Okay, so as I've explained in one or two other threads I'm an Anglican considering converting to Catholicism. I've been using this board to try to answer questions I have and explore the faith, so please bear with me. This week, I started attending Mass at a local Catholic Church. Today, there was an hour of Eucharistic Adoration afterwards. I came away with a wonderful feeling of peace.
So I started to reflect on what was holding me back from "swimming the Tiber" so to speak. I came up with a list of things. Having friends at my current CofE church and being quite involved in things there is a consideration, my mother disliking Catholicism quite strongly is another, but then I figured out what the biggie is. I like to think I'm a reasonably moral person. No worse than anyone else anyway. But by Catholic standards, I'm a terrible person. There are certain teaching of the Church I tell myself I'm unsure about (mainly porn, impure thoughts, masturbating, that sort of thing). I tell myself that because I can't intellectually see how those things are wrong. The other half of the time, I know that the Church knows best and that I'm a terrible sinner. And then I get a feeling that I'm not good enough to be a Catholic anyway and I should just stop kidding myself.
This then leads me to wonder how I'd ever be able to confess 24 years of sins. I know it would probably be a relief to get it all out. But I don't know how I'd manage it. And I know know how I'd stay away from these things (possibly by fear of having to confess them). And if I convert knowing I wouldn't be able to keep some of the Church's teachings, is that hypocrisy or does that just make me like any other sinful, fallen human being?
So I started to reflect on what was holding me back from "swimming the Tiber" so to speak. I came up with a list of things. Having friends at my current CofE church and being quite involved in things there is a consideration, my mother disliking Catholicism quite strongly is another, but then I figured out what the biggie is. I like to think I'm a reasonably moral person. No worse than anyone else anyway. But by Catholic standards, I'm a terrible person. There are certain teaching of the Church I tell myself I'm unsure about (mainly porn, impure thoughts, masturbating, that sort of thing). I tell myself that because I can't intellectually see how those things are wrong. The other half of the time, I know that the Church knows best and that I'm a terrible sinner. And then I get a feeling that I'm not good enough to be a Catholic anyway and I should just stop kidding myself.
This then leads me to wonder how I'd ever be able to confess 24 years of sins. I know it would probably be a relief to get it all out. But I don't know how I'd manage it. And I know know how I'd stay away from these things (possibly by fear of having to confess them). And if I convert knowing I wouldn't be able to keep some of the Church's teachings, is that hypocrisy or does that just make me like any other sinful, fallen human being?