CathInfo.com

I can only speak for myself, and I feel for Catholics that are uncertain.

The Catholic church was never meant to be complicated.  

One doctrine flows into another, and when you know your catechism you can see that.  This is why I love to study catechism, it isn't suppose to be ambiguous where words can change with the wind.  The Chuch is absolute!  This is absolutely wrong, this is absolutely right.  

I grew up in the midst of the Vatican II revolution.  I went to CCD classes every week from first grade through high school.  Upon graduation, I can honestly say that I was mostly ignorant of the Catholic religion.  I knew more about various Protestant religions from my friends than I knew about the Catholic religion.  In fact, I truly believed that the Catholic religion was just another way to worship God, just as the Baptists have their way, the Lutherans have their way, the Jews have their way.  If Islam had been in the news, I'm sure I would have thought the same way about Muslims.  We did a lot of art in those days, drawing pictures of "God's Love"--even in high school.

Only after essentially abandoning the practice of the faith while in the army and having some Protestant friends try to save my soul, did I decide to try to find out a little about the faith.  The Post Exchange book store happened to have a copy of "The Catechism of the Council of Trent" on the shelf (I still can't figure out why they would have had it!) and I picked it up.  The new and improved Catechism had not even been written yet.  

To my surprise, I discovered that the Catholic religion made sense.  In fact, it made more sense than the Protestant religions.  This only spurred me on to learn more.  I've been trying to learn more every year since.  The one real difference between Catholic doctrine and all other doctrines is that Catholic doctrine is simple and fits together like puzzle pieces.  All the other doctrines have to find nuances here and there and they have to cut some of the puzzle pieces to make them fit.

Quote from: MyrnaM

I can only speak for myself, and I feel for Catholics that are uncertain.

The Catholic church was never meant to be complicated.  

One doctrine flows into another, and when you know your catechism you can see that.  This is why I love to study catechism, it isn't suppose to be ambiguous where words can change with the wind.  The Chuch is absolute!  This is absolutely wrong, this is absolutely right.  

I grew up in the midst of the Vatican II revolution.  I went to CCD classes every week from first grade through high school.  Upon graduation, I can honestly say that I was mostly ignorant of the Catholic religion.  I knew more about various Protestant religions from my friends than I knew about the Catholic religion.  In fact, I truly believed that the Catholic religion was just another way to worship God, just as the Baptists have their way, the Lutherans have their way, the Jews have their way.  If Islam had been in the news, I'm sure I would have thought the same way about Muslims.  We did a lot of art in those days, drawing pictures of "God's Love"--even in high school.

Only after essentially abandoning the practice of the faith while in the army and having some Protestant friends try to save my soul, did I decide to try to find out a little about the faith.  The Post Exchange book store happened to have a copy of "The Catechism of the Council of Trent" on the shelf (I still can't figure out why they would have had it!) and I picked it up.  The new and improved Catechism had not even been written yet.  

To my surprise, I discovered that the Catholic religion made sense.  In fact, it made more sense than the Protestant religions.  This only spurred me on to learn more.  I've been trying to learn more every year since.  The one real difference between Catholic doctrine and all other doctrines is that Catholic doctrine is simple and fits together like puzzle pieces.  All the other doctrines have to find nuances here and there and they have to cut some of the puzzle pieces to make them fit.

Yes, Myrna. I cannot believe the One, Holy, Universal Church is supposed to be so nuanced and subtle that only a handful of enlightened modern theologians can possibly understand it.

That's Gnosticism, pure and simple.

TKGS--everything you said, that's exactly what happened to me. When I started reading Traditional material everything began to make sense. The Faith I had been raised with and had never understood suddenly made sense, so much sense in fact that I realized that no other explanation could possibly be true.

If Benedict were just another Joe Catholic in the Novus Ordo pews, I wouldn't be so upset by these posts, especially TKGS's in which he compares, blow by blow, the Eternal Teachings of Our Holy Church with the blithering modernist balderash of Benedict XVI. I would simply figure it was the musings of another confused, poorly catechised post-V2 victim.

But when it's the man whom 99% of all Catholics recognize as the "Holy Father"? Then what? Is he just another victim too, of modernist seminaries, liturgical experiments, indifferentist ecuмenism, and obfuscating superiors? To what extent can a man in his position be judged to be a mere "victim"?

I wish I knew. Or maybe I already do.