Religious/Spiritual clubs vs The Church!

Since we’re now in the Easter season, I thought this was a good time to send this post along!

Many of the posts I’ve seen here on Catholic365.com are from converts to our Catholic Christian faith, either from non-Catholic Christian denominations, non-christian religions, or from no belief system. There are even some reverts! I love reading their stories, and I’d love to have feedback on this post especially from these converts and reverts!

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve known many people who’ve left the Church over the years, including immediate and extended family members. It appears many of these people have left due to having, at best, a poor formal faith formation during the ten to twenty years following Vatican II. I could have been one of those people, but because of experiences I had in my teens, and people who came into my life during this time, I was saved from leaving the Church when many of those around me left the first chance they got, usually right after Confirmation! Educating myself in faith issues that I should have been taught in my youth, came in my 20’s and 30’s. I thank God for organizations like Catholic Answers who filled in so many gaps in my faith education!

Many of my contemporaries who left the Church joined Protestant denominations. With over 40,000 Protestant denominations out there (converts and reverts, is that an accurate number?), it appeared to me that it boiled down to one question for these people; what “club” should they join? They probably asked themselves “which one of these clubs fits MY personal spirituality? Which one tells ME things I want to hear? Which one makes ME feel most comfortable? That’s the one I’ll join”. For many of them, joining a religion is no different than joining some kind of social or fraternal organization; find one you like, and join it!

Many of these former Catholics have been misled to believe that;

-all religions are equal, which begs the question; if all religions are equal, then why don’t they all worship God??

-we all worship the same God, which begs the question; if we all worship the same God, then which one of Mormonism’s “gods” do we worship (Mormonism is polytheistic, something their proselytizers won’t tell you when they come to your door)?

Now I’ll be the first to admit that when I first moved to my town, I went “shopping” for a parish here (there’s three of them), going to different Masses at each one of them. I had previously belonged to a parish in which there were blatant liturgical abuses, and where children received First Holy Communion three years before their First Penance (a direct violation of Canon Law), so finding a parish that at least stuck to basic Liturgical and Sacramental rules was important to me. The one I eventually chose to join as a parishioner just happened to be the one closest to where I lived.

Back to the former Catholics, now Protestants! As I learned about various denominations and religions, I also learned that there was no spiritual accountability among them. Whenever disagreements arise in these groups, one of two things usually happens;

-either one group splinters off to form a new church/denomination, or

-the group members force out the current leader and replace him or her with a leader who will tell them what THEY want to hear…even if it’s wrong! What a deal! People get to vote for and hire the leader who’s going to tell them what they want to hear, and if he or she starts saying things that make them uncomfortable, then it’s time to force them out and replace them!

No wonder televangelists like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer are so popular! They tell people what they want to hear, even if it’s wrong!

Then you have groups who say they’re a religion. The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (their official name) comes to mind. Simply put, Unitarian Universalism is nothing more than American Protestantism carried out to its ultimate conclusion! Some groups of UU’s (as they refer to themselves) call themselves churches, but they use the word “church” in a very generic, dictionary sense of the word, and not as Christianity uses it. Other UU groups refer to themselves as a “parish”, a “congregation”, or a “fellowship”. Though the organization will never admit it, it’s pretty much a “believe whatever you want” type of organization. They admit to having no official beliefs; instead they have Seven Principles which are non-binding on their membership, and are open to individual interpretation as well. They tend to focus on man-made political issues, and on non-existent issues like “global warming”. Their gathering places look like typical Evangelical Protestant church buildings, complete with pews, a speaker’s podium, hymnals in the pews, etc. Based on what I’ve read and heard, their membership currently tends to be older (as in senior citizen older!), rich white liberals, yet they claim to believe in things like diversity!

Oh, and like mainstream Protestant denominations, their overall membership has been dropping over the past several years.

Now I have questions for the converts and reverts. Before you came into full communion with the Church, or returned after being away for a time, and from my perspective as a cradle Catholic, you had many options in terms of which spiritual “club” to join;

-What was it about the Church that led you to it, or led you back to it?

-What did you see in the Church, that you didn’t see anywhere else?

-The Church experienced a blown-out-of-proportion (by the Catholic-hating news media) clergy sexual abuse crisis in the past 10-15 years, and yet you still came home to the Church; why?

-We say and teach moral values and truths that are countercultural in secular society, yet you still came home to the Church; why?

Let the responses begin!