Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Welcome Home?

Someone said that church should be seen as a home and not someplace to be exploited or used, e.g. destination weddings.  OK, lets look at this.  Say your child leaves home or your friend leaves the group without saying goodbye and maybe with a lot of rancor.  Some time later, years, they come back, not so much to live there but to be part of the family or group again.   Do you welcome them or punish them?  I think it depends on the bond that is there as well as your own hurt feelings needed to be exercised, or your pension to be judgmental.  If love and acceptance is the bond, plus a bit of forgiveness, you welcome them.  Then why do priests get upset with Catholics who left and then come back for a sacrament some years later?  Why do priest get upset with the Christmas/Easter Catholic?  Love, acceptance forgiveness on one side.  Law, rules and judgment on the other
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 17, 2014 at 6:57 AM

    Can't remember where I read/heard this: "The Church is not a museum for saints; it is a hospital for sinners" Isn't that what most of us want and need the most?

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  2. AnonymousJune 17, 2014 at 9:56 AM

    "Church is where people go when they have nothing else to do on Sunday morning." ~ Rev. Gasau

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  3. AnonymousJune 17, 2014 at 4:40 PM

    I left my Boulder church after I realized that nobody cared for me or my efforts... And nobody cared

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  4. AnonymousJune 20, 2014 at 2:29 PM

    Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Church has been like that for me. I know it has been like that for others who come to church, too. I have to show up partly because I think I should do my share of creating community and be present for those others. Selfishly, I know how important it has been for me when I needed to "go home," so sometimes I go to church to just to pay my dues. Maybe it is purely social, but, for me, grace has nearly always come to me through others; through Fr. Terry, for one.
    Right now I am angry at the hierarchy, again, because they don't want me to publicly support my grandchildren whose parents are lesbians. I'm also angry at them because they put burdensome contracts on Catholic school teachers while paying lawyers to write those contracts so they can protect the diocesan coffers.
    But, the hierarchy are not the people who make church my home. It must be time for me to go back. To be present.

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