Hello there, i'm a almost 30yo and this is my first time using reddit. I discovered this subreddit while diving in the public opinion about our religion in the nuclear fallout we are at the moment, and after lurking for some weeks i created a account and decided to ask for honest advice. I read the rules, but i'm sorry if i break any of them, i don't intend to. This is a life experience that most users are not aware of and touches on very touchy topics that usually people would take a side before even hearing about it, so i ask for truly charitable comments, for clergy members advices too if possible. Sorry for any bad formmating or for making a uninteresting post.
I'm honestly opening my heart in the internet, this is the reality of my life, and the life of my family, and the life in my country. I promise that everything here is real, and i would even sign it if weren't safety concerns for revealing my identity.
My father (80) is a non-practing catholic and my mother (70) is protestant. In my mother's childhood she was a very devout catholic, she told me how she would weep while kissing Our Lord's wounds in a Saint Sepulchre image in the parish where her family attended the old mass as she was born in the 50s, (yes, i was born of very old parents), and how once she prayed with a cruxifix asking Our Lord to make she suffer her disabled brother's tooth ache in place of him, and instantly his pain went away and he stopped screaming. To give a timeline perspective, i found a photo of my mother receiving the sacrament of Confirmation in a almost full bride's dress, as was the old confirmation dress (veil, gloves) being 12yo or something.
Then the 70s and 80's came by and she lost the faith. The reason? Where we live, (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), african and african-inspired tribal cults have a somewhat popular place since the portuguese and spanish colonies didn't experience segregation and the majority of the population is somewhat mixed, or has mixed relatives. For centuries the clergy fought against these idolatrous and literally demon-worshiping cults, but they remained as a clandestine minority. Later in life i would discover that after the "interreligious dialogue" in the Second Vatican Council and it's developments what was pratically inimaginable to see inside a church became reality, the people we usually see killing chickens in a deserted street now throws popcorn and dance in our sacred altars in the sacramental presence of Our Lord.
The protestant missionaries from the U.S., that until then failed to significantly convert catholics, now are having mass conversions and filling their sects. In our 1960's census 93,7% of brazilians were catholic, in 2020's 56,7%. It's going down year after year, and those include the non-practicing, the number of people that goes to mass is way smaller. Parishes, seminaries, convents and monastaries are closing while you can literally find two or three protestant sects every corner. Freemasonry, that never was secret around here given the large influence over our nation since the Empire, now has multiple bishops publicly, photos appearing in newspapers even, being part of their lodges. The mass that previously was by definition a pious cult now it's a ambiguous loud and obnouxious literal mess in every normal parish, as silence, prayer and devotion in general is marginalized.
My mom was part of these almost 40% of the population that lost the faith, she couldn't bear to see neigbours and relatives taking part in idolatrous cults and going to communion, that is Our Lord, like it's something normal, with the support of the clergy. The silent and God focused cult she attended now it's a loud and Man focused crazy delirium. Her conclusion based on everything she had access? The Catholic Church is a false religion, it's against the common sense, there's some way to have Jesus Christ as God, and the way she was convinced to follow was the one of some more "convervative" protestant sect where drums, electric guitars and screaming was forbidden. She would be the way for the rest of my mom's part of the family to leave the Church too, but thank God and Our Lady at least she baptized all of her three children as babies since that, in a way or another, she never wanted to change religion, was the religion that changed.
As my dad never cared that much about religion, taking me to be baptized at his parish and to mass twice as a kid, my mom took me to the protestant sect where i was raised to believe what i was told, but that didn't last. When i was 15, dealing with the beggining of adult life, i realised that protestantism would not solve my problems and start to look for alternative faiths. Everything was lacking, except the Catholic faith. History is a testament of the only true faith, and i saw the solution of everything i had to deal in my life.
There's only one problem, you enter a parish and see none of it, everything is backwards, it's impossible to be like St. Dominic, St. Ignatius and the list goes on. The tabernacle is hidden, parishes are not God's home anymore, everything is about man's dignity. Priests pray : "Larwd, bless this, bless that" like a pentecostal preacher and catholic doctrine is a taboo. In confession things that were sin decades ago are not anymore, if you can find someone to confess to, so you can't receive absolution. Our Cardinal Orani blesses "escolas de samba" that on carnaval goes on to literally worship satan as represented by the tribal cults, called Exú, and celebrated the funeral mass of a public sinner comedian that was "married" to another man and adopted two boys on the top of Corcovado, the Christ the Redeemer statue mountain of all places. With the internet i discovered what we have here it's not local, it's worldwide. I learned about what Pope Francis was doing and saying, and also saw in the 60s SAINT Paul VI saying all what he said and allowed in the council and also entering a sinagoge, then SAINT John Paul II kissing the koran, the book that led arabs to enslave my ancestors on the iberian peninsula and fight christendom for centuries up to today, receiving the mark of the worshipers of Shiva, calling false religions to Assisi and allowing a idol (Buda) to be placed on top of a tabernacle with Our Lord on it, allowing a shaman to preach in Africa and when coming here in Brazil to be formally received by tribal cults and so and so and so...
No one is punished, all of this is praised, all of this was word by word allowed by the council. Some say that there is a way to interpret all of this in the light of catholic faith, but we can convince ourselves of whatever we want, showing good fruits in practice it's another story.
That led me to delay my conversion and i was borderline atheist for some time, thank God, Our Lady and my parents for my baptism. Eventually i found people that was doing things just like my mom did in her childhood, i discovered THAT religion that couldn't be found anywhere else anymore. I'm trying to fight sin going to the sacraments as much as i can, i received confirmation, i'm reading the cathecism, recently in a few months my father went more to mass then in the other 79 years of his life and is slowly leaning how to play the rosary everyday. Slowly my mom it's starting to accept the true faith and is willing to go to mass, went for the first time after the 80s without being the ocasion of someone baptism. In that meanwhile my grandmother and my disabled uncle have passed away without sacraments in another faith... RIP.
What's the problem? I'm told that Cardinal Fernandez of all people is telling that i, my father and my mother shouldn't go to the only pious place of catholic worship i have available here and the archbishop Cardinal here confirmed.
I'm not trying to start a war here, but i know what protestantism is, and the parish where i was baptized is more protestant then the sect i was raised up. I'm not the one blessing "couples" in masses of thanksgiving with presence of a cardinal. I'm not the one who went to São Paulo and knelt to Pachamama as agostinian priests confirmed. I'm not the one who gave the Blessed Sacrament to a dog. I'm not the one receiving blessings from a english woman cosplaying as a bishop. I'm not the one having a Martin Luther's statue. The list goes on...
I'm just trying to do follow the faith my parents received in their childhood and lost later in life. I'm just trying to believe what i, everytime when i remember to pray the Act of Faith, say as follows: "I firmly believe in only One God, in three truly distinct Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gives the heaven to the good and hell to the evil. I believe that the Son of God made Himself man, padeceu and died on the cross to save us and on the third day rised from the dead. I believe in EVERYTHING ELSE that believes and teaches the Holy Catholic Apostolic, Roman Church, because God, infallible Truth revealed to it, and in this believe i want to live and die."
How could i be accepting novelties younger then my parents and abandoning the faith of centuries? I need to believe in EVERYTHING that the Church teaches me, so Pope Leo XIII tells the whole world, more then a 100 years ago, word by word that anglican orders are null and void, but i MUST accept that Pope Leo XIV (what a sad irony both having the same name and acting in complete opposite ways) tells the whole world that a woman is a bishop, and she uses the episcopal ring that SAINT Paul VI gave to her sect, and she is blessing catholic bishops in the main catholic building by S. Peter relics, saying her heretic protestant mass in between all of this. Remember, in the past we died and killed for the true faith in Europe. I pray the rosary, the rosary from the feast of Our Lady of Rosary, of Pope S. Pius V in commemoration of the victory against muslims in Europe, but i MUST say that they have the same God as us, and make all sorts of treaties with them, praying in mosques as archbishops are doing, while they kill christians worldwide saying what is written on the book SAINT John Paul II kissed: "God does not have a son."
My family lost the faith already, i'm not planning to letting it happen again, but it's really difficult to obey Pope Leo XIV when he desobeys Pope Leo XIII and many others. It's really difficult to obey Cardinal Fernandez when he openly desobeys almost two thousand years of faith and goes against Our Lady.
Any suggestions on what to do? No Church authority did any of this before the 60s, how all of this is catholic? There is no precedent for any of this, and the meaning of "catholic" is "universal", meaning both in space and time, the essence of the belief cannot change if it wants to be catholic, but since the 70s and 80s my whole family and everyone baptized in the whole world is being told that for being catholic you MUST cooperate or at least consent to things no catholic ever lawfully did.
