I was raised Catholic and I have recently returned to going to mass as a way of meditation and peaceful participation in something I find helps me spiritually. I question my faith all the time. I have no answers. I don't know what will happen when I die.
Eckhart Tolls wrote a really cool book called A New Earth. In it he says people and religions talk about God as if they have it all figured out and know exactly what "GOD" is. In the same way many people say the opposite and deny that "GOD" exists, as if they have any concept of what it is they are denying. Wow! That is some powerful and well thought objective tinkkng about belief and non belief in deities.
Many of you seem like hard core atheists, and I recognize what you're saying because I used to be one too. Now that I go to church again I feel like I have a much more objective point of view. I don't follow the Pope or the rules of the church with blind faith and I disagree with many of the tenets and politicization of the Catholic church. I also acknowledge the heinous history of bloody conquest the church has in its notorious past. But I think that an outright condemnation of all Catholics is just lazy. It's like saying this... they assimilated many cultures along the way so anyone who has anything to do with them is a kook!
There are millions of people in the world that practice Catholicism that are excellent and thoughtful people. There are Catholics who are pieces of shit. There are people like that everywhere on Earth even amongst the Mayans and other assimilated and non assimilated peoples everywhere.
I'd like to hear some feedback from other forum posters on this. Am I way out in left field here? Am I out in left field for being interested in the paranormal?
I think our stories might not be that dissimilar.
I was raised a Catholic as well, and all my life I attended Catholic private schools --even in college! I went to the Universidad Iberoamericana, run by the Jesuits.
There's one time when I was very devout and struggled to follow the tenants of the faith. Later as I grew older I began to question more and more about the dogmas; also, my interest in the 'paranormal' allowed me to look at many of the interpretations made by the church in a different light.
So now I don't consider myself a Catholic, and I'm a
very harsh critic of their many errors and mistakes --I used to be something of a polite troll in a Catholic blog called Busted Halos
-- and I just wrote a letter in the Reforma newspaper criticizing the opinion of a bishop that complained how the stories of sexual abuses committed by members of the clergy were just 'three little stains' on a big white wall, but because of those little stains now people wanted all the wall to be painted ; that. Pissed. Me. Off.
Having said that, I also find that nowadays attacks to the Catholic church has become a, shall we say, acceptable form of
bigotry. Like Islam, people view the Church as an image of everything that's wrong with religion and a belief in a higher meaning in the Universe. And I find myself as much revolted by that stance, as by the myopic refusal of the Vatican to accept their many mistakes.
As a Mexican one is taught in grade-school to hate the Spaniards that came driven by their gold-lust and destroyed the many wonderful civilizations that flourished in Mesoamerica. But this is a very skewed and biased vision of the past --fueled by a spirit of Nationalism obviously-- And after I found two books in my path, one
The Heart of Jade by Salvador de Madariaga, and the other
Regina by Antonio Velasco Piña, my ideas re. the Spanish Conquista changed.
Because, let's face it, with the Conquista one form of brutality was replaced by another. Just as the Spaniards justified crimes like the Inquisition by telling themselves the flesh was expendable as long as you managed to save the immortal soul of the sinner, so too most cultures in the Americas justified their ritual human sacrifices as necessary to sustain the cosmic balance.
And even without religion humans are only to happy to resort to brutality.
On a personal note, I have chosen to search my personal contact with God away from institutions and sanctioned dogmas. But I'm not ready just yet to throw away ALL of the teachings of the Church. Nor I will overlook the missionary work many of its members have conducted to try to improve the lives of less fortunate and the forgotten.
Aside from all the scandals and the quarrels and misunderstandings, there's always a kernel of hope in the message of Christianity. A message that we are not alone, and that there's something greater than ourselves that cares about our well-being.
Therein lies the real strength of their message, and why people are not just ready to turn their backs away.
