My Journey (thus far) as a Roman Catholic

I sympathize with a lot of what you’ve experienced. I am from the South and converted to Catholicism. When the idea first came to my mind I thought it was crazy. ‘Who converts to Catholicism’, I thought? I thought my friends and family would think I’m crazy. I thought I’d always be some kind of oddball. This isn’t to say I didn’t know of any converts. I knew of well known apologist converts. I had watched or listened to podcasts of ‘The Journey Home’ on EWTN (which may help you). I knew converts existed. But, it still seemed crazy and I thought I’d never fit in.

Well, several years later it doesn’t seem crazy at all. I know tons of converts. In fact plenty of people I assumed were Cradle Catholics turned out to be converts. One of my favorite priests is a convert and I know several other convert priests.

I was married and my wife converted with me. That helped me as I wasn’t all alone. But what we did is found some good, traditional Catholics and this gave us a sense of community. One thing Protestants do better is fellowship. Catholic parishes are not very good at that. It can be hard to connect with people and that is essential to feeling like you fit in.

As for solutions to that maybe their is a rosary group you could join? Or maybe their is a Bible study. I’m not a Knight and don’t really want to be. The other groups I mentioned may be more focused on the Faith as a group, and this may help you.

One thing to keep in mind is your faith isn’t your feelings. Having a strong feeling doesn’t mean you have strong faith. Some of the greatest Saints have felt as if God withdrew his presence. They lacked consolations, yet continue to have faith. Part of having faith means living a Christian life and participating in the Sacraments.

As for confession consider this, do you want new sins to confess? Do you want to struggle in some other area? Right now it seems like your struggle is with porn and masturbation. If you can conquer these you may discover new sins you didn’t recognize before. We are on a journey to holiness, if we want to be. Porn and masturbation are grave sins. We have to root them out if we want to become really holy.

It is pretty difficult for me to feel good about my faith life when I am looking at porn and masturbating. When I do that I don’t want to pray or do other holy things. So the good feelings aren’t there. And I may never have them. But regardless, I need to stop this sin. If I do that then I am being a good Catholic.

Another thing to keep in mind is that life is a journey. We don’t (absent tremendous grace) change overnight. Things are often gradual. But every day we are going in one direction or another. We are either going towards Heaven or Hell. Two sins against the Holy Spirit are presumption and despair. This is where Satan lives. You either think my sins aren’t that bad, or God won’t forgive me or heal me. Both are lies. The truth is God is merciful but also just. We must surrender to both His mercy and His justice. I don’t know of any secret to this other than to continue to remind yourself of this truth.

 

I think I know what you mean. Do you mean that if you don’t look at the sin as all that bad then you’ll not feel as bad? If so then that is true in a sense. You can convince yourself it isn’t so bad, but that itself isn’t true. Porn and masturbation are bad, very bad. We all want to cling to the sins we like by telling ourselves it’s not that bad. This is the path to Hell.

But again, in all this remember God is merciful. Our sin is bad but God wants us to be free of sin. He wants to forgive us. He also wants us to understand that we rely on him for everything. He wants us to deny ourselves. Part of denying ourselves is thinking of ourselves less. This could even apply to our sins. What good does it do to think so much about how awful a sinner we are?

 

I live in the Southeastern United States. Been here all my life, born and bred. I grew up, in the Church of the Nazarene, a small evangelical denomination, started in 1910, came out of the Holiness Movement (America's 3rd Great Awakening). I was baptized in the Nazarene Church after I made a personal commitment to Jesus and prayed to receive Christ. I migrated from there to Calvinism (Presbyterian). I was married in the Presbyterian church and after 10 years a Calvinist, my wife and I both began to study the Church fathers and ask some questions. It wasn't long after that that we both found our way to Rome. So I definitely understand the perspective of being a Catholic convert in the South. My wife and I are the only one's in our family that are Catholics. We are lucky in that we live in an area with a sizable Catholic community. We actually attend a parish with over 7000 members! There is also a small Latin Extraordinary form parish near by which many of our new Catholic friends attend and are trying to rope us into. If we had fewer small children, we might take them up on it, but the parish is very, very small. So is the building! We would probably take up an entire pew.

I would say, the first step in becoming a good Catholic, is to stop calling yourself a bad one. Bad is as bad does. So, if you want to be a good Catholic, then start with obedience to the Church. What could be more Catholic than that!

The church requires 6 things of you, they are called the 6 precepts of the church. They are as follows.

1. Attend Mass on Sunday and Holy Days of obligation.
2. Confess your mortal sins at least once a year.
3. Receive the Eucharist at least once per year and that during Eastertide.
4. Contribute to the needs of the Church (free will giving of money or time)
5. Fast and Abstain on all appointed days (Currently that is Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and abstain from meat on Fridays during lent)
6. Avoid contracting an illicit marriage. (don't marry your sister, 1st cousin or you know.. a dude.)

Now, that doesn't sound too hard does it? If you are doing at least these things. You are not a bad Catholic. Doesn't make you a good Catholic, but you are not a bad one.

Second, I would recommend taking confession at least once a month or as often as you commit a grave sin. Always go forward at mass, if you are not fit to receive the Eucharist, get a blessing (don't ever miss you blessing!), and before you leave the house for the day, say an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be. Do your best to mean it. Once you get those down, add in a little daily scripture. Keep hanging out here on NoFap, keep praying for grace to get your masturbation habit under control. Be aware that when you go to confession for this, probably ever other dude in line in front of you confessed the same thing and don't sweat the priest not giving you awesome advice. Take the absolution, and remember, the sacrament imparts grace even if the priest is playing angry birds while you were confessing your sins!

This may seem basic, simplistic, even legalistic. But I sometimes, when you are struggling, it helps to get back to the basics. I speak from experience here. I'll be praying for you. Don't give up, and go to Mass! It's still counts even if you don't understand the language.

 

SingleIndividual, it sounds to me that like many of us, you have a sincere desire to be a good Catholic but are struggling. I believe it was Thomas Merton who reflected that our desire to please God is itself pleasing to him.

I like what LavaMe said about confessing the same sins repeatedly being better than having new sins to confess. Father Mike Schmitz from Ascension Presents talks about that in a YouTube video - we should at least be grateful that we aren't constantly finding new ways to offend God.

I will also share something a priest said to me during confession recently - that even if we are in a habit of winning and don't feel like we are making progress, it is a gift that we know our sins. How much worse it would be to have a sinful habit and not know it. Also, sometimes God works on us in ways we don't see right away.

I saw a video recently in which a priest observed that often we go to confession hoping that it will be easier to avoid or resist the same temptations in the future, when really we need to be aware that it will probably be even harder, because we have habituated ourselves to it all the more. For some reason that insight has been helpful to me lately.

Single, you also mentioned in a recent post your discouragement with priests who don't have much helpful advice to offer during confession. I try to keep in mind that the purpose of confession is absolution, not advice. Some priests do both well, but even if they don't, that I am able to humbly confess my sins and receive the unmerited gift of absolution is wonderful. Good advice is everwhere, even if it is hard follow. I can only receive absolution for grave sin through confession.

 

You complained about the Mass being in German. If the Mass were still in Latin it would be even more the same across the world. That is one advantage of the Latin Mass.

Great point. I recently read a blog post by a good priest on this: http://blog.adw.org/2019/06/progressive-stages-sin/

Again, great point. A lot of people expect spiritual direction in confession. The priest may or may not offer a few words of advice. But the essential part, and the part only a priest can offer, is absolution. Priests administer the sacraments. They alone can administer them (or most of them). Not every priest is a great homilist, gregarious, or a great spiritual director. But all can give us absolution.

And when I’m in a long line of penitents it isn’t very fun waiting ten minutes per penitent because people are talking to the priest either getting spiritual direction or just chatting. As I said I’m a convert. I think my first confession lasted ten minutes. I had plenty of sins, plenty of awful sins, a lifetime of sins. But I simply said them in number and in kind. That didn’t take long.

 

One more thing about confession. I converted about four years ago. I converted with a lifetime habit of PMO. Of course I confessed that at my first confession. When I first confessed I felt a certain strength to not commit this sin. I went I think three weeks. But then I had a particularly stressful day and decided to ‘reward’ myself with PMO.

After that I felt awful. I wanted to confess ASAP. I think I tried to find a confession time the next day. And this then became a pattern. I’d sin and then try to find a confessor the next day. But over time I got more comfortable with the sin and confession. Confession of this sin became an expectation. It wasn’t like I didn’t revile the sin in some way. But I didn’t feel the urgent need to confess it so soon after I committed it. I would tend to go to confession every Saturday so I could receive on Sunday.

This went on for several years. As it did I think my firm purpose of amendment became less firm. I mean I had an expectation that I’d be committing this sin. I didn’t have the same revulsion to the sin and didn’t fully repent. I think I may have repented for fear of Hell, but I wasn’t repented because I had offended God. Recently I started to not care as much about confession every week. And this meant, for me, not receiving every week. I was despairing of the idea that I would ever stop this pattern.

About three weeks ago I hadn’t gone to confession in a month. This was the longest I’ve gone since I converted. I committed my sin. But then I reflected on this sin. I reflected on how bad it is and how it is destroying my faith. I made an earnest prayer to God. I made a really good confession. I didn’t have a mystical experience or hear God’s voice. But I think I’ve received special graces to avoid this sin. I write about it in this post:

https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/lavames-journal.101492/page-13#post-2111418

 

About 5 years ago I managed to stop for a bout 2-1/2 years. Two things that helped a lot were active participation in a forum much like this (the one I used then is less active now) and that I went through a 10-week course on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which involved an hour of silent prayer every day for 10 weeks. I believe I received a lot of grace through that.

This time I don’t think I can manage an hour of silent prayer every day, but I plan to say the rosary for the next 90 days and pay attention to how things change.

I think two mistakes I made last time were neglecting my prayer life and getting complacent about near occasions of sin, assuming I had reached a point where I could handle it.

Those aren’t really recommendations, just my plan and my experiences. Feel free to adopt what might work for you.

I do find that the more closely I am living out Church teachings, the less outdated and unreasonable they seem.

 

I’ve experienced periods in my life like that. You can seer your conscience. When you do so then sin doesn’t bother you as much. I don’t know that I have great advice or expertise in how to fix that. But it seems to me spending time thinking/meditating on the reality of sin might help. That reality is both worldly pain and unhappiness, and Hell.

The teachings are outdated. More modern teaching has taken hold and become popular. But just because something is old doesn’t make it wrong. Age has nothing to do with rightness. Go read Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. These men are far smarter than most people you encounter today. These men had deep thoughts that really well captured reality. Most people haven’t built their knowledge on the work these men did. Most people are far less intelligent than these men, despite being able to read their works and benefit from them. It is trait of modernism to reject what is ancient. But if you spend time reading the ancients you realize how much wiser many of them were then people today.

The abuse is awful and disgusting. But the truth of the Church isn’t dependent on the moral lives of its leaders (though it should be exemplary). Remember Peter denied Jesus and Judas betrayed Jesus. This problem is nothing new.

 

Well, the fact that God doesn´t approve of it alone should be more than enough to make you stop doing it. For us, it makes them FAR worse. Other reasons (it may induce ED, it twists your view of sexuality and many other things) are not mandatory for us, rather assurances that it is really wrong. Or for us to be able to convince even non-religious people that they should stop it even if they don´t believe.

 

Here's some things that might help go to confession at least weekly and asap if you pmo
If you live in Austria I am sure there are a multitude of churches I suggest any time it starts up again to take a walk to the newest church and pray.

 

True. Actually, from a Catholic perspective, consistency of Church teaching tends to be an indication of its authority -- the more a teaching can be demonstrated to have been held consistently by the Church since its inception, the more we can trust it to be right.

 

that's a really good question, and not one I think I can answer right now...will have to think about it and pray upon it more...