I was disappointed to read Barbara Curtis’s advice to a Catholic single mom who wants to feel closer to Jesus in her life.
In this mother’s words she:
It just seems like “y’all must be fakin’ it”…do you really feel that relationship with Christ? I feel horrible because the best I’ve been able to give my children is PSR (we’re Catholic), a rushed grace before dinner, and a few Bible stories, saints stories, Veggie Tales, and Bibleman DVDs. Last spring it felt like Jesus was no more real than the Easter Bunny…and we stopped going to church.(rules without relationship brings no joy; only resentment)
and she’s surprised she doesn’t have a relationship with Christ?
But Barb’s response floored me.
Second, I strongly recommend that you look outside Catholicism for a church that will feed you spiritually and help you set down the roots you need. I was baptized Catholic as a baby but not brought up in the faith, went to a Catholic high school where I was interested in the mumbo jumbo aspects of it – the rosary, Latin mass, etc – got married in a church, etc. Yet when I tell the story of my faith, I always said I had no Christianity in my background. And I’m telling the truth because in all the time I was involved with the Catholic church, I never learned who Jesus was or that I had the opportunity of having a personal relationship with him.
That is not to say that Catholics cannot be Christians – in the sense of having a real, living, breathing relationship with God. I know plenty of Catholics who do. And now that I am a Christian, I have much reverence for the teachings – especially the prolife teachings – of the church.
But most of the Catholics I’ve met in my life (outside the Internet) don’t have a clue about what it means to have a personal relationship. I hope you know I am not trying to be offensive here – just trying to throw a lifeline to someone who it sounds is perishing spiritually.
First of all, do a blog search and you’ll see I have been a supporter of Barbara’s especially through her tremendous weight loss! I have even linked her to other people who wanted to be inspired by her life as a mom of many, and a woman over 50 losing so much weight. So I like Barbara. I really do!
Yet I find her comment, which apparently is widely held among Women Christian Bloggers to be very disturbing and it saddens me. I felt like a kindred spirit reading Barbara’s blog and now I no longer feel welcome there.
You can read my comment there if she publishes it.
UPDATE!
Barb did indeed publish it and quite a few others. There were some wonderful suggestions there! Barbara was also very gracious in her response.
One thing I am learning very slowly – for Protestants there seems to be a very real distinction between church and God. I don’t know how to describe it, but to me as an outsider it seems as if church is something you do, but that it can help your relationship with God, or hurt it. It’s like they aren’t any more closely related to each other than that.
For Catholics (and probaby the Orthodox) it’s different. The two are interwoven, part of each other. The bride and the bridegroom. There is not that disconnect. It’s that shift in paradigm that seems to be at the root of the miscommunication between Protestants and Catholics, at least with the women I have “spoken” with on line.
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