Catholic Church- Dont know what to think

[Crazydaisy11]

I'm a lapsed catholic, go to mass at christmas, funerals etc but not regularly.
My dh is really religious, goes to mass every week, confessions and generally just believes.
I'm not sure about it all, he doesn't preach at me but sometimes will say he is going to confessions and when I ask why he explains about penance and if you die before you confess you go straight to hell.
I haven't been for about 25 years and now I'm scared! I dont know if it's true or if I believe, but I'm scared that if I dont I'll burn in hell.
Part of me thinks that's just a story to control people by the church to get money but what if I'm wrong??
I'm really worried and cant sleep. Any thoughts or should I just ignore and carry on. My general feeling is if you have led a relatively good life, not intentionally hurt people you'll be ok.

I'm a fan of the very simple idea that if evil exists, god can not be omniscient, omnipresent, all powerful and good. S/he either knows and doesn't care, knows and can't do anything or doesn't know.

Exactly. And also, I have a very good friend who is a very devout Christian. Yet she has a chronic illness, her husband has just been diagnosed with similar, one of her children has had problems from birth and another has also since been diagnosed with the same illness as their father. Yet here is little old agnostic me getting on just fine. Where is my incentive to "join up", if this is how God treats someone who does everything they want you to do? I understand the argument about free will and we can choose to do good or evil, but at what point did my friend get to choose any of this?

I think you are better off not worrying about confession and the man-made aspects of a religion. I'm sure you are a nice person and try your best not to hurt anyone or do damage in the world. Explore and ask questions, by all means, and find the best route for you, and I hope you find it, but I think, at the end of the day, that route is probably, as Bill and Ted said, "Be Excellent to Each Other."

Hi OP, I recommend you read the book Sapiens by Noah Harari. It discusses the evolution of all religions. I am a catholic but am intellectually curious and do not agree with many tenets of the faith. I stopped going to weekly mass recently after a personal fall out with the priest and I don’t feel any regret. As my elderly aunt said, upon hearing about Fr. Michael Cleary and Bishop Eamon Casey having children, “ they told us not to have sex, not to enjoy it, and they were a having the time of their lives. I wish I had known they were hypocrites when I was young, I’d have had way more sex”.

I’m an atheist who was raised Catholic.

If there were a God who sends good people to hell because they don’t go to confession or because they choose the ‘wrong’ type of worship why on earth would you want anything to do with Him?

Floribundance has just said what I meant, only more succinctly!

It’s better to look at it the other way around - the reason to go to reconciliation is to reconcile yourself to be in God’s grace and to give up the burden of sin that may be weighing you down. If it’s not weighing you down, down but it’s not the fear of hell that would make me reconcile, but the feeling of freedom it gives me personally to move on.

I expect someone already covered this, but if you believe god is good then you only need to act decently and can rely on him accepting that.

If he is the monster depicted in the bible and is watching for a chance to catch you out then you have no chance anyway so it's still not worth worrying.

Babdoc "coming back from the dead" only counts as proof if you can prove it happened. Lots of religions have a story about someone coming back from the dead.

If the catholic church was a person, would it go to its 'heaven'?

You just have to look at how blatently the old testament was ripped off old Greek and Hittite myths to know its a complte racket.