Why People Leave the Catholic Church

[Michie]

In light of the recent high-profile conversions of Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, Tammy Peterson, Candace Owens, and questionably the enigmatic Russell Brand, many have asked why they chose to enter the Catholic Church. Their answers to this question are public, especially Ms. Owens. She has detailed on several platforms what it is that brought her home to Catholicism. Her reasons, and those of her fellow converts need not be summarized here.

The sad reality is that many, too, leave the Catholic Church. They do so without fanfare but with some good reasons. Many leave the Church looking for succor. They either drift away from religion altogether, find comfort in pantheism, some amorphous “spirituality”, nature, the occult, yoga and meditation, or some protestant denomination. Why are they leaving is being asked too infrequently, and almost never by the correct people. Whether or not the defectors know it, they leave because the Catholic Church today is hiding its depth and its raison d’être to a large degree. Aside from access to the Sacraments, the Church today routinely covers its light with a bushel basket. And regarding the seven Sacraments, access to the pearls was even limited during the Covid response, leaving many to wonder just how important they are to a Catholic Church who left us without them for so long.

At best, the Church does not realize that it is in competition with the secular world for the attention of those in the pews. The Church is not equal to the task of wresting away from people their attention for an hour per week, and if that isn’t bad enough, just as often the Church is distracted itself.

Continued below.

Why People Leave the Catholic Church - Catholics For Catholics

In light of the recent high-profile conversions of Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, Tammy Peterson, Candace Owens, and questionably the enigmatic Russell Brand, many have asked why they chose to enter the Catholic Church

cforc.com

 

[Wolseley]

Great article, Michie---thanks for posting. It articulates some things that have annoyed me for years, specifically, "church by workshop": you get a bunch of prelates and liberal laypeople together, and they seem to think that holding a week-long convention at a Radisson hotel in Atlanta with catered meals and a lot of hot air being vented on some topic like "The People of God: We Are Church in Today's World", or some such insipid nonsense, along with flow charts and handouts etc., etc., etc., is the same thing as actually going out into the streets and evangelizing. Meanwhile, the hungry go hungry, the homeless stay homeless, and the lost remain lost, since none of them can afford the $450.00 registration fee to attend the conference. Case in point:

Many in pain will not waste their time turning to a Church or priest whose main focus is sheltering migrants or the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum.....people need and desire more than lectures on global warming. In their day-to-day prayerful contemplation, people grow weary of asking themselves if they need to hunt down sustenance on their own because their pastor is off on some tangent about recycling.

Then, as the article observes, "Homilists, and their bishops, seem to have all but forgotten the final entry of the Code of Canon Law of 1983, which states that the Supreme Law of the Church is the salvation of souls." Precisely! The Church tends to spend too much time dawdling around in stuff like climate change and issuing broadsides against abortion clinics, when it needs to be focusing on getting people saved and into heaven. There's nothing wrong with opposing abortion, but blockading clinics (where, let's face it, most of the patrons are not Catholics, or even Christians) and saying, "This is wrong! You can't go in there!" is the exact opposite way of doing things if you want to wipe out abortion. If you get people saved and turn them into faithful, devout believers, then they're not going to want to procure an abortion to begin with.

Granted, some of these things may be important, but they belongs in the purview of the laity.....The charism of the laity is secular in nature. It is the laity that should be dealing with vaccinations, immigration and aluminum. “The laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.”

Again: precisely. The Church needs to focus on the getting us to the next world, and stop worrying about what happens with this one. This world is passing away and will be destroyed, as Our Lord clearly tells us in Holy Scripture. Leave the worries about plastic straws and sea turtles or the worries about whether Aunt Jemima's picture on a bottle of pancake syrup is racist or not to the secular do-gooders with well-meaning but hare-brained virtue-signaling schemes; priests need to focus on keeping their flocks out of the fires of eternal damnation.

And finally, we have this:

The messages of this pope are not always wrong. But when Pope Francis is observed to use the Church to advance – or to suppress – his preferences, an observant people sense this. This sense flows right into the deduction, then, that this Holy See is about one man, and that man is not Jesus. This debases the Church into what many perceive as a cult. And even if it is not a cult, no one feels the need to set aside an hour a week just to hear about Francis’ favorite things. After all, he is not Oprah. He especially perpetuates this paradigm, when in the face of arguably heretical actions, he still favors his allies; James Martin, former Cardinal McCarrick and Marko Rupnik, all the while punishing those with whom he has ideological disagreements; Bishop Strickland, Archbishop Vigano, (Father) Frank Pavone and Father James Altman. Other examples on the agenda exist as well; the promulgation of homosexual marriage and the elimination of the Latin Mass. The latter has become seen as an unhinged vendetta. People are not stupid.

What can I say? Francis seems to want to drive people out of the Church instead of bringing them into it, unless they buy into his circa-1970 "Spirit of Vatican II" Church Light: tastes great, less filling idea of what Catholicism is.

 

[RileyG]

Great article, Michie---thanks for posting. It articulates some things that have annoyed me for years, specifically, "church by workshop": you get a bunch of prelates and liberal laypeople together, and they seem to think that holding a week-long convention at a Radisson hotel in Atlanta with catered meals and a lot of hot air being vented on some topic like "The People of God: We Are Church in Today's World", or some such insipid nonsense, along with flow charts and handouts etc., etc., etc., is the same thing as actually going out into the streets and evangelizing. Meanwhile, the hungry go hungry, the homeless stay homeless, and the lost remain lost, since none of them can afford the $450.00 registration fee to attend the conference. Case in point:



Then, as the article observes, "Homilists, and their bishops, seem to have all but forgotten the final entry of the Code of Canon Law of 1983, which states that the Supreme Law of the Church is the salvation of souls." Precisely! The Church tends to spend too much time dawdling around in stuff like climate change and issuing broadsides against abortion clinics, when it needs to be focusing on getting people saved and into heaven. There's nothing wrong with opposing abortion, but blockading clinics (where, let's face it, most of the patrons are not Catholics, or even Christians) and saying, "This is wrong! You can't go in there!" is the exact opposite way of doing things if you want to wipe out abortion. If you get people saved and turn them into faithful, devout believers, then they're not going to want to procure an abortion to begin with.



Again: precisely. The Church needs to focus on the getting us to the next world, and stop worrying about what happens with this one. This world is passing away and will be destroyed, as Our Lord clearly tells us in Holy Scripture. Leave the worries about plastic straws and sea turtles or the worries about whether Aunt Jemima's picture on a bottle of pancake syrup is racist or not to the secular do-gooders with well-meaning but hare-brained virtue-signaling schemes; priests need to focus on keeping their flocks out of the fires of eternal damnation.

And finally, we have this:



What can I say? Francis seems to want to drive people out of the Church instead of bringing them into it, unless they buy into his circa-1970 "Spirit of Vatican II" Church Light: tastes great, less filling idea of what Catholicism is.

Well written and well said.

 

[fide]

Worldly prelates, spiritually immature, beget worldly pastors, spiritually immature, who beget worldly congregations, spiritually immature, who are told to "evangelize" because that is what everybody is talking about "doing" - while very, very few among them know or understand what exactly "makes" a "believer". The very few who do know, find almost no one in the ladder of authority who can hear or understand what these strange people are talking about - hence they must be untrustworthy. Even excommunicated, demoted, cancelled, whatever it takes to silence these disruptive and strange disturbers of the peace. As the Blessed Mother told us, pray - pray - pray and make sacrifices for the poor sinners of the world. Only God can stop the floodgates from breaking, if it is true to do so. The faithful must do what Jesus did: pray and make sacrifices. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I get a bit tired of all the Francis blaming for the church's decline.

Did Vatican II Cause the Catholic Church to Decline? – Catholic Stand

catholicstand.com

Catholic attendance has been dropping since Vatican II, and I don't blame Vatican II either.

In the decade after Vatican II Catholic attendance dropped by a third, but Protestant attendance dropped by a half, even more than the Catholic.

I've just started attending a series on "A People on Mission". Almost the first power point slide stated that when Peter proclaimed Christ at Pentecost, and as the disciples went out to evangelise, they were accompanied by "Signs and Wonders". Want to tell me where the signs and wonders are today? Is there something exhilarationg about watching a bunch of people line up and walk forward to receive a wafer and sip of wine? We insiders might know what it signifies, but what would be the big deal for a non-Christian?

Meanwhile thanks to science and engineering, we can get on a plane and fly across an ocean, phone relatives in the antipodes, get AI and the cloud to give us the latest water polo results in Saudi Arabia, possibly get some hearing from a cochlear implant, improve our vision with cataract surgery, go surfing ini a giant wave machine, and check our bank balance or the lack of it on our mobile phone. The generations of Christ's time would have been amazed.

Mind you if they've been looking down from heaven as members of the "great cloude of witnesses" for the last 2000 years they're probably not surprised, being party to greater wonders than these.

Nor am I sold on the business we've got seven sacraments. That's for believers who take it seriously - outsiders couldn't care less. Protestants have been getting along on two for centuries, sometimes very successfully.

The Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw it coming in his cell in Tegel Prison before he was martyred on 9 April 1945. From "Letters in Prison 8 June 1944 - "... But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without 'God' - and, in fact, just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, 'God' is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.

Roman Catholic and Protestant historians agre that it is in this development that the great defection from God, from Christ, is to be seen; and the more they claim and play off God and Christ against it, the more the development considers itself to be anti-Christian. The world that has become conscious of itself and laws that govern its own existence has grown self-confident in what seems to be an uncanny way. ... Christian apologetic has taken the most varied forms of opposition to this self assurance. .... Even though there has been surrender on all secular problems, there still remain the so-called 'ultimate questions' - death, guilt - to which only 'God' can give an answer, and because of which we need God and the church and the pastor. So we live, in some degree, on these so-called ultimate questions of humanity. But what if one day they no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered 'without God'?..."

Bonhoeffer didn't give a solution, and he was martyred before he could give this theme much more thought. Even if he had, writing material in Tegel Prison would have been limited with bombing raids coming from England about 1000 kilometres away, when first world war planes had mainly been slow and limited biplanes. I remember reading in "A Bridge Too Far" that parishioners singing the "Te Deum" were drowned out by the roar of bombers and transports heading for Arnhem.

We need to stop thinking as insiders looking inside for the solution outside and stop blaming Pope Francis. The next pope won't make any difference to the decline of the church in the West no matter who he is.

And no, I don't have the short term solution either.

 

[RileyG]

Pray. Pray like you never prayed before.

 

[Solo81]

Worldly prelates, spiritually immature, beget worldly pastors, spiritually immature, who beget worldly congregations, spiritually immature, who are told to "evangelize" because that is what everybody is talking about "doing" - while very, very few among them know or understand what exactly "makes" a "believer". The very few who do know, find almost no one in the ladder of authority who can hear or understand what these strange people are talking about - hence they must be untrustworthy. Even excommunicated, demoted, cancelled, whatever it takes to silence these disruptive and strange disturbers of the peace. As the Blessed Mother told us, pray - pray - pray and make sacrifices for the poor sinners of the world. Only God can stop the floodgates from breaking, if it is true to do so. The faithful must do what Jesus did: pray and make sacrifices. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Personal and community prayer is the solution but I think people need to pray more to the Holy Spirit.
It was when the Spirit descended that the Church got going; they locked themselves in a room out of fear until He came. The Spirit is the one who will renew His Church. And we get to enjoy a Spirit-filled life while helping Him.
Win-win.

 

[Doubting Bob]

I am currently seeking initiation into the Catholic Church, having been Anglo-Catholic for decades, but I know many who have fallen away from a variety of churches both Catholic and Protestant. In every case it has struck me that they have become comfortable with a sense of emptiness, learning to cope with life as it is, not as it should be or will be to come. I don't know what they want but neither do they, they just know where they are not finding it. For me, smells, bells and a smatterin of latin helps me to engage more deeply but it won't be for everyone.

 

[Solo81]

I get a bit tired of all the Francis blaming for the church's decline.

Did Vatican II Cause the Catholic Church to Decline? – Catholic Stand

catholicstand.com

Catholic attendance has been dropping since Vatican II, and I don't blame Vatican II either.

In the decade after Vatican II Catholic attendance dropped by a third, but Protestant attendance dropped by a half, even more than the Catholic.

I've just started attending a series on "A People on Mission". Almost the first power point slide stated that when Peter proclaimed Christ at Pentecost, and as the disciples went out to evangelise, they were accompanied by "Signs and Wonders". Want to tell me where the signs and wonders are today? Is there something exhilarationg about watching a bunch of people line up and walk forward to receive a wafer and sip of wine? We insiders might know what it signifies, but what would be the big deal for a non-Christian?

Meanwhile thanks to science and engineering, we can get on a plane and fly across an ocean, phone relatives in the antipodes, get AI and the cloud to give us the latest water polo results in Saudi Arabia, possibly get some hearing from a cochlear implant, improve our vision with cataract surgery, go surfing ini a giant wave machine, and check our bank balance or the lack of it on our mobile phone. The generations of Christ's time would have been amazed.

Mind you if they've been looking down from heaven as members of the "great cloude of witnesses" for the last 2000 years they're probably not surprised, being party to greater wonders than these.

Nor am I sold on the business we've got seven sacraments. That's for believers who take it seriously - outsiders couldn't care less. Protestants have been getting along on two for centuries, sometimes very successfully.

The Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw it coming in his cell in Tegel Prison before he was martyred on 9 April 1945. From "Letters in Prison 8 June 1944 - "... But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without 'God' - and, in fact, just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, 'God' is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.

Roman Catholic and Protestant historians agre that it is in this development that the great defection from God, from Christ, is to be seen; and the more they claim and play off God and Christ against it, the more the development considers itself to be anti-Christian. The world that has become conscious of itself and laws that govern its own existence has grown self-confident in what seems to be an uncanny way. ... Christian apologetic has taken the most varied forms of opposition to this self assurance. .... Even though there has been surrender on all secular problems, there still remain the so-called 'ultimate questions' - death, guilt - to which only 'God' can give an answer, and because of which we need God and the church and the pastor. So we live, in some degree, on these so-called ultimate questions of humanity. But what if one day they no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered 'without God'?..."

Bonhoeffer didn't give a solution, and he was martyred before he could give this theme much more thought. Even if he had, writing material in Tegel Prison would have been limited with bombing raids coming from England about 1000 kilometres away, when first world war planes had mainly been slow and limited biplanes. I remember reading in "A Bridge Too Far" that parishioners singing the "Te Deum" were drowned out by the roar of bombers and transports heading for Arnhem.

We need to stop thinking as insiders looking inside for the solution outside and stop blaming Pope Francis. The next pope won't make any difference to the decline of the church in the West no matter who he is.

And no, I don't have the short term solution either.

Re: signs and wonders.
We have a lot of evangelists practising their full-time ministry here and there are lots of signs and wonders happening but those stories won't ever get media coverage.
The charismatic movement is where you're more likely to find it, rather than at Mass - even though at Mass, Jesus gives himself entirely to you.


Evangelists here aren't like the ones I've seen on tv and the charismatic renewal here is predominantly Catholic. So I use those words in the Catholic sense.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I had a look at your bio and it said you are "From Gundy". Where's Gundy?

Just out of curiosity as you said that charismatic renewal neare you are predominantly Catholic.

Gundy here (in Queensland, Australia) would mean Goondiwindi, but I can't see Goondiwindi being a hotbed of the Catholic charismatic movement.

 

[Solo81]

I had a look at your bio and it said you are "From Gundy". Where's Gundy?

Just out of curiosity as you said that charismatic renewal neare you are predominantly Catholic.

Gundy here (in Queensland, Australia) would mean Goondiwindi, but I can't see Goondiwindi being a hotbed of the Catholic charismatic movement.

I have no idea where or what Gundy is. I'm in Ireland. I never filled in any info or details, afair, and if I did, it was bare minimum.

There is Aus charismatic renewal. A quick online search will show you who to contact for your nearest prayer group.

 

[fide]

Personal and community prayer is the solution but I think people need to pray more to the Holy Spirit.
It was when the Spirit descended that the Church got going; they locked themselves in a room out of fear until He came. The Spirit is the one who will renew His Church. And we get to enjoy a Spirit-filled life while helping Him.
Win-win.

A lot more than I can write in a post, is needed to fully answer your post, which I believe I can fully understand and sympathize with. I hope that what I do write, might encourage you to "take a deeper dive" into Carmelite spirituality. A book I usually recommend to do that is The Ordinary Path to Holiness (hot link to Amazon page, to learn more about that book if you're interested)

But a brief response to your post is this: There is a radical difference between the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles who had been formed and led and taught by Jesus Himself in the flesh, having left all to follow Him - and the Spirit coming upon "babes in Christ". Jesus knew when His work had reached the point when He could leave those He had called and formed for those three years - His Church - and when it was time for the Spirit to come for His part in the salvation of the world.

But back to "the babes":

1Co 2:14 The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
1Co 2:15 The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
1Co 2:16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
1Co 3:1 But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ.
1Co 3:2 I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready,
1Co 3:3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?

God has revealed much of His wisdom concerning the conception in the soul of a human person, of the supernatural Life of God the Holy Trinity. This "Interior Life" as it has been called, can grow, develop and mature in a believer, but in stages that requires the ongoing consent of the believer, which Paul saw was not yet there for these bellievers. He had to feed them "baby food" because they were in fact spiritual babies, no matter what their natural chronological age might have been. Babies are not ready to be given a "spiritual rifle" so to speak, and be sent into the world to war against all spiritual enemies that are indeed out there.

Spiritual babies are not ready for the Spirit and His Gifts, that "spiritual adults" like the Apostles were ready for on Pentecost! Neither are "spiritual adolescents"! Nor are "spiritual young adults"! Paul wrote, "I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh."

I hope the point is clear: no one sends children to do a man's work. God does not do this. God the Holy Spirit does not do this. A prudent Church does not do this! A prudent Church would look at the spiritual condition of her members (as Paul did!) and her clergy and some of her hierarchy, for that matter, and see what the needs are and address them wisely.

 

[Valletta]

I've just started attending a series on "A People on Mission". Almost the first power point slide stated that when Peter proclaimed Christ at Pentecost, and as the disciples went out to evangelise, they were accompanied by "Signs and Wonders". Want to tell me where the signs and wonders are today? Is there something exhilarationg about watching a bunch of people line up and walk forward to receive a wafer and sip of wine? We insiders might know what it signifies, but what would be the big deal for a non-Christian?

God is not a magician. He does not do magic tricks for one's edification. Many of the signs and wonders from God, like the Resurrection, are important to believe although we have not personally seen such. If we have faith and understanding in the Word of God, we know a miracle takes place at mass. For exhilaration and demands that we must constantly be entertained visually and audibly the Catholic Church is not the place. The Church is not going to outdo other Christians in comradeship at the Sunday mass or what people consider entertainment, but will outdo them in holiness. That being said, documented miracles (by documented I mean in what people have seen and witnessed or accepted by science) that are part of the Church, such as the miracles of the saints. As a Catholic it is not required to believe in individual miracles such as what took place at Fatima or Lourdes, although it may be wise to do so.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I have no idea where or what Gundy is. I'm in Ireland. I never filled in any info or details, afair, and if I did, it was bare minimum.

There is Aus charismatic renewal. A quick online search will show you who to contact for your nearest prayer group.

When I click on your ID to the left of your post, it includes the phrase "Active member - 44 - From Gundy", which is where I got it from.

I was at a Catholic session tonight and one of the speakers goes to a Catholic Charismatic group.

 

[Solo81]

When I click on your ID to the left of your post, it includes the phrase "Active member - 44 - From Gundy", which is where I got it from.

I was at a Catholic session tonight and one of the speakers goes to a Catholic Charismatic group.

You're right; I looked and it says 'Gundy' but I didn't write that as my location. I'm in Ireland.

Do you think you'll attend a charismatic meeting?

 

[Solo81]

A lot more than I can write in a post, is needed to fully answer your post, which I believe I can fully understand and sympathize with. I hope that what I do write, might encourage you to "take a deeper dive" into Carmelte spirituality. A book I usually recommend to do that is The Ordinary Path to Holiness (hot link to Amazon page, to learn more about that book if you're interested)

But a brief response to your post is this: There is a radical difference between the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles who had been formed and led and taught by Jesus Himself in the flesh, having left all to follow Him - and the Spirit coming upon "babes in Christ". Jesus knew when His work had reached the point when He could leave those He had called and formed for those three years - His Church - and when it was time for the Spirit to come for His part in the salvation of the world.

But back to "the babes":


God has revealed much of His wisdom concerning the conception in the soul of a human person, of the supernatural Life of God the Holy Trinity. This "Interior Life" as it has been called, can grow, develop and mature in a believer, but in stages that requires the ongoing consent of the believer, which Paul saw was not yet there for these bellievers. He had to feed them "baby food" because they were in fact spiritual babies, no matter what their natural chronological age might have been. Babies are not ready to be given a "spiritual rifle" so to speak, and be sent into the world to war against all spiritual enemies that are indeed out there.

Spiritual babies are not ready for the Spirit and His Gifts, that "spiritual adults" like the Apostles were ready for on Pentecost! Neither are "spiritual adolescents"! Nor are "spiritual young adults"! Paul wrote, "I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh."

I hope the point is clear: no one sends children to do a man's work. God does not do this. God the Holy Spirit does not do this. A prudent Church does not do this! A prudent Church would look at the spiritual condition of her members (as Paul did!) and her clergy and some of her hierarchy, for that matter, and see what the needs are and address them wisely.

The Holy Spirit is not a weapon. He is the Lord, the giver of Life. We don't need to first improve or mature ourselves before we can receive Him; He made the first move and came to us. It is through Him that we improve and mature.


You were confirmed as a child, no? The Holy Spirit does indeed confer Himself upon children. He is God, not a 90% moonshine that can be consumed to excess.

 

[Bob Crowley]

You're right; I looked and it says 'Gundy' but I didn't write that as my location. I'm in Ireland.

Do you think you'll attend a charismatic meeting?

I'm thinking about it. I did attend one a few years ago but it was too far to drive to attend regularly.

 

[fide]

The Holy Spirit is not a weapon. He is the Lord, the giver of Life. We don't need to first improve or mature ourselves before we can receive Him; He made the first move and came to us. It is through Him that we improve and mature.


You were confirmed as a child, no? The Holy Spirit does indeed confer Himself upon children. He is God, not a 90% moonshine that can be consumed to excess.

The Holy Spirit is not a weapon. He is the Lord, the giver of Life. We don't need to first improve or mature ourselves before we can receive Him; He made the first move and came to us. It is through Him that we improve and mature.


You were confirmed as a child, no? The Holy Spirit does indeed confer Himself upon children. He is God, not a 90% moonshine that can be consumed to excess.

There is much more to spiritual development than you seem to account for. I won't press the matter beyond this one last post, but I would suggest you read The Ascent of Mt. Carmel , St. John of the Cross. Besides "saint", he is also a "Doctor" of the Church, and a teacher having much to pass on to the Church - especially the Church of today. The other book I recommended is an introduction to the real "heavy hitters" of the subject - but maybe you'll be impressed more by the experience and theology of a saint and doctor, than a contemporary layman. May the Lord lead you.

 

[Markie Boy]

I went from a protestant church to the Catholic, and then finally back protestant. My experience.

When I left the protestant church I was at, if I wasn't there for a month people noticed, I got a card in the mail, and someone talked to me.

When I left the Catholic church nobody really noticed or cared. Anyone that did notice doesn't seem to care why, they just want to tell you how wrong you are.

Very different cultures

 

[fide]

I went from a protestant church to the Catholic, and then finally back protestant. My experience.

When I left the protestant church I was at, if I wasn't there for a month people noticed, I got a card in the mail, and someone talked to me.

When I left the Catholic church nobody really noticed or cared. Anyone that did notice doesn't seem to care why, they just want to tell you how wrong you are.

Very different cultures

I bounced around a bit more .... in my case, I not only didn't care if I was unnoticed in the many places I visited - I wanted to be unnoticed. I got very tired of the superficial conversations imposed on me by strangers - some I have learned are official "Greeters" who "reach out" on behalf of the pastor, etc. But I was not looking for "fellowship" - I was looking and listening and searching for Truth. I didn't want slogans, or bumper-sticker theology, or "getting saved" per se - I wanted to find "the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth."

I finally found it - or actually He found me finally and only after I was worn out from the searching. That Truth subsists in the Catholic Church. There are many sub-"cultures" therein. One must, I conclude, recognize the difference between sub"cultures" and the core - the center - the essence - the fullness - the Life.