PsycheDelia

i was raised catholic, and i can assure you that the catholic church is not fanatical about keeing people in the fold. they do their best to guilt trip a person, but then just being raised catholic instills enough guilt in anyone to last a lifetime. walking away from the church is hard sometimes because of this guilt. a lapsed catholic friend of mine recently had to go church for a friend's wedding - he told me that when he walked in he half expected a lightening bolt to him as punishment. and of course it gets really really annoying to hear everyone say they are going to pray for you - now you have to feel even more guilty because all these people have taken upon themselves the additional burden of praying for you....

on a positive note, many catholic priests i have spoken to encouraged me to question my beliefs because they felt that if i chose to remain in the church after all that questioning i would have a much stronger faith. being treated like an adult with a funtioning brain is not uncommon in the catholic church, and contrary i think to the general perception that the church brainwashes it's flock. it wasn't too hard to step away from the church. the family is a different matter....

for an interesting read on the papacy, and the way it has evolved your friend might want to get a copy of 'why i am a catholic' by garry wills. it is true that the writer is an apologist for the church, but he does have a lot of not very flattering stuff to say about the vatican, and makes his dislike for the present pope very clear.

i remember a book i read when i was about 15 - it was called a modern priest looks at his outdated church by james kavanaugh. that one made me question the catholic church deeply. just checked on amazon and discovered that it's still in print. admittedly, a lot has changed in the catholic church since then, but if my memory serves me well (i read it about 15 yrs ago), it should still have a lot in it for your friend.

please wish your friend luck, and ask her to pm me if she wants to talk. i am still in the process of cutting off ties from the catholic church (don't know if i will ever fully 'deconvert'), but i have learned to lose the guilt. it might help her if she can talk to someone in a similar situation.

nj_heathens

Thanks to everyone for your responses so far. My friend is following this thread and she asked me to thank you as well.

She's grateful for the suggested sites, which she is busily surfing. Please feel free to post other threads or sites you think might be helpful.

And I think she agrees with B.Shack's first post: she fears that revealing anything to her family about questioning her faith will lead to an unrelenting onslaught of judgmental behavior that will only put more distance between her and her family. She really does not want that to happen, but if it does, she wants to be more certain of what she believes.

I'm also quite certain that posts like Gemma Therese's will not help her. She's an intelligent woman approaching 30 who has been a devout Catholic her entire life. She feels more and more disconnected from the Catholic Church because of its policies. When she questions those policies, she's subjected to harsh responses and it is suggested to her that questioning Church policies is questioning her faith. Hypocrisy is not new for the Catholic Church, she knows this, and is beginning to realize she might not be willing to live with it.

Mrs. Heathen

Seeker630

for Ms Heathen:

As a former Catholic myself, I can recomend some reading for her if it's still in print. When my questioning of the church was in full bloom I came across a book at a garage sale, written by a priest by the name of Father James Davanaugh. The title was "A Modern Priest Looks at his Outdated Church". He basically went though some of the dogmas of the church like denying sacraments to divorcee's, birth control, women's lot generally within the church and so on. It was very good. He was writing as a confirmed Catholic though--more like a guy who saw the need for major reforms in the church.

It was published in June 1967 by the Trident Press, and the one I have is a Pocket Book edition of July 1968. It is a paperback. I found it about 12 or 13 years ago. f you can believe it--the cover price on the book when it was new is $.95

Gemma Therese

I would do anything to help your friend. Most people who disagree with Church teaching do not really understand the teaching.

Gemma Therese

[Edited to remove preaching. -GunnerJ]

Thalia

If your friend is not totally ready to or does not want to give up all belief or church involvement, perhaps she could spend some time at a Unitarian church. Many have a mix of theists and non-theists, christians and nonchristians. In my breif time attending, I found that many people had escaped a strong tradition and maybe your friend could find support from these people. UU's very much encourage people to help each other explore their own ideas and grow in their own way at their own pace.