Catholicism

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by Sun

I saw this thread and thought that I might share a link to Dignity USA, a group
founded by and for lgbtq Catholics. This may help some of you keep a connection to the Church while honoring your selves in your wholeness as people regardless of the poor biblical scholarship and crimes against humanity perpetuated by the Church "leadership".

Sun

I genuinely appreciate the well-intended nature of your post. Furthermore, I can understand the reference to "crimes against humanity".

However, I am slightly uneasy by your reference to "poor biblical scholarship". I don't think that, in itself, is a bad thing. I think about faith and my Catholicism a lot. For me, the bible isn't the be all and end all. In fact, far from it. Biblical scholarship doesn't appeal to me.

Give me a living church with its many faults, and worshipers who often fail, rather than something that places too significant focus on writings of previous millenia.

Originally Posted by Sun

So do not despair over the ongoing crisis in leadership, there is good in the body of the Church, or as you say, the body of Christ.

One side of my family was Catholic and the other Jehovahs Witness. So I can not claim to have been one or the other, but made my way through that confusion to Unitarian Universalism where I do find many recovering Catholics and a huge "welcoming denomination" as well as the largest # of lgbtq Ministers in the world.

I don't despair. There's always been a significant amount of good and evil in the church. There always will be. Good attracts evil, certainly on spiritual matters.

Similarly, there's good and bad in the leadership of the church. I, for one, am confident that the good will triumph over the bad but this will take time and will be a prolonged process. The phrase "Rome wasn't built in a day" is rather apt.

Not all of us here are recovering Catholics or feel the need to look elsewhere for spiritual comfort. I'm openly and unashamedly Roman Catholic and my individual identity, and the insights and the challenges that this provides are fundamental to my Catholicism and how I experience it.