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Notes -
Assuming you are Protestant, is it as easy (acknowledging that this is no way “easy”) as finding a new church?
As a Catholic, this is quite a big problem as the whole apostolic succession thing is pretty important to us. Kinda hard to leave. Though I seem to understand that Orthodox Church makes the same claim. And it seems many Catholics do make that jump.
Yes, there are plenty of non-denoms that would be close enough. Part of me doesn't like how pastor centric those churches are, nor do they seem to establish long running institutions. They can have a very hard time surviving pastoral transitions, then again that has been becoming more and more true within denominations and my denominations long standing institutions were a source of the corruption. Most likely there would be a schism and my current congregation would split along with a good portion of the western congregations and practically all the non-western congregations.
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This also varies with the region from which a Catholic comes, in my experience. For example, I knew a lot of Polish Catholics who attended Episcopalian or even Presbyterian churches, where these were the dominant Christian denominations, because for them a church was primarily about the general idea of worship rather than the specific details of worship or the doctrines that the church professed. (Of course, I am sure they would have some limits, e.g. there would presumably be some Unitarian things they wouldn't sing.)
On the other hand, I have some Catholic friends who would actively avoid being in a non-Catholic church, and one who told me that they were more comfortable in a mosque or temple. These were from America, Ireland, or Italy, and they were more into thinking of themselves as members of "the Church" rather than "Christians".
That’s an interesting obvervation. I’ve heard the poles are quite Catholic but if that is even remotely generalizable, that is a major problem and they have missed the point.
The people informing you might have been conflating agreeing with Catholic social teachings or the prevalence of Catholicism with people actually having the type of attachment to Catholicism that Catholic doctrine says that they should have, or a general comprehensive adherence to Catholic doctrines. I can understand people, especially lonely Trads, mistaking the sizzle for the steak.
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