Thank you for your honesty and interesting experiences. I am a convert to Catholicism and do not have these same experiences.

Since I am a Traditional Catholic, I do not have a place to go for Mass or social gatherings in my country, and I do not believe the Second Vatican council was Catholic. Still, as a Catholic I have to be honest enough to admit that there are lots of problems with the Bible, probably due to human errors or even agendas.

Do we even know that the scriptures we have today are the same ones that were canonised by the Church a long time ago? After all, Scripture provides several alternatives to who killed Goliath, and several alternatives to who was king David’s father, just to name a few things.

And almost every time the English translation writes the “Philistines”, the Greek text reads “the other tribes..” Now, that changes the narrative slightly.

We don’t have the answer to all these things, and people can be so silly sometimes. I remember visiting a Traditional Latin mass in Belgium as a new convert. There were people from the Czech Republic and people from Holland and Germany. One group found it extremely problematic to take off their jackets in Church, and one group found it very offensive to wear a jacket in Church.. and it caused a lot of bad tensions.

I wonder how these people would have reacted if a poor beggar came in with flipflops and dirty clothing. Would they have refused him to attend Mass? Probably. I don’t think Jesus would have.

Don’t turn your back on God because people are people. If death didn’t enter the world because of sin, then why do we die? Why do we have sickness and suffering, if God is good, unless there’s something causing all this pain?

I don’t believe we are gods in the way you describe it, just because we are created in God’s image. If we are described as gods in the Psalms, then it must be something in God that is imprinted upon man, that makes us different from the animals.

I believe we have enormous potential just because of that fact. God is limitless and we are his creation and this gives life so much purpose. Maybe I should be glad I don’t have to deal with the things you went through growing up. To love your neighbor can be very hard!

I thank you for being so honest. Have a good day!

Iselin