![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/hoping-931x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
IT <\/strong>can be\u00a0a terrifying thing to feel your faith in Christ waning. Perhaps you are one of those people.<\/p>\n You have always believed, always felt that your Christian faith was important… but now, you are not so sure. You have prayed to God for help, relief, healing, a sign… but it seems as if there is no one listening on the other end of the line. Or you have experienced a sudden reversal; you thought God was opening doors, that you had correctly discerned His will, and all of a sudden, your plans collapse. “What was that\u00a0<\/em>all about?”, you wonder. Suddenly, everything feels random….\u00a0Or perhaps a sudden tragedy, a painful and brutal illness, or other unbearable cross has suddenly appeared in your life, and you wonder how a loving God could permit this? Or permit starvation, oppression, and the child abuse that continues every second of every day? Or maybe, like St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se de Lisieux, you have encountered the temptation to rationalize everything away\u2014that miracles, healings, and God Himself are nothing but the constructs of the human mind, psychological projections, or the wishful thinking of the weak.<\/p>\n If you only knew what frightful thoughts obsess me. Pray very much for me so that I do not listen to the Devil who wants to persuade me about so many lies. It is the reasoning of the worst materialists that is imposed upon my mind. Later, unceasingly making new advances, science will explain everything naturally. We shall have the absolute reason for everything that exists and that still remains a problem, because there remain very many things to be discovered, etc. etc. <\/strong>\u2014St. Therese of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations<\/em>, Fr. John Clarke, quoted at catholictothemax.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And hence, creeps in the doubt: the Catholic faith is nothing but a clever system of human origin, devised to oppress and control, to manipulate and coerce. Moreover, the scandals of the priesthood, the cowardice of the clergy, or the sins of “faithful” lay folk seem further proof that the Gospel of Jesus, as lovely as it is, is powerless to transform.<\/p>\n Moreover, you cannot turn on the radio, TV, or computer today without the news or entertainment acting as if everything you were ever taught in the Church about marriage, sexuality, and life itself is so completely out of touch that to be heterosexual, pro-life, or believe in traditional marriage is tantamount to being an intolerant and dangerous freak. And so you wonder… maybe the Church has it wrong? Maybe, just maybe, the atheists have a point.<\/p>\n I suppose one could write a book in response to all these worries, objections, and arguments. But today, I will keep it simple. God’s answer is the\u00a0Cross:\u00a0“Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”<\/em> [1]<\/sup><\/a>1 Cor 1:23<\/span><\/span>\n