#Catholic thoughts

[banishedchildofeve]

,, warning, a rant post,,, mentions of s*x work and p*rn in our society below.

A girl at my work asked me why I wasn’t agreeing with her as she and another workmate of ours discussed modern feminism. I was listening, to be polite, as there was nothing else much to do and no customers, and not saying anything. I’m usually quiet at work, but she seemed to take offence to my silence, as if I should be interjecting into the conversation to express how much I agreed with her.

I told her that I don’t believe modern feminism is always a good thing, and before I could even explain myself, she gave me a horrid look and said “right, because it’s easier to do nothing and get all that male approval, isn’t it?”

It was mean and I blinked at her, affronted and confused. Usually people let me explain when this topic comes up and I voice my opinions, if I have to, as I like to not cause conflict. Normally, I explain how I feel, very politely, about issues that feminism has brought up for women like the normalisation of abortion, contraceptives and dangerous hormone-changing pills, not marrying or even trying to find love, ‘sex work’ being seen as powerful etc etc.

I usually use my example of “girlboss” culture to help people understand how I’m not trying to be hostile or anything, but this workmate didn’t even let me and walked off to go talk to the manager who we’re all really good friends with. The other workmate I was with looked confused too and she joked about the awkwardness of what had happened, and I brushed it off but on the train home I was thinking about it again.

I was thinking about how often wives, mothers, homemakers and nuns/sisters/friars etc. are looked down on, often by feminists because they aren’t some business woman who only wears tight office-chic blazers and gets drunk every weekend and posts bikini pics. I thought about the young girls who dream of homemaking and wifehood, and the women who choose it over a career, and who are sort of viewed as pathetic or weak or ‘old fashioned.’

I’ve been told firsthand that my dream of being a mother isn’t good enough and how I “need to decide on a real career path,” or “something other than that, at least.” I’ve been made to feel small or stupid or that I’m offending all the women across all the generations who worked hard for our rights.

And this hurts, because I love women. I look up to who I consider to be the best feminine influence in all of human history, Mother Mary, daily. And I felt confused as I thought, because isn’t it all about choice?

Why is my choice less valuable than hers? Why is my choice to abstain until marriage, not drink coffee or try this pill or that drug or this drink something that I should be embarrassed about? Why is my modest mufti day outfit at school earning me stares and causing snide remarks? Why are we bringing up girls to believe that being a p**n star something empowering, something to do to “make a quick buck.”

Why are we letting young and influential girls believe that their worth comes only from their body, their aptness at reeling in boys, the size of their boobs, the way they dress and how many drinks it takes them before they’re throwing up at a house party outside on the lawn?

Why are we letting men, husbands, boyfriends believe that their wife/girlfriend/fiancé’s body is something that they can both benefit off if they just film that one video, or take that one photo? Why is it okay for a man to watch p*rn while his wife sleeps next to him?

Why is “she has an OF,” an insult, or something that takes away from her worth? Despite the fact she doesn’t feel beautiful unless a man is complimenting her body? How is this her fault? What could she have possibly done? She’s been taught that her body is all that guys care about. She believes that if she doesn’t do this act or send that photo she is wasting his time, she’s not worth his time.

It makes me sad. I hear younger girls talk in the bathroom at work while I’m in their cleaning or whatever about how this boy sexted them this, or how this other boy’s invited her over to his house on this time and how she’s been watching tutorials on how to … well, you know.

It makes me feel sick. These girls don’t know the danger they’re in. They’re being raised in an online world where it’s trendy to wear tiny shirts and post photos of your butt.

Most of the girls I overhear talk of things like this look 14-15.

This is not their fault.

They’re not to blame. It’s the world we let them indulge in. It’s a world where they’ve seen and heard and tried so much before they’re even able to legally get behind the wheel of a car and drive. Before they’ve even taken a proper exam at school.

When our frontal lobes detach, we become so ignorant to danger. Teenagers drive fast, do drugs, dance on the railings of bridges above highways and believe they’re invincible. It’s natural, sure, to an extent. But this is the time when so much can go wrong. Innocence cannot be returned.

I hate to think of how many girls will realise just how groomed and shaped they were by this toxic culture that surrounds us as a society later on and wish they hadn’t done this or that.

I want to protect these girls. I want to comfort them and keep them from these horrible, evil ideologies and that fuel harmful industries and create dirty, satantic fetishes in which people profit and people enjoy.

I want the girls who only dream of marriage and having kids to be safe and protected. I want girls who think it’s cool to smoke cigarettes and steal their parent’s booze to be safe and protected. I want the girls who dream of being billionaires and dating 40 men to be safe and protected.

Young girls are so influential and I wish there were better role models to show them that there is life and beauty and comfort and promise in the life that is ‘old fashioned’ and ‘anti-feminism.’

There is new life in Christ, always, of course. But I really wish the evil didn’t get there first.

I want to raise my own daughters in a world where it’s not okay to watch p*rn and use social media and consider sex work “empowering.”

I want girls and women to see that their worth does not come from how they look; but from within. From their heart, from their charity, from their kindness, from their humility, from their love of helping others, from the words they choose each day.

Of course this means we must make changes now, and step by step, starting with ourselves and our behaviour and headspace and habits. Changing for good can change others for good, inspire good, produce good, spread good.

Our daughters are relying on us.

Okay rant over, God bless all who read this. I hope you’re okay.

<3

(i wrote this awhile ago and just let it sit in the drafts. sorry it isn’t structured well. i was getting v emotional when i was writing this oop lol. i’m not here to have arguments, i hate arguing and it’s even worse online w literal strangers. i just am so sick of all this evil and damage being disguised as “pro women” and “feminism” and to speak out against it is to sound like a woman-hater, which is the last thing i am. the last thing a girl my age could ever be smh).

[crazycatsiren]

Me: *looking around the congregation* "Is there no dress code for Mass anymore? T-shirts, shorts, jeans, sneakers, sandals, really? Flip-flops? Crocs? Seriously? "

Me: *looking down at my own bag with a pin on it that says 'Fuck Off'* "Well... ok, all right then, I guess..."

Me: "But I'm going to keep dressing appropriately and modestly for Mass, and wear a veil, because I'm no heathen!"

Me: "Wait a minute..."

[herdreamywasteland]

god, do you love me?

(POEM WITH HUGE TW, READ NOTES)

i don't know how god thinks but does he love me?

i don't know how god thinks, but god, do you love me?

do you love me?

i ask again and again, do you love me?

echoing the words of jesus christ, holy and perfect falling from my sinful lips.

and i understand how hard it must be but answer please.

god, do you love me?

i don't know how god thinks and i don't know how you think.

but do you love me?

and there's so much i need to do. there's so much I'm missing. there's so much stuff.

but i need to know, do you love me?

and im hiding in your closet but i swear i'm not a faggot i just need to know

you can't give me what i want a certain satisfaction, an answer.

do you love me? god, can you love me?

just lynch me, beat me, break me,

i'm a freak, an accident, a horrible mistake.

god, can you love me? god, do you love me?

i say bad things and do things that are even worse.

i think bad things, and i can't control myself,

the spirit is willing, my flesh is weak, just pierce my hands, i'm just a freak.

make me more like you, turn me into christ, make you love me,

god do you love me?

my dad is a christian my mom is a christian

i don't know what im supposed to be.

because i'm hiding in closets and wishing away bodies, thinking bad things, saying worse.

and god, does he love me?

infinite mercy, but is it infinite, there has to be an end, or some kind of catch.

people like me don't deserve to see heaven.

so i ask, in the words of jesus christ my god, why have you abandoned me?

do you even love me?

i don't know how god thinks, but how could he love me?

i don't know how god thinks but i see the way you act and that's enough.

you can't love me, not for who i am, just for who i pretend to be.

is that what god wants?

should i hide? should i change?

i bet you'd kill me.

haven't slept for days, haven't eaten anything. it's all in my head, there's nothing i can do.

people can dream, think things, say things, do things.

but i'm such a freak, i'm just a freak, an erasable mistake.

does god make mistakes?

and i don't know how god thinks, but this is sacrilegious, am i sacrilegious?

i don't know how god thinks, i sure hope he loves me.

i don't know how you think, but god, i hope you love me.

echoing the words of jesus christ, following in his footsteps, hating every moment of it, hating myself.

string me up on a tree, stab my hands, break my teeth.

give me a crown call me your queen, rip open my side, put holes in my feet.

make me just like christ, so that maybe i can understand, if god really loves me if you really love me.

my spirit might be willing, but my flesh is weak, why have you abandoned me, left me here to rot,

when i said beat me, i never meant leave me, when i said kill me, don't let me die alone.

let me be the skeleton in your closet, but i'm not a fag, i just hate myself, just hate my body, just hate me.

when i said pull my hair, when i said string me up, when i said hurt me, break me, kill me,

i didn't mean leave me.

god, don't leave me.

and i don't know how god thinks, but i need him to love me,

i don't know how you think i need you to love me.

but i'll bleed just for you, i'll whisper the gospel as you try to sleep, i'll stab my side and crown myself, i'll hide in your closet, and insist i'm not a faggot,

i'll smile for my mom smile for your dad

cut my hands, bleed on your bedsheets, call you my queen.

i'll get on my knees, plush carpet and church floors under me.

and i hate myself, but i don't know how you think, and i don't know how god thinks, and i need to know

god, do you love me?

[mrsjdavis]

This is what it means to take up your cross...

Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

[mrsjdavis]

This opens up so much perspective on sin and repentance, as psychological phenomena! Being able to sit with the discomfort of our flaws and not center ourselves, is an important aspect of humility.

[puppyeared]

renaissance dogys

characters belong to @canisalbus

[the-muppet-joker]

Refraining from posting about my niche kinks on Tumblr is the same as Ego Death in my eyes.

[shortkingvi]

we seal mike flanagan away for a year and then every october he re-emerges like a progressively more insane little show business gremlin to put a curse on my bloodline

[aqours]

the takeaway i'm getting from the catholic church getting their own anime girl mascot is every other branch needs to jump on this asap. as a methodist i propose we get a goth anime girl mascot

[crazycatsiren]

God gives His toughest battles to His most authentically and unapologetically carnal, hedonistic, and unhinged soldiers and forever blesses us for it. I said what I said, if you even care, that is. ✝️

[meticulouslymindlessart]

Thetis with the arms of Achilles

I saw several mosaics depicting this motive and decided to try my hand at it as well.

Also, I just find Thetis to be quite interesting as a character. There’s gotta be something fundamentally Tragic about raising a child, knowing that he will most likely die very young.

*

*

*

(Close-Ups)

[martyrbat]

ok sure you don't believe in god or the church anymore but what are you doing to unlearn the propaganda you wre taught? what are you doing to educate yourself about marginalized groups that the church attacked and that you absorbed subconsciously? how are you challenging your viewpoints on things such as addiction, sexuality, poverty, other religions, disabilities, illness, race, and more without it being through a christian lens? are you careful to not spread propaganda or harmful ideologies? youre ‘reclaiming’ shit for your poetry and healing and thats great i guess, i wish you the best, but what have you actually renounced?

[mrsjdavis]

Today's first Sunday reading was the binding of Isaac. This shocks a lot of people, that Abraham would sacrifice his child. But, don't people frequently sacrifice their children even today? What is war, but people sacrificing their children? It also shocks people that Abraham wouldn't question God. But Agamemnon didn't question sacrificing his child. People take it for granted that The Omnipotent will ask us to violently destroy what is most precious, and that we love best, that anything good has a horrible cost. What Genesis 22 shows us is that God DOESN'T want us to destroy what we love. If we give it to Him, He will give it back to us, with more besides. The gods are cruel, but God is kind and generous.

[rachellesedai]

Another thought

What all did Mary know? She knew Jesus was the son of God and they had years to just sit and talk. Did she ask what the stars were? Did he tell her? Did he tell her about ancient mysteries and distant lands? Why not? It’s not like it would have changed anything. Mary could have had a better education than any human ever.

random Catholic thought

Did Mary know herself to be sinless? Or was it revealed in Heaven?

[sevenlersiniz]

You turn on the light.

[banishedchildofeve]

how July feels