Catholic Doctrine   Pull Yourself Together In 5 Days You are perhaps asking yourself many questions!  A good friend of yours just got killed on his motorcycle -- he was only 20 years old.  A mother of 4 died of cancer at the age of 40.  Another friend has recently been divorced: a shattered dream.  So many tears!  And you say:  "Truly, there is so much misfortune in the world, I can’t believe in God." ... That you are asking questions, is a good thing.  But not to seek the correct answer is not so good.  Put your discouragement aside for awhile and let us reason together. Facts Let us start with facts.  Your body with all its organs, each one like a factory i.e. of an extraordinary complexity (ask any doctor), this wonderful "machine" was passed on to you by your parents, they didn’t create it. You may have been told that evolution tries to explain that your great grandfather was a monkey...  Now, almost every year, new theories on fossils contradict each other on their age and their "evolution".  Botany tells us that "like begets like".  Spontaneous generation has long been discarded.  It has been proven scientifically that life can come only from life. All this leaves us quite sceptical of what some teachers and the media -- especially T.V. -- tell us! The world does not find its explanation without an almighty Creating God, wise to the highest degree.  You have the excellent witness of Prophet David in Psalm XIII:  "The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God.  They are corrupt and have become abominable in their ways." Here is the answer to one of your questions. Your soul Moreover, you are not a mere animal.  You have a soul.  It is easy to prove the existence of that soul.  In a carpentry shop where wooden tables and chairs are made, they do not make use of iron mineral.  Inversely, in a car assembling plant, they make use of metal not of wooden beams.  What comes and leaves the factory is of the same nature. Now, continuously you think, you compare, analyse, judge: this is right, that is wrong, this is beautiful.  These thoughts have neither weight nor dimensions, nor colour.  They absolutely cannot be produced by matter.  They transcend matter.  Then, make the step with the great pagan philosophers who lived before Christ: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc...  And like them recognise that you have a soul.  By this same soul, God gave you freedom and leaves you the faculty to use or abuse it.  But if you abuse it, it will turn against you.  This explains all the depressions, suicides of so many -- because outside God, everything crumbles...  And hell has not even yet been mentioned where you can go if you die in the state of mortal sin.  There are 14 specific mentions of hell in the Gospels.  Now, this is the Word of God! What is at stake is too serious to be ignored. We are all affected by it -- you too. Nothing is lost Nothing is lost, however, as long as you live.  You can pull yourself together whatever your past may be.  Put the counter back to zero. Come and follow the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  In 5 days you will resurface.  Promise. Contact the Society of St Pius X to find out where and when will be the next retreats. Don’t wait.  Life is short.  You don’t live twice.