laurak, greetings and salutations,
And, take heart from your own Catholicism. Worse than 'loving money', so many 'Catholics' won't die to themselves in any way to permit Christ His loving way with them. They seem to act as if the Church is there to serve them with little obedience, and no service or sacrifice on their parts.
If even half those who call themselves 'Catholic' made sure to at least go to Mass every Sunday, all of our churches would be full for three Masses every week-end, plus a crowded fourth.
Think - we have 'Catholic' political leaders who are not only Sunday-Mass-going, but believe (THEIR) 'Catholicism' is somehow correspondent with their culture-of-death views. If one takes but a tenth the training, by any means, to become a knowledgable and right-seeking Catholic, they will encounter
1. the requirement of Sunday Mass and
2. the right to life as paramount to anything but personal salvation - which is sort of the right toward the next life.
But, it is obvious, even that modicum of instruction is not acquired. I mean, we are considering here a twenty-minute serious conversation with an orthodoxly Catholic pastor, to get all the wrinkles smoothed on just these two issues.
Lots of people - I came from a large ethnic family of them - are as 'Catholic' as they are Buddhist - they somehow seem to think to make up their own 'Catholicism' as they go along. A prize example: extra-marital sex may get frowned upon, but, 'you know, those boys have to sow those wild oats' (though, the girls have no such permission, and one wonders how non-Catholic, or, at least differently-ethnic, girls feel being 'Catholic'-boy sexual tackling dummies). So, in my tribe, we have the 'don't have sex' Commandment for girls, and the other nine 'suggestions'. The boys have only the ten 'suggestions'.
These folk by-and-large may go to Mass twice a year, and maybe not at all, but think that they should have Catholic Baptisms, Communions, Confirmations, Matrimonies, Anointings and funerals. (Notice the absence of Confession.) The Sacraments are as spiritually meaningless to them as are the Commandments, and are just part of the 'celebration party'. Most often, they don't even regularly contribute to the parish. But, I know a 'Catholic' multi-millionaire who writes a check for a million bucks to his parish every January first, and treats his 'Catholicism' as his own to choose how to live. For him, even tacit absolution from Confession is received in writing that check. Pace his check, is he really any different from poorer such ethnic 'Catholics'?
And, so many of these kinds of 'Catholics' - such as the kind I've known all my life - vote but barely with 'life' in mind except for their own. They have more intensely thoughtful affection for the dollar in their wallet that they do for some poor girl and her unborn child - including their own daughter's 'mistaken' child (a la Obama's grandchild named 'Mistake'). AND, based purely on very self-centered attitudes, and like so many 'Catholic' ethnics, these folks of mine have pulled the Democratic lever since 1932 ('cuzza FDR') every time they vote.
By the way, I was supposed to become the 'extended-family priest', you see, to confer Sacraments on persons who I knew left their souls in sin-stained, tormented, dusty emptiness. But, but . . . just the thought of ministering to their utterly un-Catholic 'Catholicism', where my priestly ministry would have to adjust to their careless 'Catholicism' without exhortation or murmur, froze me away from listening for God's call. I have decided that maybe I could have been good deacon - but, not worthy or called to full Holy Orders.
So, laurak, take heart from your own Catholicism. Pray that God reaches these sad souls before He has to judge them.
