[ninenot]

Good point.

There was a disconnect. It played out so that the concept of Fatherhood (divine and human) was distorted into a "Do As I Say, DAMMIT!!" thing, rather than a Father who understood the best uses for the design--similar to a family father whose restrictions and instructions to the children are based on experience.

[bornacatholic]

Thanks, brother. Your previous point summarised it well. I was raised I needed the Church for salvation rather than needing Jesus as my Saviour; while acknowledging my Saviour would be, naturally, acting and mediating His Salvific Grace through the Church He established. The young men and women in my home town were raised to think of themselves as Catholics rather than Christians. While we all know, intellectually, the tautological Christian preceeds Catholic,it was my experience that, in practice, the Church and our observing its rules and regulations obscured Our Lord and Saviour and we judged ourselves righteous as long as we were obedient to the rules and regs.

In hindsight, the revolution we underwent in affluent America revealed what was actually in the hearts of those Catholics who came of age back in the day. Once it appeared the rules and regs could change, many were revealed as only having the form of a Catholicity absent the Christian substance.

And, believe me, I am not leaving myself out of the criticism. It is only through a series of crises which followed my abandoning Catholicism that I fell into such a state that I, literally, was reduced to tears and begged my Lord and Saviour to come into my life and save me. For my former friends, I don't think they have, yet, reached that point where they realise they need a Saviour.

Of course it is to be expected others had different experiences in different parts of America. The only universal is sinful man desperately in need of a Saviour.