You know what narla? Sometimes I think you really want to understand, and sometimes I think you just want to throw out bait and inflame others over matter you know they feel strongly about. It's getting tiresome.
You throw out terms like "intelligence", implying that one either lacks or suspends their intelligence if they call themselves Catholic. As DK said, having all the answers would require no faith to believe. I agree with this. But you (and many other posters here) are trying to put logical, scientific limits on something which is very abstract and difficult to define. There are aspects to religious experience that are, for lack of a better word, supernatural, and as such, sometimes defy logic or science. You can't just get it or live it from reading a book, anymore than you could fall in love with your husband/wife by reading about them in a book. You have to live it and experience it.
I like to quote a certain Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr. In his book, Everything Belongs, he says "We do not think out way into new ways of living. We live our way into new ways of thinking."
I am living my way into new ways of thinking. Through my faith, I work on myself, daily, weekly. I don't know where you turn to become a better person, but I do it through my faith. Every week, I read and reread the gospel for the coming week, and seek a message particular to me in my place where I am at that week. Through reconciliation (or confession) I work through my own faults and shortcomings, working on my pride sometimes, my anger at other times, as examples. I meet with a home prayer group one morning per week, and I serve in a few ministries in my church. I am passionately in love, and consumed with my faith. In a good way. My Catholic faith is interwoven throughout my life, and that is why, when people either take shots at the Catholic Church, or write books/produce movies that mock my church, I feel personally offended.
I promise you this, narla. I don't just "believe everything the church tells me". I study it, I ask questions, I seek to understand. Most things have come clear to me, there are other aspects of my Catholic faith that I am still hoping to know. but I know enough and have experienced enough to trust, and to be hungry for more.
Emotionally vulnerable? No, I don't think so. Nor do I think I am the one with a hole that needs to be filled.....
imho
