The Catholicism Thread

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.