"Recovering" Catholics Hit Close to Home for Me

                                                               +AMDG+

THE MASKED ANGEL:

In this posting, I'm going to look at a special breed of atheists called "recovering Catholics." Before we look at it, I implore you to watch this video:





Once again, Michael Voris hits the bullseye, but I must point out one thing he overlooked: he did not mention or look at people he knows who call themselves "recovering Catholics."

For those not familiar with the term, "recovering Catholic" means someone who was either raised Catholic or came into the Catholic faith at some point in their lives but abandoned it in favor of another religious view…falling outside the Church, you might say. In what is perhaps one of the more puzzling traits of Recovering Catholics is their treatment of their former faith as a sickness they are now happy to  say they've gotten over in the same sense as someone saying "I'm a recovering alcoholic" or "I'm a recovering drug addict."

Why is this? You don't hear someone say "I'm a recovering Presbyterian" or "I'm a recovering Methodist" or "I'm a recovering Jew." Why does no one ever say these? (Besides the fact that last one also counts as an ethnicity and the other two are so-called Christianity created by sinful men?)

According to Philip Jenkins in his book The New Anti-Catholicism: the Last Acceptable Prejudice, the term "recovering Catholic" was first coined by gay activists in the mid-1980's. (No surprise there: the vast majority of "recovering Catholics" are in favor of gay so-called marriage.) Over time, the term came to mean anyone who left the Church and now acts as its enemy. We see this in groups who oppose all access religion has in the public area, regardless of what that religion is.

One question I would like to ask this group: out of all the alternatives to Catholicism, why do these people choose either a so-called Bible based church or atheism? My guess is either they were poorly taught their Catholic faith or they want a viewpoint that allows them to not take responsibility for their own actions, and here are some examples of it from famous "recovering Catholics":

-In her book Bad Habits, Jenny McCarthy claims her former faith is the source for her neurotic tendencies and she thinks the Immaculate Conception refers to Jesus' Virgin Birth. There are no backed psychological studies for her first claim and even the 80s Catechism proves her wrong on the last one.

-Then there's former VP candidate Sarah Palin, who in November 2013 claimed Pope Francis made liberal-leaning remarks, even though it turned out he was actually describing the Catholic teaching of subsidiarity. Had she been familiar with the teaching, she would have realized how the teaching fell in line with the conservative view of smaller government.

-Then there's former Catholic turned Mormon Glenn Beck…oh, where to begin about how ignorant he is about Catholicism? Besides advising Catholics to leave their parish if the priest promotes social justice (news flash: Beck doesn't even know what social justice means) but recently he claimed scientist Bill Nye's fight against creationism is "like the Catholic Church's war against Galileo."
Had he bothered to look into the case, he wouldn't have said something that dumb.

-Then there's actors like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Madonna…nuff said.

-And now the special case of Bill Maher. He will get his own posting here so for now we'll bring up his claim of Jesus being based on Egyptian myth, a claim widely dismissed by Egyptologists as historical quackery but Maher keeps promoting it and has never apologized for getting his facts wrong.

It should be obvious from all this that "recovering Catholics" need to be called out on their ignorance and how poorly they distort Catholic teaching before their nonsense gets even worse.

And I know some are going to write to me and say"Masked Angel, you don't know what you're talking about. I bet you were born and raised into Catholicism, never once questioned it, never bothered to consider alternative religious views and you're just going after them because they're better informed than you are."

The truth is quite to the contrary.

I meant it when I said this issue hits close to home for me. In my life, I can name ten people who fit the "Recovering Catholic" profile…three of them are people I graduated from high school with who now no longer talk to me because of my faith,  four of them are former co-workers who I know if I talk religion to them, they won't talk to me anymore and two of them…are my own sisters, who I can no longer relate to.

But perhaps the closest former "recovering Catholic" I know…the one where I can get my best source of information into how this group thinks, how they come across their conclusions, and why they no longer believe….the one I can turn to the most for the best information...is myself.

Yes…The Masked Angel himself was once a "recovering Catholic", and I can say with complete honesty that the views "recovering Catholics" have are views I myself once had in my youth but now view as childish and ill-informed.

I have been on the "recovering Catholic" side and I have been on the revert side, and I want to make this abundantly clear to "recovering Catholics:"

There is NOTHING you can say or argue to me that will convince me of your viewpoint.

If you say something ill about the Catholic Church in front of me, I will confront you, I will get in your face…and it will not end well for you.