The Catholic Church and Their Tales of Fire and Brimstone

I was reading Isabel's post here and I was typing a comment in response that was getting so long that I decided to make it into a blog post. Basically, Isabel remarked that she was horrified by Father Dolan's threats of hell in his sermon during the boys' retreat, and that the descriptions made her feel awful.

The Catholic Doctrine preaches that anyone can be saved as long as they confess their sins and try their best not to sin anymore. Even if someone rapes and murders, as long as they confess their sin, genuinely feel sorry,  and promise to try their hardest not to sin again, they can go to heaven.

Instead of preaching about the evils of hell, the priests could emphasize love and forgiveness and following the church, because according to Catholic Doctrine, anyone who confesses, is sorry, and tries not to sin again will escape hell. In fact, logically the only people who go to hell by this way of thinking are those who don't believe in God. If that is what Father Dolan believes, then he should be emphasizing that the boys should stay with the church so they can be believers and go to heaven.

In the end, Stephen did confess and have his sins forgiven, and everything worked out in the short term, but theoretically if the goal is for him to go to heaven by the rules of the Catholic Church, then being scared of sinning won't work. The fact that everyone sins is an important part of Christianity, and there is no way that Stephen can avoid that. Stephen will sin even if he does everything perfectly, and he can't be "scared" out of that. He has to focus on the love part, and learn to forgive himself as well as letting God forgive him because no one is perfect.

What is Coming of Age?

When a child is around the age of ten, one can say for certain that he is still a child. When someone is around the age of thirty, he or she is an adult. The questions lie in when and how. At one moment did that person become an adult? Was it one particular moment? Did it happen gradually over those twenty years? Exactly when and how did that person come of age?

I don't think there is a specific moment when a person comes of age. I think that it does take place over several years, before which one is a child and after which one is an adult. I feel like I have started to come of age, but that the process isn't over for me yet. I try to think logically and rationally, weighing options, possibilities, and most importantly, the future. I try to think ahead and I think that is a large part of what separates an adult from a child.

The process of Coming of Age takes several years, and a good analogy for that would be height. We are always aging or growing taller, but the Coming of Age is like a growth spurt where you mature quickly over a short period of time (relative to your whole life of course), after which you are significantly taller. You may not have reached your final height yet and you still have some growing to do, but a lot of the growing is out of the way.

This analogy isn't perfect, of course, because an adult can keep growing and reflecting even when they are older, whereas the average human is done growing taller by the age of twenty five. But Coming of Age is a gradual process that can be accelerated. I know that I'm not done with that process, so I will come back to this blog in sixty years and update you on my progress!