I too had an up-bringing colored by fundamentalism. It wouldn't take with me and in my 30's I converted to Catholicism. At last I found a church that liked most of the things I did and wasn't preaching hell fire and damnation every week. In fact in the Catholic Church priests cannot preach; they give homilies on the texts (especially the Gospel reading) of the week. The texts are the same for every church in the world so there is not that free-form choosing that goes on in the Baptist churches I attended (sporadically) as a child.
What scares me therefore are the number of cradle-Catholics I have met and am related to who also read the Left Behind series. Since the Catholic Church's focus is on the Passion and Resurrection and not the Second Coming this is indeed strange. To hear a Catholic talk about the Rapture and being born-again is one of the most bizarre things I have experienced. Worse, the Catholics have no foundation at all regarding those books or the dogmas driving them; so the message is even more skewed.
The only readings at Mass from Revelations is during Lent and as I said the Gospels are the focus of the Mass before Communion.
Glenda
Killeen, Texas
