Beautiful day for doubt

Why am I doing this? I hate the Catholic church. These people are the worst and they go against everything I stand for. I am a hardcore left-leaning democrat and though Pope Francis is super cool, the rest of his church leaves me feeling nauseous. This is a huge mistake.

These things are true, and I don't think they will ever be untrue.
But I could literally say the same thing if not more about the evangelical christian background I came from. Those people are the WORST. There are bad people everywhere.

My brother and I were discussing my journey the other night, and he was describing the Catholic church as the biggest douche-bag in the history of the world. He's not entirely wrong, but I responded with a moment of clarity. I said something along the lines of
"Yeah the Catholic church is super fucked up... but so am I, and I find that beautiful and compelling."

I'm not sure how I'm going to reconcile who I am now and what I believe with what the Catholic Church seems to put out into the world because they are so utterly different. But the reason I am even interested in the Catholic church has absolutely nothing to do with people and everything to do with God. I want to be as close to God and as focused on God as I can possibly get, and I think the Catholic church might be my best chance at that. I grew up criticizing my Catholic friends for not being "real Christians" because I believed their faith was dead and old and that no one who went to Catholic church actually knew or cared about Jesus. I'm sure that does exist. But what also exists is the beautiful and meaningful liturgy that focuses the body and mind on God. I have met and know several amazing people with deep and steadfast faiths that are rooted in the teachings of the Catholic church. I want to be a part of something like that.

Today, S gave me a new book called "Catholic and Christian" whose aim is to explain the teachings of the Catholic church to protestants. Hopefully reading this will be one of the first steps to figuring this out for myself.
I'm also going to mass with S on Sunday. This will be my first mass if I remember correctly. She helped me out by explaining "Genuflecting" and reminding me that The Lord's Prayer is a bit different. I'm excited and nervous.
I also half-prayed the rosary for M. He, without knowing it, has played a big role in the timing of this journey and now he is leaving for something new and the best way I knew to honor him was to pray a rosary for him. The decades were really long though and I only did three "Hail Mary's" per decade. Maybe becoming Catholic will help with my ADHD (ha).

Here we go,
Andrea