Rachael Varca on The Free Press

[Rachael Varca]

*Cracks knuckles and dusts off research skills.*

Latin use in the church: https://aleteia.org/2021/07/20/why-latin-remains-the-official-language-of-the-church/

Why are priests the only ones who can speak to God?

Not sure where you got that from. The priest acts as "in persona Christi", or in the person of Christ, but isn't Christ himself. All things we do, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist, is in imitation and remembrance of Christ, as he said. There is a long tradition of internal prayer, primarily based on the teachings of the dessert fathers or the early Christian monks who would retreat into the desert to seek communion and solitude with God. I would suggest "Searching for and Maintaining Peace" by Fr. Jacques Philippe, St. Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle", St. Ignatius of Loyola, or St. Louis deMontforte's works on interior prayer and the development of the spiritual life. Nothing that I know of in church teaching says only priests speak to God. We are called and taught to devote time of prayer--both spoken and mental, sometimes in litanies of prayer like you would find in the rosary or even in the tradition of the Liturgy of the Hours--to God, and listen to the interior movements of the Holy Spirit, Christ, and God.

If your curious, you might also look up Interlocution, which is actually hearing the voice of Christ or Mary--St. Faustina Kowaslka is a good but difficult saint who is documented to have had full conversations with Christ.

We don't have to go through a lot of theological study to ask for forgiveness, but there has been a lot of theological writings and teachings -- as is true in various protestant traditions -- explaining the undergirding of Christ's teachings. The greatest difference I see is the teaching on the Eucharist, purgatory, and the understanding of "saved by faith" vs saved by works. I've seen many people abuse the saved by faith who speak only of mercy but completely bypass the understanding of sin and it's spiritual, physical, and metaphorical impacts on the world. Try a copy of the catechism of the catholic church -- it provides references to every teaching the church has and what passages it draws its reasoning from.

If there are specific biblical teachings that you can provide that you find problematic, I'd be happy to provide a list of citations. I would suggest some other resources for your to explore -- and I get it, I converted from being an atheist and a witch, so much of the teachings were absolutely new to me period.

https://www.newadvent.org/

I'd also recommend reading about and reading works by Theologian Scott Hahn, who converted to Catholicism while he was in Protestant seminary.

[PumpkinHat]

Thank you for replying in a respectful way. That's rare on the internet lol. I do find this all to be very interesting and informative and I'm glad you shared it with me and cleared up some misconceptions. You're journey from an atheist witch to a Catholic sounds very interesting. I would most identify as an agnostic these days but I am very interested in all kinds of religions especially Christianity since that's what I grew up with. Just to give you some perspective the way I've seen it growing up as a protestant (Baptist then Calvinist my parents were rather fundamentalist creationists and kind of still are) is that before Martin Luther kicked off the reformation Latin was used as a way for the church to maintain control because it was illegal to publish bibles in languages other than Latin and only the most educated even knew how to read it so they just had to trust the priests, who had been indoctrinated through education in theological schools to push the Church's agenda, that they were actually telling the truth of what the bible said. Much like how our current culture believes the only way you can say anything about science is if you went through the process of indoctrination at one of the "good" Ivy league schools and that regular people can't do science which isn't true. It was when the Catholic church started asking for donations to save people's relatives from hell that the camel's back really broke and Martin Luther pinned his theses to the church door. I just find it odd that in popular depictions of Christianity they use Latin against demons and whatnot as if it has some special significance to them. Those may just be inaccurate depictions I don't really know. As for priests only being able to talk to God, when I was growing up if I wanted to talk to God I just put my hands together, closed my eyes, and prayed. I didn't need some mediator to confess to. That's where that idea came from.