I was brought up in a Catholic family. My parents have always been strong, devout Catholics. I attended Catholic school from 1st through 12th grades, and attended church every Sunday and all the special holy days until I was in my teens.
During my teen years when I began questioning how my life was supposed to be, I also began to question the relevance of the Catholic church. My education was heavy on religious doctrine and law and history. But mixed in there I had also learned about many of the corrupt leaders the Catholic church had experienced during its long history the and how human thinking greatly influenced and shaped so much of what the Catholic faithful practice today.
The bible is supposed to be the divine word, the only true word of God, to be considered the one ultimate basis of every aspect of our lives. The truth is that the bible consists of selected teachings interpreted numerous times throughout history. Those multiple interpretations of each lesson do not guarantee we are actually reading the original intent of those lessons. Additionally, there have been found many other manuscripts found from the same time periods that the bible's lessons are derived from that have never been included with the present day bible.
Add to this what my young, teenaged self was seeing. People who regularly attend Sunday mass but completely dismiss most Christian values throughout the rest of the week. People who regularly attend Sunday mass but always leave before the service has completed to ensure they get out of the parking lot first. People who say the prayers, repeating the same words over & over again by rote, not actually having any true thought or feeling regarding what is coming out of their mouths.
And a couple of the kickers is that anyone who is not Catholic cannot participate in communion and cannot go to heaven. A true Catholic believes they have the only true religion and belief in the true God, so if you are not a member of the club you do not get any of the benefits.
I have not attended Catholic mass much at all since high school and have not considered myself to be a member of that special club.
I do not harbor any anger or hate toward Catholicism. I have great respect for many of their traditions. The thing is, I cannot believe that they hold all the cards in the religion game. As a group they tend to appear close minded and uncaring of anyone not believing like themselves.
This has been a somewhat long-winded approach to what I really want to talk about, but you needed the background. Throughout her life my mother was one of the most faithful & devout Catholics I have known. She passed away over two years ago but thinking over her life I think she lived as close as possible to the way a Christian is supposed to live. She may have missed out on a few things by adhering to the Catholic faith but she was always a strongly Christian woman. My father has been the same. He has always lived exactly how devoutly Catholic men are supposed to.
My father is now 86 years old. He has had trouble seeing and hearing. It has been some time since he could drive a car. Since my mother passed away he has moved into a retirement community that he likes and has many good friends. It is very important to him to attend Sunday mass every week but occasionally he doesn't get a ride lined up. Since I am the only child of his living in the area he will call me for a ride. The first couple of times this happened I dropped him off at the church, then picked him up an hour later. I found that there is not much you can do in that hour in between so I started attending church with him on these occasions. I am sure this please him immensely even though I do not join in the communion and do not kneel when everyone else does.
This morning was one such occasion. Afterwards I was thinking that it seems that I have attended Catholic mass more times now since my mother passed away than in all the time between my teenaged years and my mother's death. I still do not consider myself to be Catholic but I must admit to having a certain sense of fulfillment?, satisfaction?, closure? ..... something anyway that feels rather good with spending this time with my father.
Finally, we are getting to the lesson of the day. One of the readings from this morning was the bible lesson found in a couple of places (Matthew 22:37-40, Mark 12:29-31, Luke 10:26-28) where Jesus informs people what are considered to be the greatest commandments:
"the first is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There are no other commandments greater than these.”
So let me ask this..... How can anyone who claims to be a true Christian not help anyone in need? How can a true Christian hold hate and anger toward anyone? How can a true Christian not accept others whether they are white or black or yellow or purple? Or whether they are liberal or conservative, Democrats or Republicans or Green Party or Tea Party? Or whether they are Catholic or Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian, or Jewish or Islamic (all these denominations & religions do actually believe in the same God after all). Or (here it comes) whether or not they are straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender?
How can a true Christian hate another human being? How?
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