“I wonder what is intended by these conversations and this sort of participation.”
I don’t really “wonder”. I get the distinct impression that the purpose IS to mock Catholicism—and by way of association—those of us who are Catholic; to “educate” us about our fallibility, to inform us of the “accursed gospel”, to caution us of being “under the curse of the law”, to assume that we are without true faith, without true hope and without true redemption.
It’s a cyber-form of the style of Mission to Catholics people who would stand outside our parish church after Mass to tell us that we were “lost”.
That’s what I have read in the negative posts made here to Catholics about Catholicism.
Which makes it all seem that the Gospel is more against something than it is for something.
In a certain sense, I can say that I’m grateful that I have been a FReeper, and a mostly-lurker. After I have read so many negative posts about Catholicism, I have become aware— much more aware—that the negative attitudes and posts about all things Catholic are not the authentic picture of today’s active Catholic parish, nor of the spiritual life of today’s authentic, practicing Catholic.
Absorbing all this, and giving serious consideration to it has done a lot to strengthen my Catholic faith because it has caused me to study more, to reflect more and to pray more. And I’ve desired to reflect and pray more than to study, because—as St. Paul tells us-—knowledge passes away, but there remains faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love. To love God and one’s neighbor is the fulfillment of the Law.
What's up with telling me what I believe?
But then I remember being on the other side. I remember the sense of revulsion I had at most Marian devotional stuff, even as I developed my theology of Mary. And likewise with nearly all things Catholic, even while I was loving Augustine and Aquinas and head over heels over Dante. The revulsion was strong.
And then I think metmom's history is undeniable. And in the right kind of Catholic ghetto it would be easy to be fall into thinking that what one experienced was all there was to it.
And these impressions can be virutally indelible. I have mentioned my friend form the hills of Arkansas who is virtually proo0f against all forms of Christianity because of the spousal and child abuse she saw justified by the Christians (so-called) up in her particular hollow in the hills. "This kind can only be driven out by prayer and fasting."