Going to Group Meetings

     It can feel alienating going to a Catholic student group. With all of the singing and talking about feelings it can seem too touchy-feely for my tastes.  I am not an extremely emotionally expressive person, but when I go to these meetings everything seems to be about sentimentality.

     Some of these people are very nice; the kind of people I would like to get to know better and hang out with. When I am at the meetings though, I feel so out of place. It is tough not being part of “the group”, but the fact is I don’t want to be that—I want to be my own person, among other persons.

     The worst part is the feeling that the other people there measure your Catholicness by how much you participate in these groups. If you participate in these groups all of the time you are regarded as devout, but if you are a newcomer you are in need of saving. I hope this is not how people really think, but that is the impression I get.

Hello All You Happy People

     I can’t relate to most other Catholics my age.  I consider myself just as Catholic as any of them; I would think my understanding and faith is just as firm as those of anyone else, but when it comes to religious expression it is as if we are from two different worlds.

     I try to go to group meetings, yet I feel that I just don’t belong.

     Make no mistake, none of this threatens my faith; it would be insane to turn away from what I am convinced to be the truth over something like this, but it can be lonely when you don’t have any community; we all need community.

     I know that I am not alone in this feeling—there must be others like me who wish to find a good Catholic community that we can be a part of. For those of you out there in this same situation, remember that there are others like you who share in your struggle. To those who are comfortably a part of a Catholic community, please understand. Maybe there are changes we must introduce to these groups, maybe there are ideas we must introduce to other Catholics, or maybe there are changes that we have to make in ourselves.

     Or maybe we just have to find each other.