Query from a convert:

Let me tell you where I’m at, professor.  I am tired and I’m completely burned out and burdened by being Catholic.  I’m tired of feeling like every Sunday I miss church I am going to hell, I miss the joy I used to have in my relationship with the Lord as a “Protestant.”  I miss the freedom that came with knowing and believing Jesus paid it all for me and that’s enough.  I no longer have joy nor lightness of being in my faith and hope and certainly in Christ.  I feel burdened.

 

Reply:

I can see that you are suffering.  To make sure your identity is protected, I’ve left out almost everything in your long letter, and I discuss the difficulties you describe without quoting from it in detail.  The same goes for previous letters you’ve written. 

Though I know both joyful and miserable people in both the Protestant and Catholic camps, that doesn’t take away from the fact that you are in distress, so let’s talk about that.  Those who face similar difficulties, whether Catholic or Protestant, will understand very well what we are talking about, and won’t need all the rest of the details.

One problem, I think, is that you worry excessively about miniscule sins.  This is called scrupulosity.  Since the Church teaches that scrupulosity is not a good thing but rather something to be avoided, you should not blame the Church for this fault.  Yes, of course it is quite wrong to miss worship without good reason – and I am not saying that doing so is a small matter.  But as I’m sure your confessor will tell you, there are certainly acceptable reasons for missing Mass, like caring for a sick child, putting out a fire, or orbiting in the International Space Station.  The Church simply does not teach that any time you miss worship for any reason you are going to hell.  Nor does it teach that sin cannot be forgiven, or that every sin is a mortal sin.  If you are “feeling like” it is, then the feeling is coming from somewhere else, not from the teaching of the Church.

From where then is it coming?  From the Accuser, who is always trying to cast us down and make our faith fruitless.  Don’t let him.

But your letter also presents several bigger issues.

The first bigger issue is that there is only one good reason to be Catholic:  Because we believe the Catholic faith is true.  Just as it would be gravely wrong to become Catholic for reasons apart from the truth (and I hope you didn’t do that), so too it would be gravely wrong to stop being Catholic for reasons apart from the truth.  You have been suggesting reasons for deserting the Catholic faith rooted in something else entirely – in your burdensome feelings.  We could compare your feelings against the feelings of a joyful Catholic – I personally have experienced far greater joy since becoming Catholic, not less – but that would miss the point.  A young lady once wrote to me telling how much better she felt since she had given up her childhood Christian faith and become a witch, because she never had to consider sin any more.  But that missed the point too.  Feelings don’t decide the issue.  Truth does.

That doesn’t mean that burdensome feelings are unimportant.  Not at all.  What it means is that you must get to the root of these feelings, and deal with them in ways that harmonize with the truth rather than by fleeing from it.  If you allow it to be, your present trial can be an opportunity to grow in God’s grace.  You might want to re-read the Letter to the Hebrews, which was addressed to an early group of converts who were tempted to fall away because of their own difficulties.

The second bigger issue in your letter is the meaning of Gospel freedom.  You write, “I miss the freedom that came with knowing and believing Jesus paid it all for me and that’s enough.”  The Catholic Church does teach that Jesus paid the debt of our sin on the Cross.  That is the very meaning of the Atonement!  Where then does your confusion lie?  Could it lie in the second part of your sentence, where you say “and that’s enough”?

For Jesus did pay the price completely.  But if by “that’s enough” you mean that the freedom of Jesus’ followers is that they don’t have to give any further thought to how they are living – that they have a blank check to live however they wish -- then it’s a false freedom, and a lie of the Adversary.  I know this was an issue in your conversion, since your former denomination taught “once saved, always saved,” and the thought that you might lose your salvation if you ever fell into grave sin and obstinately refused to repent was terrifying to you.  We must never forget that we can be forgiven every truly repented sin.  But Jesus never gave us permission to sin.

How could He?  If to sin is to turn away from the One who paid the debt, then how could that make us free?  Though nothing outside us can ever tear us from the love of Christ, we can certainly desert Him on our own.  I know that all too well, because I deserted Him when I was a young man.  As St. John writes in his first letter, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth” -- but as he goes on to say, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Like me, you are a convert from Protestantism.  Some non-Catholics, of course, understand the teaching of the Catholic Church quite well, but those who are uninformed about her teaching often make the mistaken claim that the Catholic Church believes in “works righteousness” – in the idea that we are saved by our own efforts apart from the grace of God.  I heard this growing up; so did you, and this mistaken view of the Church caused difficulties for you during your own conversion.  But the expressions of scrupulosity in your letter give the impression that perhaps you have never quite cast off that mistaken claim – that perhaps you believe that now that you are Catholic, you do have to believe in works righteousness!

If so, I can see how this would make you scrupulous.  But in reality, it is a recipe for a failed spiritual life.  We are not saved by our own efforts, but by Christ.  We cannot heal our own brokenness any more than we can forgive our own sins.  Real freedom lies in being free to follow Him, and discovering in Him who we were made to be.  This comes through the grace of the Holy Spirit, which breaks the chains of our sinful desires and makes it possible to accept the Savior’s gift.  Being “free to sin” is merely being free to be in chains.

Think of it like this.  I am rowing across a river which is much stronger than I am, and the current is against me.  I keep losing ground.  But then the wind comes and fills my sails, and although I still need to row and use the rudder, the wind makes my effort easy.  That wind is the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The third main issue is one you do not raise explicitly, but it is written all over your letter, most of which, of course, I haven’t quoted here.  Let me tell you a story.

Some years ago, a young woman visited me during my university office hours.  She was not one of my students, and I had never met her before.  However, she visited because several other students had told her that I was a Christian, and she needed to talk with someone who was.  She was Protestant – as I was too at that time – but Protestant-Catholic differences don’t come into this story.

She told me that she was losing her faith, that she no longer had joy in it, and that she was in misery about the fact.  Although she spoke to me of her loss of faith and joy as though it was just “happening” to her, I came to realize during our conversation that it wasn’t like that at all.  Actually she was seeking out people hostile to Christian faith, and exposing herself to their influence.  Every last one of the teachers she had chosen (and she had lots of other teachers she could have chosen instead) was militantly anti-Christian, and although she didn’t mention it, I had the feeling that most of her circle of friends was also hostile to faith.  No wonder she was having difficulty!

I said to her, “You think of yourself as though you were being bombarded against your will with reasons to lose your faith, but you actually give the impression of someone who is looking for reasons to lose it.  Even more than finding out replies to those reasons, what you really need to do is find out is why you are doing that.”

Forgive me, but since you have written to me in such distress, I have to ask:  Does that sound like you?  Is your circle of friends, dear ones, and influences hostile to or alienated from the Catholic faith?  Your letter mentions the stories of Catholic converts who returned to Protestantism.  They exist.  I could also tell you about Protestant converts who returned to Catholicism.  Have you considered their stories?  The only question is who has the words of truth.

Some of the things you ask me about – in your letter, for example, you said you’ve told of rich people country “buying prayers,” and you assumed that what you heard was true even though you had no personal experience of such things happening – are pretty bizarre.  However, they sound very much like the anti-Catholic propaganda that filled my ears in my youth.  Since I never hear of such ungodly practices in the Church itself, or among my own circle of Catholic friends, which is pretty broad, I can’t help but wonder who is influencing you.

To put a point on the question:  Do you “just go to church,” or are you actually part of the Catholic community, of the household of faith?  Do you make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation?  Do you have a circle of Catholic friends who are more experienced and well-instructed in life with Christ, who can encourage you and help you along, and who can explain what you are missing if you do misunderstand something in the Church’s teachings?

Talk to your priest about this.  God made us social beings, and you cannot grow in Christ all by yourself.  It just can’t be done.  Surrounded by friends and influences who are either hostile to the Church or alienated from it, separated from the actual life of the Church, of course your hold on Her faith will become tenuous and burdensome.

That would happen if you were Protestant, too.  I would have given you the same advice if you were finding faith burdensome and we were both Protestants.  In fact, I did give people the same advice in my Protestant days.  It’s easy to fall into despondency if you’re isolated.

As the ancient saying has it, “One Christian is no Christian.”  But you don’t have to be just “one.”

May the Lord of life, whose grace is a fountain, help you to offer your suffering to Him.  May He guide you through it to the glorious end that He desires for you.  Don’t trust your feelings.  Trust Him.