabbis and teachers, and these are good things. I don't have the time to study Hebrew and ancient texts and research and study what the finer points of this or that law are. That's why we pay our pastors and rabbis and teachers, just as we pay our math teachers to go off and do THEIR research. They do this study, and they present their findings to us, and help us to learn, but we are not to treat them as infallible. We are to weigh everything they say against what we know to be true--a certain amount of study and prayer is still vital on our part, and we need to know enough for ourselves to recognize when one of these teachers tells us something wrong.
So the whole concept of a pope with papal infallibility is fundamentally flawed. There is nothing wrong with having a heirarchy of teachers, just as at a school we have teachers and department heads and deans. And maybe those department heads and deans can make decisions about what those below them should teach, but we recognize that they are sometimes wrong and sometimes make mistakes. A pope is a human being, and none of us, under any circumstances, should ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever turn the responsibility for our souls over to another mere human being, or allow that person to stand between us and God. That curtain was torn, and it was torn by God Himself. ANY spiritual leader is only a teacher, and we should always weigh what a teacher says with what we know to be true.
Secondly, there is a whole mess of Scripture that tells us about how religious leaders and teachers are supposed to be appointed, and I'll tell you right now that I'm not eligible, because I don't measure up. Religious leaders are held to a higher standard than the rest of us.
God forgives, and we are supposed to forgive as well. Sure, no human being is perfect, but there's a whole list of stuff that makes you ineligible to be a leader or teacher. A lot of these things have to do with sexual sins. To put it bluntly, if you visit a prostitute, for example, you're no longer eligible to be a deacon in a church. Period. It doesn't mean God hasn't forgiven you, or that I haven't, it's just part of the eligibility criteria, like a conviction for embezzlement making you ineligible to work in a bank even if you've served your time and been rehabilitated. Far from saying that priests aren't allowed to marry, Paul actually suggests that they do so--to paraphrase, he says that if you're getting some at home, you're not going to be tempted to go get some where you shouldn't.
So that's the thing: the entire understanding that the Catholic church has regarding leaders--what their role is, how they should be appointed, how they should be regarded by the congregation--it's all counter to scripture. If you found out that a church leader was molesting anyone, that leadership is stripped, period. That is IN THE BIBLE. There is no question of a cover-up.
And when they appointed this last pope and he said, "Oh, yeah, I was in the Hitler youth, but you have to understand, I was young, and it was impossible to say no," uh, NO. I am sorry. Is it understandable to be in the Hitler Youth during that time? Yes. Was it impossible to say no? No. Other people did. Some of those people died.
Would *I* have said no? Who knows? Probably not; I'm a bit crap. However, I wasn't running for pope. The whole point is that LEADERS ARE HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD. For me to be the best thing you've got going, a lot of very good people would have to die first.
The standards for and role of teachers, and the fundamental nature of direct access to God say something very big about faith and the church. I can join a church that feels strongly about triple-dunking everyone or banning the Macarena. I don't feel that I can join a church that says that I have to blindly accept what the Pope or any other human being says about anything without talking to God about it.
God never said that our leaders would be perfect, or that their moral codes would be bug-free. He did say that if they taught something wrong, that they'd be punished dearly for it, which implies that it can happen.
If you tell people they're supposed to accept what their leaders say as coming from the mouth of God, then suddenly you run into trouble when they turn out to be flawed. You cover things up.
When you don't hold your leaders to a higher standard, and when your highest leader is someone who justifies his past mistakes by saying, "Well, you had to understand...the circumstances...they were difficult...." instead of acknowledging that these mistakes make him ineligible for leadership, then you can't really be surprised when you find out that this same approach is taken toward the cover-ups of the past.
What I am hoping is that these scandals cause the Catholic leadership to revisit the concept of leadership itself, and adopt the Biblical principles that were there to avoid all of this in the first place. Until then, you'll find me over here in Messianic Jew-land doing the Macarena.
posted by Simone @ 9:25 AM
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