Shea, what are you saying?

Link:

Catholic and Enjoying It! : A Reader Struggles to Reconcile Alcoholics Anonymous with Her Catholic Faith
October 20, 2015 by Mark Shea
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2015/10/a-reader-struggles-to-reconcile-alcoholic-anonymous-with-her-catholic-faith.html

Reader (she is briefly quoted):

I am deeply disturbed that I have found more hope and healing through Alcoholics Anonymous than through Catholicism. Is that right?

Mark Shea (dito):

God can use anything. Why not AA?

My own comment:

Seriously, I have read indications that it has idolatrous content, like invoking "a higher power" (not specified as the Triune God, but specification left up to each, while they pray "ecumenically" as in Assisi), and that Atheists are welcomed to take the AA group as that higher power. Idolatry of man and at its worst of a human collectivity.

As she said:

I’m Catholic in church, and I’m an alcoholic in AA.

Ah, they make being an alcoholic so important that it becomes the sole admissible identity in AA meetings? Catholic has to go down?

Reader (briefly quoted):

I am resentful that I have to find that healing outside of the Church.

Mark Shea (dito):

Don’t feel like everything has to happen at Mass and don’t make the opposite mistake of thinking that if God blesses you outside Mass, then Mass doesn’t matter.

My own comment:

True enough.

But Holy Mass should not be profaned by going to idolatrous meetings.

Also, if the alcoholism is purely pathological, not the mortal sin of drunkenness nor panicking over getting cheeks too red while drinking red wine, as if that were drunkenness, one can live with it.

If one is on the other hand committing mortal sins, it is very bad if the Church Sacraments offer so little aid as to make presence at idolatrous meetings necessary.

Note, I said I had read indications this was so, but my hunch is that Catholics should neither go to, nor be sent by their priests, to AA./HGL