Don’t make me laugh.

Several people, in coments and in IM and in emails have said to me that they had no trouble wiht faith, but with organized religion.

And I can’t fault them a bit.

Here’s the thing: I have been a Roman Catholic all my life. I am techically excommunicate for personal reasons but I still attend mass. Once you are a catholic (and I mean, truly a catholic) you can as much not be a catholic as you can start being a hog.

Being a Catholic, however, is not a prerequisite for faith in a Creator. In fact, I think that some of catholicism is a specific impediment to faith.

I KNOW a lot of the calvinist beliefs are an impediment to faith. I suspect a great deal of Liberalism is an impedimen to faith.

Whatever the case, at least as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, I have put my fingers into the soil where the bodies are buried, and have felt the bones.

A good spiritual leader can inspire you to closer contact with the creator, and brotherhood and peace with your fellow man and woman. But the acts of brotherhood must come from you. No organization can control what is within you unless you allow it- and allowing it has led to some of the worst nastiness in our history.

Look: Establish your relationship with your Creator yourself. Keep that relationship personal. And keep it to yourself. Don’t think you deserve to enforce your belief on anyone else, because you do not.

No, you should NOT stop going to mass- or to services- in fact, do so more so than before, if you can. But be aware that the building, the minister, the people, are not the source of faith. You don’t need anyone else. You need to be at services so you can maintain that sense of community, and to increase your awareness of a specific thing.

The awareness that there are others just like you.

Others who have found how to use that faith in their lives, and are whole within themselves. People who have arrived at that equilibrium between the teachings of organized groups, and the wisdom of their own hearts. They are there looking for you. They are there to support you. Get to know them and it will help strengthen your own relationship with the Creator. The ones who are very obviously there to show off their new dress, or to be seen in the right pew with the right crowd? the ones that make a big show about their wonderful faith and how great it is? ignore ’em. They suck. they are as much in touch with their creator as.. well, as you could become a hog.