Today's TRE

Today started our Parish's TRE ( Total Parish religious education) program. Cindy will not be joining our family to the once a month class this year as she must work every weekend.Since her Nursing school classes run from eight AM until three thirty PM Monday through Friday she is not able to work the two PM to ten PM shift which she had worked all summer. Obviously the day shift is out too and the night shift would not work for someone who is used to sleeping nights, especially when she would have to go to school and concentrate after with no sleep. This has left Weekends as the only working options for right now. In order to spend some family time together, we decided to spend the early morning and afternoon together and for the family to go to TRE for the four thirty PM to seven PM class. We had never attended the late class before and it was kind of nice. The attendance was much smaller than the one PM class which was a nice change and we even found that many of our friends attend this session .
The session itself was not really as noteworthy as some in the past but I did leave feeling better than I expected. For the last month or so I have had the displeasure of being exposed to the bashing given out by some Self proclaimed good Catholics. I am sure that no matter what religion you are, most have encountered these people. They are the self righteous who feel the need to preach church teachings and tell everyone else where their sins lie while living in the fantasy worlds where they lead perfect lives and would never fall to sin. Probably the biggest bashing that I have witnessed lately is over election candidates and how only one is an option for good Catholics to vote for without sinning. This has made me shake my head in disbelief for awhile . I have even voiced my opinion a few times and been the target of bashing because of it. I even at one point felt that I didn't fit in with my fellow Catholics and wondered if I should even be Catholic. Additionally The bashing of others by these so called good Catholics left me embarrassed that I was of the same religion as they. This is why I found it interesting that Father started off today's class with a letter written to all Catholics about the coming election. Paraphrasing this letter basically said that no one candidate this coming election is a total good Catholic choice and that We as Catholics are not called to vote solely on the stand of one issue (abortion) but that we should rather, carefully weigh the candidates stands on many issues facing Catholic families and decide for ourselves, through prayer who the best candidate may be. Finally, I felt as though someone seen my point, and those someones were Catholic Bishops, and even the Pope. I felt so renewed.I felt UN ostracized. I felt proud to be a Catholic again. So please everyone, catholic, Christian, whatever.... Understand that there is rarely a one size fits all . Have your beliefs, embrace them, feel good about them , but never, and I mean never be so wrapped up in your beliefs to condemn another for the slightest difference in opinion. If the Pope feels that there is no one choice, maybe ,just maybe, God feels the same. Just something to think about !