What if...

What if I could get the pope's very own permission to follow my conscience and believe what resonated with me about God?  Would I then finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief and just be in the presence of God among fellow Catholics?  Or would I still find a reason to seek and search and feel inadequate?

There are people who hold the same views as I do about God and all the various related theology.  They're called Reform Jews, Quakers, Unitarians... But there is a different group of people who worship in a way that is already meaningful to me out of tradition, indoctrination, whatever you want to call it.  They're called Catholics.  There are subsets of both with whom I agree about issues of personal morality and social justice, which of course means there are people in both groups (Catholic and non-Catholic) with whom I disagree. 

I'm codependent. One of the signs of codependence is discomfort being around those who disagree with me.  What needs to happen is for my self-worth to grow and branch out beyond what my well-meaning Catholic role models try to tell me.  Yes, I'm made in God's image.  Yes, I'm a precious daughter of the King (God).  Yes, He meets me where I am.  Yes, He loves me unconditionally.

But I also hear that while it's ok if I happen to be doubting or questioning or disagreeing, it is not ok for me to stay that way.  "I believe, help my unbelief" I'm to pray.  Am I really supposed to spend my entire life trying to believe something I don't?  Aren't there better ways for me to use not only my time but also my talents?

What I'd like to see happen is that when an issue comes up, I would feel safe saying "I have a different perspective" without feeling the pitying eyes of more orthodox Catholics trying to shower me with God's grace through their gaze.  I don't want to feel like a pariah when I disagree.  I don't want to feel like I'm at risk of being asked to leave or be quiet if I disagree.  I don't want to feel guilty for coming to different conclusions than others who have thought through the same set of evidence. 

Currently, I don't feel safe speaking up.  When I'm in a meeting or class and the issue of the historicity of a person purported to have lived 4 thousand years ago comes up, I want to be able to focus on the metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic meaning of a story rather than getting into a debate about weather it is historically true or not, which frankly I think is usually beside the point.

What if Catholics actually thought Jesuits were fully Catholic? (Or is this only a problem at my parish?  And no, it's not a traditional latin mass parish.)