As part of our contribution to the Year of Faith, Sacred Space 102fm wants our readers and listeners to tells us Why they are Catholic christian?
The Year of Faith is a reminder to us all that we are called to share in community and in communion with one another and to be witnesses and missionaries to the world. It doesn't call for heroic deeds and travel to far distant places but as St Therese of Lisieux said of doing the little things extraordinarily well.
In Ireland in particular being a Catholic Christian has been a challenging endeavour especially over the last number of years as we have watched in horror as our church leadership has lurched from one crisis to another like drunken sailors and at all times seeming to suffer from a serious case of "foot in mouth". But 84% of Irish citizens recently indicated on the Census that they still regard themselves as Catholic. We want to know why.
Will you share your story with us, and together we can encourage each other on the journey of faith that we are all sharing. To be Christian is to live in community, by definition almost you can't be a Christian on your own.
You can post a comment below (please be advised that all comments are moderated and it may take a day or two for one of the team to see it and publish it to the blog), you can email us at sacredspace102@gmail.com or you can write to us at the address on the sidebar c/o West Limerick 102fm.
Your contribution can be as long or as short as you wish and we will be continuing this little project throughout the year and may read out some of the contributions on air. We would ask that if you are commenting you please sign at least your first name to the comment as we generally ignore anonymous comments.
We look forward to hearing from you
SS102fm Team
I've been a believing, practising Catholic all my life, but that's not to say my faith has never been challenged. When I went to Cambridge to study science, I was surrounded by people who didn't share my faith, and I met many who actively opposed what the Church stood for. I was forced to question my faith, and this led to a lot of study, prayer, and conversation with non-believers and fellow believers. In the end, I was happy to conclude that only the Catholic Faith made sense of my experience of the world: only it could account for the sense of being called to greatness as well as the sense of my own frailty, the beauty in the world as well as all the ugliness and pain. Only it could give a sound foundation to my intellectual search for truth and my personal search for peace.
ReplyDeleteI've been blessed to have seen the Church at its best: in my parents who taught me to pray and to love; in friends who challenged me to aim for holiness; and in great gatherings of the young faithful at events like World Youth Day, which proved to me the vitality of the Church. Certainly I've read about all the scandals in the Church - these great tragedies were littered throughout the papers as I was growing up. But the Church was always more to me than a source of scandal: it has been a home, a mother, a teacher, a family, a school, a festival of saints, a hospital for sinners and a happy band of pilgrims. I pray that others may come to know what it is to love, and be loved by, Christ and His Church.
Conor Benedict OP
I like being a Catholic because:
ReplyDelete1. It offers me the wonderful peace which comes from trusting in a loving, caring God as my steadfast anchor in the stormy water's of lifes journey.
2. It allows me to be loved and loving every moment of my life in obedience to Jesus' great commandment of love; and
3. The resurrection offers me the great hope of spending eternity with a loving God and my dearly loved and missed departed family memebers and friends.
Mary Keating