OK I do not know if it is only in my area that this happened in but I truly do not think it is. Every since I was a little kid all I have heard is how the Catholic's hate us, how they persecute us, even beat us in some third world country's. They insight their members to hate us and pelt us with rocks, tar and feather us, on and on. In fact rummer has it that in one small town by us the slit the tires of all the JW's cars in the late 60 when they were holding a CA. Yet I know a older Catholic couple who lives there and they say they never heard of the Catholic's doing that nor was it organized by the Catholic's that they know of. They do not doubt that it happened just that it was not done by the Catholics. This couples daughter became a JW and they are so hurt by how unloving she has been to them another who story.
As I have posted I quit going to the meeting two weeks ago for good, but the last talk by the CO he said that the Catholic digest wrote that 'Jehovah's Witnesses were the best religion there is and if there were not such a great people as the JW's someone would need to invent them' then the CO added 'and this is coming from our strongest opposition.' He also tried to talk about how horrible the pedophile priests were but I was sitting in the front roll and I swear if he had kept going I was going to stand up and say 'yes we slam the Catholic's but we have a sexual psychopath we seed door to door, yes we are so much better than the Catholic's.' The CO must have realized that because he stopped and changed where he was headed, but he still slammed the Catholics four or five times during his talk on different things.
So anyway I was always afraid of anyone who was Catholic why they hate us so much. When I waitressed I treated all the priests and nuns that came in like dirt and I felt so self righteous, like I was showing them the "truth" by being this jerk. OK so now I have my own cleaning business and half of my customers are Catholic's I have no fear of them now, they are great people and I truly like them. I have become friends with some of them and have even had them to my home for dinner and such.
So I have started to ask them why the Catholics hate us so much. Why the priests tell them to hate us. In fact this one man I work for two days ago I went with him to this lake place to clean and it is a two hour drive one way all we did was talk about the differences in our beliefs. He was a born in Catholic, he is now in his early 70's and he swears he never once heard anything bad said about us. This man went to Catholic schools and is totally immersed in the religion. He has priests and nuns over all the time and he said never has he heard a priest say one bad word about us in all of his life. He was just totally blown away at what I had been taught to believe about the Catholic's.
So what is your take on this, have any of you ever talked to a Catholic. This man is not the only Catholic I have spoken to I have talked to many and they all say the same thing to me that they never have heard anything bad about Jehovah's Witnesses. So is it only my area. In fact this man that I work for grew up in the neighborhood of one of the brothers who was in my hall and this brother was always saying how the Catholic kids hated him and his family. This man I work for when I told him that looked at me and said we never hated him and his family where did that come from? I think it was the "brothers" take on it as his family was egging on the neighbors by have a neon sign in their window saying religion is a snare and a racket and the neighbors could not sleep because it was so huge and kept flashing on and off all night. When the brother would tell me the story he would laugh and say yeh we grew up in such a strong Catholic neighborhood. And yes now I feel really bad in how I treated the priests and nuns when I waited on them.
So what are your takes on this. Is it just another lie we were taught?
LITS