Mrs. Doubtfire

In my Parish we have a person who would insist that she is Catholic, although we find some of her ideas to be ... different. For instance, she is in love with a local Presbyterian church and insists that everyone should be attending this church "to find out what we're missing". She also tends to see things from the fringes, doesn't agree with Catholic teaching on a lot of issues, and would prefer to be free of the Pope. She feels that everyone else is missing something important, and needless to say she tends to be outspoken, although luckily not disruptive.

She quite often attends events in the Parish like the Spirituality Tuesday evenings, and her comments and questions tend to be off topic and predictable. Her favorite question is, "Don't you ever have doubts?” referring to some aspect of the speakers subject. In the past the speaker would attempt to satisfy her with a quick answer, while the rest of us remained quiet hoping to move on to something more interesting. I think most of us hoped that (over time) these quick answers would help her to move on too, but since they haven't we've begun a silent campaign to reinforce a more Catholic perspective.

For instance, the other night when she asked if the speaker ever had doubts, quite a few of us had something positive to say about the nature of doubt, mentioning that sometimes we can be strengthened by doubt. In another comment she insisted that forgiveness is an unreasonable expectation despite Jesus' suggestion that we turn the other cheek, because after all "we're just human". I pointed out that Jesus was "human" when He said to "turn the other cheek". During the discussion about pride, she insisted that making a donation (even to the church) and not getting public recognition for it in return was an unfair request. We pointed out that if someone donated money for a stained glass window, just so that they could put their name at the bottom of the window, then they did it for the wrong reasons.

Please help me pray for this person, she is obviously troubled by something that is holding her back and I hope that as a group we can help her "move on" in a positive way.