I WENT TO SADDLEBACK, I GO THERE NOW. RICK WARREN IS SO COOL!

The Purpose Driven Theatre

Saddleback?  Rick Warren?  Cool?  What about St. Christopher?  Mass?  Communion?  Altar?  Tabernacle? Our Lady of Guadalupe?  Comfortable, padded and upholstered pews? etc...?
We were in a meeting, around a table preparing for the sessions that we would present to a group of people who had made the decision to "come back home" to the Catholic Church. A woman whom we all knew because she had been very active in the ministries of the parish, came barging into the room like the wind storm of the spirit and announced, "I don't come to the Catholic church any more.  I've had enough of these priests and  their mousy little helpers who don't respect anyone whose been around for all the years that I've been.  So, I and my husband go to Saddleback (Rick Warren's church near the Capistrano Mission in Southern California).  Rick is so cool."
Naturally, the members of the committee started the interrogatory over this turn of events.  I didn't say much, I listened.  There was not a single theological or truly spiritual reason for this person's leaving.  The points that were being made for her return were all sacramental.  All to no avail.  Of course.

Church?

Then, after about 15 minutes of futile back and forth, she asked me why I had been so silent.  I said, "You haven't said one single thing that tells me that you are not Catholic any more.  You're nothing but a Catholic sitting in a Protestant pew because you are pissed off at some Catholic people.  That is shamefully sinful and you are making your sin public by coming in here and bragging about it.  You know that what I have just said is true. I hope that you will listen to the invitation of God and get out of the Protestant pew."
About a month ago I was told by one of the members of the committee who was present at the interruption that the person had seen her on the grounds of the church and told her, "Paul told me that I was going to hell.  I'm coming back."  I haven't seen her, and I don't think I will.  May God have mercy on her soul.