I'm considering converting to Protestantism

[Shi Huangdi]

Recently the whole pedophilia scandal has caused me to question my religion more and more. It's becoming harder for me to take on faith that the Catholic Church is the Church of God when it's cardinals are involved in protecting child molestors. Catholicism was the religion my parents raised me in, but I am not so sure now if I will keep it. Any thoughts on this? Have any Catholics here had any reactions to the pedophilia scandal in the Church?

[Asher]

If you're going to switch churches because of politics, why are you even bothering with religion?

Religion's about faith, not about politics. If you honestly feel you can swap religions at whim for political reasons you're a blind atheist at heart.

Atheims and being agnostic are valid choices for you.

Not everybody needs the religious crutch.

[TCO]

Pick a better reason than that, BD.

Luther had a lot more theses when he went door-nailing.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Asher
If you're going to switch churches because of politics, why are you even bothering with religion?

Religion's about faith, not about politics. If you honestly feel you can swap religions at whim for political reasons you're a blind atheist at heart.

Atheims and being agnostic are valid choices for you.

Not everybody needs the religious crutch.

asher, he is switching between christian churchs

so the fundamental faith is the same (or so I understand)

Jon Miller

[KrazyHorse]

Some really big differences of opinion, though...

[KrazyHorse]

And not just structural ones, either.

[Boris Godunov]

I would understand if you were considering leaving the Catholic church and remaining independent. But why bother jumping to another church? Surely your faith in Catholic teaching goes deeper than that, I hope. If you wish to reject the current church leadership while retaining your identity as a believing Catholic, I'd say just drop out of the Church in protest, or join a protest Catholic organization (I know they do exist).

Joining a Protestant church seems rather meaningless, if it really is just dissatisaction for the behavior of Catholic leaders. That's like me not liking Bush, so I'm gonna go live in the U.K. To hell with that, I'm going to stay here and protest/vote against Bush, make my dissatisfaction known.

[notyoueither]

Take heart Shi.

You will find bad apples in most barrels. What counts is the message and how you relate to it. The Catholic church has done many good things too.

BTW, I am neither Catholic nor Protestant.

[connorkimbro]

Yes, I agree with what the others have said. Don't belong to a faction based on the other people in that faction. Every group has good people, and bad people in it.

[Shi Huangdi]

You don't understand... The Catholic Church is supposed to be the Church of God and promoting God's work here on this Earth. That someone high up in the church as a Cardinal would be protecting child molestors- and even the pope hasn't done anything to stop this. That my Church would be doing bad works still suprises me. I realize the Church, supposedly God's Church had promoted bad works before- such as forming eccelisatical courts and killing people who differed from church doctrine- but I had hoped the Church had stopped promoting bad after John XXIII and Vatican II. Keep in mind, I haven't decided anything yet, and I won't convert just on this- but I intend to re-examine doctrine more carefully again and see if I can still agree with it, but my faith is definitely shaken. I don't consider it a matter of politics when church higher ups protect child molestors by not reporting them to police and transferring them to different parishes.

[Ming]

It's what you believe in... not the idiots running it...

Signed a non practicing Catholic who still believes the teachings...

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ming
It's what you believe in... not the idiots running it...

Signed a non practicing Catholic who still believes the teachings...

All of them?

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by connorkimbro
Yes, I agree with what the others have said. Don't belong to a faction based on the other people in that faction. Every group has good people, and bad people in it.

Its different with Catholicism- its more then an ideology. It's a church, and the hierarchy is an integral part of it. Catholicism believes the Church is god's living instrument on Earth, so it's really not good when Cardinals are acting this bad, and even the pope hasn't done much to stop this.

[notyoueither]

I think Boris said it best so far.

The Church is doing something about the situation isn't it? I'd heard they were. If they didn't... that would be bad.

Getting back to Boris... if it matters, fight for it. Help make it better.

[Asher]

What's the point of organized religion? It should be clear from all the recent fiascos that the leaders of the religions aren't serving God, but rather themselves and the political structure of the churches.

Why do people need to belong to an organized religion? What's wrong with believing what you will on your own? Why do we need to join up with others?

[PhoenixPhlame73]

Shi, you asked for opinions and are arguing against them all. Just listen to the people and either kignore them or consider their viewpoint.

Me - I got no viewpoint

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Asher
What's the point of organized religion? It should be clear from all the recent fiascos that the leaders of the religions aren't serving God, but rather themselves and the political structure of the churches.

Why do people need to belong to an organized religion? What's wrong with believing what you will on your own? Why do we need to join up with others?

What's the point of any communal activity? Sharing time and bonding with those of similar beliefs and ethics. You could make the same argument about any organized activity. People want to belong to something, and churches do a wonderful job of providing a sense of community for many people.

[Boris Godunov]

Well, outside of the pedophile scandal, which is outrage-enducing for anyone, I find the Catholic Church's denial and cover-up regarding sympathy for the Nazis in WW2 to show they still are playing the same old tricks.

However, this is an issue of the heirarchy, not the lay people. I believe if enough lay people make it known their outrage and demand change, it will happen. There was the counter-reformation, after all.

[DanS]

"That someone high up in the church as a Cardinal would be protecting child molestors- and even the pope hasn't done anything to stop this. That my Church would be doing bad works still suprises me."

I hear you man. To know that the higher ups apparently weren't sufficiently guided by the holy spirit is demoralizing. (I wouldn't agree with your "hasn't done anything" comment, though.)

You can take this at least two ways. One way is to believe that the holy spirit just wasn't guiding the bishops. The other is to believe that the better portion of the higher ups weren't listening closely enough to this guidance.

The second option makes more sense to me. Fortunately, this means that it is a curable disease. Just get new bishops. Preferably more holy men and fewer legalistic drones who are only concerned with PR.

This scandal has hit me very close to home.

[SnowFire]

On the whole, I'd agree that the issue of molestations alone isn't really a great reason to leave the church. However, being a Protestant myself, I do believe that whatever the impetus for examining the differences between the various churches, there are some issues with Catholicism that I think it would be worth it to take heed. From there, whether you want to stay within the system and try and reform things or simply move to a different church is your call. Or, of course, come to the conclusion that you really were at the right church after all, which would be equally valuable. (Random tangent: I do believe that converts to a religion can assure themselves a lot more sincerely that this is the right idea, and it hasn't merely been programmed into them. This is one thing that worries me: I haven't really had a serious crisis of faith yet that has caused me to reconsider my religion (even to come back to it), and my current explorations seem to back up staying Presbyterian. Is this because I've been brainwashed or because I was one of the lucky few to have been born into the "right" religion? I can't tell.)

#1: The whole idea of the Pope is, frankly, ridiculous. I'm sure you're quite familiar with the line in Matthew (I believe) about Peter being given the keys and whatever is loosed on Earth will be loosed on Heaven, and so on. Fine. The problem is, that's all it says. First of all, it doesn't say anything about Peter having control over doctrine like the Pope has. So maybe what was being described had nothing to do with what we know as a Pope today at all. But okay, suppose it is in fact standard Catholic pope powers being talked about. Where does it say that this is transferable? Jesus says this to Peter, but doesn't add "and when you die, somebody else gets to do it." Maybe Peter is still the Pope, up in heaven, and the guys in Rome are imposters. But okay, fine, it's transferable. How do we know that the line that the Catholic church claims is correct is, in fact, the correct line? How was the office of Pope transferred before there was a College of Cardinals? How do we know that the Cardinals really voted God's will- apparently some dissenting cardinals thought God's will was somebody else! And why is it such an amazing coincidence that God willed an Italian into the office for so many centuries, almost as if the politics of the cardinals had something to do with it. Furthermore, maybe a group of Syrian Christians have had the true Pope in their group for the past 2 millennia! Being the responsibilities given to the Pope (read the passage again- it's pretty extreme!) and the kind of crazy nutball Popes we've had in the past, does it seem likely God would have chosen this line? Not to mention the issues of 2 Popes at once, 3 Popes at once, and other antipope fun.

Yes yes, many Popes were good pious men, but that's not the point. Would God entrust a position so important to- well, go read B*B's Historical Filth. As a side note, as popular as John Paul II has been, he's been a pretty terrible Pope all in all, compared to John XXIII and Paul VI. In 1960, the top 5 New Testament scholars in the world- all Presbyterian, Methodist, or Disciples of Christ. Same with parables & other fields. But those two great popes came along, really reformed things (got the Latin out for one thing- shouldn't people understand the message the church is giving?), got people doing theology, were generally fantastic. You look at the top New Testament, Johnanine, etc. scholars today and a good half of them are Catholic. And now John Paul II comes along, who's actively moving the wheels backward and won't even listen to his own scholars. You might have heard of Hans Kuhn, who was constantly getting in trouble with the Vatican despite his excellent books (apparently at some conference a major Baptists leader introduced him as "my kind of scholar," and he got in trouble for that too!). And of course the molestations issue, which he had to have known about unless the bishops are even worse than we thought.

2) There's a whole heck of a lot of doctrine that neither of us know about that comes as part of the Catholic Church. Think about all the encyclicals written since AD 500. Probably a lot of it nobody agrees with, but will be trotted out and kept for tradition's sake. Just as an example, in official church literature as far as I know, Eastern Orthodox & Protestants still aren't really considered Christians, despite John Paul's plays at being ecumenical. Now this is something a decent number of Protestant churches do too, it doesn't make it any less silly. Another classic example is transubstantiation, which some Protestants use to make fun of Catholics. I don't think it's that big a deal myself, but it just goes to show the silly things that can get buried by time, and would be too embarrassing to reverse. (true fact: to get the doctrines that this is the one, true, eternal church together with the fact that new doctrines are added- like the whole silly papal infallibility thing in 1876- apparently there is a doctrine that says that when new doctrines are made, all the people before hand were unconsciously following it anyway. Without even realizing it, they agreed, and it just needed to be written down for these modern times, you know.)

3) The organization of the church is off- it's far too top-down. Your diocese leaders could shuffle all your priests around if they wanted to, and there really wouldn't be much you could do about it. Just as a counter-example, Presbyterians are somewhat infamous for their committees for everything. We democratically elect our elders & deacons, and the elders democratically vote on the central things concerning the church. Meanwhile, the committee on XYZ works on that issue, be it Mission or the finding of a new Pastor (which our church is working on right now). The Church and Corporation are kept separate. As for higher level offices, each church elects representatives to their Presbytery, which elects representatives to the Synods and the General Assembly. The GA's leader, the speaker, is pretty much nothing more than a glorified moderator, who changes every Assembly. The extreme bottom-up approach hopefully limits corruption as well as career church politicians.

4) A personal preference, but I find that some Catholic services place far too great an emphasis on ritual over actual spiritual contemplation. One memorized prayer, the Lord's Prayer, is enough for me. The other prayers (of confession, for the people and their concerns, for enlightenment before scripture readings, etc.) are different each week at our church, insuring we can't go on autopilot and recite the words without thinking about them.

Which one is the odd one out? #4. What is the common thread running through the others? Complaints about the administration of the Church. Because, let's face it- most Christian churches share at least 50% of the same doctrine, and the Catholic church, "on the ground" so to speak, I'd say mirrors most mainstream Protestant churches about 80-95%. And this is a good thing! After all, no matter what some extremist groups say, a Christian is a Christian ultimately, whether he be Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, or Quaker. Lutheran and some Anglican churches can be quite similar to Catholic churches, except with the lack of the overarching hierarchy that the Catholic church is saddled with. Also, all Protestant churches believe that it is up to each person to evaluate the Bible themselves and come to belief, not a church hiearchy. It just so happens that people who go to Lutheran churches have generally agreed on one conclusion, those who go to Presbyterian another, and so on. And even then, I know I've often seen sermons as an attempt to convince people to change their views, not as some kind of fiat from on high. Which I'm sure most Catholic priests preach their sermons like too, it's just that the "official" doctrine says otherwise.

Well, I hope I didn't offend anybody, but just some thoughts from me on this issue. I have absolutely nothing against Catholics, and not really that much against the modern Catholic church either, just that I don't agree with them as much as I agree with my own denomination- which is why I am of my own denomination and not Catholic.

The Church is doing something about the situation isn't it? I'd heard they were. If they didn't... that would be bad.

Well, yes, it is good that they're doing something now. The problem is that there are documents that seem to say that they've known about this for a long time and covered it up. The courageous thing to do would have been to tackle the problem as soon as they found out about it. Heck, it isn't even that courageous: it makes good Machiavellian sense too- would you rather have a small public relations then or a large one now?

[Monk]

Shi,

Congrats on your considerations, but you're able to think independently - what's with the need to label yourself "Catholic" or "Protestant"? I agree fully and completely with Asher.

[our_man]

Shi, I'm sorry to hear about your crisis of faith, hopefuly you'll reconsider your line of thought. The paedophilia scandals were shocking, this sickening abuse of power over children has also occured in Ireland among children who were under the care of Brothers and Sisters in orphanages. The fact that they were covered up makes it all the more horrifying.

Despite this, I never once doubted my faith. I believe in Christianity, and more specifically, Catholicism. Most of the priests I know are good men, who would have a great deal of trouble with their conscience having the knowledge that one of their peers was a paedophile; I'd like to believe they'd do something about it. The Catholic Church has problems, but it is far more a force of good in society than one of evil.

The Church isn't about the clergy Shi, it's about the people. We make of it what we will and take from it as little or as much of it as we need. Reforms are needed, as can be seen in the dramatic fall-off in church-going (in Ireland at least). In order to survive it has to change to some extent, so my advice to you is not to rush into anything. The most important thing is to try and live your life according to Christian values; if you feel you are unable to do so anymore in the environment the Catholic Church provides, then you should seek out an alternative.

I hope I was of some help.

[Athene Miranda]

Lots of good thoughts there. I think I agree with all of you, even the mutually exclusive ones,

Me, I believe in, oh, lots of stuff, but I don't like the idea of organised religion. It gives people power in the name of God. The Pope has a lot of power and influence and he holds it in God's name, and as Shi pointed out there have been some pretty nasty popes. Even the best are only human, and the church says they're "holy instruments"? Nope.

So I commmune with eternity on a more one-to-one basis. All people are holy, and I'm not having a bishop saying he's holier than me just because he's got a big hat on. Plus religions have a lot of silly hangups about things, sometimes things that matter to me. Too conformist, ne?

You go your way, Shi. Follow your faith however you feel you need to. Just remember to respect people who make different descisions to you, everyone!

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rain fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you,
May God hold you,
Ever in the palm of his hand...

[Bosh]

I wouldn't jump into anything, protestant or otherwise, at the moment. I'd just do some philosophical/theological/church history/bible reading and see where it leads you. You've obviously got some deeper questions than this mucking around in your brain (since the Church has done worse in the past) than just simple outrage at the pedophiles that you need to take a good look at....

[Dr Strangelove]

The jump from catholicism to protestantism isn't necessarily that huge. The two original protestant groups, the Anglicans / Episcopalians and the Lutherans kept the overwhelming majority of the original catholic teachings, so you would probably feel right at home in either church. The original idea of protestantism was reform, not revolution or even rejection anyway. OTOH you could stay in the Roman Catholic Church and voice your appeal for meaningful non-destructive reform.

[Saint Marcus]

Protestants molest children too

- me

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
Protestants molest children too

- me

Are you saying that you were molested by a Protestant?

Protestant clergy are more likely to go after teenaged girls.

[Bereta_Eder]

orthodox priests can marry (unless they want to ascend to the higher places in the hierarchy)

is it the same with protestants? I think so.

(yes I know I'm too general with saying "protestants".

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by paiktis22
orthodox priests can marry (unless they want to ascend to the higher places in the hierarchy)

is it the same with protestants? I think so.

(yes I know I'm too general with saying "protestants".

Being celibate conveys no benefit and might even be considered an impediment with respect to advancement in most protestant churches.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Protestant pastors can marry. Heck, my pastor got married, got divorced and then remarried!

Saint Marcus - That post seems to indicate that you are a Protestant child molester.