I almost fell out of my chair when I read this. At http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/aug2014/pastorbob817-2.htm it says,

"when a child is subjected to "spiritual abuse", through education or religious training, they carry the wounds of that upbringing throughout their entire adult life. "

Huh?  There are several things wrong with this statement.  First off, how is attending a Catholic School or Worship Center classify as "abuse"?  The use of a label like that indicates an extreme prejudice against the Catholic Church.  Yes, they teach a few things wrong.  But I think we can get over it. 

So you used to attend a school or a Church that taught you it is OK to pray to Mary to get people out of pergatory earlier?  Yeah...that's wrong....but this is not even something you need to see a shrink for.  This is the kind of thing you tell people "Get over it!" about and that should close the door on it.  Believe me, God CAN heal you of this. Prayer is you best bet.  To conclude that people cannot get over the so-called "abuse" of the Catholic Church is to conclude that the Catholic Church is more powerful than God, because even He cannot heal people of their damage.  To say ex-Catholics "carry the wounds of that upbringing throughout their entire adult life" is to insult God and His omnipotence, and that statement comes far closer to an "abusive" statement than anything I've heard any Catholic priest say in my lifetime.

A little more depth came through in this statement....

"People that have come out of Catholicism are plagued with the idea that everyone should be or think like, act like, and be like them. "

No...that is not a product of the Catholic Church.  It is a product of American culture and is prevalent in every public High School.  Nearly every American teenager thinks "everyone should be or think like, act like, and be like them," and if that is what he got out of parochial school, I have news for you, it would have been far worse had he been enrolled in the public school where peer pressure is even stronger.

This is why it is so important for parents to teach their children to value individuality.  If the kids in your school make fun of your children for wearing clothes that aren't in style, you teach your children to fight back.  The worse thing you could do is buy your kids the trendy clothes.  That will only re-enforce their concept that they should conform.  The pressure to conform comes from kids, not teachers.  Good parents can help a child overcome that.

"They live with what I stated above, living in and walking in the shadows of their "legalistic" religious belief system for the rest of their lives. "

I would not consider Catholicism "legalistic".  Erroneous is not necessarily legalistic.  "Legalistic" is when someone ignores the intent and puts the written structure of the rule above the intent of the rule.  That is legalism.  Unfortunately, many anti-nomial people label any rule as "legalism" and to them, a "legalist" is anyone wanting to obey a rule they don't want to obey, like don't steal, don't commit adultery, when they are trying to justify their adultery as their spouse's fault.  Adulterers think anyone who doesn't udnerstand the reason they commited adultery is a "legalist".  My guess is that anyone who labels the Catholic Church "legalistic" probably has some sins to hide.  The Catholic Church does a very good job of calling sin "sin".  People who sin and want to JUSTIFY their sins don't fit well into Catholicism or any other Church that defines sin.

Many pastors in our modern culture have abandoned preaching against sin in favor of self-help sermons.  That is a serious problem.  Some of them have built big churches doing that, but when we stand before God on judgment day, He isn't going to care how big of a church a pastor built for himself.  He is going to care how well we fed the flock. 

Many of the biggest revivals in America started with repentence revivals - teaching people to turn from their sins.  Our modern culture has gotten so bad with its moral relativism, that it has spilled into the Church and now many people, even pastors, are labelling any attempt to preach sermons against sin as "legalism".  The word "Legalistic" has become the code word for those promoting Moral Relativism to use to make all sense of right and wrong sound bad and evil.  Don't fall for this trick of Satan folks....God has a right and a wrong and we need to pay attention to it, not label everyone preaching right from wrong as "legalists".

Is the Catholic Church truly bad?  Well....the present pope is one of the worst we've had in modern times.  Hard to defend that guy.  BUT on October 31, 1999, on the anniversary of Martin Luther's tacking his protests on the door of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church signed a joint statment of faith with the Lutheran Church saying that salvation is by faith, not by works.  The first 10 years after that, the percentage of Catholics that describe themselves as "born again Christians" rose from 1% to 10%.  What's your Church done in that time period?

The Catholic Church has ridden itself of some of its errors.  Indulgences were removed in reaction to the reformation.  1999 was another big one; the reversal of Salvation By Works.  They are our co-laborers in the Gospel, not someone we should hunt down and shoot verbal arrows at because they teach a fwe things we don't.

Now there are some people out there that blame all of their problems on their upbringing; Mom and Dad, the Church they were brought up in, their home town....whatever.  But sometimes, you just have to put on your big boy pants, accept responsibility for your mistakes, quit blaming others, and get on with life.  When you try to blame others for your own mistakes, you will indeed, "carry the wounds of that ... throughout [your] entire adult life" because God will be trying to deal with you to get you to accept responsibility for your failures, and if you keep trying to blame those failures on your upbringing, you will never be at peace.  God won't let you.  He'll blame you to your inside self until you accept responsibility for it.  If you keep passing the blame, like Adam did in the Garden of Eden, you won't be at peace and won't hear God when He tries to get you to change.  You'll think His voice is satan attacking you, because trying to blame your upbringing for your own mistakes will cause you to not recognize the voice of God. 

Shalom,

Joe