The Catholic Church and hope

The Catholic Church I know and love became my rock in a time of personal struggle and crisis. I felt deep sadness when I read Janice Kennedy's view of the Church which she has grown so disillusioned with. It sincerely made me feel very bad for her and I would like to give her hope that it needn't be that way.

After my own absence from the Crunch for thirty five years I returned to it in my quest for healing and found a new conversion along the way. After myriad psychological and new age "help", and whatever else I could get my hands on, in order to relieve my suffering, it was the Church in the end that saved me.

I began anew a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and did this through his Church, and by his Church, the same Church that Jesus began over 2000 years ago. For the first time in my life I felt God reaching out to me and enveloping me with his Love and his Grace.

I renewed myself in the Sacraments of his Church with regular confession and the Holy Eucharist and began to attend Mass daily whenever I could. I listened to homilies by humble, funny and wise priests who filled my soul with the knowledge and faith that I am loved by my God, regardless of my sins.

I found a gentle and kind spiritual director who guides me on my spiritual path, a man of the cloth who has soothed my soul and given me hope that we truly are children of God.

The Church is not perfect. That is because man is not perfect. The Church is divinely inspired but there are men within her ranks that may be arrogant or evil or do bad things. This is the nature of humanity. It should come as no surprise that there are people within her sphere like this.

But I also believe we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. I believe we should embrace the good that we see within the Church and do our best to weed out the bad. We must pray that the God who takes care of us all, help us along this path to find healing from within.

I love the Church and I love what she has done for me in my life. I hope Janice Kennedy can rediscover it as well.