Sure it’s hard but isn’t everything that is worthwhile? If you can choose any religious denomination (or none at all) why would you choose the one with the most rules and regulations?

Look at all those rules. You have to go to church every Sunday and every Holy Day of Obligation. You have to tell the priest all about the bad things you have done. You can’t have sex before you are married, you can’t even live together before marriage. You can’t get drunk, you can’t gamble, you can’t have any extramarital fun. It really seems the Church i.e. God wants us all to be miserable.

Until you realize the reason why you have these rules. God does want us to be happy both in this world but more importantly in the next. We’ll get to why you can still enjoy this world either later in this post or in a subsequent post. For now let’s talk about the next world, heaven.

I believe that when you die only your physical body dies, your spiritual body (soul) continues to live forever. Eternity is a long, long time. We learn from scripture, no matter which version of the Bible you read, that our souls will go one of two places after death. We can either go straight to hell or we can go to heaven. If we are judged worthy to go to heaven we might need to stop in purgatory. This is where we have to be cleansed first. This isn’t as nice as heaven but it’s much better than hell.

The Catholic faith doesn’t sugarcoat this. Back when I was younger I remember the priests weren’t afraid to talk about this in their homilies, something that is rare today. But you can still read it in scripture what the consequences of sin are. Let me amend what I just said about a lack of fire and brimstone preaching. There are times when it is still preached, just not as often as I feel it should be. Maybe people need to be reminded of what will happen if they sin.

I believe in the teachings of the Catholic faith. I may not always agree with them but I follow them because I believe it is the right thing to do. True it isn’t easy to follow the rules but I would rather spend eternity in Heaven than spend it in hell. Do you need to be Catholic to get to Heaven? Personally, I don’t think so, but it can’t hurt.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.

The Holy Bible. 2006. Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.