8.0. If the Vatican II Church isn’t Catholic, was my childhood faith fake? Was there no Holy Ghost in it? What did I experience—was it all just emotion or made up? This is all very confusing.
Your question is deeply sincere—and deserves a loving, honest, and clear answer.
First, let’s start with this: God is real, the soul is real, and so is your longing for Him. What you experienced growing up—your desire for God, moments of awe or conviction, or even a sense of the supernatural—were not necessarily false. But the source of those feelings must be discerned carefully.
Even in non-Catholic environments, people may feel emotion, conscience, and spiritual longing. But that does not mean the Holy Ghost is truly operating sacramentally or doctrinally in those systems. God may move outside His Church to draw someone toward it, but He does not confirm error or dwell in heresy. He never contradicts Himself.
“God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33), nor of false doctrine, nor of invalid sacraments.
The Vatican II religion—by radically changing doctrine, sacraments, liturgy, and moral teaching—has departed from the Catholic Church established by Christ. That is not a matter of feelings, but of fact, history, and dogma. The Church teaches, infallibly, that truth cannot change, and that a different gospel (Gal. 1:8) is to be rejected—even if it comes with “signs and wonders.”
So what did you experience?
You may have experienced:
Natural emotion, stirred by beauty or community
A movement of grace, nudging you toward God—despite the errors around you
A sense of the soul’s hunger for truth, even if not yet fulfilled
God’s mercy, calling you out of confusion and into the truth of the Faith
But these experiences do not validate the system that surrounded them. Many Protestants also claim to “feel the Holy Spirit.” That doesn’t mean they have the true Faith or valid sacraments.
The true test is not how something makes us feel—but whether it is in line with what the Church has always taught, everywhere, and by all.
“Sentiment is not sanctity. Emotion is not doctrine. And peace without truth is false peace.”
God’s grace may have begun a work in you—but He now calls you to complete the journey: to reject the Vatican II counterfeit and embrace the Catholic Faith whole and entire, as it was handed down before the changes.
In short:
No, you did not “make it all up.”
But yes, you were misled by a counterfeit system that used Catholic words but changed their meaning.
And now, God is calling you out of error and into the full truth of Christ’s Church—the same Church of all time, not the new one invented at Vatican II.