Most who leave The Church do so because their souls have been overwhelmed by demons of vanity. When The Church’s teachings interfere with what they want to think, say, or do, lapsing Catholics proudly parrot the classic line of the lost. They announce, “I have grown beyond that.”
The thinking that leads to such a conclusion is, in a word, “insane”.
None of us would take all of our property and risk it on a roulette table’s red or black square. If a wealthy older person were to threaten to do so, heirs would rightly complain and courts may grant an injunction against such wasteful, risky behavior.
But, if a person wants to gamble his or her immortal soul for eternity, no one forcibly restrains them.
I live in a rural neighborhood fifty miles from a major city. Lots of Catholics have been moving out here for the past fifty years as their urban neighborhoods and parishes were intentionally destroyed by big-city socialists, all of whom claimed to have “the best intentions”.
When they arrived, they found themselves many miles from a Catholic church, and surrounded by a sea of Protestants, most of whom were lapsed from their shrinking denominations. Oddly, many of the Protestants are descended from lapsed Catholics from earlier generations of those who fled the city.
The first question newcomers are asked by local residents is almost always, “What church do you go to?”. If the answer is “Catholic”, the response is, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference, as long as you believe.”
Believing that “It doesn’t make any difference what Church I go to as long as I believe.” is a short step from “I don’t really need to go to church at all.” That self-centered opinion usually leads to losing all meaningful contact with The Loving Programmer. It’s a mistake that, if not rectified before one’s soul leaves one’s body, can never be made right. When we catch ourselves justifying moving away from God and Church, we might profitably consider that we are turning into a weed that will be thrown into the fire when the fields are harvested.
