Here's the deal. Educated people realize that their own experiences are not comprehensive. When I had sheep, I not only learned about diseases that had been in my flock, but diseases I had never seen. And it paid off. When I saw a sheep with an acute vitamin B deficiency, I could diagnose and treat it, though I had never seen it before.
That is because I trusted the writings of experts in sheep diseases more than I trusted my own experience.
If someone grows up in a Catholic neighborhood, one may think that that neighborhood represents all of Catholicism -- unless one reads and studies.
IF one reads and studies, one learns that Catholicism is not what mommy and daddy and grandma say it is, or even what red-nosed Father McGillicudy says it is.
One parses out dysfunctional families and communities from the Church which tries to minister to them. One teases the doctrine out and learns to distinguish between the earthen vessels and their contents.
Now the reason I am not doing what you are doing only in reverse is this: I am not saying the Catholic Church does not include bozos (and worse) or have areas where the doctrine is poorly taught and where kinky weird practices are carried out by those who claim they are doing them in the name of the Church.
But I AM distinguishing between the sweet and clear water and the rusty pipes which bring it to me.
Those who know me know this story:
Long, long ago, when the earth was young and I had just been ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church, I was 'head teacher' of the parish child care center. One of my teachers wanted to have a little chapel service for the very little children. I said, "Go for it," and then came to observe.
She was trying to get 4-year-olds to say the Lord's prayer AND it wasn't working as fast as she'd like. Naturally they were mumbling as they tried to wrap their tongues around words they'd never heard before.
So the teacher,a very sweet lady, said brightly, "Speak up children! God can't hear you if you don't speak clearly!"
So I'm resisting smacking my head. I'm thinking, "Great. Boo [that was her name] is teaching them that God wants them to say stuff they don't understand and that He's hard of hearing."
To me that was an enlightening experience about how devout "grown-ups" (this was LONG before the Episcopal Church jumped off the cliff) unconsciously use the concept of "God" to control the behavior of others, and in the process become DYSangelists (as opposed to EVangelists.)
I've heard all the Catholic horror stories. I grew up in an elementary school with only one Catholic in it (and he was a hellion!)
But I've read in Augustine, Justin, Irenaeus, Thomas Aquinas, Dante (!!!! ding ding ding) and I worked with the "compare and contrast "between" superstitious and life-denying Catholic practices here and there, and the wonderful beauty I saw in a very few Catholic people and a great many Catholic books.
Some of us walk into a garden and all we notice is the, ahem, fertilizer. Others keep looking until at last we see the Roses. THen we understand not only the roses but the fertilizer, while those who turned away at the first unpleasant whiff end up not understanding the fertilizer and knowing little of roses.
I read and studied and what I read and studied didn’t disagree with the teachings I had been raised with.
This is not any different from what I read and was taught as a Catholic, especially since Vatican II happened some years AFTER I was born.....
And since it would take a theological nuclear blast to change the minds of many Catholics older than I, that mindset never changed, even though it came from the Vatican itself. Many of the older Catholics strongly resisted the Vatican II pronouncements. I recall the furor over changing the mass from Latin to English, and to turn the altar around?
It bordered on heresy itself. The end of the world was around the corner. The church was denying its very essence.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/rcc_salv.htm
Christian denominations, whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant, have historically taught that an afterlife awaits everyone. All people will eventually spend eternity in either:
bullet Heaven, where the rewards are beyond our wildest dreams, or
bullet Hell, where unbelievable levels of pain and suffering will last forever without any hope of relief.
Various denominations have taught that their particular followers have a better chance at attaining heaven, and that believers in other faith groups are either totally excluded from heaven or, at least, are more likely to go to Hell.
The author, who was brought up a Protestant, can recall a conversation over five decades ago with some Catholic friends from the neighborhood. He was taught in Sunday School that Catholics automatically go to Hell; his friends were taught in separate (Catholic, parochial) school that all Protestants end up in Hell.
These beliefs have since changed on both sides of the divide, as Christian faith groups have become more accepting of other denominations. Even beliefs about Hell itself have moderated; it is now seen by many religious groups to be simply a place of isolation from God.
There has been considerable movement by the Roman Catholic Church concerning the salvation status of non-Catholics. The church has gradually changed from an exclusivist to an inclusivist position, thus becoming more accepting of the validity of other Christian denominations and of other religions.
The fate of non-Catholics, as stated prior to Vatican II:
Before Vatican II, the Church consistently taught that only Roman Catholics had a chance to be saved and attain Heaven. Followers of other Christian denominations and of other religions would be automatically routed to Hell for all eternity:
* Pope Innocent III (circa 1160 - 1216 CE) is considered “one of the greatest popes of the Middle Ages...” 1 At the Fourth Lateran Council (a.k.a. the General Council of Lateran, and the Great Council) he wrote:
“There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all can be saved.”
* Pope Boniface VIII (1235-1303 CE) promulgated a Papal Bull in 1302 CE titled Unam Sanctam (One Holy). He wrote, in part:
“Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins...In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Ephesians 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed....Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” 2
The last sentence in the original Latin reads: “Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, definimus, et pronuntiamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.” 3
* Pope Eugene IV, (1388-1447 CE) wrote a Papal bull in 1441 CE titled Cantate Domino. One paragraph reads:
“It [the Church] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.” 4
Have you ever tried reading the bible? :)