open mindedness - a vice or a virtue?

[bluebell]

14 hours ago, 3DOP said:

Hi bluebell. Thanks for repeating the remarks by our new poster. Greetings fether. I found this topic interesting when it first opened. I don't know if what follows will be exactly right. I think open-mindedness and its opposite are kind of loose terms. If you have been open-minded before deciding on something, are you now guilty of closed-mindedness? I think that is what I am reading from you two. 

Some would say that Catholics are closed-minded if they refuse to follow the current pope. He tries to overturn teachings that have been canonized by 2,000 years of acceptance as sacred and true by the Catholic Church. He endorses practices that have for the same length of time been considered immoral and sacrilegious. What should a Catholic do to be considered open-minded in a healthy way? If Francis is correct, the Catholic Church has been an unmitigated disaster until he arrived on the scene to blow everything up. There are many in the Church who are conservative like me, but who do all these mental gymnastics to try to say that the pope is misrepresented, misunderstood, and mistranslated. Are they the ones who are open-minded in a healthy way? Other Catholics embrace whole-heartedly the teachings of this papacy and don't have any patience with Catholics like me who perceive that if Francis were right, their Church has been apostate for a long time. Are they the ones who are open-minded in a healthy way? There is a fourth group of Catholics. Those who perceive that Francis is wrong, and that proves the Church was always wrong and who leave the Catholic Church. I suppose they are the ones who might be seen by you all as open-minded in a healthy way. Catholics are leaving, that is for sure. I do not know where they are going.

The "problem" for me is with how much I "love" the old Catholic faith. I started out 28 years ago with a journey of the intellect, that led me to be convinced that the Catholic Church could make good on her claims. Before this I think I was open-minded to a remarkable degree. I read the Koran once before I became Catholic, and again since, also reading literature by a persuasive Franciscan priest who seemed to believe that Mohammed was a true prophet and that the Koran was true. I read several books about the Bahai Faith, (a kind of hybrid between Christianity and Islam that incorporates more of the Christian Scriptures than does Islam) written by one of their prophets, a kind of Middle Eastern Joseph Smith. I did not read all of the Book of Mormon. But I read about a dozen books by LDS authors most of you would approve. All this time, I hadn't completely closed the book on going back to some form of Protestant Bible Christianity. The intellectual journey was not pleasant. I did not much enjoy my journey of doubt which lasted about three years.

After an eventual intellectual conversion to Catholicism, I had a second, and unexpected journey of faith which was delightful. My beliefs became more and more something not just to give an intellectual assent to, but something of the heart and the will. I began to love my faith even as I experienced minimal progress in what I believed intellectually. That has stayed the same, but now I seem bound by a double conversion involving the intellect and the will. Can one objectively re-examine intellectual beliefs while the heart is enchanted? The heart needs to be broken if you will. It needs some very hard facts that make it regretfully give in to a re-examination of the intellect. Francis and his predecessors, have been hard, in the face facts of my Catholic life. However, I have a safety net in that there have been multiple private revelations (I have shared them here), which warn ultimately of profound loss of faith and morals,  a diabolical disorientation within the Catholic Church at the highest levels, in this era. Without that, I think I could be forced to be open-minded to the idea that the Church was always apostate. I can't underestimate how shaken I might be if I lacked the foresight these prophecies bring, which make me stand firm even when the popes of my time seem to be denying the faith and breaking commandments of God and precepts of the Church.         

So...that is my apology if I ever should seem closed-minded about my religion. It has not always been so.

----------------------------

Now if you want to talk about on what side we should have fought in the American Civil War, or the American Revolution, I am all ears. I can flip-flop. I remain open-minded. My heart is not engaged. At 63 years old, I still weigh the options, and will probably die weighing the options. I do not feel pressed about history though like I did with Mormonism, Catholicism, and forms of Koranic religions. I feel less pressure to study evolution vs. creation. Unlike history or literature, the question is boring to me. Sorry to you science hounds. I don't want to spend precious leisure hours working at such a topic. I am satisfied to disbelieve in evolution because it seems crazy to me with very little study. I read one book back in the 80's (by an Aussie, non-Christian, some kind of bio-geneticist?). I have much hope that right or wrong, I will not be questioned at the Great Judgment about why I did not apply myself more to discover why creationism is wrong and evolution is right.

Rory

I think that we need to be open as we search and discover truth, but once we have found it, we don't need to act like we haven't.  That isn't open-mindedness to me; that's equivocation.  Commitment isn't a bad thing and being committed to the truth and knowledge that you have learned isn't being closed-minded in my opinion.

We can stay openminded by being willing to examine new knowledge as it comes but that doesn't require that we go back to a neutral stance like we were before we discovered the truth of that we have, either.  

As for being Catholic and being openminded, I really can't say how that is supposed to work.  From my perspective, much of the problems that many Catholics have with Pope Francis can be resolved with a belief in continuing revelation, a fallible pope, and a living church that grows and changes according to the needs (and weaknesses) of the people, because God loves is more interested in meeting needs and overcoming weaknesses than in dogma.  BUT, I understand why that doesn't solve anything for Catholics, who have different beliefs about God and His church than I do.

I wish you luck in your journey as you get through this.  I can imagine how difficult it must be to work through.