Jovial,

             You had indicated two groups in the Catholic church:

“Most REAL believers within the Catholic Church will stay faithful, while the nominal ones will apostate from the Catholic Church and join the New Age movement.”

I would say that there is a very large third group, of which I was part of for nearly half my life.

I was a worshipper of the “saints”, but more than that, I was a worshipper of the queen of heaven.

I thought that I was praying to the Christian saints: Peter, Paul, Anthony, Christopher, and others, but clearly I was not:

 

Job 5:1 Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; and to which of the saints wilt thou turn?

 

I was a full blown idolater, with graven images in my car, in my room, and around my neck, to which I directed my prayers.

Thinking that I was communicating with saints which had died, I was also therefore a full blown necromancer.

However, my worship of the queen of heaven, who I thought was Mary, made me a full blown heathen.

I could have stood for hours with the Ephesians, shouting, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”, but substituting the queen of heaven for Diana.

And even more abominable than that, I worshipped leftover food as my god!

Every time I entered the building, and walked into, or across, the center aisle, I genuflected toward the altar in the front.

I did that in honor and worship of the leftover god from a previous mass.

I believed that in that chalice were leftover pieces of Jesus, that had started out as little bread wafers, but were turned into pieces of Jesus during a previous mass.

I believed that when the priest pronounced, “Hoc est enim corpus meum” over the wafers, that he changed them into Jesus.

In fact, before I could eat one of those little pieces of Jesus, the priest would ask me, “The body of Christ?”

To which I had to affirm my belief that it really was a piece of Jesus, by saying, “Amen”, before he let me eat the little piece of Jesus.

I also used to pray the rosary daily. On the main part, there were five equal sets, of ten beads together, followed by one bead by itself.

For each set, while holding successive beads, I prayed ten prayers to the queen of heaven, for every one prayer to the Father.

At the bottom of the rosary was a short section ending with a cross with a graven image of Jesus on it.

So, every day that I prayed the rosary, I broke both the first and second commandments.

By praying to the queen of heaven, and that with a ten to one ratio of the prayers to the Father, I broke the first commandment.

I was placing another god before the Father, by praying to “something” else, believing that “it” heard my prayers, and that “it” could answer my prayers, like a god.

With the crucifix, i.e. the cross with the graven image of Jesus on it, I broke the second commandment:

 

Exodus 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

 

Graven images of Jesus are a violation of the second commandment.

I also completely believed in a “works salvation”, which is essentially a “self-salvation”.

I believed that if I didn’t die in a state of mortal sin, and had done more good deeds than bad, that God was going to let me into heaven.

Everyone in my family, all my Catholic friends, all my Catholic neighbors, and all the other Catholics in my parish, pretty much believed like I did.

 

I was a full blown idolater, a full blown necromancer, and a full blown heathen.

I also worshipped leftover food as my god.

My daily prayers consisted of breaking the first two commandments.

And I believed people got to heaven by their own merits, not requiring Jesus as their savior.

I was clearly not saved!

Yet, what I believed was pretty much the common faith of the vast majority of Catholics that I have ever known.

Until my mid-twenties, I had never met anyone different, but then I met one Catholic who I had thought believed like a Protestant.

In hind-sight, reflecting back on the things he said about Jesus, there is a very good chance that man was saved.

Everyone else was like me, an idolatrous necromancer, who worshipped leftover food, and thought that they could work their way to heaven, without a savior.

 

So, there is a very large, third group of Catholics, that I think ought to be added along with your list of two.

However, this third group doesn’t even need to apostatize, because they’re still not even saved yet.

They are not in apostasy, since they have not fallen away from the truth, since they still don’t even believe the truth.

 

                          Thank you,

                                       Gino