Sometime after I'd become Catholic, and I was having some doubts about the decision (nothing to do with the pedophile crisis), my old Presbyterian pastor turned up in a brief vision, and said "The Catholic Church is closest to the truth". There was a distinct emphasis on the word "closest".
Incidentally, I do get visions from time to time. To detail one episode, I'm going to get a bit personal.
When I was still Presbyterian, I was going to a church not all that far from where I grew up. So I prayed that somehow the pastor might get to meet someone who could tell him what I'd been through with my father. Apart from my own family members, the only people who could really tell him were the former neighbours. Certainly not our relatives, as they hardly ever visited (I could count the number of visits on the fingers of one hand), and were never there when he was going off his brain.
Not even the members of a hockey club I played for no more than 100 metres down the road knew about it. My father was a mail sorter, and nearly always worked afternoon shift, starting about 2pm and going through to about 10pm or so. He didn't get home till 11pm most nights, and the abuse started around midnight and went on till about 3am.
By that time the hockey players had long gone home.
Anyway we had a resident Salvo whose wife attended our church. Somehow or other he got into visiting a former neighbour who lived two doors away from our old home. He was dying of cancer, and the Salvo must have talked our pastor into going with him.
In the vision I had, the former neighbour was sitting up in bed, with the pastor on his left and the salvo on his right. For some reason the conversation must have gotten onto my father.
"XXXX Crowley!" shouted the neighbour, "He was a miserable, bad tempered b_____d!!" He then turned to the pastor, and said "Pardon the French!" The pastor nodded. Then he continued "No one was sorry when he died!" By "no-one" he meant the neighbours, not one of whom turned up to my father's funeral. But a number of them came to my mother's funeral 20 years later, when they were their 80's. The neighbour went on "They all copped it but the brunt of it fell on Robert" (me). And that was it - whatever else was talked about was not disclosed to me - his personal sins, his family issues, anything else. I suppose God thought it was none of my business, and gave me the vision to illustrate He'd responded to my prayer above. The pastor had met a former neighbour, and that was all I needed to know.
Anyway sometime later we were in the pastor's office and he commented that he'd met someone who knew my father. I said "Oh, you mean (former neighbour)?" He said "Yes, how did you know?" I told him about the vision, where they were standing, what was said etc. He was taken aback, and asked if I'd spoken to the Salvo or the former neighbour. I told him I hadn't which was the truth.
He said "You do get visions! That's exactly what was said and where we were standing!"
So I do get visions from time to time. But they're certainly not common. That particular one was simply an answer to a prayer request that the pastor would somehow meet someone who could give an independent testimony about my father. And as far as I'm concerned, the vision where the deceased pastor stated the Catholic Church was "closest" to the truth was an answer to my concerns about the church at the time.
As far as the pedophile crisis was concerned, I was warned about that by the pastor anyway, when he was still alive, when he predicted I'd become Catholic, but that there'd be a "lot of them" (pedophile cases) after I'd become Catholic.
So I wouldn't change. I think it's closest to the truth, and I can't see any point in going anywhere else.
It's been going for 2000 years, and the current bunfight between conservatives and the liberals will have faded into history in the not too distant future. There'll be other things to worry about by then.
In a few years the current pope, his critics and his supporters will most likely have passed from the scene, and I won't be far behind them. But the church will still be there, although it's form might have changed. I think God's going to drive us out into the universe, I think Western Europe will become Moslem, and so what form the church will take if both of those things happen will be up to future generations to work out.
I take the long view.
