Ask A Catholic

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

btw sodomy /= anal

i mean, i'd rather sit on a pillar in the syrian desert than live in a dallas exurb myself

xp

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?

Catholic guilt is tradition. It does make intuitive sense to my indwelling Catholic: the Holy Family suffered as they did for me, but how grateful am I really, in my daily life? Not very. I'm more interested in myself. That's my nature, and I don't do much to overcome it or transcend it. But the saints show me that I could, if I really cared. Hence, guilt!

Lots of straights don't understand that though. Fortunately in Catholic school I learned what constituted sodomy since it was all non-procreative sex anyway.

xxxp can include anal sex

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

that may be, but in hoc signi vincis iirc

Alfred, if you were Philip K. Dick & saw those fish symbols, you would be transported back to the first century, and a pink light would tell you about your son's birth defects

goole right, wiki sez, but the cross was still around early:

During the first two centuries of Christianity, the cross may have been rare in Christian iconography, as it depicts a purposely painful and gruesome method of public execution. The Ichthys, or fish symbol, was used by early Christians. The Chi-Rho monogram, which was adopted by Constantine I in the 4th century as his banner (see labarum), was another Early Christian symbol of wide use.

However, the cross symbol was already associated with Christians in the 2nd century, as is indicated in the anti-Christian arguments cited in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, chapters IX and XXIX, written at the end of that century or the beginning of the next,[2] and by the fact that by the early 3rd century the cross had become so closely associated with Christ that Clement of Alexandria, who died between 211 and 216, could without fear of ambiguity use the phrase τὸ κυριακὸν σημεῖον (the Lord's sign) to mean the cross

If my sister's experiences in the mid nineties are any indication, Catholic schools are feebler institutions than they were in the fifties and sixties.

no more nuns to run them

oh that's for sure. it's the one thing that i kind of mourn about the slow death of the catholic hierarchy.

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

The Sanhedrin, "an assembly of twenty-three judges appointed in every city in the Biblical Land of Israel" as Wikipedia handily puts it, handed Christ over to Pilate to be crucified. The race stuff in all this is way too dense for me to really parse without making an utter ass of myself, but, speaking from a how-it-seems-to-me position rather than a doctrinal position here, it seems like Christians (including Catholics over the ages) think of Christ as a Jew-who-passes. He's not really a Jew, because the Jews persecuted Him. Yes I know this is profoundly fucked up, but I do think that's how anti-semitic Xians think of the matter.

"lay teachers"

Who'd'a thunk it? That Catholicism would be the Hot Topic of the Day on ILE? Next thing you know it will be declared DaVinci Code Day on I Love Books.

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

It's possible because of grace. Pius IX institutes the doctrine in 1854: "In the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." From newadvent.org, further explanation:

The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.

Not only did the Sanhedrin hand him over, but Pilate also gave the crowd a chance to save one of the convicted, and they chose to have Barabbus, a "bandit", freed instead.

VERY INTERESTINGLY, wiki has just told me that "bandit" is one translation, but that "insurrectionary" or "revolutionary" is another one. So perhaps the interpretation is that the Jews who voted for Barabbus betrayed Christ by picking the WRONG revolutionary/the wrong version of their future??

Meanwhile, leave it to the Onion for timing (unless this is what prompted the threads):

http://www.theonion.com/articles/pope-to-ease-up-on-jesus-talk,19727/

xp it's cos of paddy's day tomorrow

Yeah, it was Mary who was a virgin at the time of Jesus' conceptions. Anne and Joachim definitely porked.

the wiki summary sort of implies the doctrine of the IC was a little bit political:

From early on in the history of the Catholic Church, in numerous places in the writings of the Church Fathers, the belief is implicitly stated.[citation needed] In various places the feast of the Immaculate Conception had been celebrated for centuries on 8 December when, on 28 February 1476, Pope Sixtus IV[6] extended it to the entire Latin Church. He did not define the doctrine as a dogma, thus leaving Roman Catholics free to believe in it or not without being accused of heresy; this freedom was reiterated by the Council of Trent. However, the feast was a strong indication of the Church's traditional belief in the Immaculate Conception.[7][8] On 6 December 1708 Pope Clement XI decreed that the feast of the Immaculate Conception be a Holy Day of Obligation.[9] throughout the entire Catholic Church.

The Immaculate Conception was solemnly defined as a dogma by Pope Pius IX in his constitution Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December 1854.[10] The Catholic Church teaches that the dogma is supported by Scripture (e.g., Mary's being greeted by the Angel Gabriel as "full of grace") as well as either directly or indirectly by the writings of Church Fathers such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Ambrose of Milan.[11][12] Catholic theology maintains that since Jesus became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, it was fitting that she be completely free of sin for expressing her fiat.[13] In 1904 Pope Saint Pius X also addressed the issue in his Marian encyclical Ad Diem Illum on the Immaculate Conception.[14]

check them dates!

"expressing her fiat"

oh well if ambrose had her checked out first then i guess i believe

any takers on the alternate view of virgin as a mistranslation from the hebrew? i always found that interesting.

oh and i am like a catholic once removed or something - raised atheist but oh man never to be mentioned around my irish catholic grandmother. who was awesome btw, so i figure catholicism is aok. also radical nuns are the coolest shit ever. ok then.

I find it interesting too. It's was supposedly maiden or something and not virgin, right?

maiden is a virgin?

by definition I think it just means unmarried

The whole virgin vs maiden vs maid thing is v confusing. Really it used to just be a young unmarried woman. I think for a very long time there wasn't necessarily a connotation that she was also sexually pure!

p sure 'maiden' suggests virgin but that the mistranslation suggested only 'young woman' or somesuch

"Several distressed correspondents have queried the mistranslation of 'young woman' into 'virgin' in the biblical prophecy, and have demanded a reply from me. Hurting religious sensibilities is a perilous business these days so I had better oblige. Actually, it is a pleasure, for scientists can't often get satisfyingly dusty in the library indulging in a real academic foot-note. The point is in fact well known to biblical scholars, and not disputed by them. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is (almah), which undisputedly means 'young woman', with no implication of virginity. If 'virgin' had been intended (bethulah) could have been used instead (the ambiguous English word 'maiden' illustrates how easy it can be to slide between the two meanings). The 'mutation' occurred when the pre-Christian Greek translation known as the Septuagint rendered almah into ... (parthenos), which really does usually mean virgin. Matthew (not, of course, the Apostle and contemporary of Jesus, but the gospel-maker writing long afterwards), quoted Isaiah in what seems to be a derivative of the Septuagint version (all but two of the fifteen Greek words are identical) when he said Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 'Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel' (Authorised English translation). It is widely accepted among Christian scholars that the story of the virgin birth of Jesus was a late interpolation, put in presumably by Greek-speaking disciples in order that the (mistranslated) prophecy should be seen to be fulfilled. Modern versions such as the New English Bible correctly give 'young woman' in Isaiah. They equally correctly leave 'virgin' in Matthew, since there they are translating from the Greek."

Yeah - it was young woman - my b.

i forgive u

VERY INTERESTINGLY, wiki has just told me that "bandit" is one translation, but that "insurrectionary" or "revolutionary" is another one. So perhaps the interpretation is that the Jews who voted for Barabbus betrayed Christ by picking the WRONG revolutionary/the wrong version of their future??

Use this site or this one to cross-reference any claims made on wikipedia regarding this sort of thing imo. Wikipedia tends to slant a bit on any given day. Number of different translations of Mark 15:7.

btw in case the Holy Father is reading this thread I apologize for reading the Bible

again btw in re: virgin vs. maiden the Church very conveniently regards tradition as one of the ways that God speaks to us. So if an early translator happened to say παρθένος for עלמה that was God's hand telling us more about the story

❤️ fizzles

otm

hey my dad loathed religion all his life but still got a priest in at his deathbed. and i don’t think it was a pascal’s wager thing. not in the sense it’s commonly meant. and his mum was a lovely kind irish catholic married to a nasty disciplinarian by all accounts. both devout far as it goes. only one of them good.

community and communion probably meant something to them both but as darragh says, not sure the rules meant as much as all that.

― Fizzles

mmmm. i do feel differently about it.

my dad has a cross on his gravestone. i don't think it was catholic. he loathed religion all his life, and at the end, when he was alone, there was a lady who was there for him, to be his friend, and she converted him. that's what she _does_ with her life. and, i mean, i'm glad she was there for him. i'm glad she could get through to him when i couldn't. he buried himself in shame about abandoning us, about being a shitty dad, and poured it all out to her at the end. and it would have been nice. it would have been nice if he could have told me when he was alive. if i didn't have to get it secondhand. and for all that i'm grateful it seems... it feels _transactional_. to me, the cross, it corrupts, it debases, what i truly believe was this woman's genuine love, her genuine compassion.

that's the other thing about being a catholic, my grandfather's favorite movie was _a man for all seasons_, and it's a great film. it's one of those films where catholicism and leftism converge, i think, the film is a leftist film but it's a leftist take on catholic belief. and one of the things that i was taught about it, growing up - i didn't see it for a long time, but i was _taught_ about it - was that it wasn't enough to do the right thing, that there was a question of _why_, _why_ a person did something. that thomas more struggled with that. and no matter how good my dad's friend was, no matter how much it was _right_, the fact that on some level she was doing it to "win souls for christ"... i don't think that reflects badly on her. i think that reflects badly on _christ_. he has no _right_. no right to my dad's soul. that cross on my dad's grave marker is a lie. and a god, a church, a religion, that is willing to _accept_ that lie...

well, it's like Robert Wyatt sang on "Alliance" (_Old Rottenhat_, 1984):

It's hard to talk to enemies. We are enemies. What we had in common makes it even worse...

In truth, my values are as Catholic as anyone's. I believe in the power of forgiveness, truly believe in it. Not just for the sake others. For for my own sake, for my own _soul_. Forgiveness, for me, it's putting down a burden, letting go of that compulsion to distance, to wariness. The need for _vigilance_. I've had to be vigilant so often, about so many things. I have to be vigilant far too often now. I hate all of the things I have to see, I have to know.

Because I can't forgive. Not like, refuse, I believe, believe in my heart, that it's not possible. Not possible for me to forgive someone for something they don't believe was _wrong_. All I can do in that case is make excuses. All I can do is cape.

The thing about having 1.35billion adherents, is you're going to be able to find whatever you're looking for within that communion, good and bad.

I grew up in a fairly strict American Catholic setting. After my mom died, The Young Pope denied my dad's 2nd wife an annulment on her first marriage, so my dad stopped going to mass entirely.

On one hand, I respect it. On the other hand, hey what now?

That sucks. Most of the Catholics I know are either priests or seminarians or lay people with Bachelors in Theology. They are all, of the ones I know well, lovely, caring, sacrificial, forgiving people. I think seriosly studying the tenets of Christ and the Church sifts the grain from the chaff (for the most part)

Last I heard there were about 1 billion Catholics in the world. That number has certainly been inflated to include anyone raised Catholic or otherwise claimable by the church, but it suggests to me that anecdotal evidence about the nature of Catholic individuals is likely to run the full gamut from truly unrecognized saints to the worst people ion earth.

Was raised Catholic growing up and was probably one of the model examples - taught Sunday school, Catholic summer camps, altar boy, etc. Maybe it was just the church groups we attended, but none of the more detestable aspects of the church were apparent or just leaned into through it all. I stopped attending as soon as I hit college because I think there were people involved that were more representative of Christianity as a whole that turned me off. That idea that "I can behave terribly but I'll be fine because I go to church and God always forgives" started becoming more noticeable in my later teen years when it seemed like the more reasonable option was to JUST BE NICE to people.

Was raised Catholic growing up and was probably one of the model examples - taught Sunday school, Catholic summer camps, altar boy, etc. Maybe it was just the church groups we attended, but none of the more detestable aspects of the church were apparent or just leaned into through it all. I stopped attending as soon as I hit college because I think there were people involved that were more representative of Christianity as a whole that turned me off. That idea that "I can behave terribly but I'll be fine because I go to church and God always forgives" started becoming more noticeable in my later teen years when it seemed like the more reasonable option was to JUST BE NICE to people.

A lot of this is my story too. I was an altar boy, I went to CYO, I went on Catholic youth retreats, I went to an all-boys' Catholic high school for two years. I never had any bad experiences through any of it; I guess I just wasn't any of my local priests' type, because at least two of them were defrocked or quit the church later. One moved to Las Vegas and got murdered one morning by a guy he'd molested years earlier. Anyway, I stopped going to church when I moved out of my mom's house at 18 — I'd long since drifted away from any kind of Christian belief and into reading about other stuff (Zen, Taoism, the usual shit). These days my "beliefs," such as they are, are a kind of personal amalgam of Zen, Taoism, Stoicism, and Norse/Asatru values — blood, honor, manliness, but without all the stuff about the gods.

My mom is still very much Catholic; she does the readings at her church just about every week, and does a lot of charity work — drives meals to the elderly, does people's taxes for free, maybe some other stuff too. She acknowledges all the shitty things the Church and her alma mater, Penn State, have done, but it neither invalidates her engineering degree nor impacts her faith.

similar for my dad, who was born and raised Catholic. He joined the Knights of Columbus after he retired and all the kids left the house. I don't ask too much about it but as far as I know that's mainly been a social thing for him.

I know he has some old-school thoughts about women that aren't as severe as other people, and he's been called out by my sister, so I've never felt like piling on to what's probably an in-grained lost cause. But he was never a Jesus-first parent - which I really appreciate looking back.

perhaps Heez hasn't finished Home Alone. Marley and his son forgive each other at the end.

well, my Methodist-turned-Catholic mom took me to see Home Alone when it was originally out in theaters, and I'll cherish that time and parenting decision forever.

Bob marleys in home alone?!? Ok I’ll finish it.

I grew up Lutheran in the south. It was extremely chill. Church camps all that stuff. Not much guilt or anything like that. My mother and father are still Christian but they do not go to the same church nor do they vote for the same party. My mom prefers the activist, community oriented side of the church while my dad prefers the traditional side. The south is mostly are up of baptist and evangelicals who believe in the gospel of prosperity and rarely do community outreach.

I now live near DC in a neighborhood filled with federalist society lawyers who rarely engage with their non-Catholic neighbors. I also know a lot more of the New England Catholics, well former Catholics, who are some of the best ppl I know, but seem extremely damaged by the church and their strictly religious parents.

Anyway Catholicism has come to represent this very corrupted version of religion that you either walk lockstep with or fight against. And yes, I understand my small neighborhood doesn’t represent the entirety of Catholicism, so I’m mainly just asking questions, be it from a very skewed place

The thing about having 1.35billion adherents, is you're going to be able to find whatever you're looking for within that communion, good and bad.

― H.P

sure. 1.35 billion adherents is a lot. i don't need to play diogenes looking for a Good Catholic. they're all over the place.

one pope, though. one college of cardinals. all men, all celibate, or pretending to be. one Young archbishop of Portland, denouncing "gender ideology", issuing edicts forbidding teachers in Catholic schools from referring to trans kids by their _names_, from gendering them correctly.

one man. how many children? how many fucking kids is this one man abusing, and nobody says anything, nobody _does_ anything, it's _fine_ because he does it in the name of _Christ_, he does it in the name of the Roman Catholic Church?

-

I can't... I can't talk about what it was like for me, growing up Catholic. How it affected me. I try, but I can't. It hurts too much. Sorry. Y'all... I think y'all talking, I really would _like_ for y'all to know. But I can't tell you. Maybe someday. The most I can do is jump off Heez here:

I also know a lot more of the New England Catholics, well former Catholics, who ... seem extremely damaged by the church and their strictly religious parents.

My Catholic roots are Midwestern. Brahmin-y, but Midwestern. My parents, my mom's parents... I don't think of them as "strictly religious" either. I went to Catholic school, Catholic college, church every Sunday, but I don't think of my upbringing as "strictly religious" in the "women with exposed ankles are immodest" sense. Have I been extremely damaged by the Church and my parents? Absolutely.

I can't say more than that right now. I wish I could. I don't believe in... I don't believe in the culture of _silence_ I was raised in. I really want to speak up. I just can't right now. I'm sorry.