/lit/ - Literature

OP you could try to become a saint.

>>22495079
The saints will preserve the Church and reform it. They have always done this, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Pic related, Athanasius had to take on almost the entire institutional Church to defend the doctrine of the Trinity during the Arian Crisis. But he did, and he won.

Everybody who bitches about the current state of the Church would have lost their minds during the Arian Crisis, when the vast majority of the bishops were open heretics and Saint Athanasius the Great literally had to endure exile and threat of death for holding to the truth of the Trinity.

Just stick to what you know the Truth of the Faith is and keep going to Mass, and keep praying the Rosary. In the end, Christ will prevail, through the actions of His saints. It's happened before.

>Justinian

lol

In what I did read, I really love the way Gibbon treats Saint Athanasius. You can tell he's clearly impressed with Athanasius despite disagreeing with the cause he dedicated his life to. There's a passage which I've never forgotten, where Gibbon laments that Athanasius should have been born several centuries earlier, before Christianity had become such a force. Gibbon speculates that Athanasius was so impressive that, if he had been born in pagan times, he would have risen through the ranks of Rome's elite, and might have become a stabilizing force in the empire itself.

But, instead, Athanasius was born in the age of Christ, and so became a stabilizing and purifying force in the Church, instead.

It's a really neat idea that I'd not encountered before reading Gibbon. That impressive people will always be impressive people, and that circumstances might dictate the nature of how they show off their gifts.

Every time we have Catholic threads on this board they always devolve into a mess like this. Sedes, Protestants, atheists, it's all such a mess.

OP, I will pray for you. Choose a saint who you feel very close to, who has had an impact on your journey to the Church. Then when you are Catholic, don't let the weird threads on here steer you in weird directions. Go to Mass every Sunday, and during the week if you feel moved. Go to Confession whenever you believe yourself to be in mortal sin. Pray the Rosary every day. Pray for the intentions of the Pope, even if Francis is not the best of Popes. Pray for the intercession of the saints. Give alms to the poor and comfort to the afflicted. Love Christ with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

And don't let anyone on /lit/ make your faith any more complicated than that.

>>19803206
>>19803329
St. Athansius, Festal Letter of 367:

"But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd."