Ask A Catholic

I left the Church years ago (tried to go back a few years ago in the midst of a personal crisis and almost made it but I believe in a woman's right to choose, that is final, the Church and I will never see eye to eye on this) but used to teach the Catechism. I know there are plenty of Religious Education/CCD survivors here, too, happy to answer questions, because once you're Catholic, you love Catholicism forever in some way or another: it doesn't wash off. What do you want to know about our super-occult image-rich original-colonialist tradition? Ask away!

Oh oh I have a question!

Can you explain the Immaculate Conception a bit more? Like, how is that possible? How is it connected to St Anne being a saint?

The Catholicism Thread

schism!

was to be expected, really

lapsed catholic here, have no interest in going back.

girlfriend's at this point pretty much firmly outside the church (this was a gradual process) because of lots of things but mostly that same issue. but yeah it's never really gonna leave her. she tried briefly to be a unitarian (like p.j. funnybunny, the bunny who did not want to be a bunny) but that didn't work.

itt Alfred, Lord Sotosyn is Henry VIII...

have no interest in any organized religion. fucking daycare provider took my son to ash wednesday and had ashes put on him....NOT HAPPY.

Catholicism is for lyfe in a way that other denominations aren't. I am not a "lapsed Evangelical", for instance.

aerosmith,

Something I've always wondered about: Why do Catholics revere the symbol of the crucifix when a) it was just the most common Roman instrument used for putting people to death, and b) it was the method used to kill Jesus.

Dear AAC:

I was raised Anglican, mostly High Church style, was even an acolyte, let active belief fall away from me gradually and have been a fairly content agnostic since I was twenty or so. I've always wondered if my joke that being raised Anglican means you get all of the ceremonies of Catholicism but none of the Catholic guilt is true and from the sound of it it is (thus your opening words), I certainly don't remember any particular focus on the idea of guilt as intrinsic in my religious upbringing as such, and might explain why I found it so easy to let go. Is it something that is ingrained from the start in any/all Catholic religious instruction?

Yours,
The Guy Whose Dad is the Only Active Anglican In My Family Anymore

fuck that chris! "how about a separation, not so much between church and state but between my child's forehead and your ashy finger"

itt Alfred, Lord Sotosyn is Henry VIII...

I'd love to have been pope during this period.

apparently when my mom was little her dad would very occasionally bust out some wine for dinner and his line was always "tonight i thought we could be episcopalian"

I find the dis "cafeteria Catholic" hilarious, ie one can't pick & choose which dogma to embrace. Pretty much every Catholic does this, being human.

xpost -- Hero.

Something I've always wondered about: Why do Catholics revere the symbol of the crucifix when a) it was just the most common Roman instrument used for putting people to death, and b) it was the method used to kill Jesus.

You just answered your own questions! Seriously – we revel in masochism. The veneration (not worship) of the crucifix is a reminder of what Our Lord endured for our sakes.

repurposing of the crucifix is actually like in my top five favorite things about christianity

xpost -- Then Alfred why don't you do what they do in Orthodox ceremonies and stand up straight through three hour services?

yeah she was all "i washed them off". lady it ain't your right to do that.

I certainly don't remember any particular focus on the idea of guilt as intrinsic in my religious upbringing as such,

Maybe I was privileged in this regard, but as a Catholic school attendee for 12 years I never got the guilt. Maybe it was a post Vatican II phenomenon? My mom, however, got nothing but guilt.

Why do/did Christians hate Jews for killing Christ when He* had to die for our sins so that we can go to Heaven?

(*still a believer, so all pronouns capitalized...)

Then Alfred why don't you do what they do in Orthodox ceremonies and stand up straight through three hour services?

Because Fr. Frank forces us to say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys for masturbating in the bathroom.

I know that's not meant as a non-sequitur, and yet.

the whole ecce homo bit and he died for your sins is the main thing i took from going to church between the age of 3 or 4 and 15 or 16. crucifix probably the least inexplicable thing about the whole shennanigans.

catholics no longer believe that jews killed christ. apart from weird ones like mel gibo who go against the contemporary teaching of the church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes#Suspected_to_have_had_male_lovers_during_pontificate

Lenny Bruce said Catholics would wear electric chairs around their necks if Jesus had been a 20th-century martyr.

xxxxp (*as if the switch from third- to first-person ("us") didn't already tip you off...)

Doesn't Mel Gibson follow an anti-pope?

i'm lapsed, but still feel like a catholic. I never got the political drubbing about abortion etc at my catholic school (which wasn't associated with a diocese and had very few people from the church involved in it). as a result I don't have that kind of grudge against the church. but knowing that is there makes me resist going back to it (even though I live in a really liberal area where I'm sure 75% of the catholics at the churches near me probably are not in line with traditional church thinking on this topic).

if i was going to let something temporal about the church bother me it would more be the endemic child fucking and covering-up there of than the backwards views on abortion that would piss me off.

but it's just the whole kit and kaboodle that i'm put off by so i needn't worry.

Christianity in general makes me so angry, Catholicism only even more so, I try not to be baited too often. But I also have a weird history of being a very serious-minded kid in a super Evangelical community with no outside influences to level me out, so it's not really the usual thing.

as a catholic school person for 12 i never got the guilt. again, prolly cuz i was thrown out of CCD in 8th grade for farting.

well here's what has always confused me about the crucifixion narrative. on one hand (and this obv varies by what gospel you're reading too) it's a negative account where Jesus either has to forgive the ppl killing him (they know not what they have done) or is in crisis (why have you forsaken me), etc. but in other accounts or maybe other hermeneutical traditions it is a very positive event and he died for humanity's sins, or his death was a gift to us (in its atonement), etc. so re the second interpretation it makes sense that you'd wear a crucifix (maybe. it was still a very common event to be crucified so it doesn't seem like a great grower as a symbol of a new religion -- tho i imagine without any historical background in this area that probably the icon emerged long enough after the Roman empire that this didn't appear to be so bizarre). has the first account (despite being canonized primarily in Mark) mostly been ignored in the main Catholic narrative or what?

Also I tried to find things to carry with me, maybe just from the "spiritual practice" side of what I was taught, but I feel more and more certain as time passes that there's absolutely nothing salvageable there.

"forgiveness" a pretty good one i thought but w/ever

(i have the kinda-luxury of having been brought up Nothing so everything looks way better to me than it does to people who were brought up Something)

Mordy, one of the motives behind adopting the crucifix WAS its commonness and lowliness. It was the death of thieves and murders and rapists, the lowest thing that Our Lord could be subjected to. This is common across all Christianity, I think -- not specific to Catholics, although the rest of us don't portray the human form on the cross in our iconography.

xxxp I think it's the being rose again after three days that turns the crucifixion into a victory:

on one hand (and this obv varies by what gospel you're reading too) it's a negative account where Jesus either has to forgive the ppl killing him (they know not what they have done) or is in crisis (why have you forsaken me), etc. but in other accounts or maybe other hermeneutical traditions it is a very positive event and he died for humanity's sins, or his death was a gift to us (in its atonement), etc

these all go together and are not contradictory:

he forgives the people killing him -his followers, the crowd who choose barabas etc.- because he is the ever forgiving christ-god who dies for us in order to wash away our original sin even though we've gone against him and aren't worthy of such a sacrific.

he is in crisis because, although divine, he is human and wrestles with his predicament and torture until reaching acceptance and understanding of it.

xxp yeah iirc (and maybe i do not rc) the crucifix was in use as a symbol from the religion's earliest beginnings as a roman cult. it is a really neat defiant thing, i think! and what laurel says about connecting the holiness of the godhead to the lowliness of the lowest is also def true.

yeah and also don't underestimate the attraction of sheer maudlin morbidity

oh man I got onto other stuff and now there's a lot of questions

Something I've always wondered about: Why do Catholics revere the symbol of the crucifix when a) it was just the most common Roman instrument used for putting people to death, and b) it was the method used to kill Jesus.

well, it's not just Catholics - that's all Christians. Crosses everywhere. It's a paradox, kind of your classic Jesus paradox: Jesus came to save you. You love him for that, right? Assuming you accept that you were damned & were likely going to Hell, this Dude came to take your place, because He loved you exactly as you were, warts and all. You on your worst day, He still loves that person enough to die in his place. Presumably you love Him back for that, but He has to die to accomplish the work of grace. So the cross on which He dies in transformed into an instrument of triumph; the instrument of His demise becomes the sign by which those redeemed by Him recognize one another and gain comfort and fellowship.

this is not a specifically Catholic teaching but it's the cross as I understand it.

NB I do not still actually believe much of this but I'm willing to offer defences as long as people don't talk like "oh ua believes all this stuff," I don't, I'm just intimate with it

The English theologian John Bale attributed to Pope Sixtus "the authorisation to practice sodomy during periods of warm weather."

i'm hazy on this but i think the cross took a while to really take off as The Symbol of the church. the fish was the 'sign' among believers for a good long time

xp Didn't you know? Anal keeps you cool.

I actually see more people with fish pendants and fish symbols on cars than crosses and crucifixes.

evangelicals love all the 'early church' stuff

stories like this would have entertained me more than the usual homilies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_the_Great

Anthony found next the satyr, "a manikin with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goats's feet."

This creature was peaceful and offered him fruits, and when Anthony asked who he was, the satyr replied,
"I'm a mortal being and one of those inhabitants of the desert whom the Gentiles, deluded by various forms of error,
worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe.
We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favor of your Lord and ours, who, we have learnt, came once to save the world, and 'whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.'" Upon hearing this, Anthony was overjoyed and rejoiced over the glory of Christ. He condemned the city of Alexandria for worshipping monsters instead of God while beasts like the satyr spoke about Christ.[29]

Writing up that "Vatican Miracle Examiners" anime yesterday had me thinking about Roman Catholic religious doctrine. The anime had some pretty, uh, unorthodox interpretations of Catholic morality and canon law, but there was some stuff that the people who catechized me would totally be on board with. I've seen some people freak out about Ouija boards or whatever but growing up what I learned was more along the lines of "Oh, whatever, it's not like you're not summoning actual demons or anything."

I say that, but of course I'm not an expert on Roman Catholic religious doctrine. Yeah, I was baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, but I'm not a practicing Catholic or anything. I think of being a Catholic kind of like I think about being a man - I was born and people said "OK, this is what you are, here's what you need to do," and I tried pretty hard, and it just didn't work out for me.

The Catholic Church, though, the sense I get from them is that they got this attitude of "We love you, please call collect" towards me. Like how the Pope is still like saying to the Orthodox Church "Look, we want to heal this so-called Great Schism. Just accept Papal authority and say you believe all the same stuff that we believe and none of the stuff we don't believe, and we can get past this awful misunderstanding."

I know the Catholic Church can sometimes excommunicate people as heretics or whatever, but I feel like it's not something they do a lot? It's like "papal infallibility", the Pope _can_ speak "ex cathedra", from the Chair of St. Peter, but he usually doesn't. Personally I suspect it's because they don't want one of their successors to treat them the way Pope Formosus' successor treated him, but I don't know that for sure.

To the best of my understanding, I'm confirmed as a Roman Catholic, but I'm in a state of "mortal sin" - that I'm not eligible to receive the eucharist until I reconcile myself with the Church. And I guess any priest can do that - like I could go to a priest and confess my sins and he could say "In the name of Christ I forgive you, your penance is to say three Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, and don't do it again." I once read a story of a longtime Boston gangster who repented and was given the same ecclesiastical penance. I mean he still had to account for his crimes in a court of law. It didn't mean he didn't have to serve out the rest of his sentence. It kinda reminds me of when I hear therapists talking about their job. A lot of therapists say yeah, our patients are really ashamed of a lot of the stuff in their past and they don't want to tell us, and they have no idea the shit we've heard. They're really ashamed of something and don't want to tell us and it's just not the big deal they think it is, and things would go a lot better for them if they would just tell us. I mean if a therapist, who's very much human, feels that way, I can't imagine God would be any less forgiving.

Nah the sticking point is "don't do it again". This is all kind of new to me, so I'm not sure what the "it" in this case would be. I know if someone's a cisgender homosexual and comes to the Church, in that case the official doctrine is "don't do gay stuff", which is kind of a broad remit. For the record I also think it's morally reprehensible, to say God only loves you if you don't do gay stuff. I'm not actually planning on reconciling with the Mother Church. Mostly I just want to know what reconciliation looks like from their perspective.

I'm pretty sure I'm in a state of mortal sin, technically speaking, but I'm not entirely sure what my mortal sins _are_. I'm not sure the Church knows entirely what my mortal sins are. I mean that's the thing about Catholicism, it's a very complicated religion and it's not one that has a lot of loopholes. For instance, when I was young, I learned about the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which forbids contraception as a violation of the "ethic of life", and there are a lot of Catholics who are very serious about that, and most of the Catholics I grew up around weren't. They'd point out yeah OK the Pope said that but he didn't say it _ex cathedra_, he didn't say "Simon Says no condoms" or "sudo no condoms" or whatever.

And maybe that's the standard. Maybe me taking E is kind of like Catholics using condoms, yeah the Pope _says_ you shouldn't do it and there are a lot of people who will say it puts you in a state of mortal sin, but ALMIGHTY GOD doesn't say that. Probably if I found the right parish and the archbishop didn't crack down on them, like the superconservative archbishop around here does, I could do that, right?

Except wearing condoms is, we'll say for the sake of argument, a private act. I may not take E in public, but I go out in public every day and call myself Kate and use she/her pronouns and tell people I'm a woman. Is that, in and of itself, a mortal sin? In order to be reconciled with the Mother Church, would I have to tell people I was a man? I mean I guess it's not that much worse than telling gay people they have to stop doing gay stuff, but damn, it would affect every single minute of my life.

But, I guess, it's not fundamentally any different from the Catholic Church's desire to reconcile with the Orthodox Church. I just don't know why they expect anybody to take them seriously!

Chicago Pope bringin' the hammer down!

Members of rebel Catholic group in schism, excommunicated, Vatican says

The Vatican said on Thursday that priests and lay Catholics who are ​part of a breakaway right-wing Catholic group that ordained bishops without Pope Leo's approval were in schism with the wider Church and now excommunicated.

In a strong ‌decree, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the top watchdog authority for the 1.4-billion-member Church, also warned Catholics globally that the Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X now celebrated the sacraments illicitly.

The ultra-traditionalist group, which denies key Church teachings, cannot officiate marriages or hear confessions validly, the decree said.

It is a strict teaching of the Church that only the pope can authorize the ​consecration of new bishops, in order to maintain the Church's ties to Jesus' 12 apostles, who are considered the first priests and bishops.

The Society was ​not available for immediate comment on the Vatican decree. One member of the group, who said he was not authorized ⁠to speak but identified himself as Father Benedict, told Reuters after a Mass in Econe, Switzerland he expected the group would just continue on as before.

...

The Church considers unauthorized ordination of bishops as so serious that it causes those taking part in the ceremony to be automatically excommunicated, or "out of communion" with the wider Church, and unable to receive sacraments until they repent ​and ask for forgiveness.

Thursday's decree said the two bishops leading the unauthorized ordination, held in Switzerland on Wednesday, had been excommunicated, along with the four priests who ​had become new bishops, which was widely expected.

However, the Vatican went further than expected and said that all priests of the Society of St. Pius X and all Catholics who "adhere formally" ‌to the ⁠group were now in schism and excommunicated.

love ite

You can take a Pope out of Chicago...

Those "ultra-traditionalist" Society of St. Pius X schismatics should have known better than to bring mere traditions to a doctrinal gunfight with a Chicago pope.

should mention that the main beef these people have with the church is that post second vatican council, they have been much too friendly to jews for their taste. john paul II obvs hated nazis and did the first expulsion, the hitler youth pope was much more sympathetic and invited them back, francis put the squeeze on again and now leo is laying down the banhammer.

I got no real dog in this fight but was glad to see the papal smack down... and excommunication is no joke, those people can't even take communion in a non St Pius X church

yeah excommunication is serious business

i'm not sure i've even been excommunicated. like don't get me wrong i'm almost certainly in a state of mortal sin, but to my knowledge i'm not excommunicated.

excommunication is like, when you get a "13 week trial subscription" of rolling stone and then one day they actually _stop_ sending you issues

the church doesn't undertake that lightly, it adversely affects their circ numbers, thus lowering their advertising rates

my mum was told not to come back to mass after she got divorced, managed to sneak back in when she moved town though

the excitement among progressive-leaning Catholic-in-the-wool-but-don't-go-to-Mass-now fellow Catholics on this is through the roof. Lefebvre's guys have been assholes forever and Ratzinger liked them, because he was a bad actor. Welcome back to reality "trads"

my mum was told not to come back to mass after she got divorced, managed to sneak back in when she moved town though

― Here is the mentioned donkey, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, July 2, 2026 12:43 PM (forty-one minutes ago)

ok i looked it up, that's not excommunication

what pope leo imposed seems to be "ferendae sententiae", or a formal excommunication performed through a canon law process

some random parish priest can't just say "you're not allowed to go to mass anymore". if he says "you're in a state of mortal sin, i'm not gonna give you the eucharist and nobody else should either", that's fine, but that's not excommunication. like i said, i'm almost certainly in a state of mortal sin, which means i'm not allowed to receive the eucharist until i'm reconciled with the church. i still count as catholic, tho.

now, there's also something called "latae sententiae", which is, like, auto-excommunication. like, apparently if you get an abortion you're automatically excommunicated. yeah nobody actually cares about this. a lot of the time this is something called an "occult excommunication" - if nobody knows about it, nobody's going to make a big deal about it. this attitude is kind of fundamental to catholicism and it causes a _lot_ of problems. frankly i feel like canon law would be better off jettisoning the idea of "latae sententiae" altogether.

so for instance, these nazi fuckers were, based on my reading of the quote above, already excommunicated through "latae sententiae", as the 1983 code of canon law applies latae sententiae on "a bishop who ordains someone a bishop without a papal mandate, and the person who receives the ordination from him" (just skimming wikipedia here, no i'm not an authority on canon law lol). not only that, but "occult" excommunication wouldn't really apply here, because these nazi fuckers were doing this in public. it was pretty clear that the pope hadn't authorized them to do the ordinations. it was pretty clear that they were doing it anyway. according to "latae sententiae" they were already excommunicated. if "latae sententiae" excommunication really mattered, leo wouldn't have felt the need to pronounce ferendae sententiae against them.

looking at wikipedia's summary of latae sententiae excommunications, i don't _think_ any of them apply to me. this is another problem with latae sententiae - under it, someone can be excommunicated and _not actually know it_. i understand the secular doctrine that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", but really, we're dealing with schroedinger's excommunication here. there are plenty of catholic women who have had abortions. i'd wager (against pascal) that the majority of them didn't know that, per 1983 canon law, getting an abortion auto-excommunicated them under latae sententiae. this is absolutely absurd. ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but canon law has for centuries been an obscure, if not actually _secret_, process. hardly any of the laity understand what it means for a priest to speak "ex cathedra", let alone the finer points of excommunication! laws this poorly explicated and badly enforced are very nearly no law. leo knows by what authority he speaks, but that authority is of secondary importance for the purpose of his decree. the law i recognize and respect here is the one apparent to secular observers: "fuck you, you nazi pricks".

Welcome back to reality "trads"

isn't Vance into this shit? i.e. only latin masses, etc.

I only go to Latin masses. if I can understand what the priest is saying that ruins it for me.

well I'm glad Usha told him to go eat a wafer, she's sticking with Ganesh

my mum was told not to come back to mass after she got divorced, managed to sneak back in when she moved town though

Yeah, my mom had to go through a whole thing after her divorce. I was only like 11 so I didn't pay much attention to it, but we kept right on going to mass, and nowadays she's one of the lectors (lectrices?) at her current church and does a shit-ton of charity work for them and others, so I guess they're cool with it. She's got a decent sense of humor about the church - when Leo was elected I texted her "The new pope's not a Nazi! That's two in a row!" and got a laugh emoji back.

isn't Vance into this shit? i.e. only latin masses, etc.

yes. the tradcaths include a lot of converts, and in the end it's really just that they covet the global reach of the Church, the imprimatur, and there's also a fair degree of fetishism in it. there's a joke about how tradcaths will tell you all about the 2nd council of Nicaea etc etc and go on all day but baptismal Catholics will meanwhile be asking where's the potato salad. Vance is your classic convert. thinks he knows better than the Pope because he's quick on the draw. but the vibe will forever elude him.

excommunication is, tbf, a joke

"you don't get to talk to god through this thing we made up anymore"

"oh ok"

my mum was told not to come back to mass after she got divorced, managed to sneak back in when she moved town though

They reverse the polarity on your signs of the cross. So god isn't listening to your prayers and is listening to your pooping.

there's also a fair degree of fetishism

i.e. the Jackie O cosplay veils

Claire has been great on this the last few days

https://bsky.app/profile/clairewillett.bsky.social/post/3mpowyfvn7s2o

excommunication is, tbf, a joke

this response may not be as easy to front for Catholics who make a big show of how "traditional" they are, but I'm sure that won't stop them from trying to out-pope the pope

yeah Claire's posts are so key

yes. the tradcaths include a lot of converts, and in the end it's really just that they covet the global reach of the Church, the imprimatur, and there's also a fair degree of fetishism in it. there's a joke about how tradcaths will tell you all about the 2nd council of Nicaea etc etc and go on all day but baptismal Catholics will meanwhile be asking where's the potato salad. Vance is your classic convert. thinks he knows better than the Pope because he's quick on the draw. but the vibe will forever elude him.

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, July 2, 2026 2:56 PM (one hour ago)

my family experience with catholicism is that it has been Very Complicated

the patriarch of my family was a Kennedy Catholic. before '63, it was kinda hard to be Catholic who was conservative in the, uh, American political sense, because anti-Catholicism was part and parcel of American Conservatism. people still talked a lot about "WASPs" (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) when I was young, and my parents and grandparents did think of themselves as Irish Catholic. I expect that deems, rightfully, finds that concept hilarious - my mom's generation are fourth-generation Americans - but you can still see the traces of it - Italian Catholic parishes, Irish Catholic, Polish Catholic. This morning I was walking by a church that sells pierogies every Saturday.

From what I can tell anti-Catholic prejudice went away pretty darn quick after the Kennedy assassination. I grew up in the suburbs and went to a suburban church that wasn't associated with any particular ethnic group. They did a lot of the "guitar mass" stuff. Carey Landry, S.J., a lot of that stuff got played at Mass when I grew up. It was the post-Vatican II thing. Very "Up With People", very "Godspell".

It's not like the abortion thing came out of nowhere. I grew up learning about Archbishop Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day, and sure, that's part of the Tradition, but Catholicism has always been _very patriarchal_. Celibate priests. No contraception. No abortion. Vatican II made a lot of significant changes, and growing up, like, the Catholics I grew up around talked around Humanae Vitae a lot. Humanae Vitae, that was a 1968 encyclical by Paul VI that reinforced the anti-contraception line. And there is this tradition, in Roman Catholicism, if you don't agree with something you give lip service to it and then you take a very broad interpretation of what it says. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission? In Roman Catholicism, that's literally a fuckin' sacrament, haha.

Catholicism, you compromise, you're discreet, you keep quiet about things, you don't make a big deal about stuff in public. A lot of churches have a lot of closets with a lot of skeletons in them. 100 years ago the worst things Catholics did, if the WASPs found out about it they acted like _all_ Catholics were like that. So, you know, nobody was gonna go telling the WASPs. You learn through experience if you try to address this stuff outside the community, it causes problems.

From what I can see, all the "pass the potato salad", "pass the ziti" religions are dying. The cultural memory of that... it doesn't last for more than a lifetime. There isn't shared struggle. I have my beliefs and my values and, as much as it pains me to say it, Mrs. Pinto's incredible ziti is not a sustainable cross-generational basis for a healthy religious community. It does pain me to say it, for the record. It was AMAZING ziti. And, I mean, I was just a white kid. I didn't feel any special bond with other Catholics growing up.

My grandparents were Kennedy liberals, read the New Republic, supported unions, didn't make a big hue and cry about abortion, and were very fucking homophobic. They wouldn't have accepted me, if they'd been alive when I'd come out. Yeah, everyone in my generation loved John XXIII, and there was no chance, you know, of letting women be priests, letting married people be priests. Because the thing that Catholicism has insisted on for many, many, many years is that there is a division between things Men can do and things Women can do. And it just _happens_ that all of the most powerful and exalted roles are reserved for men.

I don't see it as a coincidence that Catholicism has such a hard line on abortion. It's politics - what you talk about, what you don't talk about. Yeah, Pope Francis was a much more... he had much more of a focus on economic equity than his predecessor. And he got a lot of good press for that. And probably a lot of people aren't aware of what he said about trans people, about the way that the whole concept of "gender ideology" is a Roman Catholic theological construct. Pope Francis, he had this audacious, incredibly audacious thing, just... a perfect encapsulation of how I view Jesuits (the patriarch of my family got his law degree from a Jesuit legal school - that worldview runs deep in my family). He accuses "gender ideology" of being a form of _cultural imperialism_. For a JESUIT, of all people, to say this - I think it's worthy of that old joke about the boy who murdered his parents and threw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.

It's very nice that Leo is willing to call out Nazis but there really isn't a diverse, lively discussion about things like women becoming priests. When it comes to gender, well, me doing what I does, according to Pope Francis, "disfigures the face of Man and Woman". I'm pleased to learn that my taking estrogen _doesn't_ incur auto-excommunication under current canon law, unlike getting an abortion, and, I mean, there's no reason for me to think that there'd be any reason for them to treat my taking estrogen any differently. They could write that into canon law at any time and it would be entirely uncontroversial. I mean I couldn't get my gametes preserved, so I can't have any kids. The Catholic health insurance company I worked for wouldn't cover gamete preservation, because in vitro fertilization results in the destruction of fertilized embryos. I mean, that's just how Catholicism's "ethic of life" works, in practice. It's very, very absurd.

And yes I can say ha ha, excommunication, what a joke, and the truth is that a lot of my values, a lot of my beliefs, _do_ come from the religious tradition I was raised in. I do have beliefs, and the religious tradition that taught me a lot of those beliefs, I guess, now says that I'm "disfiguring the face of Man and Woman". I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with that. I don't know how to practice my beliefs in community, when they say stuff like that. And it's not new, it's not about me, it's just... well, when a religion commits to patriarchy like Catholicism does, there are limitations. I'd love for some form of credible Christianity to exist outside of the confines of patriarchy, but if it's gonna happen, whoooo, I tell you what, it's NOT going to be Roman Catholicism, no matter which man happens to be sitting in St. Peter's chair.

So who's left, then, in the Church, aside from the JD Vance's of the world? My mom had seven siblings and of those eight kids, seven left the Church - Unitarian Universalist, Episcopalian, outspoken atheist, nothing in particular - it's a wide diaspora. The one who's left? Married a racist. Hardcore conservative. Latin mass. He's, funnily enough, the "black sheep" of our particular family. He's a Catholic, but being a Republican, voting for Trump, that would have been anathema to my grandfather, was anathema to pretty much all his other living kids. My family, it's one that believes in "family first", and the tradcaths _are_ still welcome in the family. It doesn't make me super comfortable. It doesn't make my black aunt super comfortable. And, I mean, the tradcaths aren't comfortable either, because whenever one of them starts up with the tradcath bullshit, all of my other relatives, who grew up learning values from the man who graduated from a fucking Jesuit law school, politely, firmly, and succinctly (I didn't get the "succinct" gene lol) explain to the tradcaths that what they are saying is completely wrong and unacceptable. They grew up Catholic. They aren't Catholic anymore.

From what I can see, all the "pass the potato salad", "pass the ziti" religions are dying

oohhh I don't know, you should see the Orthodox Armenians up the hill from me

what’s their food specialty? it’ll take a lot to beat my local Greek Orthodox church, foodwise

From what I can see, all the "pass the potato salad", "pass the ziti" religions are dying. The cultural memory of that... it doesn't last for more than a lifetime. There isn't shared struggle.

We nonbelievers need to give these religious fucks the persecution they're always whining about. Make 'em really feel it. The ones who survive can thank us later for strengthening their faith.

xp I won't argue with that, I went to their food faire thing a couple years back and it was some heavy stew with sumac? or something... And they weren't even pouring Armenian wine

We nonbelievers need to give these religious fucks the persecution they're always whining about. Make 'em really feel it. The ones who survive can thank us later for strengthening their faith.

― wipes chooser (unperson), Thursday, July 2, 2026 6:59 PM (yesterday)

i never said i was a nonbeliever! that's the fucking difficult thing, isn't it? i do, unfortunately, know what it's like to be persecuted for my beliefs. my beliefs are determined to a significant extent by who i am, and i _do_ have beliefs, i _do_ have values. that's one of the things that i understand about catholicism... it was just a few generations ago that people who were born into catholicism were marginalized because of it in some places. in america, in northern ireland. god, a few decades ago i remember knowing someone - i don't remember where - who bled orange, who had a fanatical hatred for gerry adams, good friday agreement be damned. to the extent that even though i was in the midst of one of my "embittered ex-catholic" periods at the time, i thought to myself, "well, that's a bit much, isn't it?"

the genuine marginalization of catholics is, in my estimatino, a pretty big contributing factor to catholicism's culture of secrecy. a culture where if, say, a priest does something inappropriate, instead of public accountability, you say look, he's genuinely contrite, we believe in reconciliation, let's send him on to another parish. i've seen various forms of abuse, both secular and religious. the sacrament of reconciliation is, i think, genuinely well-intentioned, but the way it's sometimes practiced does tend to perpetuate, rather than break, the cycle of abuse. i don't think the problem is with the sacrament itself, but the way it's sometimes misused.

the joke within catholicism regarding the standard penance is something along the lines of "five hail marys, three our fathers, don't do it again". penance shouldn't be a joke, and what gets missed out on is the idea that, you know, part of reconciliation is often taking public accountability. i remember reading an anecdote about a member of the boston "irish mob" (irish american), going to seek reconciliation for doing mob hits or whatnot, and that was the penance. in that case, though, in that case i'd argue it was appropriate, because this was someone who was being held accountable in a civil sense for what he'd done.

if canon law is being used as a _substitute_ for secular justice - which historically it often was - obviously that's wholly inadequate. so you have this system where canon law was _designed_ to have temporal force, and if you try to apply that in practice, well... i mean it was one of the significant factors in the 18th century French Revolution. that was more than 250 years ago, which in terms of, say, the American state is a very long time. in terms of the Roman Catholic Church, though, it _wasn't_ that long ago. the latin mass people look at Vatican II as "Catholicism gone woke", and honestly, from a historical perspective it seems like much more of an attempt to address serious logistical problems caused by Catholicism's changing place in the world.

the Society for St. Pius X didn't get their name out of a hat... Pius X was a major figure in the promulgation of canon law. he promulgated the 1917 version of canon law, a very fierce, severe, and "conservative" interpretation of canon authority. he was not operating from a position of political strength. in fact, i'd argue that the unforgiving nature of its strictures is inextricable from the position of the papacy of that time - the struggle of an organization fighting against its reduced political position in the world. sure, he was canonized - hell, he was the patron saint of the church i grew up in. did it mean anything that the parish was named for him? not at all. i didn't learn anything about his approach to canon law growing up. the ziti was _much_ more important. i'm not saying that as a joke, either - one of the things progressive catholics really focus on is the _ritual value of a shared meal_, rather than just, you know, christ on a cracker. mrs. pinto's ziti, i'd argue, belongs to the same tradition.

i guess it's not surprising that the society for st. pius x have the same sort of denialist obstinacy their namesake did. i don't have any personal animus against the guy, but in historical terms, it's hard for me not to see him as kind of a failpapa and the 1917 canon law as being something of a cold comfort. john xxiii, on the other hand, was working from a very different position - from a vatican that had its political independence formally politically recognized by other nation-states, but which was, and is, the rumpiest of rump states. unlike pius x, his authority was accepted by the secular world. the _nature_ of that power, however, was fundamentally transformed from that held by the pre-1870 Papal States. it's entirely reasonable and sensible that John XXIII should call an ecumenical council to adjust to the Church's radically different position in the world.

and that's just, like, a fundamentally different perspective from the lay perspective - "laity" here meaning not simply catholics who aren't looking at things from a clerical perspective and the general public, catholic or otherwise. there is a certain unrecognized tension between catholicism's political role and the way the church _organizes and sees itself_. the circumstances, for instance, of benedict xvi's resignation... i can't even claim to understand them, but the secular perspective just doesn't seem to take into account his particular religious mindset. he was impractical in ways often similar to the impracticality of the lefebvrists, but the fundamental difference is that he _recognized the limits of his power_. he resigned. the lefebvrists lack both the virtue of Catholic humility but the basic common sense to recognize their own limitations, and this is what led to their excommunication.

my patriarchal lineage on my mother's side, we're definitionally laity. my great-great grandfather came to america from ireland because he was a second son and didn't want to be a priest - he wanted to get married and have kids, which he did. the sort of high-handed rules lawyering that characterizes the lefebrvists has, in fact, been one of the defining features of my family's relationship with The Church. the struggle my great-great grandfather, my family's patriarch, had with the larger Catholic patriarchy has been reflected through time in so many ways. one of my great-great aunts gave birth to a stillborn child. the Church refused to bury it in consecrated ground. she never set foot inside a church again. how stupid of the Church, how stubborn, how pointlessly cruel! what is the _point_ of something like that? what is the fucking _point_? what is the point of auto-excommunicating anybody who has an abortion? what is the point of "humanae vitae"? what is the point of, well, _patriarchy_? the papal states are gone. constantine saw the cross as a sign of conquest, and a decade or so ago Francis, the Jesuit Pope, decries people like me as "imperialists". the church can preach reconciliation, but it seems to me that there a great many things it needs to reconcile itself to.

i am not as effusive as the "progressive Catholics". the reconciliation between the head of the church its people is a long process, one which i don't think Leo or any one man can complete. having said that, i do think that leo's _ferendae sententiae_ excommunication of the lefebrvists is an important step on the road to that reconciliation. many, many times in the past i've declared myself "out" of the church, and it's not that easy. every time i think i'm out, they pull me back in. that, in a nutshell, is my relationship with Catholicism.

what’s their food specialty? it’ll take a lot to beat my local Greek Orthodox church, foodwise

― Illegal Algae (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, July 2, 2026 6:56 PM (yesterday)

well, yeah. key word being _orthodox_. the mainline protestants, the megachurches, the Roman Catholics... they're in a fundamentally different position from the Orthodox Christians. they're different, and most Americans, I think don't understand _how_ they're different, _how_ the invisibility of their faith, their people, affects them. the food is important, it's not really at the root. the root is that they have this thing that outsiders don't really seem to see or understand. imo.

I'm acquaintanced with several leftist Hispanic Catholics, almost liberationist. A couple of my best friends, both liberal/leftists, have joined the local Congregationalist church.

on the opposite end of the spectrum from "liberationist" from a, uh, certain point of view, some of my friends are very excited upon seeing a neck cilice for sale online. there's are a _lot_ of folks in the subset of "people who were raised catholic and have some very interesting fetishes as a result". i don't really think of myself as one of them. a neck cilice is, uh, a little much for me. i understand how people who grew up literally eating the body and drinking the blood of christ could desire certain sorts of communion. i also think that the line between the sacred and the profane is a lot more porous than a lot of people think. "fetish" is a religious term as well. ritual, sacrament - i learned these through catholicism and they are an important part of who i am. that said, blasphemy has no appeal for me. everything has its place, and just because something's sacred to me doesn't make it _Catholic_.

oh! i forgot what i was going to say! someone joked "you can't be horny for this if you aren't catholic", and my take is look, if the church can auto-excommunicate people they can auto-confirm people. anybody who is into the idea of a neck cilice should be automatically made catholic.

please don't put in the newspaper that they got mad

https://fsspx.news/en/news/letter-holy-father-regarding-decree-dicastery-doctrine-faith-59956

From what I can tell anti-Catholic prejudice went away pretty darn quick after the Kennedy assassination.

this is not true imo. evangelicals remain big mad at the Church both out of envy and because they think we are polytheist pagans. the whole evangelical world is built on a foundation of anti-Catholic sentiment and there's a ton of it. I'd also consider the "but they're losing their way" Catholicism of Vance etc to be a form of anti-Catholic sentiment, he doesn't give a shit about the Church, he craves her power.

the whole question of liberation theology vs. what we on the left believe, no, there isn't going to be any ordination of women in our lifetime, et al. the Church is institutionally conservative but still theologically radical by comparison to protestants, in my view. I love the Church because the Church is part of me, is my mother, but my spiritual practice, while still cosmetically Catholic (praying in the pews when I can, veneration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints through the Holy Rosary and seeking intercession, genuflecting before prayer, etc), is esoteric and private, I don't go to Mass and I'm not raising my children in the faith which I'm pretty sure is a sin. the Church isn't ever going to meet me where I am on my personal values but that is ok with me, I cheer when it uses its powers for good.

the whole evangelical world is built on a foundation of anti-Catholic sentiment and there's a ton of it.

https://jsr.fsu.edu/Volume11/King.htm

Americans call these people “Scotch-Irish” but this is a misnomer as these people reviled Irish people and would have been incredibly insulted to be so considered. That they migrated from what’s now Northern Ireland doesn’t change that; per centuries of recorded history, the group first moved there as a supremacist movement, there to push native Catholics off their land and take positions of power, which they did with support from the British crown.

That the Orange Order came with them (another supremacist organisation) and it’s said that members of the Order were deeply involved in the formation of the early KKK. This pattern was seen in Canada too.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325269412_Orangeism_A_Great_Protestant_Crusade_The_Nativist_Legacy_of_the_Orange_Order_in_the_Northeastern_Borderlands

This wasn’t an accident either.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-46011779

I feel the same way about your private practice of religion, JCLC. Open religiosity is unnerving to me outside the context of like Mass or something.

this is not true imo. evangelicals remain big mad at the Church both out of envy and because they think we are polytheist pagans. the whole evangelical world is built on a foundation of anti-Catholic sentiment and there's a ton of it. I'd also consider the "but they're losing their way" Catholicism of Vance etc to be a form of anti-Catholic sentiment, he doesn't give a shit about the Church, he craves her power.

you know, you make an excellent point, and i agree with you re: evangelical anti-Catholicism. i've seen plenty of evidence already that these new values Trumpist evangelicals claim to have are superficial and readily abandoned at the first opportunity. i see no reason that their embrace of Catholicism is anything other than opportunistic. as far as Vance's convert's zeal... i think Leo's excommunication of the lefebvrists is a great demonstration of _why_ the conclave chose him as pope.

the whole question of liberation theology vs. what we on the left believe, no, there isn't going to be any ordination of women in our lifetime, et al. the Church is institutionally conservative but still theologically radical by comparison to protestants, in my view.

i understand and respect that view! the catholicism i was raised with is that theologically radical tradition, the tradition of father berrigan. that tradition is a great deal of how i try to make sense of, reckon with, america today. one of the things that has changed is my view of "protestants"... christianity for me, at this point, is about far more than "catholics" and "protestants". there are so many forms of faith, so many ways to believe. personally, part of my esoteric approach to religion is the rejection of the idea that any one faith can claim to be _the_ "true faith". my beliefs are, in large part, syncretic. if someone is prone to condemn me as a "polytheist pagan", i look at the people i know who are polytheist pagans, and i look at the Trumpist evangelicals, and i look at who better represents the values i was raised with...

I love the Church because the Church is part of me, is my mother, but my spiritual practice, while still cosmetically Catholic (praying in the pews when I can, veneration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints through the Holy Rosary and seeking intercession, genuflecting before prayer, etc), is esoteric and private, I don't go to Mass and I'm not raising my children in the faith which I'm pretty sure is a sin. the Church isn't ever going to meet me where I am on my personal values but that is ok with me, I cheer when it uses its powers for good.

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, July 3, 2026 4:08 PM (three days ago)

there is so much i learned growing up catholic, so many good things, that i find nowhere else. the mysteries, for instance, that are part of the rosary - joyful, sorrowful, glorious. there's so much that i don't understand, even though i know it to be true. i've known much joy and much sorrow in my time. i am happy to offer over the glory to god - i, as a human, have yet to find any use for it.

at the same time, i find that much of what i was taught as a catholic is, to be blunt, wrong. i respect so much of what dorothy day lived, and her opposition to abortion... i don't believe that all mysteries are divine. a lot of my gender is mysterious to me, and after extensive prayer, i've come to the conclusion that in my case, at least, my gender is no more or less a reflection of divine truth than anyone else's. at the same time it is _truth_. all of this patriarchy stuff, it's not congruent with what i know to be true about gender. i don't believe that patriarchy is a necessary part of christianity. i believe, truly, that christianity without patriarchy is possible. i can't envision it myself.

these latin mass people and whatnot, their talk of the church having "lost its way"... to me, they misunderstand, that catholicism is not a matter of _what_ but _how_. the faith of my grandfather was in _a man for all seasons_, his favorite film, and while thomas more's faith is not mine, it does very much influence it. if i lose my way - and i do, often, because i am human - the latin mass people are not the ones i rely on to help me find my way. what they think of as the "way" isn't anything i recognize from how i was raised.

i do recognize the faith of my fathers in leo's action. like you, i cheer him for it. i would say that the church is a mother to me as well. my relationship with it is as fraught and painful and complicated as my relationship with my birth mother. in some ways it's entangled with her. she was the person who taught me so many of my values, and her relationship with the church is as complicated as my own.

so many mysteries. so hard to not fixate on the sorrowful ones.

thank you for talking about these things. it's of great comfort to me, just to be... reminded that i'm not alone. that we're not alone. and thank you as well, gyac!

Americans call these people “Scotch-Irish” but this is a misnomer as these people reviled Irish people and would have been incredibly insulted to be so considered.

I believe they were quite happy to be called Irish - they'd settled it so it was their country was the logic - until Irish Catholics started coming over to the USA in large numbers in the 19th century.

I was at a catholic mass/wedding today in orange county, my first mass in probably 15 years. the priest gave a story about meeting the bride, a confirmed catholic who attends mass at another church regularly, and said he told her she couldn’t take communion until she was married in the church. (the couple had legally married about two years ago.) is that customary? sounded strange to me and my wife, a fellow lapsed catholic

the priest later, just prior to communion, invited catholics who go to mass every week to come up for communion, but said that those who don’t, and anyone else who wanted a “special blessing”, to also approach him in the communion line but to denote their non-communion eligible status by crossing their arms in front of their chest. this apparently is something my wife had seen before, but having been to hundreds of masses myself (in the northeast), I’m certain I’ve never heard a priest say either thing before — that only some catholics were eligible, and the crossing your arms thing. in fact my priest growing up never said anything about who was eligible to take communion, it was just assumed that if you wanted to take communion you could. is this normal? I found it very bizarre and unwelcoming

I saw the blessing thing for the first time at my uncle's funeral a couple of years ago, I just went for the regular communion, not into that weird shit

I’ve never heard that either Kevin? Very strange. This site makes no mention of it.

https://www.catholic.com/tract/who-can-receive-communion

What the fuck? This is news to me.

Funny you mentioned a wedding. I had to miss a former student's Catholic wedding last night b/c it was the same afternoon I returned from a vacation -- would've been my first Catholic wedding in close to 20 yeas.

That priest is using his position to impose a nonsensical and unnecessary subservience on his parishioners. It's a power play.

Sounds very Wake Up Dead Man.

yeah i was gonna say let's not rule out just a classic case of wanker priest

yeah that priest is just a wanker