Expert: Griff Ruby - 12/15/2009

Question
I was raised a Catholic.  I am ow going through confirmation classes with my church when I began to think.  Do I agree with all the Church ways?  For example- why does the Church discriminate against homosexuals.  I'm not gay, but I like to know these things.  I also have been under the impression that the Church is a bit outdated.  Some of their principals seem to me this way.  I have done some research on other religions and I want to make sure that I believe the same things my Church believes.  I have tried praying and I think that God wants be to question my faith and get more involved.  Truly, I think the reason that I "random" began questioning my faith now is because before I simply went with the flow.  I want to know what to do seeing as I am supposed to be confirmed next year.  I do not wish to lie as I am committing my faith the the Catholic Church.

Answer
The Church does not discriminate against homosexuals.  That is nothing more than a vacuous accusation made by the anti-Catholic media in an attempt to intimidate churchmen into allowing all manner of sin.  For the Church DOES discriminate against SINFUL ACTIONS, regardless of who performs them, and is understandably also opposed to the sorts of thoughts that might bring such actions about.
A person might have "feelings" towards another person, of either gender.  And there are any number of reasons why such feelings can never be acted upon, for example the person may already be married to someone else, may simply not feel like returning the feelings, or might be of the same gender as the person having the feelings, or any other of who knows how many scenarios one could think of in which such feelings are nothing more than something we live with, like having to work for a living, or the various aches and pains that come with life (all the more as one gets older - something to "look forward to" - yeah right!), or the possibilities of all sorts of bad things that happen.  The tendency to have such feelings is intrinsic to the human condition, and follows no rational pattern.  What would one do for example, if the person they had a crush on was a mere cartoon character?
But we live in a decadent and fallen society that ever seeks further and further evils, as the only thing interesting left to live for.  The adulterous "swinging '60's" eventually gives way to the "greedy '80's" which has eventually given way to the "faggy aught's" and who knows what comes next, though I have no doubt that gladiatorial games fought to the death, "blood-sucking rights for human vampires" and "abortion for pleasure" are all somewhere down that same path.
The Church has ever and anon had to fight an uphill battle against such increasing decadence and evil, and generally held its own for quite some time.
But you come along now in the wake of a true catastrophe in which the Church's ability to fight this battle has been seriously compromised.  Instead of sounding a loud and clear trumpet as to what is right and why, and what is wrong and ought to be punished, you now are faced with "teachers" so rooted in the falling modernist culture that they present the ancient truths (if at all) with only the frankest embarrassment:  "yeah, well, the Church is kind-of against, well, you know, some of these kinds of things, you know, kind-of mediaeval like, and well, now I've said what I'm supposed to say; let's talk about something else now..."
There is so very very much more to learn that I scarcely know where to begin with it all, but I can know this much without knowing a thing about who you are or where you go.  Though it may well say "Catholic" on their shingle, there is no real Catholicism there, and their real job, quite far from propagating the Catholic Faith, is to prevent anyone from finding Faith.  A few individual teachers here and there may struggle against that real goal, but the whole infrastructure is against them, and that's only a very few here and there while the rest are either such hirelings as to do whatever destructive thing is asked of them, or else themselves just some more particles of the actual problem itself.
You are now at a time in life that your mind is finally beginning to wake up and look around, and want real answers instead of the pap that sufficed for more ignorant and simple times of your life.  Becoming a Catholic should be about hooking up with the Savior that came and died on that Cross so many thousands of years ago.  A simple reading of the New Testament (or even of one or more Gospels therefrom, e. g. Matthew or John) could go a long way towards introducing you to Him in a way that little else can ever supply these days.  Not all of it will make sense, since the Bible writers presuppose much from the culture and nature of the times it was written, but much else will stand out as immediately useful to your life, and startlingly awesome as Jesus gets seemingly "cornered" only to "answer" His way out of it and demonstrate a truly superhuman wisdom.  You will see in His life a unique love of sinners coupled with a complete intolerance for sin, and yet ever with an eye to rehabilitating the individual to a real spiritual life and to genuine honor.
But obviously that is only a start. There He was, so far away in time and space, but how does one hook up to all that?  In the Biblical book of Acts, we get our first and best glimpse of the Church, as intended by Jesus Himself.  With Him soon enough ascended back into Heaven and leaving the rule of His Church to men (Apostles) He had appointed, one sees in that book people from many far lands nevertheless becoming part of what He came to establish, and thereby a part of Him, Himself literally that is, His Mystical Body, residing, as Scripture puts it all too many times, "in Him."
That's what to look for.  When something is truly ancient, it doesn't look like something someone just made up yesterday.  Anyone can hide an ipod playing Beatle songs in a cardboard box and pretend it's something "really old," but what would that be in comparison to an Edison Cylinder player playing some rare but catchy old tune from about 1900 that neither you nor any of your friends have ever heard before?  Look around yourself in church.  While "liturgy committees" try to decide on whether to have clowns or dancing girls or "children's liturgy" or what not, the general run of what few people even still bother to show up roll their eyes in boredom and end up hoping their snoring won't wake anyone else.  When they get to the end where they say "Let us go in peace," "Thanks be to God" is the only prayer sincerely said.  Not "thanks be to God" for all sorts of extraordinary graces and holy sacraments that can empower us to live the Gospel in our daily lives for the rest of the week, but "thanks be to God" the wretched thing is over and we can go home now.
It really isn't much better at Protestant churches.  Some might well have some hand-clapping enthusiasm and shouted "Amens!" but in the end that's merely taking the ipod out of the cardboard box and replacing the Beatles with Billy Joel.  So what do I suggest?  Find a Latin Mass somewhere.  It may take some travelling.  It may be so far away that you can only do it a few times a year.  And unfortunately, not even all Latin Masses are well or properly said, which could impair the experience at some particular site or on some particular morning.
"But I don't speak Latin!" you could say.  That's OK.  In time, if you continue you will pick that up, at least a little bit, by osmosis, and maybe more than that if you obtain (or even borrow) a Latin-English Missal and let someone there show you how it is used.  And bear in mind the ancients did speak Latin.  Jesus Himself did so, at the very least, when speaking to the Roman soldiers and/or to Pontius Pilate.  At first it might seem very strange, even uninviting in a way, as its rhythms and cadences are foreign to you now, but it is my hope that you will also glimpse something you have never seen before, holiness, mystique, awe and true reverence.  And something you may never have encountered, simply as it might seem:  silence.  Not that dead silence of an empty room, but a living silence of a roomful of people, silent with awe and wonder.  For in a Latin Mass (it is not simply what you have already seen every Sunday, but done in Latin; it is a whole different ceremony, and vastly more meaningful, especially once understood), you taste the manner of worship known to those Christians in the book of Acts, and known throughout all time, and indeed by everyone who even thought of themselves as Catholics, clear until the late 1960's.  It is like journeying to some exotic land you never could have imagined existing at all, let alone so close to home.
You know how you can recognize the music of your favorite groups, sometimes so well that even a new song by them, when it comes on the radio, and even before they start singing in their voices you could otherwise recognize anyway, you can tell it's them.  It's kind of like that with religious ceremonies.  What you have seen thus far on Sunday mornings - any Joe Schmoe could have invented and deep down you already know that.  The same can be said for what goes on at any Protestant church.  Perhaps it's never even occurred to you that anything else (in the way of religious ritual) could possibly exist.  (Until I encountered such a thing, I had never expected it, that's for sure!)  But the Latin Mass (or even some other alternate Rite, such as Byzantine, but that's a complication it might be simpler to avoid at the start, and get to much later on when a lot more is understood and such basic questions as "is the Church discriminating against homosexuals" something you are way past even having to think about) - now there is something no mere human could have ever conceived.  It really is an intersection of Heaven and Earth.
And then comes the whole story of how such a glorious thing came to be so unusual and rare, of the efforts by opponents of God to stamp it out, of the reasons it can exist even though some have actually tried to outlaw it.  Coming to grips with that story, and the struggle to return to the authentic worship directed by God instead of that concocted by God's own enemies, that is the real struggle of the Church today.  To regain the power to protect the world from its own decadence and dissolution, the Church must first regain Her own identity, so devastatingly lost in the 1960's.  The vast majority have gone astray, while only a few small scattered remnants faithfully carry the torch of the actual authentic worship and congregation that God founded so long ago.  It is this restoration, first of the Church, and then of "all thing in Christ" as Pope Saint Pius X took as his motto, that the sacrament of Confirmation is meant to be calling you to.  Never has a soldier been so vastly outnumbered and overpowered in proportion to what he is to accomplish as now every truly Confirmed soldier in Christ must be, and I expect miracles to occur for he who takes on that battle in earnest and with a holy faith.  Who can even guess what God has in store for you?
P. S. I forgot to add at first:  To help you find such a Mass, please consult http://www.traditio.com/tradlib/masslat.pdf
I hope and pray that this will inspire you and energize you for the Gospel and for the true cause of Christ, God bless!