It's really unfair to pick at you over this and say that it sucks to be you. The real key to faith is a sense of the Presence of God and that's not something available to everyone. You won't feel abandoned or hopeless if you can perceive it.
RFK's description of his return to faith rings very true when he described it as first choosing the good and then becoming aware of the Presence. He was impelled towards it through the trauma of addiction but there are other ways. No atheists in a foxhole as they say. Perhaps some manner of harrowing is indispensable to its discovery.
It's there to be found. I don't deny your right to your own mind, don't despise my poor efforts at reverence. You could try looking through the
Catechism and asking what a particular portion means, how it figures. Don't just pick the most controversial parts. See if it can make sense. Ultimately trying to explain it away is an effort at evasion. There are greater personages than either me or you that were of a firm faith.
'The story goes, a young student in France boarded a train and took a seat across from an elderly gentleman who appeared to be dozing. When the trained lurched, a rosary fell from the gentleman’s hand. The young man retrieved it and handed it back to him. He couldn’t resist asking the gentleman if he still believed in such things as praying the rosary. The gentleman admitted that, indeed, he still believed.
Surprised, the young student told the gentleman that his professors at the university did not believe in such superstition. He then went on to enlighten the elderly gentleman about the more modern and sophisticated view of the world and explained that enlightened people did not believe in such nonsense as praying the rosary.
As the older gentleman prepared to leave the train at his stop, the young man offered to send him materials to further enlighten him. The older man kindly accepted the offer and gave the young man his business card as he departed. As the train pulled away, the young man read the card out loud to himself: “Louis Pasteur, Director of the Institute of Scientific Research, Paris.”
Perhaps Louis Pasteur, through his path-breaking work and his life experience, knew something the young man had yet to learn. It seems that often the more we know and the more we learn, the more we doubt how well we know what we think we know. We realize what our human limitations are. In a sense, we realize just how minuscule we are in the scheme of things, especially without God.
In the epilogue of his history of Christianity, Paul Johnson observes, and I quote at length, “Man is imperfect with God. Without God, what is he? As Francis Bacon put it, ‘They that deny God, destroy man’s nobility: for certainly man is of kin to the beast by his body; and, if he be not kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.’ We are less base and ignoble by virtue of divine example and by the desire for the form of apotheosis which Christianity offers.”
In everyday terms, because we are created in the image and likeness of God, we are required to demand more of ourselves than our base instincts. To know, love, and serve God requires that we obey His commandments and the laws of the Church. This world will tug at you and attempt to divert you. Somehow, you must stay the course. God will provide a way, give you the strength and grace to endure and overcome your failures.'
https://www.getprinciples.com/a-pilgrim-on-the-road-of-life/
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www.sarsfieldsvirtualpub.com
