Disclaimer: This website is not intended to convert anyone from one faith to another; but rather to strengthen all faiths as we venture forward on our Spiritual Journey. But BEWARE, anyone can start their own church or Christian denomination nowadays, so this website should also help you discern whether or not you want to entrust a particular church with your eternal soul. I hope that you will find this website helpful no matter where you are along The Way. I use the basic tenets of the Catholic Faith as a road map along this journey and I try to put it all in plain English. Don’t worry, the Catholic Church has been around from the time that the first Apostles built the first churches and we can learn straight from the Church Fathers, the Apostles, and Jesus. Every aspect of the Bible, plus the traditions and letters passed on from the first Churches, is mapped out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is fleshed out through rules (Dogma), doctrine, creeds, sacraments, Christian virtues, cardinal sins, etc… Don’t worry, I’ll put it all in plain English.
My underlying reason for putting this website together is this: I grew up in a wonderful Christian family; we attended a wonderful Bible church and had a good public school education (public school teaches things opposite of the virtues, though). As I became a teenager, I made countless wrong turns and did horrible things. As I look back, I wonder, “What went wrong?” My family attended church twice on Sunday and at least once during the week. I learned all the Bible stories, I could recite the books of the Bible, I knew that Jesus loved me and that he died on the Cross for my sins, and that I’d go to Heaven when I died to live in some sort of mansion… And as a bonus (nowadays) my parents were not divorced and I have countless memories of good, clean family fun!
So what went wrong? I know many folks pondering the same question – Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, Jews… How do we get so far off track? After many decades on my own spiritual journey, I think I’ve figured it out. I’m not going to get into environment problems such as friends with drugs, neighbors selling drugs, and the public school teaching kids how to “you know what”. Definitely not going there! Let’s keep this family friendly and focus on that which we have much more control over.
I never had a spiritual plan. As a Sunday Christian, I just had to love Jesus. There were no hard and fast rules. What would Jesus do? I hadn’t a clue. I didn’t have to go to church either – I could read the Bible myself. I had no clue that there was more to it than just the Bible and me. I knew nothing about the Catholic Church, or the Church Fathers – I didn’t realize that those New Testament churches kept going and that they actually formed the Catholic Church.
No one gave me the road-map to help me stay on the right path. As a Protestant (and many Catholics are in the same boat), I just got wonderful snippets every Sunday (or however often I went to church) and then back to the real world. It was society – school, television, friends, and neighborhood kids that had the most influence on me. And that wasn’t so good.
Anything of importance (that we want to succeed at) needs a plan.
We plan out our career (maybe), teachers make lesson plans, businesses create financial plans, so on and so forth… So why don’t we have a spiritual plan???
Here’s my plan. What if Christians of all varieties could turn back to the roots of Christianity and follow the teachings of the Church Fathers? The Church Fathers were taught by the Apostles, who were taught be Jesus himself. The Church Fathers built the first churches. They continued to write letters to each other discussing the faith. The Church Fathers would be the best judge of how Jesus and the Apostles interpreted scripture. It would be mapped out in their worship service and the letters they wrote to each other. Coincidentally, these early churches were all Catholic Churches.
If you want to change your life for the better, look no further. Using the Catholic Church’s framework, it is all laid out for us.
Here’s some good areas to start: