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Dear Dom,
First, I would like to echo the reply that my colleague Mary Ann has given.
Second, to the grave concern I have for the quality of life inside Catholic seminaries today,
the biggest problem in our Church is a lack of catechesis among Catholics in the Church, among both, those who make their Sunday obligation and those that don't.
In my opinion, the quality of our Catholic catechesis is terrible and there is no encouragement for our teenagers in CCD to:
- remain faithful to the Magisterium and the Holy Father, to the extent of being willing to laid down their life for:
- our Lord Jesus
- His only Church, and
- the divine Teachings that the Church has preserved for over 2,000 years.
Don't take this personally, but it appears you are one of many who have fallen into this category, so you have to ask yourself the question:
- Do I just want to go through the motions, doing things, because "they" told me I have to?, or
- Do you want to learn what you believe as a Catholic Christian and understand why you believe it?
There are some great new resources the Vatican has provided. Besides the standard for the faith: the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church has also provided the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and within the past few month: YouCat — the Vatican's way of being cool with the youth. In this age of text messaging there are so many abbreviations like: BFF, LOL, the Vatican has YC, which means YouCat: Youth Catechism.
Both the Compendium and YouCat come in a question and answer format, so if you have enjoyed visiting our site and the question and answer forum we have provided, I think you will enjoy both the Compendium and YouCat.
So my advice, get your YC today!
You said:
Is this true, because this is what I was taught.
After reading the first paragraph from your original question, what you were taught is incorrect. For that reason, I encourage you to learn the faith.
Try to develop a library of books and resources. I have one. My library encompasses, in both, paper and computer form:
- Church history and patristics
- Catholic evangelization
- Catholic apologetics: knowing how to defend arguments against what we believe in a charitable manner, and
- Catholic devotions that assist me in my prayer life.
I have no idea how sincere your friend is, but if he is sincere just tell him, he is attacking a straw horse, a Church that doesn't exist.
If you know he is not sincere, like Mary Ann said:
- By what authority does he make these false claims and slander and distort our faith?
A problem many in the Church have today, is we let people slander and distort our faith without challenging them. It's politically incorrect to talk about region or faith, but it's OK to slander or distort the Christian faith, especially the Catholic faith. Ridiculous!
Certainly, if I started saying that Baptists believe in everything the Methodists believe in,
the Baptists would not be happy with me, and justly so.
We have so many treasures in the Church that we don't take advantage of. Scott Hahn has said:
We are like Rockefellers in the ghetto, who don't know how to write out a check.
Catholics, and other Christians with valid Holy Orders, are the only Christians who can partake in divine nature on a weekly and daily basis through the sacraments of the Church.
If partaking in divine nature with God Himself is not cool, I don't know what is. : )
- It's your choice though, do you want to be just a bump on a log, or do you want to know and defend your faith?
The choice is yours and everyone's on the face of the earth.
Just my two cents.
Mike
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