#anglican in my childhood

[sasquapossum]

The oompa loompas went on strike.

You're passing through Wonka's factory and through a doorway you see what is distinctly the body of Christ being fed into a big wacky machine

[saintsenara]

hi ive been reading your delicious hp meta and in particular how voldemort has so much catholic theming as a villain and character in part due to the authors own views on religion. i was wondering your thoughts on a trend ive noticed in fic that makes this idea explicit by making wools a catholic institution or at least tying it closely to one. its an idea that i see the appeal of but to me always reads as a bit split from the historical context, that a broad london orphanage in the 20s would be catholic as opposed to anglican. as a yank it feels more like an association we would make, orphanage = run by nuns, because that was the situation here vs. an actual look on the plausibility of voldemorts own history with religion

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i promise i will one day write the "lord voldemort and religion" meta i've had multiple requests for, but on this specific question...

i also like to headcanon the orphanage as a catholic one, because i'm irish, and so the image i have in my head when i think of poor merope staggering through the doors to give birth and to die is of the laundries and the other institutions - including orphanages - which were woven into their web.

as headcanons go, it's not really justifiable on the basis of what we find in canon - mrs cole is very much not a nun, and the description of the orphanage is clearly intended to make it sound like a state run one, which would mean it was a church of england institution [there being no separation of church and state in the united kingdom] and lord voldemort therefore raised in a sort of compulsory, bland, low-church protestantism.

[which, i think it's also worth saying, mrs cole's canon portrayal very much implies. i never really vibe with interpretations of voldemort's childhood which have him being accused of demonic possession and the like - this is really not something you'd expect to find in mainstream swathes of the 1930s church of england. the mrs cole we meet in half-blood prince is someone who is clearly doing everything she can to disavow any supernatural explanation for tom's magic, and this is definitely c of e of her...]

but there were catholic orphanages in the uk during the 1920s and 1930s [which would still be able to claim some degree of state involvement]. east london - which had a large irish population - would be a reasonable setting for one. mrs cole could presumably be a layperson on the payroll because the nuns didn't want to deal with the orphans themselves...

[j-femmescoli]

some things re: ruby i've been thinking about

we have an entire episode in s1 (2005) about how someone cannot touch their past self or bad things happen so how could the woman who left her at the church be an older her

unless she's not entirely human? and maybe the rules are different about different species? idk

the doctor has mentioned their own children / family multiple times in just these six episodes -- telling ruby about susan in the devil's chord, repeatedly saying "dad to dad" to the anglican in boom, etc.

ruby and the doctor's stories mirror each other when it comes to their childhoods, abandoned and adopted. but in flux when the doctor confronts tecteun they say "what if i wasn't abandoned, what if someone was waiting to come pick me up." what if there's more to the doctor's story, the doctor's race, the doctor's home that we do not know about. what if it has to do with ruby.

if the woman who left ruby at the church is an older her, we still don't know who she is or where she comes from

i don't believe it at all but whenever i see the woman who leaves ruby on the church i can't get it out of my head that it looks so so so much like jodie 😭

that's all. for now

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 3 - Catholic Character Tournament

firestar art by @kudossi

Propaganda below ⬇️

Firestar

NOTE: I have to note that Firestar is kitty Anglican NOT kitty Catholic

Kitty jesus, he believes in starclan which is the kitty version of heaven/god and yea. All the warrior cats characters except those outside the clans or those that are atheist believe in the kitty heaven and would irl be bri-ish and christian as hell so. The authors are all older british christian women and so the way starclan is written is like undoubtedly that.

The main religion in the series is extremely catholic coded. Most clan cats believe in Starclan and the Dark Forest(or heaven and hell). There is a set of rule they must uphold and follow, where following them leads to heaven and breaking them leads to hell. Their religious leaders are sworn to celibacy, and the punishments that "code breakers"(or cats who break the rules) face are extremely similar to situations people with religious trauma have gone through.

OP notes: apparently converted to avoid getting his balls cut?? Idk. The discord yet wild for firestar so I had to include him because it's hilarious hehehe

OP new notes: I have learned so much about warrior cats. Do yourself a favor and go down this tag and see the Firestar discourse.

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Wait what denomination are you?

Until like last Sunday I attended a Nondenominational church. I've decided I am returning to my childhood baptist church. For now at least. When I move out of home I am in search of an Anglican or Methodist church. Hoping for Anglican because after being Baptist all my life I am craving something high church.

[cloverandcrossbones]

Who TF decided that the His Dark Materials (Golden Compass) books were for kids/young adults?

I attempted to read them when I was the "target" age for them and it was the first time I ever remember tapping out on a book because it was above my reading comprehension (I regularly read books that were 2-3 years ahead of my "reading level" and was generally up for a challenge so that should tell you how much of I struggled). I gave up partway through the second book, The Subtle Knife, and didn't touch them again until this year.

And, boy, am I glad I waited! There is so much to this series that would have just been totally lost on me as a kid. The way it explores theology and morality would have gone right over my head. Even now with a bachelor's degree in English literature under my belt the depth to these books astounds me.

Every chapter of the Amber Spyglass opens with a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost, or one of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, or some other theologian or philosopher or outright Bible verses. Every chapter. In a series that was regularly promoted to 10 year olds. Yes, kids can be pretty smart and I hate when adult authors talk down to them, but what 10 year old is reading Paradise Lost?

I'm not saying you need a degree to understand this stuff, but you would have to have read a lot of foundational texts to get the full depths of the references. I also ended up leaning a lot on the religious study courses I've taken (and theological education from growing up Catholic) to identify specific religious theories/schools of thought which was just fascinating. Religious groups HATE these books! They're extremely critical of organized religion and Christian beliefs especially as they are canonized by the Catholic and Anglican churches. It's a three-book fiction trilogy exploring and arguing against Milton's interpretation of original sin.

So why was this series labelled as YA? Simple, the protagonists are kids; they're 12 years old.

Why did Pullman write about 12 year olds if the series wasn't meant for them? Because the biggest theme of the story is sin and children are considered innocent. Lyra and Will are coming of age and transitioning from childhood innocence to adulthood and its accompanying consciousness/self awareness that allows us to be held responsible for sinning.

Anyway here's an entry to the literal Wikipedia page for the series that I think sums it up:

Although His Dark Materials has been marketed as young adult fiction, and the central characters are children, Pullman wrote with no target audience in mind.

[cheerfullycatholic]

Can you please pray for me as I discern what Christian denomination to join, and whether I should stay at my childhood church?

I’ve grown up evangelical all my life, and so have accepted Jesus as my Savior, but I feel like there is something hollow in my faith and am thinking more and more about following a more traditional Christian religion. I have always been attracted by a more liturgical Christianity and a higher view of the sacraments since I went to an Anglican school growing up, and it does astonish me as I read more about church history how the Protestantism I grew up in has so deviated from what the earliest Christians thought and did.

However, I feel selfish for considering this and letting my family down. Shouldn’t I just worship God where I am at? I don’t want to just convert for my own personal tastes or sake. In fact, the worst feeling in converting to something like Catholicism is the fact that I would unintentionally be idol worshipping as I was taught Catholics do as a kid growing up in my church. Please pray that Jesus helps me follow the Truth and that I know where to go, trusting in Him above all else, and not my own desires or being sidetracked by my fears.

Thank you. I would immensely appreciate your prayers and anyone else’s, especially anyone who has gone through a similar discernment process.

Of course 🖤 I think God sometimes makes us uncomfortable in order to guide us in the right direction, so I think looking for the Truth rather than staying where you are is a good idea

[noahsbookhoard]

📚December 2024 Book Review📚

Happy New Year everyone! And to end it up with only one day of delay here's the last reviews for 2024!

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

It was interesting but not my favorite Atwood so far. Grace's point of view was sometimes hard to follow, but the change of writing style to mark the difference of class and education between her and the doctor was a meaningful choice. I liked the mystery, the contradicting versions of what happened and the confusion of the poor doctor trying to unravel all this.

I am not opposed to open endings so the lack of answers at the end was not a problem to me but I understand that it can bother others. When you write about real events it's delicate to whether someone is or isn't guilty, better to let the readers judge by themselves.

Le Père Porcher (Chroniques du Disque-Monde #20) by Terry Pratchett

I wanted to reread it for Christmas season and, for a twist, to read the french translation by Patrice Couton. I don't credit translator enough but I always heard the highest praise for his work on the Discworld Novels. They are well deserved, the translation is amazing! Incredible work on the names, hilarious translations of the puns, it works so well! The story itself is just as good as I remembered, Death is really an amazing character.

Soie by Alessandro Baricco

I don't see the appeal. There is some nice writing, the repetitive aspects give it a nice fairy tale vibe but that's it. It barely mention the journey to Japan, barely mention silk. Which is the damn title. Instead you have a guy that travels across Europe and Asia to cheat on his wife. This wasn't was I hoped for from the title and blurb, I am just disappointed.

A Day of Fallen Night (Root of Chaos #0) by Samantha Shannon

I loved The Priory of the Orange Tree when I read it three years ago so I was excited to read the prequel. If you are like me and picked if long after reading book 1, I strongly recommend catching up on the lore before reading and if you haven't read book 1 yet DO NOT start with A Day of Fallen Night: this might be a prequel but it is not an introduction.

That said I loved it, convoluted and lore heavy as it is: it brings back all the places I loved in book 1 with even more details put on the world building and tradition. The multiple point of views are well used and they come together in really satisfying ways. Even if the threat is more or less the same as in The Priory of the Orange Tree the way they figure a solution and the fight was so good!

Retour à St Mary (Cosy Christmas Mystery #1) by Carine Pitocchi

Plain bad, and that's not the just me saying it, that's 100% of my local book club. Don't hope for a whodunit, the mystery barely qualifies as a police novel, the investigation is confusing and the culprit, obvious. This is also half of a Christmas cheesy hallmark romance. The bad half that is, because at the end Unsufferable Female Lead takes a train and just leaves behind Secretly In Love Childhood Best Friend Who Happens To Be An Anglican Priest For Some Reason Male Love Interest. It just sucks. Don't bother.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I really liked it, the main character spiralling down pulled me down two and at several moments I was genuinely spooked. I read it a little too quickly to fully appreciate it tho I think, I will need to reread it again!

Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Niania #02) by C S Lewis

I don't really have much too say. Just like the first book I had watched the movie a hundred times before and I was just too old for it. It is a cute story tho, I love the talking animals, especially Reepicheep.

Winter Spirits short story collection

Overall a nice read: this is an anthology featuring 12 different authors which means 12 different spin on the spooky christmas ghost story. There's only one I actively didn't like and four where I went to check what else the author had done because I needed to study how their brain worked. I originally picked the book because it features a story by Stuart Turton, who wrote The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. His story is good but I especially loved those by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Andrew Michael Hurley, and Natashe Pulley.

The Agatha Christie Book Club #1 by C A Larmer

This was fun but not as good as reading an Agatha Christie novel. The investigation is a little convoluted, with clues that aren't really clear to the reader. And honestly if I were the characters being interviewed by the book club member twenty seven times in one week I too would have been annoyed and slammed the door. It was a bit frustrating that the pay off required to have biographical knowledge of Christie's life. It was all explained in the end but you couldn't really follow along. The book is good but my expectations were miscalculated, I'll adjust when reading the rest of the series.

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei

This wouldn't be enough to call it Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade In Space but this is very much what it is. And more. It has some really cool element of world building and alien species with complex history and dynamics. The characters were very good too, the relationship between Uncle and Maia I was especially fond of, medic is touching too, I just took most of the book to warm up to Will. Emotional, action packed, full of twist and investigation and museum heist. Very warm recommendation.

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

Gut punches galore. It had been a long time since I read a horror novel that genuinely scared me and boy was I scared. I have next to zero knowledge of the US South but the description were so vivid I could feel the heat. Also a gold star for most fucked up gay relationship to Andrew and Eddy, this should be so hot but somehow it is, good luck to Sam unpacking this mess.

A Local Habitation (October Daye #2) by Seanan McGuire

This. Was. Wild. Never saw so many deaths and especially main characters narrowly avoiding death I was SO SURE I had figured it out and in the end I was barking at the wrong tree. What a ride. I am growing very fond of October Daye and I hope we get to see more of Quentin too because he's a good kid. I was promised by

[alliluyevas]

whats the difference between anglicans & episcopalians? i thought the only difference between the two was, like, national boundaries. are they in communion with each other?

okay, this is really confusing because anglican can mean different things in different national contexts

the Anglican Communion is the term for churches worldwide that are connected historically and theologically with the Church of England.

The Episcopal Church is the American branch of that larger faith tradition. Pre-1776, it was the colonial branch of the Church of England but split off as the United States split off politically. In the modern day, the Episcopal Church has its own autonomous church structure but recognizes connection with the Church of England and the broader Anglican movement and is in communion with other churches in that movement.

For instance, in my church we pray for our local bishop, for the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and for the archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England and is an honored and respected figure in other churches in the Anglican communion but he does not have any authority over the other churches. (The highest authority in the Episcopal Church is the presiding bishop. This is an elective office, voted on by all Episcopal bishops, and the individual elected serves for a nine-year term. The Episcopal Church doesn't use the title archbishop other than recognizing its use in other Anglican denominations.)

The Anglican Church in North America is a separate denomination that split off from the Episcopal Church (and its Canadian equivalent, the Anglican Church of Canada) in the 1990s because of disagreements over the church's social positions, namely ordination of women and openly gay priests. I don't know as much about the Canadian side of this (which is even more confusing, because both branches call themselves Anglican churches), but in the United States it goes like this:

Anglicans are members of a more conservative breakoff sect that schismed off of the Episcopal Church. Their church does not accept gay priests or gay marriages and may or may not ordain women (I believe the current policy is leaving it up to individual congregations, but I may be misled on this.) Despite being called Anglican, this church is not recognized by or part of the broader Anglican communion.

Episcopalians are members of the Episcopal Church, which does accept gay and female priests and perform gay marriage ceremonies. (Both my childhood parish priest and the priest at the parish I attended prior to my most recent move are gay men.) It is part of the broader Anglican communion.

I hope this helps!

[recalcitrantlycaffeinated]

DND, session -1

We start our tale before the first session truly begins...for we must start our tale with the person who invited me to play DND (5E) this summer.

Imagine the most hapless person you have ever known. The MOST persecuted character you have ever seen; things never go right for him. This HAS to be pre-ordained, or some kind of biological accident never before befalling the children of Adam and Eve.

That's my friend Miles (not his real name). We went to college together 15 years ago, where I and my boyfriend at the time used to hide from him during lunch because we did not have the emotional bandwidth to hear another story about his car getting hit by a snowplow five minutes before the school canceled classes, or the floor collapsing at a concert he attended, or his keys breaking off just as he was trying to open his trunk (where his only other pair of keys happened to be). A couple years after I graduated, I spent a weird few weeks as impromptu assistant editor on his documentary when they were so entrenched they needed a few outside people to weigh in, and during the pandemic we started talking more often. We debate Anglicanism vs Roman Catholicism on the reg, and I still get to hear improbable stories of the worst bad luck ever at least weekly.

The next character in this story is one of Miles' childhood friends that I met while working on the movie. Who just happens to be one of the priests at my parish. He's the one who is (ostensibly) running this summer campaign. He is NOT fighting off some kind of ancient curse, but if you told me he was a time traveler from some earlier pre-technology time where they did metal forging things and didn't use proper calendars, I would believe you without question.

Of course, when you combine propensity for disaster with aversion to any useful modern tools used for planning things cooperatively, you end up with a session 0 where the DM cannot even be there because he forgot about a parish commitment, and where Miles has to player DM a session based on two handwritten pages of inscrutable notes given 24 hours ahead of time (he did not even have a physical copy of the handbook).

As if this was not complicated enough, I then had to bring my four year old to the session with me when my husband got called in to restore power after the recent storm. Given 12 hours' notice for this, I taught her how to use headphones and hyped her up for grown up game night, while Miles downloaded copies of Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh to a USB stick (note: both these files ended up being broken in different, inexplicable ways...because of course they were).

We were joined by one of Miles' friends (and a frequent player in the games he DMs) and her not-quite-teenager, who had never really played DND before, and had grown really attached to their character to the point that they were terrified of it dying.

The final player at this session was the husband of one of Miles' parish priests.

We had originally built a party with three rogues, because we thought this was marvelously funny, but the final count is one multiclassing cleric/rogue named Seamus, one swashbuckling rogue named Traps (me!), and one fighter named Xander. Rounding out with the non-rogues, we've got an assassin bard elf drow named Hex, and a paladin whose name I promptly forgot for Character Reasons.

Oh, you thought I was going to make a whole new character that allows me to Grow and Improve at Role Playing? WRONGGGGG!! Everybody, welcome to the return of Samuel, my favorite idiot charisma boy archetype. Except in this version of the multiverse the ships are in space instead of on the ocean and there are at least 800 fewer rules about how they work so I am going to be able to explore the universe unencumbered by rules about Exhaustion and Rum is Bad For You Actually. Everyone should maybe be afraid of how this is going to go.

[46ten]

James Hamilton (Sr) on St Eustatius/Statia, on their census records from 1759-1767

This is the work of Ruud Stelton, Alexandre Hinton, Walter Hellebrand, and Eliza Gramayre, and has been published by the first two researchers in the JAR (2020). [I don't think I've posted about this before and want it for my records!]

They found census records of a James Hamilton in St. Eustatius/Statia, beginning in 1759. From 1763-1765, a wife and two children, along with five enslaved persons, also appear in the census records, which led the researchers to conclude that this is most likely the Hamilton family we're interested in. This supports other evidence Michael W. Newton found of traces of the Hamiltons in St. Eustatius starting in 1755. It also raises the possibility that A. Hamilton may have known some Dutch since early childhood!

The five enslaved persons were two adult women, two girls, and one boy. There's speculation that these belonged to Rachel and had been inherited from her mother, as they do not appear in the census except when Rachel and the two sons are also present.

States Hellebrand: "St. Eustatius was one of the wealthiest and busiest places in the eighteenth century and the Hamiltons would be attracted by its opportunities and anonymity.”

From the JAR article:

"With import duties abolished, an increase in trade activities with ports across the Atlantic World resulted in the construction of a mile-long strip of hundreds of buildings including warehouses, merchant homes, shops, trade offices, brothels, and taverns along Statia’s leeward shore. This bustling trade center, wedged between steep cliffs on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other, was called the Lower Town. Statia’s population increased from around 2,000 people in the 1740s to 8,476 people in 1790.

..."Most likely, the Hamiltons lived in Upper Town, the island’s main settlement on the cliffs overlooking Lower Town. This is where most middle-class citizens resided. Upper Town was very different from the hustle and bustle of its seaside counterpart, but it was still a busy place where people vended provisions and merchandise in the streets and on the market. Moreover, government buildings, places of worship, and the island’s main fort were all located in Upper Town. Eighteenth-century travelers describe most buildings in Upper Town as single-story wooden constructions topped with a shingled roof. These houses usually had three rooms: one central room that served as a public space and two bedrooms to the sides..

..."With thousands of ships arriving from all over the Atlantic World in the previous decade as well, the situation must have been similar in the 1760s. St. Eustatius attracted people from all over the world who wanted to make a quick fortune. As a result, many different religions were practiced on the island. There were Anglican, Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, and Roman Catholic religious groups, each with their own place of worship. The island was also home to a relatively large Jewish community, which had built an impressive synagogue in Upper Town in the 1730s.... From 1763 to 1765, the Hamiltons lived in one of the most cosmopolitan places in the Caribbean, where they could buy almost any type of good someone in Amsterdam, London, or Paris had access to as well. While Dutch was used in most government correspondence, English was (and still is) the language most commonly spoken on the island.

..."This data provides some insight into the Hamiltons’ standing within society and suggests they were comfortably situated within the island’s middle class."

Newton provided a copy of the records and additional speculation.

I've always been interested in a thorough examination of how Hamilton's experience with the Caribbean trade economy, social stratification, and slave revolts informed his political and financial thinking - I'm not sure there have been in depth explorations of these topics when it comes to islands like St. Eustatius or St. Croix (in comparison to Jamaica, for example, although that just may be the bias of only reading English-speaking researchers).

[avelera]

funny CLWM thing that somehow hadn't occurred to me yet: the town is now all scandalized that "Morfea" might be a catholic... if they only knew that Hob was born a catholic! That the church of England didn't even exist when he was born! lol, the layers of "everyone in town would flip their shit if they only knew what's actually up with the 'Gadlings' " in this fic are so fun!

Hmm, well, keep in mind, Hob definitely converted to Anglicanism and was probably one of the very first men to do so? Given I picture him as a grubby little social climber through Henry VIII's reign--said with all affection, you get that money, Hob, as a peasant, no one has earned it more, I'm so proud of him for weaseling his way into their ranks BUT I'm sure it took a lot of persistent effort-- my point is, I see 1500s Hob as someone who leapt at the chance to suck up to the nobility and Henry VIII by being all aboard the "screw the Pope" train immediately, there were a lot of political reasons to break with the Catholic church too that as someone angling his way into the upper classes, Hob would have had at front of mind.

Also just... keep in mind 1389 Hob would be less "Catholic" by our standard and more "Latin Christian" ie, of a group that was everyone who wasn't some flavor of Eastern/Orthodox Christian or some minor heretic sect so... yeah Hob was just mainstream IMO, if the town could accept that he's immortal, it would be less like he was some "*gasp* Catholic!" and more that he was whatever the dominant religion was in England, whenever it happened to be that, so: eminently proper about it.

The thing about Morfea-as-a-Catholic being seen as some sort of scandal is less that anyone would freak out that she was ever Catholic, but rather they'd assume she converted to Anglicanism to marry Hob in their local church and then they'd be wondering if she only pretended to convert to Anglicanism to marry Hob and if her failure to show up at Church is because she's secretly still a practicing Catholic in her heart.

Note: the (correct) assumption that Hob is Anglican would be assumed by him going to church in town before Dream showed up, something he would have made an effort to do to confirm that he was a good upstanding Englishman once he moved into this town to open his bookshop, 1789 and recently-1789 Hob would be very conscientious still about being seen doing things "as they are done" when it comes to fitting in to society, IMO.

So it's less that everyone knows she was once Catholic (she's Italian, it would be assumed that she was at one point) now as that they suspect she was trying to conceal the fact, which is much more of a scandal. Keep in mind, it would have been within living memory in this town when Catholics were barred from certain careers and weren't allowed to worship openly in England (source) for example if they were soldiers (only allowed in 1811) but at this point, Catholic men could not vote or have a seat in Parliament (not until 1829).

Thing is, Hob as I write him is very nearly an atheist and not a man of principle. He's a man of hedonism, comfort, and convenience. Hob as we see him in 1789 would have absolutely no qualms about being openly and loudly Anglican despite being "born" a "Catholic" if it's what he needed to get ahead in life and be comfortable. And keep in mind, the Black Plague era when he was born was a point of very low regard for the "Catholic" Church in Europe, as only the selfish or very lucky priests would have survived (since priests are supposed to administer last rites to the dying) for what would have been Hob's childhood, so he probably never had a "good" priest growing up to make him a fan of the religion beyond what was required by obligation.

Also, Protestantism traces its roots back to the corruption that set into the Church as a result of the Black Plague so like again, Hob I think would be one of those Englishmen who was entirely in favor of breaking ties with the Pope and would have had absolutely zero qualms about brown-nosing the nobility to be seen as at the forefront of accepting the new state religion if it meant angling for advancement. Actually, it's kind of implied, I believe, that he was one of the New Men who benefited from the dissolution and redistribution of the wealth from England's monasteries? If so, if he has any lingering traces of being a Catholic, he's a very bad Catholic.

Anyway, the Regency is an era of expanding rights for Catholics in England though they still face societal limitations like a lack of suffrage, even for the men. I imagine the expectation was that Morfea would convert to her husbands religion. At the very least, the memory of their wedding being in the town means she was married under Anglican rites, and it would have to be to make it binding. Thing is, Morfea showing up the next Sunday for Church would probably put the whole rumor to rest. They're not going to burn her as a witch or anything. It's more that she seemed to avoid going to church at exactly the wrong time, when it was probably most necessary for Hob and Dream to confirm that they were as normal as possible. Theoretically they could probably right this quickly by having Dream (ha!) get very involved in doing good works through the Church as an open practicing Anglican (Hahahahaa!) but therein lies the greater question: why bother?

[blondiest]

Okay so I've been thinking about the gender swap thing and I think part of it with Meronia is that enemies/rivals to lovers doesn't have the same tension or dynamic when it's a straight passing ship. When its m/m or f/f there's a subtle element of internalized homophobia (which is not by any means an ideal situation, however it's something that most- if not all- queer people can relate to) and it feels almost more believable in a way and especially since people tend to enjoy things that they relate to. Not that there's anything wrong with enemies/rivals to lovers in an m/f dynamic or that it can't be done well or realistically, because I've enjoyed ships like that too, but I think it usually works better as m/m or f/f. With Meronia specifically, I think a lot of their dynamic may come from Mello's Catholic guilt about his sexuality and the religious trauma from Wammy's House, especially with the scene in the anime when Mello gives Near information and the stained glass and everything is in the background and the church bells ring after Near asks if the picture is the only business Mello had with him and Mello seeing the note on the back, scenes like that that set the dynamic between them in the first place just don't really land the same way with a m/f couple. Again, not to say that it can't be done well, I just wanted to share my take on it.

I hope you have a great day/night and you don't deserve to be getting hate for this

hi!! thank you for sharing your thoughts on this so thoughtfully and politely :-) you're very sweet.

to be honest i don't usually really write mello experiencing a lot of catholic guilt with respect to his sexuality specifically because i personally find it more interesting to explore his inferiority complex and relationship with religion through other lenses (part of this is just that i don't really tend to like writing internalized homophobia for my own reasons -- obviously this is a totally valid thing to explore with mello). [i also have the profoundly not-popular headcanon that wammy's was not actually catholic but instead anglican, and that mello's catholic background came from his childhood pre-wammy's, but that's not actually that relevant at the moment i suppose]

i guess what i'm saying is like,,, i already don't explore those things so i think in the case of my writing for the ship, that difference is somewhat less relevant. but i hear where you're coming from in terms of preference overall. we can agree to beautifully disagree <3

[impider]

here's some quick kulta ( earth 1520's spider-man oc ) headcanons that i need to get out of my head because i don't have time to fully develop him or his universe yet , but my muse for him is high since i got to talk about him today !

born and raised in london , kulta's the son of two parents that immigrated to the uk from the republic of benin . they are yoruba people , making kulta of direct yoruba descent . their culture was very prominent in his childhood home and kulta speaks fluent yoruba , having had to translate for his parents throughout his life . he practices the yoruba religion , one that is centuries older than christianity . throughout his life , he's gone through the motions with his identity and religion as an african kid living in an eurocentric environment , but as of now , he is overwhelmed with a sense of yoruba pride and rebels against the idea of london's protestant anglican church .

though one thing he doesn't respect is superstition . he believes in hoodoo and the yourba deities and knows in his heart that they are real , but he has summoned them several times against warning ( mostly while drunk or to sick them on his enemies ) .

it is rumored that he has made a deal to host the crossroads deity and that it is them that grants kulta his inter dimensional travel abilities . because of this , he can travel to different dimensions without miguel's watch tech . as a result , he has become a trickster that will appear at the crossroads when summoned and makes deals at the crossroads that seem to always have a catch . consuming souls has essentially made him immortal , though he uses them to pay off his debt to the original source of his powers .

his uncle bamidele ( affectionately known as dele ) was an inspiration to him . dele was a musician that taught kulta everything he knows and was someone that fully embraced the underground music scene and culture of the uk at a time when kulta was still finding his identity . when his uncle goes missing , kulta takes it hard and searches for him even now , from earth to underworld , looking for his soul .

currently an infamous rockstar that started very lowkey in the punk scene , but has since risen in popularity as the guitarist and vocalist of his band . he uses his dimensional travel abilities to travel to different earths and make enemies of other rock bands / challenge them to see who's the best . known to trash hotel rooms and get ejected from venues for vandalism .

standard spider-man powers and gear , but his main offense is a trick weapon gutiar - chainsaw that he uses to behead statues and monuments .

[sag-dab-sar]

Personal Terminology: why "Mariolatry" and not "Marian Devotion/Veneration" ?

Mariolatry is a pejorative term used primarily by protestants to describe Catholic & Orthodox veneration of The Virgin Mary.

Here is a small part of what Mary means to me.

Mariolatry

Wiktionary Entry

Latin Maria + o + -latry

Maria referring to The Virgin Mary, 'o' is an interfix, and "-latry" meaning 'worship of'.

-latry according to wiktionary comes from "Late Latin latria, from Ancient Greek λατρεία (latreía, “service; worship”).

So the literal meaning is "Worship of Mary"

This may not seem bad on the surface but it certainly is bad for many Christians because there are different types of acceptable veneration.

Christian Veneration

*Obviously individual Catholics and Christians are going to have different ideas. Certainly not all follow official doctrines many syncretisms and DIY exist. I am basing my view off Church *doctrine* as I know it.

In Catholicism (largest denomination of Christianity) worship is known as latria. It comes from the exact same origin "-latry" does.

Latria is due only to God (The Trinity) and God alone.

Dulia, which comes from Greek douleia meaning servitude, is the honor paid towards Saints.

Hyperdulia, which is just dulia with a hyper prefix attached meaning "over", describes the honor paid towards Mary. It is above the honor of saints but below worship.

"Wherefore dulia, which pays due service to a human lord, is a distinct virtue from latria, which pays due service to the Lordship of God. It is, moreover, a species of observance, because by observance we honor all those who excel in dignity, while dulia properly speaking is the reverence of servants for their master, dulia being the Greek for servitude". — St. Thomas Aquinas

Worship is due to God and God alone.

So saying "you worship Mary" can be offensive, and a Christian who participates in Marian Devotion might strongly disagree. Marian devotion exists in the Roman & Eastern Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, and Lutheranism. They don't worship her, they give her honor and veneration that is below the worship of God, even if it is devout.

Many Protestants refuse these distinctions and see the veneration of Mary and Saints along with statues and icons as idolatry..... hence "mariolatry"

My Personal Practice

The distinctions individuals wish to use is all well and good, and I completely respect it.

But I am not Christian. I am a polytheist. I see no reason to give Mary Hyperdulia/Dulia and not Latria.

I don't come from a theological framework were worship is due to The Trinity and The Trinity alone. Or even due to Gods alone. Many other types of spirits that may not be considered Gods or "fully" Gods can receive worship in my practice. I view Mary on par with heros such as Herakles, he certainly receives worship.

Mary is separate from my rituals, offerings, and prayers to the Theoi and Diĝirene. However, my veneration/honor of Mary is still not below their worship. Hence "worship of Mary" seemed completely acceptable and well thats what "mariolatry" means so I took a very strong liking to the word.

Other Terms

"Mariology" — this is the theological study of The Virgin Mary. Her place, her role, etc within Christian theology. I have no interest in studying theology.

"Marian devotion" — devote is a very strong word in my religion that can't be ascribed to Mary

"Marian veneration" — connects my desired personal practice more to Christianity than I want it to be. Also "Marian devotion/veneration" just tingle my childhood catholic school spidey senses and I don't like that.

(Hm, 🧐 so if an idolater is someone who practices idolatry would a mariolater be someone who practices mariolatry.)

Last Note

I am not trying to be pejorative towards Christians. I have no issues with Christians. Nor would I insist Marian Devotion by other people = worship. This is solely about me personally using a particular word. I also don't feel any offense if someone called me an idolater, even if they are trying to offend, since I call the animated objects of the Diĝirene & Theoi "Idols."

Anyways hope that all makes sense.

-not audio proof read-

[zerogate]

On premonitions of death

In the early sixties, a French historian, Philippe Ariès, who had already written a radical book about childhood, became deeply occupied with the manner of our dying. Ariès never held a university position. For thirty-five years, he ran the document department of a research institute devoted to tropical fruits. Occasionally, he was mocked by more credentialed academics as “the banana seller.” He read Latin on the train to work. Ariès wondered whether France’s funerary customs—the pious walk to the graveyard; the veneration of tombs—were age-old or more recently invented. He investigated the digging of Paris’s great modern cemeteries, in the late eighteenth century. During his research, Ariès glimpsed an earlier, tantalizing world of reused graves and mingled bones, where men and women responded differently to the end of their lives.

Once he began studying old rites and the verses of medieval danses macabres, Ariès found that he could not stop. With his wife, Primerose, he began to visit the national archives, where they spent three years of weekends reading old wills, from the nineteenth century back to the sixteenth. He gave himself to the story of death. “There was no turning back!” Ariès recalled. “I had lost all freedom; from now on I was totally caught up in a search that constantly expanded.”

Ariès came to the conclusion that, over the course of a thousand years, death had become increasingly private, to the point of invisibility. In the process, it had grown wild. In the early Middle Ages, death had been more commonplace, a simpler and more collective act. “We all die.” It was the sign of a good life to know that the end was at hand. A bell would ring by itself. A man would hear three knocks on the floor of his room. An inscription from 1151, in Toulouse, told how the sacristan of Saint-Paul-de-Norbonne “saw death standing beside him,” made his will, prayed and died. In Arthurian legend, King Ban watched his castle burn, fell off his horse and looked up to the sky, beseeching, “Oh Lord God . . . help me, for I see and I know that my end has come.” I see and I know. Ariès italicized the words. Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, is asked: “Ah, good lord, think you then so soon to die?” He replies: “Yes. I tell you that I shall not live two days.”

[...]

Ariès was fascinated whenever a fragment of the old ways survived. In 1959, almost twenty years before Ariès published The Hour of Our Death, a retired shoeshine named Malete Hanzakos began to prepare for the end of his life in Bucyrus, in northern Ohio. Hanzakos, who was known as Mike, migrated from Sparta, in Greece, to New York City after the First World War. He settled in Bucyrus in the thirties, where he cleaned shoes, grew vegetables and drove his paneled truck through red lights, stopping when they turned green. He never married or spoke much English. At the age of seventy-seven he suffered no more than the usual aches and pains. In the last year of his life, Hanzakos chose a cemetery plot, had a headstone engraved (except the final date), tended his grave, ordered flowers for his funeral (tied in a ribbon of white and blue, the national colors of Greece) and wrote an obituary for the local newspaper, which refused to print it while he was still alive. He could have been reading from The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, written by Jeremy Taylor, an Anglican vicar, in 1651: “Death hath come so near to you as to fetch a portion of your very heart; and now you cannot choose but dig your own grave, and place your coffin in your eye.”

On Boxing Day, Hanzakos asked his sister, Constance, and her son and his family to drive down from Michigan to see him. They ate burgers at the LK Restaurant in town, inspected his grave, which he was proud of and which upset them, and then all crammed into Hanzakos’s one-room apartment under a machine shop. The shoeshine handed out some jars of vegetables that he had canned and a few envelopes of cash. When his nephew tried to refuse the gift of his old shoe brushes, Hanzakos said, “No, boy, I don’t need anything any more,” took a step toward the kitchen table and fell to the floor. He was dead before the doctor arrived. 

“The Man Who Died on Time,” the story of Hanzakos’s foreseen death, was published by Life magazine in early 1960. A few years later, it caught the eye of George Engel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester, in upstate New York, who collected such stories. Like Barker, Engel was gripped by cases of people who appeared to have dropped dead because of some surfeit of emotion or certainty about their fate...

In the sixties, Engel collected 170 cases of sudden or eerie deaths, which he mostly found in press reports. He organized them into eight categories, including “on loss of status or self-esteem,” “during acute grief” and “after the danger is over” (a handful of people often die this way after earthquakes). Like Barker, Engel wanted to expand the frontiers of psychiatry and to pay more attention to the physiological impact of our emotions. In 1980, he wrote a landmark paper advocating a new “biopsychosocial model” for medicine that would take into account not just the bodies of patients, but also their minds and the societies in which they lived. He was a man with time for the nocebo effect.

And, like Barker, Engel was also compelled by forces that weren’t entirely rational. On July 11, 1963, Engel’s twin brother, Frank, who was also a distinguished doctor, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-nine. The two men had been exceptionally close: indistinguishable as boys; rivals and, more recently, collaborators as they pursued their medical careers. They called each other “Oth,” as in “Other.”

After his brother died, Engel became convinced that his life was also running out. He saw death standing next to him. Then a magical notion took hold: that if he could survive the calendar year after his twin’s passing, then he would live out a normal life. “I was fully aware of the irrational nature of this idea, but nonetheless found it impossible to dispel,” Engel recalled. On the afternoon of June 9, 1964, just short of eleven months after his brother’s death, and a few hours ahead of an awkward meeting which, like John Hunter, he was in no mood to attend, Engel suffered the heart attack that he had been waiting for. He was in his office in Rochester. It was not fear that he felt. “My reaction to the attack was one of great relief. I not only escaped the unpleasant meeting, I no longer had to anticipate the heart attack; the other shoe had fallen, so to speak,” the psychiatrist wrote, in an extraordinary paper, in 1975. “I felt serene and tranquil. The waiting was finally over.” I see and I know.

--  Sam Knight, The Premonitions Bureau