I was born and raised Catholic and accepted without questioning and without thinking all I had been taught.
Then you were wrong. There are settled truths which we must all believe. Heck, as acknowledged here, all Christians believe at least 95% in common. Other areas of faith require lively discussion and experience. That's how the Church has always grown. If we didn't question and think, there would be no Aquinases, Catherines, Augustines, Chestertons, and the rest. You lived your Catholic faith under a bushel basket.
Doing so would have run the risk of being sent to hell. You just accepted what you were told, no questions asked.
Absolute idiocy that no thinking person could possibly believe.
“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
You are part of the problem. You spout absolute nonsense as Catholic Doctrine from a "born and raised" perspective to give yourself an undeserved authority. If you want to understand the Catholic perspective, ask a Catholic... not one who never understood it herself.
Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion but the priest’s word was law and heaven help the person who questioned a NUN.
HMMMmmm... I wonder how many RCC members there be that HATE Protestantism?
Or at least what they THINK it is...
Sorry you're illin' Pgyanke and I hope you feel better soon.
Metmom is NOT wrong at all and I can testify that I experienced some of the exact same things she did. You even confirm in your post that there are "settled truths" which Catholics MUST believe and that is the gist of the argument.
Many things got added and changed over the centuries in the Catholic religion on the core tenets of the faith. Many of which compelled the Reformation. You say that settled truths MUST be believed and that is what Metmom is talking about. It is because they have been declared as de fide (of the faith) by the magesterium, then there IS no room for dissension or questioning. To dare do so brings down punishment and continued resistance to believing everything you are told DOES threaten everlasting condemnation in hell BY the very priests ordained to shepherd the flock of God.
It is disingenuous to say that anyone who questions what the Catholic Church teaches is "hating" the church or being a "bigot". It is also erroneous to presume that any of those questions are just merely wrong perceptions or "absolute nonsense" only asked because a person wasn't catechized properly. That is a huge cop-out and insult! Had the Roman Catholic Church remained faithful to the core tenets of the Christian faith, there wouldn't have been a need for the East/West split in the eleventh century OR the Reformation in the sixteenth. Those happened because the "settled truths" became unsettled and redone and new settled truths got added on. Instead of the church teaching what had always and everywhere been believed by everyone (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est), changes crept in under the guise of doctrinal "development". It's interesting that so many theologians of the church were allowed to question and think and their evolving conclusions were allowed to change things that had previously BEEN settled truths. But let a Catholic, or a former one, question these things today and they are castigated as heretics and schismatics. Quite the double standard!
It's no wonder really that Joseph Smith developed his own religion condemning all other Christian denominations, rewriting the Bible to fit his fevered imagination and passions and it is why his followers to this day have become convinced that the "true" faith was lost when Roman Catholicism became the state religion under the reign of Constantine. They presume all the other Christian faiths evolved from it and condemn us all thinking they alone have the "fullness of the gospel". How we KNOW what is the true faith is by the rule of faith GOD gave to us - His sacred Scriptures - and all claims of truth MUST be measured by it and not the whims and wishes of sinful men.