The Catholicism Thread

Symmetry required Laurel starting this.

actually official Church literature is riddled with stuff that might shock you as far as what they concede is legend, tradition, nonsense, etc. Buy The New Jerusalem Bible and read the footnotes in the Pentateuch, the Church kinda does not fuck around w/that stuff, Catholics invented intellectualism you know

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:22 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

man NO ONE EVER GAVE ME A GOOD EXPLANATION. Every religion teacher, up to the moment of my Confirmation, was flummoxed. "Lesse, you guys know God The Father, and we've studied God The Son, and as for The Holy Spirit, well, see..." whereupon they start quoting Ben Kenobi in the first Star Wars.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:22 PM (4 minutes ago)

these fuckin guys

i STILL don't know what CCD stands for

The name for catechism class?

catholic compulsive disorder

Catholic Church Druids?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_CCD_in_the_Catholic_Church_mean

Huh, I had no idea, despite attending for several years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confraternity_of_Christian_Doctrine

According to canon law, Mary was conceived without original sin. It would not do for the Son of God to emerge from an impure vessel. As for Anne and Joachim, I was never taught their legend in Catholic school: I read about them on my own in a big book of saints that fascinated me in seventh grade.

Are Scotland and Northern Ireland the only places where Catholics are loosely thought of as being on the left of the political spectrum?

I had no idea what CCD meant either despite having gone for every year up until made my confirmation at 15 or so. We just called it "religion".

Went to an all-girls Catholic HS. Stopped taking communion sometime during my junior year. Annoyed the hell out of the nuns for the rest of my time there because I refused to buy into a lot of the BS that was spewed esp around abortion and contraception/adolescent sex. Atheist ever since.

my overall apathy towards catholicism at the time was probably largely due to the fact that CCD was always after school on mondays

Maybe should also add that as far as I can remember I never believed in any of it to begin with so I didn't have any crisis of faith or anything, I just realized that I didn't have to keep doing certain things I had always done simply because my parents made me.

We just called it "religion".

^this.

i don't consciously remember ever hearing anyone in my diocese speak ill of homosexuality or abortion but after my little bro was born we almost entirely stopped going to church because we didn't want to be "that family" with the screaming baby

so it's possible i missed out on that juicy stuff. i usually just kinda zoned out after about twenty minutes

I went to a Catholic elementary school. Some reasonable nuns, some crotchety ones, a single crazy incontinent one.

as a Cub Scout I earned a medal for attending Mass 30 (?) days in a row.

when my uncle died last year the church where the funeral services were held had a stained-glass LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL anti-abortion window, tho

See we had sexual health classes in my HS where the nun - no joke - drew a stick figure on the board, called her Fertile Myrtle and taught us about sex. Sort of. I would ask questions about birth control and they would say we're not allowed to talk about those things. Then I would ask why. I was probably pretty annoying tbh but I didn't care and I wouldn't let it go. It infuriated me. We also had a HUGE Pro Life group who would go to the big walk for life each year and that was another thing I was pretty insistent on questioning. It didn't go over very well.

i had nuns as teachers for a time when i was very young. They used to batter us. Dont remember much else about them.

I dont think i have v much catholic guilt, but how does one know, really.

Are Scotland and Northern Ireland the only places where Catholics are loosely thought of as being on the left of the political spectrum?

Isn't this true in America as well, at least historically, with immigrant groups such as Irish Catholics, Italians, etc. (whose backgrounds alligned them with class struggles and a fight for social equality) forming strong urban Dem voting blocks? Today, the Spanish-speaking (Catholic) vote (which I think is the fastest growing Catholic group in the U.S.) also swings Dem. Or do you mean something else by "left"?

Since Catholic doctrine forbids, AFAIK, the death penalty and "unjust wars," I think assigning an overall political right-left position is a fool's errand -- the sex issues aside.

I mean, there was a notable socialist undercurrent in American Catholicism early in the 20th century, and I suspect an unusual % of the religious orders' members still tend that way. (No hard evidence of this.)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oc2k_vjt8Ic/SqEZNtbmR4I/AAAAAAAAAt4/gHmZP315-bM/s320/dorothy+day.jpg

All our parish priests were nice normal guys except for one semi-retired guy who would rail against the sins of abortion and divorce at every opportunity, also against people who came to Mass late. He also tried to kill me once, kind of.

!!

i once had to deliver something to the catholic workers association in NYC and they were all super-nice!

CCD classes (we also just called it "religion class") was sometimes hilariously baffling, especially the year they tried to explain sex and the Catholic church's position on it.

Most memorable: our teacher told us that if we had sex before we were married, we would be "like half Christmas trees."

I have never been able to figure out what that metaphor was supposed to mean.

I don't know either, but it's got to be better than the lesson where they take a single rose and then crumple it up and bruise and tear off the petals and then say, "This is what you'll be if you let boys touch you...and WHO would want THIS?!?"

omg

okay, that's so insane!!! Wow

Heh, my CCD teachers never even approached sex, thankfully. All I remember about CCD is that my teacher's very cute son was a budding artist and spent the whole time sketching in a notebook.

One of my former roommates is now a priest & he was the first really right-wing guy I ever knew. I remember him hyping to me Dr. Laura back in the mid 90s. He was pretty rah-rah military, anti-Clinton; right-wing in a way that seems kinda quaint now that those days are gone.

I love this guy & it made me sad to hear about what going to seminary was like. I don't kiss & tell so no details here.

I stopped going to CCD, or what they called "youth group" by that point (post-confirmation), when the "teacher" played "Stairway To Heaven" one night to show us how pop culture could speak in an enlightened way on heaven.

also, at our pre-confirmation retreat a centerpiece of the weekend's formal activities was listening to, and then discussing, "Livin' On A Prayer".

my dad went to seminary for a bit.

I love this guy & it made me sad to hear about what going to seminary was like. I don't kiss & tell so no details here.

What is this shit?? Totally not fair.

OK I dated someone for most of college who was two years older than me and had been raised very Catholic. He was no longer a believer but did, in fact, have a lot of guilt and anguish over that fact. He was also actually really interested in religion in general and thought about going to divinity school. When he was graduating college he was approached by one of the brothers from his HS and offered the chance to enter this one year program where he would live with the brothers in their house and they'd hook him up with a job at a school in NYC. At first he completely dismissed the idea but once the summer after he graduated had passed and he didn't have any plans he took them up on the offer. Obv he wasn't supposed to have a girlfriend since he was supposed to be sort of feeling out the role of a priest so I was his "friend" and he would smuggle me in the house every once in and while after we'd been out in the city and then we'd do it on their basement couch and I'd leave before morning. God that seems so disrespectful now but I wasn't really thinking about that at the time. P glad I don't believe or otherwise I'm pretty sure I'd be going straight to hell. In the end we broke up and he did not become a priest.

haha, the details are really just kinda tawdry & "political" in lots of bad ways & I suspect this guy is gonna be a big shot someday in the church so I don't want to spill any seed here.

xp subtle braggin imo

Oh, post-confirmation we had this thing where you were assigned to a small group (like no more than 8 kids) that every Sunday night would meet at the house of a married couple who would lead discussions about God and life and stuff. I did that for a year (9th grade) until my inchoate doubts about Catholicism began to coalesce into a more-articulate aversion, and my parents (who were both raised Catholic but by no means doctrinaire) allowed me to drop out.

xxp I think I understand the jizt of your argument.

my dad went to seminary for a bit.

Mine, too, actually. Seems kind of funny now, as he now considers himself an atheist.

I briefly considered the priesthood too.

Alfred, I have absolutely no idea, why but until this thread I thought you were Jewish.

err misplaced comma there

my pastor growing up always hinted strongly that i should think about seminary. poor guy.

i went to catholic school grades 2 thru 12. had my doubts from a very young age. my dad's side of the family were old-school superstitious irish catholics. this was the time of vatican II - when I started school the nuns wore full-on black habits than covered everything, like in the sound of music. they all took men's names. by the time i was in 8th grade, the nuns who hadn't left the convent wore civilian clothes and switched back to their given names, sister mary jerome became sister laetitia. in high school there were folk masses with acoustic guitars and happy-happy songs. one of the younger jesuits had long hair and organized a charismatic group, "jesus freaks" in the parlance of the time.

I hung out with some Jesuit priests about a decade ago; they lived in a gated community & had the best stocked liquor cabinet I'd ever seen. They told me that the maid service kept it filled. Despite being married at the time, I considered joining the priesthood that night.

folk masses were the worst

Oh the priests in that house I was talking about earlier had the best booze. Not that we drank any of it or anything, we just admired their collection from a far. They were Jesuits too which are the best kind imo.

i was once told by an ex-Jesuit that i would have been a perfect Jesuit. i still take that as one of the highest compliments i have ever received in my life.

i never seriously considered the priesthood ... i like weed and pussy too much.

I ALWAYS HATED FOLK MASSES SO MUCH.

This past Christmas my mom asked me to go to mass with her and I almost agreed to it just to make her happy until I remembered that her church has the folk group. I was so so happy when she decided not to go.

only thing worse than folk mass in nu catholicism is face-to-face confession

My grandmother left the Church when they brought in the acoustic guitars in the late sixties and she never went back

not so crazy about folk mass, either, but my parents' best friends are the people who played the folk music at our church's folk mass (and they are very nice, good-hearted people) so i have to bite my tongue on this subject.

My grandmother left the Church when they brought in the acoustic guitars in the late sixties and she never went back

my gf has this book called why catholics can't sing and always complains about the acoustic guitars too.

xp subtle braggin imo

not to be morbid/disrespectful but I think all us Catholics know that bedding a priest isn't exactly the impossible dream

only thing worse than folk mass in nu catholicism is face-to-face confession

― buzza, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

The only time I ever actually went to confession was the first time when they make you go but now I can't remember what that is called.

We had a retreat in HS where we were supposed to go and they lit candles and played The Bangles "Eternal Flame" while ppl were confessing and I was like NO WAY JOSE and opted out.

I personally love & hate the folk Mass in equal measures, some of those songs really speak to my heart

x-post - I didn't sleep with a priest!!! Wait - is that what it sounded like?!

Acoustic guitars in church are the worst imo.

electric guitars in church are far, far worse.

boogie woogie piano in church: always welcome

No results found for "catholic bass solo".

wow i had no idea about the whole "immaculate conception" thing w/r/t Mary, huh

my mom is basically what i think of as being ethnically, or secularly, catholic. grew up in rural ireland and n. england, went to convent schools, etc. not a believer anymore (ex-hippie), but still thinks of the church as being fundamentally OK since it cares about the poor (proddies don't), believes in evolution (proddies don't), and encourages a culture of intellectualism (proddies don't).

whenever we went to church here, in the US (C and E), she was always vaguely horrified by how much the lines blurred between catholic mass and some generic protestant service, all youth groups and 'cool priests' and big box warehouse churches and shit. plus she was absolutely disgusted to discover that some catholic kids i knew in high school wore, like, "i didn't come from no monkey!" anti-evolution shirts. don't they know about jesuits??!??!??! she loves jesuits.

everyone loves a jesuit

when I was a teenager there was a sunday night folk mass at the next parish over that all the "young people" attended. an excuse to get out of the house.

afterward my dad would quiz me on the gospel readings and sermon to make sure I went.

my dad's first cousin is a priest, he's 81 now and still "working." he can't retire - no replacements. he & my dad were same age, grew up together, and stayed close over the years. father s is a great guy but it's funny. even though he's had more varied experience than most - never was a parish priest, he taught college, was an administrator/boss in his order, traveled a lot - he emits this air of other-worldliness, like somebody who's lead a very sheltered life. which of course he has, in a way.

x-post - I didn't sleep with a priest!!! Wait - is that what it sounded like?!

as an ex-Catholic I am going w/my initial misreading, that you totally slept with a priest

yer mum is awesome, gbx.

everyone loves a jesuit

― ENBB, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 2:50 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

it's true!

I would like that on a t shirt. Would wear.

the main church in my present parish is pretty social-justice-y & one Sunday the priest whipped out his acoustic & sang "Sixteen Tons" after a homily blasting corporate treatment of workers...a folky interlude I endorse.

Here's the church I used to attend. See those railroad tracks just to the west? I swear the priest had a deal with Union Pacific to route a train through and shake the cantilevers during the Communion.

Also, home to a guitar mass where a few bars of "Freebird" seem to sneak in every once in awhile.

I was sorta OK with the folk group when they'd bust out Morning has Broken cause, well, Cat Stevens. It's a heck of a lot better than On Eagles Wings which I hope I never have to hear again. Ever.

she's a cool lady

i do think it's a little...interesting (but not surprising) that all the stuff she loves about catholicism ('liberation theology' aside) is the kinda thing that would anathema to a child of the 60s. she likes latin masses, lol hueg cathedrals, ceremony, ritual, etc. though i do, too, really: the hugeness of the institutional space that the catholic church provides (there's an entire CITY somewhere that's ~all about~ catholicism!) appeals to a childlike sense of wonder, tbh. like if you elide/ignore the creepiness of some of it, there's this whole massive world of LORE that appeals to the fantasy nerd in everyone, with heroic saints and ruins and crypts and missing artifacts and so on

the personal relationship w/god that protestants coined did away with all that....except that now, if you talk to like campus crusade for christ ppl you get the impression that they've been imbued with a feeling that whereas catholic legend was about ppl doing stuff hundreds of years ago, being Born Again means that you're a "spirit warrior" RIGHT NOW.

I love On Eagles Wings it makes me cry :(

and "Here I Am," too

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings.

Bear you on the breath of dawn.

Make you to rise like the sun!

oh man I had totally forgotten about Here I am

wait - let's see

Here I am Lord
It is I Lord
something something something

OK, that's all I remember but I could hum the rest of the tune.

you didn't just sleep with a priest, you turned the sumbitch

i have heard you callin in the night iirc etc

I grew up in a Swedish church, so what chokes me up is the stuff from the proper Covenant Hymnal, which I suspect is much the same as the Lutheran one.

I'm also a fan of "Be Not Afraid" and "Gather Us In."

But I do love a good hymn-sing!

x-post - I don't remember those. Then again, it's been a long time.

be not afraid, ave maria, like a shepherd, sing hosanna

Would prob still get a well-sung cd of these

anyway i suppose i should say right now that i'm still waiting for 'secular catholic' to pass into the vernacular (like 'secular jew'), and that i try to slip into conversation whenever possible.

dunno. always had the impression that quite a lot of catholics don't ~actually~ believe in the literalness of the christian myth (the church doesn't: hence the its eventual embrace of astronomy and evolution), nor in much of its doctrine, but since they like some of it they stick around because mass can be kind of comforting and priests can be nice to talk to. its nice to have someone to talk to.

whereas my (skewed) view of protestantism has always been "either you're in or you're out." ain't no such thing as half-way baptists.

i like hymns, too!

gbx otm

wish ireland would embrace 'catholicism as a way of life' method of teaching as opposed to 'here is a list of fairytale impossibilities believe or go to hell' at five yr olds

lol otm

I always think of a funny bit from this chick-lit book that I think really surpassed chick-lit, at least for someone else from the same crazy religious background as the author/narrator, about how you can have been NOT-Catholic for all the years of your adult life but still be considered by yourself and everyone else to be essentially "Catholic."

tho dunno where gbx is at with prods, they're p much the same as us except for being totally evil in the north obv.

O those northern proddies

oh yuck, bad memories of old church singers hamming it up on GLOOORY TO GOD IN THE HIIIIGHEEEEEST

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh stooooooooooooooop

there was always the one old guy in my vicinity who sang REALLY loudly and like a half-step off

I feel like there is ALWAYS that guy.

he gets around!

i did like, when i finally learned how to read music, actually being able to follow along in the hymnals

I'm also a fan of "Be Not Afraid"

oh man I cry like a child at "Be Not Afraid"

Be not afraid;
I go before you always.
Come, follow me,
and I will give you rest.

literally teared up typing it

feel like i've met plenty of ppl that, if asked their religion, would say "catholic, i guess....but i don't really believe in any of it." i know loads of jews that say that, too, but i've yet to meet a protestant that would say that. most of the ones that left their faith are like "i WAS ____, but i quit." except for lutherans, i guess. but i think that's just because all the lutherans i know are MNan and probably don't want to cause a fuss by going to the trouble of rejecting their faith

xp to laurel

my Episcopalian/Anglican relatives are very very similar to my Catholic family (more so than my Russian Orthodox relatives). makes sense, since Anglicans are only Protestant b/c Henry the Eighth couldn't keep it in his pants and wanted a divorce.

tho dunno where gbx is at with prods, they're p much the same as us except for being totally evil in the north obv.

O those northern proddies

― the '' key on my keybord is not working (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah see but they're anglicans and my mum was always like 'o those anglicans they're basically just catholics who can divorce and who stole all the good churches' >:[

xp basically

the english have an unsatisfying half-assed solution to everything.

I enjoy and wallow in my Irish Catholic guilt, btw, seems much more user-friendly than Jewish guilt.

every hates the episcopalians but its just cause we have all the money *counts his money*

Catholic Lite

more presbyterians than anglicans in ulster iirc

you can't quit catholic, real catholics just look smug when you mention being atheist or w/e the same way thirtysomethings look amused at 16 yr old goths

o man what the heck is a russian orthodox anyhow

always seemed like it had the potential to be the most fun kind of christianity if only because they had better hats and weirder rituals and insane beards.

xp

you can't quit catholic, real catholics just look smug when you mention being atheist or w/e the same way thirtysomethings look amused at 16 yr old goths

― the '' key on my keybord is not working (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:14 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark

this is what i mean!!!!!!

hahaha

I flat out tell people I'm Atheist but I do think what GBX said is true of a lot of ppl.

o man what the heck is a russian orthodox anyhow

always seemed like it had the potential to be the most fun kind of christianity if only because they had better hats and weirder rituals and insane beards.

yeah, Orthodoxy is all that ... plus all the crazy icons and the occasional liturgy in a weird dead language (Old Church Slavonic) that no-one even pretends to understand. they also have some crazy mystical traditions (see the Old Believers, who are even MORE Orthodox than the regular Russian Orthodox). and the main holiday for them is Easter (which always made the most sense to me, since the entire POINT of Christianity is that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead ... NOT merely that He was born (the emphasis of Christmas)).

downsides: LONG liturgies entirely on yer feet (Orthodox churches don't have pews), sketchy views regarding church-state separation (at least in Russia) and lingering anti-Semitism.

I always think of a funny bit from this chick-lit book that I think really surpassed chick-lit, at least for someone else from the same crazy religious background as the author/narrator, about how you can have been NOT-Catholic for all the years of your adult life but still be considered by yourself and everyone else to be essentially "Catholic."

― go peddle your bullshit somewhere else sister (Laurel), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 4:08 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

what book

iirc they have a pretty cool idea about how doctrine is decided. protestants are concerned with conscience and it's primacy, catholics are more concerned with the authority of the magisterium. the orthodox basically has a community standard, the church decides what's what in conversation with itself through history.

xp

no wonder they all went commie

Ha, Ned - my parents were married in this tiny Anglican church, but from there on out both of them were anti the whole thing because of tithing isues.

Back in the backety-back of my Huguenot ancestors is a guy who was the son of a general serving Louis XVI, and THE LEGEND SAYS three priests crossed his path one evening somewhere near La Rochelle, he threw shade at the fathers by greeting them as 'gentlemen' not 'fathers' and they drew swords on him for his impertinence. Miiiiiiiistake. One priest killed, one injured and the last one basically made like a preacher and got the Hell out of there. Huguenots were always explained to me as people who wanted to get that pesky middleman out of their relationship w/God so it was kind of lulz when my dad proved to have inherited the tight Puritan wallet aspect of this.

Hi I am lapsed Anglican! All the fun of Catholicism without the messy guilt. And yes, cool churches. Except my Mum insisted on going to the 'casual' church that looked like someone's house with a hippy priest who had a beard and I did not like it at all. I liked big white frocks and choirs and stained glass.

My mother in law is Catholic, I go to Catholic mass with her at Christmas and she's always amazed at how I know most of the call and response. Catholic-lite, baby!

(haven't been struck by lightning walking into a catholic church..yet)

Found it!

...there is no real halfway with evangelical Christianity. ... It is possible, for example, to be raised as a Catholic and then to grow up and stop obeying the rules and stop going to church and generally have nothing in your life that would remotely indicate to any reasonable human being that you are a Catholic, and yet still be considered, by yourself and everyone else, a Catholic. Not so with evangelicalism. You're either in or you're out. You're either with them or against them. And so, before we go any further here, I would like to make the point that I am currently out. Another point I'd like to make is that this is just the sort of thing I found really irritating about evangelicalism in the first place.

lapsed Anglican! All the fun of Catholicism without the messy totally hott guilt

fixed

The Big Love by Sarah Dunn

There is a huge Greek Orthodox parade through Astoria for their Easter--it looks quite medieval.

I don't know about hott. All I know is that I've dated three Catholics from three different ethic/national heritages and it seems like a bad scene.

when i was a kid i thought the greek orthodox church in my hometown was a planetarium

there was a greek orthodox church in my suburb, you could see the dome from our backyard. but no greek orthodox churchgoers in the neighborhood to speak of. they must've commuted.

they had the best festival in the summer - gyros

haw laurel that quote is like exactly what i was getting at

thanks laurel

I don't know about hott. All I know is that I've dated three Catholics from three different ethic/national heritages and it seems like a bad scene.

I can't speak for str8 catholic boys & should hold my tongue about the rest probably

actually that quote is why Catholicism seems more hardcore - it is forever! hooks in once, stain in always. Go ahead and leave. Doesn't matter. You're marked.

Isn't this true in America as well, at least historically, with immigrant groups such as Irish Catholics, Italians, etc. (whose backgrounds alligned them with class struggles and a fight for social equality) forming strong urban Dem voting blocks?...

― Virginia Plain, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 2:26 PM

Yeah i thought about America too, well actually the northeast (and maybe Chicago I'm not too familiar) but by left i meant in kind of (relative) socialist type terms and in recent years, so was sort of on the fence about that

One good thing about ex-catholics is that they/ we never turn into the kind of annoying Dawkins/ Hitchens/ Fry style professional secularist - which is really just that protestant determination to be right all the time with reversed polarity.

multiple xxxxposts here - I had forgotten some of those hymns - really always liked "Gather Us in," "Be Not Afraid," etc. The first thing I always did when getting to Mass was to look up what hymns we were going to sing and mark them somehow so that I could easily turn to them. The rest of it was zoning out. And if it was hymns I didn't like, ugh.

My daughter is really interested in God/church, etc. so I've been taking her to an Episcopalian church, which is sort of familiar-ish enough for me to not feel totally uncomfortable. We like to sleep in and so go to the later, "contemporary" service, which features some really odd music choices. At Christmas, "Angels We Have Heard on High" was done with a reggae beat. I guess it was fine, but I kind of think some things weren't broken and didn't need to be fixed.

yeah the Mass I went to at Christmas had the kid's choir singing some of the standards, it kind of threw me because they had a band with a drumkit...I don't know why, but I wasn't mentally ready for drums in church. It was kinda weird.

I'm sorry, gbx and anyone else I like who is/was Catholic! I shouldn't have said that about Men of Your Faith. The ones I dated were either dumb and/or jerks but it wasn't (entirely) because they were Catholic. I <3 you guys.

Although I do think there is something about Catholic identity that is really about ethnic identity (Irish, Italian, whatever) in the midst of a larger other culture, and sometimes the backwardness of the some ideas (like about the genders, for instance) is so strong that even dudes who wouldn't rep for that stuff also don't find it strange or off-putting enough.

all of most hardcore catholics i know, my age or otherwise, are women, and either teachers or nurses iirc.

Only have one friend that 'believes' his religious professions at mass.

how do you define "hardcore"? I have an ex who goes to mass every Saturday night or Sunday morning.

xp tho i should note that none of them are *very* hardcore tbh

lol alfred, exactly.

They'd go to mass on sunday, but i have serious doubts about eg virginity what have you.

I think maybe i'd consider anyone who believes in miracles or angels or any of that stuff literally to be kinda a step beyond what i could understand myself

Oh see, everyone in my life up until I was about 20 believed in miracles and angels.

xp to Darragh.

Very few priests believe the miracles and angels stuff anymore. if they ever did. Some with dither distressingly if you ask about God and Christ's divinity.

'will dither'

i have a cousin who is in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Christ

:/

female tho, i don't know any dudes who are into the god thing. apart from priests, lol.

well the lay branch of it.

oh yeah i know, priests have to think about that stuff tbf. It's the farmers that *do* that knock me off stride

oh man maciel

everything i know about him i learned from andrew sullivan, haha

heh.

legion is huge in chile, as is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nstatt

my grandma was maybe the most catholic person i've met. a few years before she died she was made an honorary member of some order or other. i remember at a group of about ten nuns praying over her casket at the wake

I do think there is something about Catholic identity that is really about ethnic identity (Irish, Italian, whatever) in the midst of a larger other culture

totes mcgotes, imo

btw radical nuns are kind of my favorite ppl

jury is still out on miracles imho

oh hey here's my church

http://www.parishofstannegarwood.org/

This was mine (til I was 10) on the left:

http://www.olgc-ic.org/

Although I do think there is something about Catholic identity that is really about ethnic identity (Irish, Italian, whatever) in the midst of a larger other culture

Well yes, but being an Irish catholic in Ireland is an entirely different kettle of loaves and fishy priests (and Polish in Poland, Italian in Italy etc.)

The one I went to growing up isn't online anymore but this was my HS. It closed in 2009 which was sort of sad.

http://www.asjli.org/

Here's a weird Catholic thing or at least a weird thing from my HS. For graduation we had to wear long white dresses with elbow length white gloves and carry red roses. I guess it was sort of a brides of Christ thing? idk. I wonder if other girls' schools do that too.

Just found this pic. It's a pic of a pic so not great but you get the idea:

http://i53.tinypic.com/2vjosn9.jpg

I do think there is something about Catholic identity that is really about ethnic identity (Irish, Italian, whatever) in the midst of a larger other culture

yeah ... being Polish has pretty much come to be synonymous with "Catholic" (even before John Paul II), so much so that when i read that Renaissance-era Poland was a Reformation-era hotbed and the home of Unitarianism it legitimately blew my mind.

Here's "my" church - really my Nan's church, I just tagged along every Sunday, was never confirmed or any of that.

http://www.otway.biz/images/stjohns.jpg

lol i just realized that out of context that pic sort of looks like it's from my lesbian wedding and now I sort of love it

I do think there is something about Catholic identity that is really about ethnic identity (Irish, Italian, whatever) in the midst of a larger other culture

It's a really strange part of my identity. I was baptized at nine and raised Catholic because both of my divorced parents each married a Catholic - my step-mother an Irish-American named Molly and my step-dad, an honest-to-God Polish-German Yankee from Chicago. Prior to that, I really hadn't had any religion.

So while my friends were all drinking grape juice at their white-clapboard Baptist vacation bible schools, I was taking Communion, learning the call-and-response of the Eucharist, confessing my sins and catching my paper wax catcher on fire with a candle at midnight Mass.

I no consider myself a Catholic, but it still remains inside me like a lost language painted on a cave in France somewhere. It's provided me an opportunity to relate to Latino and Yankee cultures. And whenever I am asked my religion for reference purposes, I still say I'm Catholic. I'm not a Catholic, but I was baptized as one and took Communion. I can't explain it, but you can't bounce back from that all the way.

re orthodoxy: this is the Orthodox church that my Orthodox relatives attend (in Manville, NJ)

http://www.spiritoforthodoxy.com/Concertimages/20100516_manville/20100516_SaintsPeterandPaul.jpg

Worth a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Foreskin

Here's the church I was baptized in and where my mom and step-father got married:

http://stalhsar.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/church_017.114100533_std.jpg

While we're posting churches, this is where I went for 18 years:

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/58/96/1589609_b3f8c4cd.jpg

As soon as I moved away from home I stopped attending completely, even though it hadn't bothered me up to then.

I guess I'm technically a lapsed Catholic, but I don't feel any real relationship to Catholicism even in a cultural/familial sense. My parents both came from big Catholic families and were educated in Catholic schools from grammar school through college. But we didn't start going to church until I was in second grade, and my parents pretty much never talked about religion at home, not even passing references to God or prayers before dinner. So Mass was always just a weekly ritual where I got to sing and recite stuff. Occasionally the homily would make me reflect vaguely about morals and how to be good, but I never had any sense of guilt or anything.

When I was 14 and started to question the tenets of the church, my parents said, "OK, we don't have to go anymore." Which is when I realized that we'd only been going so that my parents could provide me and my brother with some semblance of religious/moral education. We shopped around a bit after that and ended up at a Unitarian church for a couple of years, but that fell by the wayside once the minister my parents liked moved away.

Despite the fact that neither of them really believes in God in the traditional sense anymore (I guess I wonder how much they did even when I was a kid), I'd say that my parents probably still have a strong cultural attachment to Catholicism. Not only was their upbringing was considerably more religious than mine, but they both continue to work in Catholic institutions (a hospital and a university) and have close family members who are still devout.

As for me, it's mostly just childhood nostalgia.

Yeah, I think I feel pretty similarly tbh.

x-post PP your experience is really interesting. Also, I'm going to be thinking about how much of an influence being raised Catholic has had on me as an adult for the rest of the night. I mean, I would have said virtually none but now you've got me ~thinking~. Thanks thread.

My mom went to a Catholic school here in which she was taught the creation story as late as 1967; she had no idea what evolution was until college. Meanwhile my father's parents didn't give a damn about their Catholicism: when they fled Cuba in the early sixties they left all records of his baptism and First Communion, which became a problem when he married my mother.

I'm responsible for instilling the first spasm of religious faith in my father. I've alluded here to surviving an intense religious phase during junior high: Mass every day, strict observance of the sacraments, rocks in my sneakers as penance, that sort of thing. Since I was too young to walk to church by myself, Dad would accompany me on Sundays, and I watched him evolve from thinking "What do you see in this?" to "I get this." The irony of course is that when I abandoned my religious convictions in my junior year he stayed with his.

Now he's an atheist with a suspicion that an afterlife exists. My mom, a pro-choice conservative, still hangs on to her faith. I rather shocked her a few weeks ago when after a few glasses of wine I admitted to not "believing in something higher."

here's my church & grade school, st vivian in cincinnati oh. nobody used that gate - for show I guess - but damn it looks official

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_utjwEXmlgko/SeRuzQotBrI/AAAAAAAAAw8/mMVBUNMWLDo/s400/20090429StVivian003.jpg

It looks like a still from a Riefenstahl film!

considering my neighborhood was probably 75% german-american that's more apt than you can imagine

lol alfred, i dont recall evolurion being offered as an alternative to creationism until first year science in secondary school in 1993!

I dont think we were ever thought creationism as fact or w/e, but all throughout primary school we learned the religious fable side in catechism and the, y'know, not-crazy version simply didnt get a mention in any science class that i can recall

jesus, i dont think i've ever even considered how fuckin weird that is until just now. Wtf primary education

sup

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2346/2081577522_0053f67387.jpg

i remember my friend luke being all "btw the big bang guys" and a load of us turning on him and being like "don't you believe in GOD! omg!" even tho i was p sure i didn't believe in god i was on the persecution front. i think i was seven.

lol some quality nostalgia itt; <3 yall for quoting some hymns.

i totally agree w/the thing about how you are always catholic even when yr not; i used to be cool w/it but am now trying really really hard to not just accept my association with catholicism as some "oh, childhood" thing.

My parents are good Catholics in the sense that they still go to Mass every Sunday - I don't think it's easy to dissociate religion from your identity if you grew up in Ireland in the 50s - but I think they're actually happier that I'm not religious at all than if I were religious and in your face about it. They're certainly not in the judgemental Catholic camp.

plax - I tried that on my Dad and he came back with the old "but who caused the big bang?" response and I went away defeated.

"i remember my friend luke being all "btw the big bang guys" and a load of us turning on him and being like "don't you believe in GOD! omg!" even tho i was p sure i didn't believe in god i was on the persecution front. i think i was seven."

I went to Catholic secondary school in the north of England and it was really weird with this kind of stuff. Like, similar things would happen, but you would also be ostracised for being overtly religious - going on the RE dept. trip to Lourdes etc. It was pretty much taboo to talk about god at all, existence or non-existence. The only people who did were actually evangelicals. I guess this is due to it being a school full of 'ethnic catholics' in a secular society.

well, not ethnic catholics I suppose, there were lots of irish but not a majority.

btw catholocism is still awesome if you extract all the stuff that persecutes women/gays/non-white people/poor people and the part where you have to believe in god

maybe some other stuff

the wine tastes funny

otm

sorta like hip hop

I always thought I wld be a Catholic in a heartbeat if you extract all the stuff that persecutes women/gays/non-white people/poor people and the part where you have to believe in god.

lol

Moving to Southern Baptist hell as a Catholic pretty much warped my brain forever

i mean, robes

ROBES!

i like a lot of things about catholocism. the community, and how devotion is something that is expressed together and joy is shared (choral music, congregations), I like the pomp and ceremony, the way incense smells, stained glass windows. I like the connection w/ larger narratives, the history that stretches back. I like transubstantiation, the word was made flesh, the dialectical coherence. The eucharist is a way of understanding the possibility of meaning, the synthesis of object and meaning, the resonance and beauty of everything around us. The emphases is on the margins edges and borders between zones, between what is concrete and material and what is immaterial and eternal. The bread becomes the flesh, the word becomes flesh. That border, the liminal point is the body, the material thing that contains the soul. The truest physical thing, fragile and impermanent. The holy body desecrated, christ on the cross, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

did u just write that?

it's beautiful

man if those aspects of it had been emphasized i may have actually looked forward to going to CCD every week

thanks e ;)

It is! I Googled it and everything just to see whether it was a quote from somewhere.

was not expecting ILX to make me rethink the role of catholicism when i woke up this morning, gotta say

catholicism in my life*

seriously

Though I kind of doubt the legitimacy of this, to this day my mother insists that while I spent my first three months of life in an ICU incubator there were people in the Vatican praying for me by name. That our diocese had a guy who knew a guy and what have you. She still attributes my survival to this, and I was baptized at Nuestra Senora de los Dolores--Our Lady of Sorrows--in November of 1986.

I went to OLS for the first two years of school, then was moved to public school for second grade. When I was eight my parents got divorced, and within the year my Dad started attending a Pentecostal church where they danced in the aisles and guest pastors from Spain brought in snakes. The band ruled, and snakes were cool, so I liked it better than Catholicism. I got a little older and went to Jesus Camp-style militant summer programs where I decided I had to be a warrior for Christ in America and was going to preach the Word in China.

My mom moved us far enough away from my Dad & that Church that I got distance from that kind of fundamentalism, and she insisted I start going to the local diocese again. I went, but I didn't buy in--at the "Ask a Priest" nights in youth group I would ask petulant gotcha questions like "at what point in the Eucharist does the bread & wine actually transubstantiate into the body & blood of Christ?"

Inevitably my 17 year old mind was impressed by the subtlety and depth of the answers I got, and through nights like that and long conversations afterward with the clergy I found out that Catholic doctrine was a lot more interesting than I'd understood at the time.

I've since spent a great deal of time trying to figure out exactly which of my neuroses are Catholic and which are Pentecostal--how much of my guilt complex comes from believing in Original Sin vs. how much comes from tearful altar calls where I relearn how fallen and sinful I am on a regular basis.

btw catholocism is still awesome if you extract all the stuff that persecutes women/gays/non-white people/poor people and the part where you have to believe in god

Agreed on women and gays (though in fact, the church is unofficially quite tolerant of gays in its own ranks, and never as vocal in persecution as fundies), but, while the church has been guilty of persecuting the poor, when afforded political power, as in Ireland, it can also be, and often is, a very effective advocate for the poor and powerless: when catholicism gets radical, its as serious and organised about it as old fashioned communism. And the 'catholicism' of catholicism means it's inherently internationalist and cosmopolitan, and less tolerant of, and complicit with, racism than many protestant denominations.

It's probably appropriate that as I wrote that I was listening to Patterson Hood's "Murdering Oscar," in which he repeatedly mutters "I don't need forgiveness for my sins/I don't need redemption for my sins."

I was into Pedro the Lion, "controversial" Christian indie rock band, in my fundie days, and David Bazan's very public loss of faith and new record where he writes about that process with his usual sensitivity continues to be a source of fascination for me. There are some people who leave the faith behind and are happy about it and the abandonment of those beliefs never causes them any trouble. I'm not one of them. xp to myself, sorry for making thread 'hoos's thoughts on faith 4 u'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

xp

plax that thing u wrote was really nice

also w/r/t this

Though I kind of doubt the legitimacy of this, to this day my mother insists that while I spent my first three months of life in an ICU incubator there were people in the Vatican praying for me by name. That our diocese had a guy who knew a guy and what have you. She still attributes my survival to this, and I was baptized at Nuestra Senora de los Dolores--Our Lady of Sorrows--in November of 1986.

my mom STILL, for real, calls her v devout catholic friend (who is a fukkin saint imo, srsly the kindest person there is) whenever she's worried about something my sister or i have to face/do. like oh your finals are coming up, well don't worry i called M____ and she's gonna bang out a few rosaries and even tho i don't really believe in that stuff anymore if anyone's got a mainline to the baby jesus it's M____ and may as well right it can't hurt

hile the church has been guilty of persecuting the poor, when afforded political power, as in Ireland, it can also be, and often is, a very effective advocate for the poor and powerless: when catholicism gets radical, its as serious and organised about it as old fashioned communism.

Yep. For all the truth about Pope Pius XII being Hitler's Pope, it's a fact that the Polish, French, and German Catholic Church protected thousands of Jews and other protected minorities at the height of Nazism.

yeah, that's kinda the root of my OK-ness with catholicism even as someone that has identified as 'atheist' since like 4th grade.

idk TBF its like a big part of what jesus said, protect the poor the weak the vulnerable in society. the fact remains that the catholic church has also helped create and maintain those positions as positions of vulnerability and idk how much of a pat in the back you get for sometimes helping the poor and weak while also shafting them quite a lot (via colonialism)

Catholicism brings out an intense mixture of contempt and defensiveness in me. As a kid I really never saw much beauty, fellowship, or hope in Catholicism. The impression I got was of decay: old churches, old statues, old priests, old ladies with strong perfume that made my eyes and nose itch. My parents were ardent churchgoers but they (like a lot of Catholics) never really knew their faith very well, other than the rituals and prayers they had been observing since they were children.

None of it felt particularly real or comforting to me. After moving to South Carolina, the bafflement and confusion in my mind toward Catholicism transformed into embarrassment and anger. At school my Baptist classmates questioned me (as the lone Catholic in class) many times about my religion and would then tell me to my face I was a heathen who "worshipped Mary".

It also didn't help when our parish priest was accused of molesting someone and was quickly shuffled to another parish.

I realize a lot of this reflects my own myopia and selfishness.

this thomas nast cartoon always kinda freaked me out

http://www.phlmetropolis.com/Nast%20Anti-Catholic%20Papist%20Drawing.jpg

woah

Nast was born in the town my dad's from in Germany.

that cartoon is fucked up!

tbh i still get a faint whiff of "nastian" anti-catholicism from a lot of otherwise progressive types, like they still think it's ok to unleash a little hate on white ethnic/catholic types in defense of all things lefty

this is a fascinating thread! i wish i had been a religious studies major. the catholic church is so beautiful and so terrible. i think most of us are still reacting to it, and to the church's power at its zenith.

At school my Baptist classmates questioned me (as the lone Catholic in class) many times about my religion and would then tell me to my face I was a heathen who "worshipped Mary".

"Saint Nick? So you pray to Santa Claus too?"

It also didn't help when our parish priest was accused of molesting someone and was quickly shuffled to another parish.

This could be one of the few threads where I can swap altar boy stories without being asked a thousand times if I was ever raped.

My favorite duty was to ring the bells during the Consecration. Sometimes I'd wait a beat and give it just one more shake for emphasis.

And I don't want to come across as an old man, but when I went last time and saw girls working the altar, man. Is nothing sacred? And why couldn't they have done that when I was a kid?

This could be one of the few threads where I can swap altar boy stories without being asked a thousand times if I was ever raped.

i was also an altar boy (i was until i graduated high school) and i was never molested or even looked at funny by any of the priests i served. i also don't tell anyone that i was an altar boy b/c i don't want to get questions about whether i was molested.

catholic gators vs. jewish octopi:

http://m.clipmarks.com/image_cache/ammcc/512/75B66BB1-17AB-4EB2-B20D-CA4C38BA6853.jpg

well they came for the squids first

tbh i still get a faint whiff of "nastian" anti-catholicism from a lot of otherwise progressive types, like they still think it's ok to unleash a little hate on white ethnic/catholic types in defense of all things lefty

― buzza, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 11:09 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is super otm and something i've run into several times in my life

for sure. at least in my circles there's a certain "well the church is why AIDS is so rampant in africa" attitude going on.

they're basically right, though, is the thing

eh ime it's taken its form more in terribly insensitive priest/abuse jokes from non-catholics

you live in boston

and?

in my circles almost everyone hates religious people and thinks they're stupid and evil.

the epicenter of catholic church molestation activity iirc?

yeah i mean this is something that gets me defensive--as someone who's interacted with my fair share of priests i don't need to hear hurtful blanket statements from outsiders who have no knowledge of how wise, caring, and kind priests can be.

i mean not only is it offensive to victims, but it also rejects a vocation that is extremely strange yet still calls some remarkable people.

though in fact, the church is unofficially quite tolerant of gays in its own ranks, and never as vocal in persecution as fundies

One Sunday, when I was 14, the auxiliary bishop of our diocese made a guest appearance at our church and caustically denounced homosexuality in his homily. I was just beginning to identify as bisexual and was visibly shaken by these remarks; though I must've known the church's official position, I'd never heard a priest or anyone else be so explicit about it.

Though I'd already expressed to my parents my doubts about Catholicism, I think the clearly emotional complaints I made on the way home from Mass that day -- and my liberal parents' inability to defend the homily -- probably hastened their decision to have us stop going to church.

(On a related note, the former bishop of the diocese was my great-uncle, and my mom has made occasional insinuations to the effect that his profession may have been well-chosen, sublimation-wise.)

I remember leading the procession into mass a few of times as an alter boy, swinging the incense. I liked to set a real slow, solemn pace. The priest would urge me to hurry it up but i pretended not to notice.

<3

they're basically right, though, is the thing

yeah, criticism of the rc hierarchy is obv legit on many issues, it's more seeing the catholic churchgoers in some lumpen "they are just drones who obey the pope/bishop/parish priest on all issues including the ballot box" that irks, like if you actually knew a lot of catholics you'd know how conflicted/contradictory "the laity' is on pet left-wing issues

my layman's impression of actual catholics is that the hierarchy and the tradition and the myth and the obscurantism and the intricate endlessly revised self-contradictory rules give them this sense of irony that is often really attractive and mature without abandoning reverence. like whenever i have dinner with my girlfriend's large and reasonably devout catholic family they make a lot of rueful impenetrable jokes about their failure to obey this or that proscription, but in a way that reveals the proscription still matters to them, and it is really warm and human because it seems analogous to the whole christian god-became-a-mortal-for-a-while paradox. whereas if you hang out with devout protestants they seem to think they've worked everything out.

the only times i enjoyed mass was the days when the altar boys would have an attack of uncontrollable lolling and the priest would get really mad with them which would make them worse.

like you know that scene in annie hall where woody allen's jewish family and diane keaton's WASP one are split-screened and begin to talk to each other across the split-screen:

"what will you be doing over the holidays, mr. singer?"
"we fast."
"fast?"
"yeah, no food. to atone for our sins."
"what sins? i don't understand."
"tell you the truth, neither do we."

obv. this is a jewish joke but i'm always reminded of it anyway at dinner with the catholics.

jesus

yeah i mean this is something that gets me defensive--as someone who's interacted with my fair share of priests i don't need to hear hurtful blanket statements from outsiders who have no knowledge of how wise, caring, and kind priests can be.

i mean not only is it offensive to victims, but it also rejects a vocation that is extremely strange yet still calls some remarkable people.

well sure! I wasn't trying to be one of those ppl---just that I imagine that snarky "priests be rapin" comments might be more common in yr area, like

that "jesus" was a Zing artifact btw

The eucharist is a way of understanding the possibility of meaning, the synthesis of object and meaning

yeah this is a thing i always envied catholics growing up.

i envied the trinity; i think the trinity is more than pretty and might actually be accurate. i think "these things are all different, but they are also all the same, and together they form a larger thing, which is also the same" is like a super super useful concept to have hammered into your head.

(http://www.feandft.com/Mandelbrot-set-web.gif)

* The Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
* Though really distinct, as a Person, from the Father and the Son, He is consubstantial with Them; being God like Them, He possesses with Them one and the same Divine Essence or Nature.
* He proceeds, not by way of generation, but by way of spiration, from the Father and the Son together, as from a single principle.

Such is the belief the Catholic faith demands.

well sure! I wasn't trying to be one of those ppl---just that I imagine that snarky "priests be rapin" comments might be more common in yr area, like

― FUN FUN FUN FUN (gbx), Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:20 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol ok! i wasn't suggesting that my exp. was unique or weird or unlikely--just agreeing that otherwise progressive folks fall into this trap with ease.

very accurate depiction of catholic mass ime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-S3K6wXYpg

when I worked at a house run by the Church that gave shelter, food, medication and skilled nursing care to patients in the terminal stages of AIDS-related complications, then-archbishop Mahoney visited, and was as compassionate a bedside visitor as I've seen in any hospital; it's wrong of the Church to oppose condom use, of course, but you couldn't prove any lack-of-compassion charges on my experiences there. Nobody at our house ever got told to reorient, blamed for anything, etc. We didn't call it a "hospice" but anyway it was a special place the Church ran that complicated my reflexive "shame on you" stance toward the Church's response to the AIDS crisis

Sort of xp to jaymc way up there:

If anyone has time to read it this is very interesting about the Church's current position on homosexuality. Pope Benny's pink Prada shoes an' all!

A coworker of mine just left our organization to go work for an organization called Cath0lics for Ch01ce. Good for her, I thought, but why even? Why not just become a Presbyterian or whatever?

it's funny, the other day i found an old diary of mine and i apparently thought of myself as catholic when i was 18? which i'd completely forgotten. I mean, when I got into the church it was an anglo-catholic/high church anglican one, and the fact of its being anglo-catholic mattered quite a lot (not least because that meant that in a way it was a link to my mother's catholic tradition from which she'd been long lapsed but this shit stays with you), but-- at 18, still? how strange.

a friend of mine once said "you know, i'm a christian, i believe in god and that i will go to heaven" and my immediate reaction was "listen sunshine you don't get to know if you're going to heaven ok" so basically i guess i am a catholic in that, except i disagree with ~the church~ on thousands of things starting with the existence of god.

Good for her, I thought, but why even? Why not just become a Presbyterian or whatever?

i was just having this conversation the other day, about gay priests in the anglican communion - one never-in-any-way-religious friend said 'i don't see why they don't just leave for a church that will treat them better' and the immediate reaction from myself and my still-practicing other friend was 'no but they can't'. a religion, to me, is an entire culture - it's not that one shouldn't switch, it's just that it takes an uprooting of your whole self to do so.

a friend of mine once said "you know, i'm a christian, i believe in god and that i will go to heaven" and my immediate reaction was "listen sunshine you don't get to know if you're going to heaven ok"

Wahhhat, for reals?? Now I'm really pole-axed -- if it doesn't do anything for your eternal fate, why does anyone even BOTHER? The illusion of control if you SUFFER ENOUGH and debase yourself for fake standards?

thats calvinism not catholicism

was gonna say.

and the answer is: same reason we act as if we have free will in a deterministic universe - no choice

I think "good works" only take time off your stint in Purgatory.

yeah i mean there's purgatory etc. (in school they told us about babies limbo too wtf?) but your good works count and jesus loves you and repent and you will be saved

Sorry, C# -- that just came out of left field in terms of my surprise and reflexive annoyance! Up til then I was rly enjoying diff lstn hr's post and mulling it over and thinking about unruly altar boys and where the laity is going with the American Catholic Church vs where the Church is going with itself, which is actually quite interesting to me.

xxxp oh, okay!

i think the Pope abolished Limbo a few years back?

whatever the Latin for "my bad" is

yeah i know but that didnt stop our teachers also i dont think the pope can just abolish limbo this is prolly like when obama shut down guantanamo, where are all the lost souls gonna be relocated for one thing

think he just said "lol not really they went to Heaven" or somethink. he totally can call it ex cathedra i think

but i mean literally this was 2 or 3 years ago so yr teachers wd still have been otm

i remember we were really young but we were still like uh what? this is also when we started being like "so what about like native people in indigenous tribes who have never even heard of jesus"

also did cuchulainn go to hell?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo#Modern_era

The Church says maybe there's Limbo, but you don't have to believe in it.

(btw our history book in primary school included several bible stories and a lot of irish mythology)

they can't cancel Purgatory cos all those peeps who paid for masses wd be asking for their money back

re undiscovered people who never heard about Christ in their lives

Yeah, I asked that question, too. The youth leader had to say he couldn't answer that in class, and ask me to stay after so he could talk to just me...mostly because no one else gave a shit and wished I would shut up so they could go play volleyball.

Cuchulainn went to Tir Na Nog yeah? don't think that was properly like heaven really

in tir na nog you prolly like smoke week and get laid all the time tho

Wasn't it Oisin who went to Tir na nÓg?

He came back though, homesick for the Ireland he left, and was told on no account to get off his horse, or he would turn into the old man he chronologically would have been....

Ireland had gone all Xian in the meanwhile, and Oisin was puzzled, and then his stirrup broke as he leaned down from the saddle to help an old man and oops! he fell and was instantly aged....but he embraced Christ and died happy.

there are a lot of addendums to irish myths where when they are old they find christ (cf children of lir)

"ooh look, there's christ"

its like if hercules was like "so yeah his dad was zeus and he was v strong and he cut medusas head off and then when he was old he found joy in the love of our only saviour jesus christ"

The story is told that when Saint Patrick was trying to convert king Lóegaire to Christianity, the ghost of Cú Chulainn appeared in his chariot, warning him of the torments of hell.

i sometimes think that one of the weirdest shifts b/w fenian mythology and christianity is the diff b/w the salmon of knowledge and fionn mccumhaill and his rise to head of the fianna and the tree of knowledge and adam and eve and the fall of man.

anyway its funny bc a lot of what people are talking about on this thread relates their catholic backgrounds to a kind of sense of difference, like community as set against mainstream values but like obviously i can't really vibe w/ that. I mean its not like that *is* the catholic experience (tho obviously it has been the catholic experience for a lot of people) and my own experience is really of like reflecting on it more over the last few years and how its shaped how i think about things in a more profound way than i would have expected. also when i lose things st anthony totally gets them back for me.

St. A was of no help w/ my lost argyle sweater, the bastard

you have to promise him
money

for the poor box

Who's the saint you're supposed to pray to when you have exams? I know there's one, or at least that's what my Mum always said...

Who is the one who you're supposed to buy a statue of and bury in the yard if you're trying to sell a house? My parents did that and I laughed at them and then felt bad about doing so but it's four years later though and the house is still not sold so WAY TO PULL THROUGH SAINT WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS.

lol...and Jude is lost causes, right?

tbf if somebody buried me in their back yard I would be pissed

Looks like exams is this guy:

Saint Joseph of Cupertino (Italian: San Giuseppe da Copertino) (June 17, 1603 – September 18, 1663) is an Italian saint. He was said to have been remarkably unclever, but prone to miraculous levitation and intense ecstatic visions that left him gaping.[1] In turn, he is recognized as the patron saint of air travelers, aviators, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, test takers, and weak students. He was canonized in the year 1767.

Doesn't ring a bell though.

I did this and it worked.

I'm not going to claim St. Joseph sold my house for me. It was a goofy last-minute act of desperation, but it happened.

you have to leave a headless statue of the child of prague outside the house the day before a wedding to get good weather

To obviously it wont work if you behead the statue on purpose, it needs to be an accident.

btw st patrick says hi i was up at his place earlier today

Last year my mom and my sister buried St. Joseph in our yard, a week later our house sold, and then they dug him back out. Apparently he gets mad and curses you if you leave him buried.

St. Joseph: patron saint of pottymouths?

you have to leave a headless statue of the child of prague outside the house the day before a wedding to get good weather

To obviously it wont work if you behead the statue on purpose, it needs to be an accident.

― the '' key on my keybord is not working (darraghmac), Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:46 PM (Yesterday)

lol i have never seen a non beheaded child of prague, my granny always had hers w/ head balancing in the window. i was like, you could glue it and maybe you would chill out a little.

I have heard of using the mystic power of the Child of Prage to effect good wedding weather, but never this beheaded statue thing.

Saint Josepeh of Cuptertino! I used to say prayers to him. and look how smart I am now!

if you check underneath any child of prague there's a tiny sticker says 'non-decapitation may affect climactic performance'

Also have a beheaded Holy Infant of Prague on my windowsill. I sometimes balance the head back on his neck. Doesn't last. God is telling us not be proud of our heads, because the holy infant is happy without his.

i think the message is 'less of ye're neck'

the older i get the more actively i dislike religion and catholicism. i don't know where this comes from, but one trip to mass a year at christmas is enough to annoy me. i hate the subservience of religion and the fact that it attempts to have power over people. i can't stand the sense of collective guilt or shame that permeates catholic mass, i can't think of anything worse than a system which makes people's value of themselves descrease. people's sense of self worth is low enough without religion. just glad nobody young goes anymore.

i also dislike the priests just as speakers and people, 99 per cent of the time.

igwym but a have a major aversion to giving babies the bathwater treatment

how do you mean?

just like i said, i mean yeah i hate our local priest and the catholic church has been a historically shitty thing but there's still a lot of things i like

yeah i guess it has value for some people, my dislike is definitely my own.

Sometimes I think the Irish managed to apply our singular talent for taking the good out of everything* to Catholicism, leaving only naked power and domination....

*See also Pop and politics.

Growing up, we had a very charismatic, kind Irish priest who played the fiddle and sang at mass, and got riproaring drunk with his friends at the yearly International Day. We actually liked to go to the lame youth group stuff because he would be there. He left on a mission to the Dominican Republic and after that the priests were really dry and boring. I found out when Ted Kennedy died that he was a spiritual advisor to the Kennedy family and hung out with them at Hyannis Port.

Now, on the rare times when my mom convinces me to go to church with her, I go with the expectation that it will be somehow fulfilling or enlightening, but it's always just soul crushing and depressing. I guess I need a magnetic figurehead in my organized religion.

a religion that holds dear statues of decapitated babies??? what sick & twisted shit is this?

I think it's that part of catholicism that sucked up all kinds of regional rituals and seems realy folk magic/idol worshippy.

To elaborate on that, I came from a pretty lapsed protestant/secular family and finding out about the way saints are canonized, the entire idea of relics, and the praying to individual saints for guidance seemed really out there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you invoke a saint, you're really trying to get him to petition God on your behalf, right?

Yeah, they're intercessors or mediators.

I'm still in Protestant America.

For so being in the Bible Belt, I just had an amusing experience in my publishing office. The editor of our bridal magazine is reviewing photographs submitted for our "Photographers Favorites" feature and ran across a Catholic wedding. It's a portrait-sized image of the bride and groom standing in front of the altar with a 17-foot crucifix overlooking them all. The editor was all, "having a cross up there would be one thing, but I can't put this in the magazine with Him up there, distracting everybody."

lol

My best friend's parents are insanely Catholic. There are so many religious things in there house it's incredible but the thing that never ceases to amaze me is the stuff they have in their bathrooms. The guest bathroom has a little chest on top of which sits a crucifix and a booklet about the Lamb of God. I think there is at least one other crucifix in that bathroom. It's pretty creepy tbh.

I did always hope the first person to come up and read from the Gospel would suddenly turn around and go "A AAAAGGGHH UUH!"

Can't find my favorite estela quote about her worry over screaming obscenities in church.

Wait estela has this fear too? When I was kid and did go to church and esp in HS when I no longer believed but was made to sit through mass at school, I had this irrational fear that I would just lose control and start screaming obscenities or just like strip naked and run around the church.

Here, too. Less a fear and more a curiosity. Okay kind of a fear. But there was a secret thrill in thinking about it.

For a while there, my parents made me take notes on the sermons, btw, and might quiz me in the car homeward about what I remembered.

Not that I'm Catholic or anything. But these talks bring me back!

lol I mentioned this on the Quieting the Imps in Your Brainz thread.

Here we go:

i used to sit in church when i was little and think about how easy it would be to stand up and shout obscenities loud enough for the whole church to hear and then i would get scared i was going to do it if i didn't stop thinking about it so i would stare at the jesus on the cross until the thought left me. later i dated sad-looking boys with prominent ribcages and said dreadful things to them.
― estela, Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:19 AM Bookmark

I am somewhat relieved to know that I was not the only one who did this. I remember feeling similarly when Laurel talked about it on the Imps thread.

i was always more worried about on of the immediate family doing something mortifying instead. My little brother knocked himself out sneezing into a pew at my confirmation, i hated him for hours. It was meant to be my day, goddammit.

the older i get the more actively i dislike religion and catholicism. i don't know where this comes from, but one trip to mass a year at christmas is enough to annoy me. i hate the subservience of religion and the fact that it attempts to have power over people. i can't stand the sense of collective guilt or shame that permeates catholic mass, i can't think of anything worse than a system which makes people's value of themselves descrease. people's sense of self worth is low enough without religion. just glad nobody young goes anymore.

yeah, i went to mass with family this past christmas for the first time in years and i was struck by how genuinely oppressive it felt.

when i look back on how the church affected me it's weird, b/c my parents were pretty "meh" about the whole enterprise, and i didn't have to attend catholic schools or anything, but somehow i managed to inculcate myself on my own with a lot of the garbage that the church promulgates. i think it's really sad and messed up how people are taught to fear something which should be a source of comfort and nourishment... and leading people to mistrust themselves and their natural impulses is largely spiritually poisonous imo. i respect people's trying to connect with god or expressing devotion to the saints or whatever, but in general it seems to me that catholicism presents a path of learning to be forever wary of one's self and throwing as many obstacles between one's self and god as possible

dell, I would make that accusation of all of Christianity, at the very least.

except when it doesn't.

"leading people to mistrust themselves and their natural impulses is largely spiritually poisonous imo"

It's a good thing you don't know about my natural impulses, then.

It's interesting to read these posts, since my experience is very different.
My family was/is Catholic without too much obsessions, we didn't have images of the Lamb of God in the bathroom (!) and I never felt particularly decreased in my self esteem.
Actually, the older I get (and after years of almost total disbelief) the more I'm interested in religion and Catholic thought, in a way that I find almost liberating.
Masses can still be very boring, though.

There are few sharper contrasts in my life between the utter fascination I have with Catholicism – the way folk magic hits its rococo doctrinal logic, the symbol overload, its giant mutating place in Euro history – and the total fucking boredom of sitting in mass listening to a priest.

there is a range of responses to different elements of the religion. I certainly see people being brought closer to God by some of it; it aint all Portrait of the Artist-style hellfire sermons.

I never liked this pre-Communion bit: "Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

More like Powerpoint of the Artist style, in most cases.

xp

my aunt's a doctor of theology, very devout, liberal and interested and knowledgeable in all aspects of pretty much all the major religions, afaict.

Catholicism is pretty much only as oppressive as you let it be, once you're out of the control sphere of y'know school or family or whatever forces may be pushing you towards it to begin with. There's obviously still a huge well of wisdom & positivity that millions of people, not all total idiots mind, find vital and relevant in their everyday lives or even just on the occasions where people usually return to religion/spiritualism.

Obviously thoughts very much not in character but i spent time with this lady yesterday and she's refreshed my usual world weariness and it seemed a timely event what with this thread in my mind.

I still skipped mass to play pool with my uncle in the pub though. Another week in purgatory then.

Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

fucking hate this.

and kneeling. i kneel for no man! nobody should ever have to kneel. if there was a god i'd hope he didn't expect this, and nothing in the parts of the bible you read in church seems to back up god as being this sort of god.

yeah i usually just sat on the edge of the pew with my knees bent awkwardly because i hated kneeling

sorry, GENUFLECTING

"Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed"

Cant elaborate more because I have to go, but I find this bit sort of poetic (but here we say "saved", not "healed", and the meaning seems quite different).

I kind of like kneeling actually . . . it seems sort of . . . poetic? And those padded pull-out things to kneel on are kind of cool. I just never knew the right time to stand, sit, kneel, etc.

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

i just define god as "the thing i'd kneel to"

I always thought the hand shaking was sort of nice. Wait - that's the peace be with you part, right? I remember ppl just started going "Peace, peace, peace, peace" and dropping the rest of the sentence after a while.

Man, as interesting as it is to read about all this stuff I am so so glad that I don't have to do any of this anymore.

"Peace be with you." "And also with you." Or just "Peace." Hug, kiss, shake hands, nod, smile. I liked that part.

Apparently people are so afraid of germs nowadays that they don't like to touch hands, even during the Lord's Prayer. Sacrilege.

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

Nightmarish. Should I shake with that person a row back and two left? Why is that person in front and four right shaking with everyone? That is escalation, we are not getting out quickly and politely with that attitude. And weddings! Buggers 2 rows back wanting a shake. You are my relative, I will drink with you afterwards.

Socially awkward mass-going penguin.

"peace time" @ church for me meant "time to peace"

Did any of you do the leaving right after Communion thing? Take communion, and just keep walking out the door? Some of my friends' families did this, but not us.

The good thing thing about catholic unworthiness, is that we are all unworthy, popes and prostitutes alike. If everyone is a sinner, and has to rely on God's extraordinary grace in order to be saved, then, however outwardly righteous your life may be, you have nothing on your neighbour. I don't actually see it as a submission to a higher power, more a recognition of the absurdity and helplessness and vanity of the human condition in the face of the infinite.

On the hand shaking....

on the rare occasions I go to mass - funerals, essentially, - I start worrying about it ages before. Last year, at a local politician's funeral, I kept hearing this vaguely familiar voice a little to my right and back, giving the responses in perfect Irish. When it came to the shaking hands, the familiar voice turned out to belong to Micheál Martin, then Foreign Minister, now leader of Fianna Fail - the first and only time I have shaken an FF ministers hand...I felt tricked and u.nclean

i went to church every sunday til i was about 14 or 15 and then my parents were both like "eh whatever" and we all stopped going. my dad was a seminary student for awhile but turned to a more philosophical bent w/religion because he hated the church's politics, i think in his mind he wanted to try to take it back to studying the core teachings of jesus and not so much the other bullshit that was added on by everyone else. anyway even after i stopped going with my parents, my brother and i would get dragged to church by my mom's parents whenever we were staying with them or on a vacation with them. my grandmother was pretty hardcore about not missing church, to the point that there was an incident during a road trip where we drove around eau claire looking for any church to go to for sunday mass (iirc we found one and sneaked in at the end in time for communion, and tbqf that three minute service was the finest church service i ever attended.)

the priest would call you out by name iirc

I just never knew the right time to stand, sit, kneel, etc.

for some reason i am imagining being an altar boy and jamming on that bell they shake during all the most inappropriate moments

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

at this last christmas mass i went to the priest did this thing where he tried to get everyone to ask the stranger nearest to them two personal questions, and then he went up to random ppl and asked them to repeat the information that they had gathered. i kinda suspect it was in part like his weird gotcha! thing to ppl who only attend easter and xmas services. anyhow it was shades of lame icebreaky things like you have to do on a corporate retreat or something... and most hilrar to me was that even my uncle who is like the most extroverted person ever and will in general fall over himself to incite conversations with random passersby was like "eff this s" and boycotted the exercise

What's weird to me is how much I actually do remember considering how long it has been since I stepped foot inside a church which has to be more than 10 years now. But, like, thinking about that Peace part - Peace be with you. And also with you. Lift up your heats. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give thanks and praise. ~bells~ Everyone stands. I mean - I'm surprised that I remember any of this stuff and yet it's all locked away in there somewhere.

I grew up near a lake resort community. In the summer, our masses were filled with people from outside the parish who would beeline toward the exits as soon as they got the Communion. Our exasperated priest would then stick a THE LAKE WILL STILL BE THERE IF YOU WAIT line to each sermon until after Labor Day.

did anyone else attend a church where the music was provided by a terrifying organ from up in the rafters and the songs were led by someone from up in that area whose voice sounded like the end of 'black narcissus' felt?

exasperated priest otm

peacing out after the host just seems plain rude imo

one time, on exiting mass, the priest told me he saw that i wasn't singing

ENBB, it never leaves you, xpost.

What nerve you had!

(I never sang)

Rude, but practical. You can get to car faster and don't have to thank the priest on your way out.

My closest experience with Catholicism was when I was engaged (derp) a few years back, to someone who was a not-regularly-attending Catholic, but whose mother worked at a Catholic school and was tight with the ex-bishop, and way too much other baggage.

The weirdest thing to me was that they had this complex where they felt guilty that I didn't feel awkward. I met a priest or two, and went to a mass once and a funeral, but everyone was nice. I was apparently supposed to feel very awkward that I wasn't kneeling and taking communion and such?

The handshaking thing is a weird one. At that funeral, my girlfriend ended up hugging her mother first, and I knew what was going on but wanted to give her a hug first, too, because I was actually moved by the funeral, but she was kind of "ahh, you're doing it wrong" about the whole thing. Other than that, it's just like... whatever.

did anyone else attend a church where the music was provided by a terrifying organ from up in the rafters and the songs were led by someone from up in that area whose voice sounded like the end of 'black narcissus' felt?

ahaha

yeah differences in churches are weird, though. like i would go to this church when visiting relatives and they sat in cushioned chairs, like no pews. crazy.

Oh yeah, apparently we were going to be married by the ex-bishop? I could have sworn that wasn't allowed, but apparently if you're no longer the bishop, it's ok to do a "not official Catholic" wedding with an unbelieving groom.

x-post Oh the Church we went to in the winter had cushioned chairs rather than pews.

shit. now I have the priests "Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world have mercy on us" sing songy bit stuck in my head.

I think I told this story before on ILX but...

My friend's auntie married a Turkish man and brought him to mass in Ireland one time. And during the muttered "peace be with yous" he was beaming at everyone and saying "pleased to meet you!"

I was once at a friend's mother's funeral, when I was in my early 20s. A Jewish friend was there with me. We're sitting in the pew before the Mass starts and there are two women up in the choir loft, singing beautifully, just really lovely stuff. My Jewish friend turns to me and says, "man, that is lovely...but where is it coming from?" I turn to him, dead serious, and say, "They're ANGELS." He gets this totally amazed-but-what-the-fuck! look on his face for a moment before I continue, "y'see, Catholics are REALLY God's chosen people, so He lets us have angels for Mass!" He then gave me a noogie.

lol @ both those posts

i never took any non-catholic friends to mass with me, but my closest friends were all jewish and i remember being totally jealz of the cushioned seats in the synagogues when i went to their bar mitzvahs

also when we practiced communion rites in CCD my teacher used ritz crackers, which meant accepting the actual sub-rice-cake cardboard disc they give you at mass was a total bummer

told this story before on ilx, but anyhow... when i was like fourteen or so there was this one mass where a super-young priest visiting from some other parish did the service. his homily centered around the evils of masturbation. he started things off by saying something like "i know this is not exactly a popular topic nowadays" and i thought he was going to talk about how people should give more money to the church or how abortion is bad and wrong or something... but instead he talked for fifteen minutes or so about the evils of beating off. "That guilt is there for a reason!" is one of the things i remember him saying.

naturally, teenaged me was fairly mortified to have to sit through that particular lecture, but on a redemptive note one the way home my mom, bless her heart, was like "you know, i don't think that was really appropriate!" or something and then proceeded to rip him apart for other reasons...

nothing in the parts of the bible you read in church seems to back up god as being this sort of god.

That's funny, I would say pretty much THE ENTIRE OLD TESTAMENT backs up god as being this sort of god.

Remember that one time I was a child bride and got hitched to some old dude who was into robes? http://i53.tinypic.com/313hddv.jpg

I went to some sort of Protestant church with a childhood friend once and I was shocked that the pastor's wife was there, that in fact he had a wife. I didn't know that men of the lord could get married.

whoa x-post, again very grateful that no one in my church ever explicitly addressed sexuality in any way

it was such a great feeling the 4 or 5 times a year when my dad would, out of nowhere, motion for us to leave right after communion. you could always count on it on palm sunday, when he wanted to beat the traffic in the parking lot (strangely we never attended church on easter or christmas) and the rest of the time you just had to cross your fingers for a miracle

x-post to laurel yeah but i guess nowadays at least there's not that much focus on angry vengeful god.

Bad PR.

we always went to mass on xmas eve. my parents could never stay up late enough for midnight mass even though i kind of...still want to go to one someday?

I just remembered asking my mom why my dad didn't have to go to church (he was raised Lutheran but isn't religious at all) and when she told tell me it was because he wasn't Catholic I announced that I didn't want to be Catholic anymore either. She probably should have known then that it wasn't going to last.

My dad had the non-Catholic/non-religious get-out-of-church pass as well.

as she gets older my mom's threats to take us to midnight mass at christmas become more and more concrete

i noticed a laminated prayer card besides the ones that came from my grandparents' funerals tucked into the frame of her bedroom mirror last time i was over there. it could happen within the next 3-5 years

did anyone else attend a church where the music was provided by a terrifying organ from up in the rafters and the songs were led by someone from up in that area whose voice sounded like the end of 'black narcissus' felt?

― omar little, Friday, March 18, 2011 12:37 PM Bookmark

We went to a cathedral for awhile where the organist was up in the rafters, scoring Vincent Price movies. He had a little mirror above his head where he could see what was happening while he was playing. Before Mass as we would sit there, my dad would turn around in the pew and try to make dirty-eye contact with the dude.

Rude, but practical. You can get to car faster and don't have to thank the priest on your way out.

― Virginia Plain, Friday, March 18, 2011 12:40 PM Bookmark

Now, when we went to St. Mary's, mass would start at 11 a.m. The Casey Kasem Top 40 Countdown ended at 12. So at 11:55 when we could "go in peace", my step-brother and I would stiff-arm our way down the aisle and run to the car before we missed hearing what that week's No. 1 song was.

I went to some sort of Protestant church with a childhood friend once and I was shocked that the pastor's wife was there, that in fact he had a wife. I didn't know that men of the lord could get married.

I'm a laid-back guy, but what Protestants get away with during their services never fails to shock me a little.

The last time I went to any churches was before sunny got here as I was scouting out wedding locations. At the Presbyterian Church, I was getting tapped on the shoulder, asked my name and where I was from before the preacher even walked down the aisle. During his sermon, one woman balanced her checkbook.

I went to the Methodist church on Halloween that year. There were members of the congregation there in costume.

And I can't remember the denomination of the place that slapped me with a nametag as soon as I walked in the door.

The icons, the vestments, the incense… it may all seem a little strange, but this much I'll give to Catholics. At least we sit down and stfu instead of treating the Sabbath like it's a goddam Rotarians luncheon.

We got married in the lobby of a hotel converted into government housing, fwiw.

my step-brother and I would stiff-arm our way down the aisle and run to the car before we missed hearing what that week's No. 1 song was.

I used to do this while my parents chatted and had coffee after church. I'd hide in the car to listen to the countdown. Until they realized I was doing it, since I wasn't really supposed to listen to popular music EVER, and it was considered MORE egregious for having been done furtively on a SUNDAY of all times.

During his sermon, one woman balanced her checkbook.

lol

tbf, if you've ever been to a Presbytarian church you will immediately understand why sometimes catching up on your life tasks is preferable to paying any attention

that's pretty awesome, laurel

balancing checkbook at mass- 'the lord he giveth (DR), the lord he taketh away (CR)'

lolol darra!

highlight of mass for me was nodding to friends as they passed by in line for communion

or nodding and grinning, rather

or seeing the cute girls, that too

omg yeh

i love after the go and peace when you can get a barely palpable sense of relief in the "thanks be to god"...esp given irish people say "thanks be to god" to mean "thank fuck that's over" or whatever

not just irish people!

haha ah right i wasn't sure if that was just an irish thing or not!

There was a real dearth of cute Catholics in my church. For example, I don't recall ever seeing my CCD teacher's son there.

there was a really hot girl giving communion out at mass at christmas this year. i've never eaten a piece of plastic wafer so seductively in my life. i really tried to make a moment occur as she handed it to me, the setting just made me like her more. amen!

i am sort of an adult and fairly patient, don't mind waiting in long lines at the bank or whatever, but fuck, at this christmas mass i was fairly freaking out halfway through and i started almost sweating and i was thinking "okay i have done some really horrible things in this life and past ones and that's why i am here in this environment" and i completely resigned myself to the fact that i would be there forever

so basically hell for me is being in church.

ok new life goal for me = cruise someone in a church

people don't believe me when i tell them this, but where i grew up confirmation came round in the third grade! so i only had to go to CCD for like three years. reconciliation, communion, confirmation, bam. real quick.

of course the fucked-up part is that they were expecting 9-year olds to take on the precepts of this religion that no kid that age can really grasp, but, yeah...

Ronan, why was a lady giving out Communion? Are you sure you were at church, and not, um daydreaming?

xpost: Maybe they wanted to make sure they confirmed everyone before puberty?

Sometimes the parishioners hand out communion, right? I've sure I've seen a lady do so before.

i have def. had a lady give communion before

ok here's a good q

open mouth and tongue out or cupped hands?

Only one of these is right btw. Choose wisely.

Maybe they wanted to make sure they confirmed everyone before puberty?

yeah, i don't know... it was weird, though, b/c i had all these friends in (public) school who were still going to ccd in seventh grade. i guess i missed out? like i remember my one friend talking about this confirmation party they had in their class to which he brought non-alcoholic beer. and pretzels.

only ever done it cupped hands (main hand under the non-main hand)

open mouth and tongue out or cupped hands?

my next-door neighbor had this technique where he would accept it in cupped hands, and then instead of bringing a hand up to his mouth he would, like, eat out of his hands like it was a makeshift trough. sort of weird...

Yeah - that is incorrect form imo.

Yeah, I got confirmed in seventh grade, but trust me, you didn't miss anything.

My church must be super conservative; ladies don't do anything there but sing.

I only do cupped hands--open mouth seems way too forward.

If for any reason I found myself in a church these days I wouldn't take communion but when I was younger it was only cupped hands the way Donna described. The open mouth thing always did seem to forward and kind gross. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Is it just me or did it only seem to be older people who did/do that? Maybe that was once the way everyone was taught but it changed at some point?

I stopped taking communion in college, I think, because I didn't want to participate in a ritual that I no longer believed in, or believed in the reasons for. I always have to put my foot down, because in Protestant churches you don't have to be confirmed in that church or even that denomination to be included.

I also sang in the choir for Christmas Eve services with my parents a few times, and since in the Lutheran church, that service includes communion, I've been awkwardly on the dais sitting alone while the rest of row filed forward...but I don't really mind. I don't know if anyone else finds it strange, they've never said anything after the fact.

aybe that was once the way everyone was taught but it changed at some point?

Yes, it was.

As an altar boy you got to see some grossness.

x-post Yeah I stopped sometime in HS. I had to go to mass at school but they couldn't actually force you to take communion. TBH HS might have been the last time I actually set foot inside a church other than historic ones or for weddings.

And I did so for the reasons you cited Laurel. I felt ridiculous taking part in something that meant a lot to other people at yet nothing to me.

mouth open and tongue out is some weird shit

giving the body of christ a lick

nothing in the parts of the bible you read in church seems to back up god as being this sort of god.

That's funny, I would say pretty much THE ENTIRE OLD TESTAMENT backs up god as being this sort of god.

really. Jehovah = kind of a prick

I think I've mentioned I semi-regularly attend a gay Catholic org's Masses -- in an Episcopal church, bcz the NY diocese exiled them years ago -- and the Sign of Peace takes awhile. Lots of hugging.

xpost yeah but judaism (at least from my outsider's perspective) always seems like such a life-affirming tradition to me. confusing...

I really hope Ronan did the open mouth/tongue out pose with some "come hither" eye motions to that lady, though.

I think I've mentioned I semi-regularly attend a gay Catholic org's Masses -- in an Episcopal church, bcz the NY diocese exiled them years ago -- and the Sign of Peace takes awhile. Lots of hugging.

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius), Friday, March 18, 2011 3:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

LOL. Love this.

I still take communion (not that I have the opportunity to frequently). I don't care about it enough either way to not take it (though I guess I feel sort of hypocritical about it -- maybe everyone does?). And it's a good opportunity to get up and walk around, and, um, flirt with the priests, or whomever gives out the sacrament in your churches, I guess.

I remember always sorta wanting to do the toungue thing once I got up there because it just seemed so weird but I always chickened out.

Virg, off topic for a sec, I just emailed you but maybe you don't use that address anymore?? The 3@rthlink one.

tongue out seems a little too 'thorn birds'

omg Thorn Birds!!!!

yes.

I stopped taking Communion too. Kinda weird at first to just sit there in an empty pew, but hey.

My step-mother never took Communion. It took me awhile to find out why. She had divorced her first husband and then later, married my father (a Mormon, ha!) In her and her church's eyes, she was a practicing adulteress and that was all there was to that.

Big reason I left. I mean, c'mon.

And yeah, as an altar boy, I saw some gross ass tongues.

(@ L., That's the one. Just checked it, replied, etc. Man, this is such a day for slacking off.)

I did help someone find a daily prayer book earlier today.

Went to a Catholic school from first through eighth grade. After confirmation, I was out of there like a shot.

man NO ONE EVER GAVE ME A GOOD EXPLANATION. Every religion teacher, up to the moment of my Confirmation, was flummoxed. "Lesse, you guys know God The Father, and we've studied God The Son, and as for The Holy Spirit, well, see..." whereupon they start quoting Ben Kenobi in the first Star Wars.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:22 PM (4 minutes ago)

I don't recall a Star Wars part, but I had a very similar experience.

at my wedding last year i'm almost certain the rabbi quoted 'fellowship of the ring'

wrt discussion of saints earlier can i just

the saints and all the martyrs

only ever received communion the old open mouth way, that's pretty much how it was done in my parish through the 70s at least

Kind of weird reading about all you irregular attenders still taking communion - that's up there with some serious shit in the sins list in my part of the world.

agreed.

i mean you guys better hope it's all bullshit cos if not

never really heard that sin...and here i was thinking wanking would send me to hell.

is it a sin to enjoy a fine wine?

theologically I was aware that you weren't supposed to take communion unshriven but tbh it doesn't seem to stop my wife and I'm pretty sure she hasn't been to confession since the 1980s

confession...what a complete load of shit that was. even as a child i fabricated sins, obviously subconsciously realising how fucking weird it would be to tell a stranger something you genuinely felt bad about.

http://www.catholic.com/library/Who_Can_Receive_Communion.asp

To receive Communion worthily, you must be in a state of grace, have made a good confession since your last mortal sin, believe in transubstantiation, observe the Eucharistic fast, and, finally, not be under an ecclesiastical censure such as excommunication.

Out of habit and out of fear of what those around them will think if they do not receive Communion, some Catholics, in a state of mortal sin, choose to go forward and offend God rather than stay in the pew while others receive the Eucharist. The Church’s ancient teaching on this particular matter is expressed in the Didache, an early Christian document written around A.D. 70, which states: "Whosoever is holy [i.e., in a state of sanctifying grace], let him approach. Whosoever is not, let him repent" (Didache 10).

Not sure if it's habit or fear or if people just like queuing or something.

hot eucharistic ministers, we covered this

i just got bollocked, she last went in 2009 apparently

During an "All right, now does anyone have a question?" segment at the end of one of my fourth-grade religion classes, I asked my teacher if she knew whether St. Francis was vegetarian or ate meat -- if he ate meat, that would make him a pretty lousy animal protector. The class chuckled, the teacher said, "Very funny," and that was it. Thanks for your insight.

My church/school was named after St. Francis and I thought it was weird that all the fundraiser dinners centered around ham, turkey, chicken, steak.

The best part about going to church was sitting behind U-M basketball coach Steve Fisher and getting donuts afterward.

The best part about going to church with just my dad: being able to wear jeans and Starter jacket and bailing immediately after communion.

oh yeah, gettig ready for mass was the biggest pain in the arse. Getting your hair brushed with extreme prejudice, wearing the awful shite your mum had picked out the previous christmas that had to do you for the year, baths! Everything!

At least when i was 13 i could go on sat evening and chill with friends after, i was nearly big enough to dress myself at that stage

This thread is bringing back memories. When my mom, a nice Irish Catholic girl, married my dad, a WASP, they couldn't stand behind the alter, where the true devotees stand, but had to stand in front of the alter, where those embarking on "mixed marriages" were banished. This was probably better for her family than the fact that her older sister secretly eloped when she was a senior in high school, to an Irish Catholic but from the wrong side of the tracks, and didn't tell her parents until after she had graduated.

Cardinal Edward Egan Just Withdrew His Apology For The Catholic Sex-Abuse Scandal

I think you meant to post this in the 'shit that looks like an Onion article' thread... oh wait. :(

Jesus, Joseph and Mary, that blogger nails him but good. Deservedly so.

i thought the church was against withdrawal

Responding to the BBC ‘This World’ programme entitled ‘The Shame of the Catholic Church’, broadcast on 1 May 2012, Cardinal Seán Brady has issued the following statement:

On Tuesday 1 May 2012, the BBC ‘This World’ series broadcast a programme entitled ‘The Shame of the Catholic Church’ on the BBC Northern Ireland network. In the course of the programme a number of claims were made which overstate and seriously misrepresent my role in a Church Inquiry in 1975 into allegations against the Norbertine priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

In response to the programme I wish to draw attention to the following:

Six weeks before broadcast (15 March 2012) I drew the attention of the programme makers to a number of important facts related to the 1975 Church inquiry into Brendan Smyth, which the programme failed to report and which I now wish to restate for all other media who report on this matter:

• To suggest, as the programme does, that I led the investigation of the 1975 Church Inquiry into allegations against Brendan Smyth is seriously misleading and untrue. I was asked by my then Bishop (Bishop Francis McKiernan of the Diocese of Kilmore) to assist others who were more senior to me in this Inquiry process on a one-off basis only;
• The documentation of the interview with Brendan Boland, signed in his presence, clearly identifies me as the ‘notary’ or ‘note taker’. Any suggestion that I was other than a ‘notary’ in the process of recording evidence from Mr Boland, is false and misleading;
• I did not formulate the questions asked in the Inquiry process. I did not put these questions to Mr Boland. I simply recorded the answers that he gave;
• Acting promptly and with the specific purpose of corroborating the evidence provided by Mr Boland, thereby strengthening the case against Brendan Smyth, I subsequently interviewed one of the children identified by Mr Boland who lived in my home diocese of Kilmore. That I conducted this interview on my own is already on the public record. This provided prompt corroboration of the evidence given by Mr Boland;
• In 1975 no State or Church guidelines existed in the Republic of Ireland to assist those responding to an allegation of abuse against a minor. No training was given to priests, teachers, police officers or others who worked regularly with children about how to respond appropriately should such allegations be made;
• Even according to the State guidelines in place in the Republic of Ireland today, the person who first receives and records the details of an allegation of child abuse in an organisation that works with children is not the person who has responsibility within that organisation for reporting the matter to the civil authorities. This responsibility belongs to the ‘Designated person’ appointed by the organisation and trained to assume that role. In 1975, I would not have been the ‘Designated Person’ according to today’s guidelines. As the Children First State guidelines explain (3.3.1):‘Every organisation, both public and private, that is providing services for children or that is in regular direct contact with children should (i) Identify a designated liaison person to act as a liaison with outside agencies and a resource person to any staff member or volunteer who has child protection concerns.(ii) The designated liaison person is responsible for ensuring that the standard reporting procedure is followed, so that suspected cases of child neglect or abuse are referred promptly to the designated person in the HSE Children and Family Services or in the event of an emergency and the unavailability of the HSE, to An Garda Síochána.’;
• The commentary in the programme and much of the coverage of my role in this Inquiry gives the impression that I was the only person who knew of the allegations against Brendan Smyth at that time and that because of the office I hold in the Church today I somehow had the power to stop Brendan Smyth in 1975. I had absolutely no authority over Brendan Smyth. Even my Bishop had limited authority over him. The only people who had authority within the Church to stop Brendan Smyth from having contact with children were his Abbot in the Monastery in Kilnacrott and his Religious Superiors in the Norbertine Order. As Monsignor Charles Scicluna, Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed in an interview with RTÉ this morning, it was Brendan Smyth’s superiors in the Norbertine Order who bear primary responsibility for failing to take the appropriate action when presented with the weight of evidence I had faithfully recorded and that Bishop McKiernan subsequently presented to them;
• The following statement from Monsignor Scicluna had been made to the BBC programme makers six weeks in advance of its broadcast but was not acknowledged by them in any way: ‘It is clear to me that in 1975 Fr Brady, now Cardinal Brady, acted promptly and with determination to ensure the allegations being made by the children were believed and acted upon by his superiors. His actions were fully consistent with his duties under canon law. But the power to act effectively to remove Brendan Smyth from priestly ministry lay exclusively with the Abbot of Holy Trinity Abbey in Kilnacrott and his superiors in the Norbertine Order. This is where the sincere efforts of Bishop McKiernan and others like Fr Brady to prevent Brendan Smyth from perpetrating further harm were frustrated, with tragic consequences for the lives of so many children. I know that in his role as President of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Brady has worked tirelessly with his fellow bishops to ensure such a situation could never occur again and that the civil authorities in Ireland are now promptly informed of allegations of abuse against children. We have all learned from the tragic experience of the Church in Ireland but also from the sincere efforts of so many lay faithful, religious, priests and bishops to make the Church in Ireland an example of best practice in safeguarding children.’;
• In fact, I was shocked, appalled and outraged when I first discovered in the mid 1990’s that Brendan Smyth had gone on to abuse others. I assumed and trusted that when Bishop McKiernan brought the evidence to the Abbot of Kilnacrott that the Abbot would then have dealt decisively with Brendan Smyth and prevented him from abusing others. With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the Church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past;
• As to other children named in the evidence recorded during the Inquiry process, I had no further involvement in the Inquiry process once I handed over the evidence taken. I trusted that those with the authority to act in relation to Brendan Smyth would treat the evidence seriously and respond appropriately. I had no such authority to act and even by today’s guidance from the State I was not the person who had the role of bringing the allegations received to the attention of the civil authorities. I was also acutely aware that I had no authority in Church law in relation to Brendan Smyth or any other aspect of the Inquiry process;
• Today, Church policy in Ireland is to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. It recognises the Gardai and HSE as those with responsibility for investigating such allegations and that any Church investigation should not take place until the investigation by the civil authorities has been completed. I have fully supported this policy and have worked with my fellow Bishops and the leaders of Religious Congregations to put this policy in place;
• The programme made reference to a statement I made in the course of an RTE interview in which I suggested that if my failure to act on an allegation of abuse against a child led to further children being abused, that I would then consider resigning from my position. The programme failed to point out, however, that I gave this answer in response to a question specifically about someone in a position of ‘Management’, someone who was already a Bishop or Religious Superior with ultimate responsibility for managing a priest against whom an allegation has been made. In 1975, I was not a Bishop. I was not in that role. It was misleading of the BBC programme to apply my response to the RTE interview on a completely different situation to my role in the 1975 Inquiry.

It is my view that the ‘This World’ programme has set out to deliberately exaggerate and misrepresent my role in these events. The programme suggested that no response to their questions had been provided before the programme was completed, whereas in fact a comprehensive response had been provided to the programme six weeks in advance and only days after the ‘door-stepping’ interview with me in Limerick.

I deeply regret that those with the authority and responsibility to deal appropriately with Brendan Smyth failed to do so, with tragic and painful consequences for those children he so cruelly abused. I also deeply regret that no guidelines from the State or the Church were available to guide the sincere and serious effort made to respond to the allegations made by the two boys interviewed in the Inquiry process. With many others who worked regularly with children in 1975, I regret that our understanding of the full impact of abuse on the lives of children as well as the pathology and on-going risk posed by a determined paedophile was so inadequate. It is important to acknowledge that today both the Church and the State have proper and robust procedures in place to respond to allegations of abuse against children. I fully support these new procedures which include the obligation to report such allegations promptly to the civil authorities. I have worked with others in the Church to put these new procedures in place and I look forward to continuing that vital work in the years ahead.

The Cardinal told RTÉ News in an interview, broadcast in December 2009 after the publication of the Murphy Report, that he was confident Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick will “do the right thing” in terms of considering his position in the wake of criticism in the Dublin diocesan report.[17] He also said in that interview “If I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then, I think I would resign.”

If I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then, I think I would resign.

ur bad at resigning imo

maybe this is the better thread for this

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/us/nuns-speak-about-vatican-criticism.html?ref=us

"The Vatican ordered a “doctrinal assessment” of the women’s leadership conference in 2008 after years of concerns about its direction. The conference was formed in 1956 to provide communication and coordination among communities of sisters, and is a canonical organization, which means it answers to the Vatican. The assessment concluded that the leadership conference had hosted speakers who “often contradict or ignore” church teaching; had never revoked a statement from 1977 that questioned the male-only priesthood, and focused their efforts on serving the poor and disenfranchised, while remaining virtually silent on issues the church considers great societal evils: abortion and same-sex marriage."

yeah you don't say. as usual the nuns are fuckin awesome

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Saturday, June 2, 2012 1:54 AM (15 hours ago)

http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-president-speaks-pain-and-process

im. surfing channels and came up on the weird religion channels and we're one of them now (fair enough obv) and theyre having a mass for the CLOSING OF THE HOLY DOOR why has this mystical shit been kept hidden from us i would totally have stuck out my teens in a religion with cool fantasy titles like that

door opens to the vortex of limbo iirc

bit fucked that its only coming up as a priority now wha

a few christmases ago the priest gave a strangely retro sermon in which he talked about hell and stuff, and along the way he stressed the need for us to reject "the glamour of evil"

it was a phrase i'd never heard before and it made me want to be evil more than i imagined possible.

bishops vs DT

http://www.austindailyherald.com/2016/11/bishops-ask-trump-for-humane-immigration-policies/

I'm seriously not making this up, but at St Bernadette's Church (v small, old post-war cinema in middle of large council estate converted into a church) in Bradley, Hudds. We had a psycho/pedo priest. His sermon was once along the lines of "what I do in my time is none of your business - unless I'm committing mortal sins by the book - gtf out of my face". This guy sexually abused loads of kids in Plymouth and Bradford before he landed on this gig and got a long prison sentence in the 90's. He scared the shit out of me back then and knew it. I put my hand out for the holy communion host once, and he boomed "ARE YOU A CATHOLIC?" right in front of the whole congregation and even my older sis was so paralysed with fucking primal catholic fear she didn't dare say shit to stick up for me.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Catholic+priest+is+jailed+for+sex+attacks+on+boys.-a061434015

This is the one, I might have got his CV a bit wrong from memory - but this is him.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44169484

all of chile's bishops offer the pope their resignations over their part in sexual abuse scandals

My favorite Catholicism thread on ILX.