#catholic conversion story

[paularoseauthor]

Navigating the Threshold: The Fear of Disclosing a Journey to Catholicism to Protestant Friends

I want to share my innermost thoughts with you and ask myself why on earth I fear sharing them with family and friends?

I want to share my innermost thoughts with you and also ask myself ‘why on earth I fear sharing my desire to be Catholic with family and friends?’ I am a Protestant minister of 40 years looking to convert to Catholicism and I am beginning shared this. However I still feel fear when sharing it with friends, colleagues and family, which is causing me anxiety . In this article are a few reasons why…

[angels-heap]

I know my Half Life blog is not the place for this conversation, so I'm holding back from posting a fucking dissertation here, but goddamn, the lack of nuance and empathy in the conversations surrounding the Nickelodeon documentary is appalling.

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

people online will be like “haha i will make 9/11 jokes because the american reaction to the event had many levels of irrationality” but will not confront the massive amounts of internalised islamophobia that arose from american propaganda justifying the ‘war on terror’ and the iran and iraq wars which was then compounded by a culturally christian society that portrays Islam to be inhumane and oppressive resulting in them now hearing that a muslim group is targeting a fanfic website for ‘degeneracy’ and ‘being usa based’ and then believing it without a second thought

[transmascchiato]

being latino means youll end up knowing some catholic lore you like it or not kinda like having a mutual from a different fandom on tumblr

as in i know i know some of that stuff but i cant tell if its actually canon or just a few assumptions i gathered from what was shoved on my face without a say in the matter

[melangedmess]

Can't wait for Christmas fever to be over it's too exhausting

[thebirdandhersong]

Well, I honestly never thought about Mary outside of the context of Christmas before I became an Anglican but my WORD WHY DIDN'T I!!

[mxthtea]

i think god rested on the 7th day so lets rename sunday to sleepin sunday and we all take a nap

[paularoseauthor]

Building a Community of Faith: Join me on my Journey.

One of the most beautiful aspects of faith is the sense of community it can foster. It’s the idea that we are not on our spiritual journey alone but are part of a larger family of believers. Today, I want to extend an invitation to all who visit this website to join us on our journey from Protestantism to Catholicism and help us build a vibrant and supportive community of faith. Whether you’re a…

[cheerfullycatholic]

“They treated him mercifully,” she said. “Mercy is the love we know we do not deserve. He doesn’t deserve their forgiveness, their goodness, their gentleness. And he received all that.”

[mrsterlingeverything]

I’ll share my story of being sent to conversion therapy by accident by my father!

So, basically my dad is a loving but stupid person, businessmen are just like that I suppose. I came out to my parents around 13 years old and both my parents were supportive, I was also attending a Catholic school and my parents told me not to discuss it until I finish the school year and I can choose a different school to attend in the next school year but summer was approaching and I was also interested in going to camps or something. My dad was talking to my neighbor and casually mentioned I came out as gay and the neighbor said he knew a camp for “kids like me” my dad being my dad didn’t really do his due diligence and just wrote a check to the camp and a few weeks later my parents dropped me off at some rural camp. I had bad vibes about the place after they took our cellphones away, and started touting all this religious nonsense and psychological manipulation, some kid was telling me he wanted to be cured of his homosexuality so his parents would love him. I was like what the fuck?? I couldn’t call my dad or mom because they took my phone away. Felt really weird they even watched us shower to make sure we weren’t engaging in “immoral acts” they fucked up when they let me call my mom for a weekly check-in. I simply told her, I feel unsafe, and somethings really bothering me. Well, within 2 hours I heard this engine revving and it was my mother driving at least 60mph on a dirt road in a Volvo suv, she took me out of there so fucking fast. Got Dairy Queen that afternoon. She almost divorced my father over it. He was very upset at himself. They made me speak to a psychiatrist just in case. Yeah… anyway love your tumblr horse boy.

U have awesome parents

[transtheology]

According to Matson, 39, his “disclosing,” as he describes it, is a moment years in the making. He offered his story as indicative of the often difficult path for trans Catholics, including those seeking life as a religious — a category that includes brothers and nuns.

“I am currently based in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky,” he wrote in an email to friends and supporters on Sunday. “I live in a hermitage at the top of a wooded hill, which I share with my German Shepherd rescue, Odie, and with the Blessed Sacrament, which was installed in my oratory shortly before Christmas.”

[...] Matson approached a canon lawyer to discuss his options and was told that only two aspects of Catholic life were categorically off the table: marriage and the priesthood. According to Matson, the canon lawyer recommended being upfront about his status as a transgender man in any vocational conversations with church leaders and mentioned the role of a diocesan hermit, which could prove less challenging than enlisting with an existing religious order.

[...] What followed was roughly a decade of searching and no small amount of rejection. Living in the United Kingdom while pursuing a master’s degree, and later a Ph.D. in theology, Matson entered a vocational discernment program and approached the Jesuit order to ask if he could join.

“They said, ‘No, we just don’t see how this would work for us,’ which was crushing, because that’s where I felt called,” Matson said.

[...] “I thought, well, if I can’t find a religious community to sponsor me, maybe what I need is a bishop,” Matson said.

A priest friend recommended different bishops to contact, beginning with Stowe, who was emerging as a leading voice among Catholics calling for a more tolerant approach to LGBTQ+ people. In 2020, Matson sent Stowe a letter, conveying his status as a transgender man, his vision for an artists’ community and his pull to religious life.

Stowe wrote back immediately, expressing his openness.

“It was an enormous relief,” Matson said. “I was in tears. I felt my hope revive.”

[...] Matson vented his frustrations to Stowe and his spiritual director, saying he wanted to speak out. But he said he was advised to first “build a foundation” in religious life for several years.

During that time, Matson had an experience that shook him. Attending a friend’s play in his religious habit, he was approached by a student who identified as trans and nonbinary. After asking if Matson was a monk, the student said they were raised Catholic, but that their parents had rejected their identity, and the student felt like they “don’t have a place in the church anymore.”

Matson responded by saying there were people in the church who would support the student, and Matson prayed with them, asking God to show the student how they are “wonderful the way you’ve made them.” The student, Matson said, grew emotional, thanking the hermit profusely and saying, “No one from the church has ever affirmed me for who I am.”

[...] As for ever leaving Catholicism itself, Matson bristled at the idea, calling the church “my family.” “I’m Catholic,” he said. “I became Catholic after I transitioned because of the Catholic understanding — the sacramental understanding — of the body, of creation, of the desirability of the visible unity of the church and primarily because of the Eucharist.”

At the very least, Matson said, he hopes going public will spark dialogue about his fellow transgender Catholics, a discussion he believes can enhance unity among the body of believers.

“You’ve got to deal with us, because God has called us into this church,” he said. “It’s not your church to kick us out of — this is God’s church, and God has called us and engrafted us into it.”

[copperbadge]

I use Google Tasks to run pretty much my whole life, but because it's easily accessible and I know it's the thing I will look at multiple times a day, I also sometimes use it to take notes. If I'm in conversation with someone at a party and they recommend a book, for example, I'll drop the title into Google Tasks and the next day I'll check my to-do list, see the book title, and add it to my library queue.

Last night I took an edible and had a relaxing evening, and this morning I woke up to find a line item in Google Tasks reading:

"What if Askazer-Shivadlakia had a royal poisoner?"

Which I will say did make me laugh.

Obviously neither Michaelis nor Gregory kept an assassin on retainer (we can't be sure of Jason). And one does have to be careful when introducing plotlines to do with subterfuge when you are discussing a predominantly Jewish country with a Jewish royal family. So I'm not even saying that the royal poisoner was ever a poisoner. Besides, that's much more a Catholic thing (see: Borgias, Medicis).

But I do think it would be funny to do a story eventually about someone whose job is basically to quietly and without fuss solve difficult, time-consuming problems for the Palace -- some issue that is bothering Gregory but Alanna doesn't have time for and Jerry isn't equipped to fix, so they call in a specific staff member who exists to do the legal and necessary but unpleasant work to solve it.

Realistically their job title would be something like Director of Technical Operations for the Office of the King but whoever holds the job absolutely refers to themself dramatically as the Royal Poisoner.

"I take care of whatever is bothering the king, quietly and discreetly, and I leave no trace behind."

Eddie's like "Gregory, I love and trust you so this is not a dealbreaker for the marriage, but who have you had murdered," and Gregory's like "One, thrilled to know murder isn't a dealbreaker for you. Two, I have never had anyone murdered, the last thing they did for me was sorting out a voting scandal in one of the northern districts to prevent someone stealing an election."

[nerdy-frog98]

Okay I’ve had several days to think about it, and I’m not upset about Eddie’s cheating storyline anymore.

Nobody asked, but HERE’S why.

Eddie is an incredibly traumatized character. The military experiences (+ his dead friends), losing his wife so suddenly & without closure, and a couple near death experiences will do that to you! Add that to parents trying to take his child away ON TOP OF feeling like he needs to give Christopher a mother at any and all costs…? Maybe a little bit of Catholic guilt sprinkled in there too.

Season 5 was not my favorite for a myriad of reasons, but one thing I did like about it was Eddie’s complete mental breakdown. It felt like a long time coming... BUT. His mental breakdown didn’t even really scratch the surface of his issues, and there are still a lot of things he needs to face before he can truly be at peace. One of those things is Shannon.

The effect that Shannon’s loss had on Eddie has, in my opinion, never been explored properly. We got a little of it in season 3 with the illegal fighting, and then hints of it again when he was with Ana, but it never felt like closure to me. It felt like season 6 tried to give him closure (through Marisol), but it wasn’t satisfying because it was more or less a duller version of what happened with Ana. “Moving on” for his sake, but with no real emotional repercussions. Maybe this is just a personal opinion, but his story has felt like a ticking time bomb to me since the moment he broke up with Ana. His breakdown in s5 wasn’t the real bomb though.

Now imagine being Eddie, a guy with a lot of unresolved guilt and feelings for a woman who died right in front of him. Imagine you see a woman with that dead wife’s exact face. I can honestly say I have no fucking clue what I would do in his position. What he did- erasing Marisol in his first conversation with this lookalike Kim, then later lying to Buck to meet up with Kim- is morally not okay. Sure. Would any of us act in a rational way though?

I’m not meaning to justify cheating, but I do genuinely believe this is one of the only ways that stubborn ass was going to figure out his issues in a way that might actually help him move on. He’s being delusional with Kim, and once the ball drops, I believe there’s a great big breakdown waiting for him on the other end.

People often accuse Eddie of being the most boring of the 118, and I hate that assessment so goddamn much. Eddie is probably one of theee most complex characters (besides Buck) in the entire show. He’s self-destructive, kind, loyal, patient and impatient- he’s a good father and a good friend, and he’s FLAWED. That is why I love him so much.

My initial disappointment with him partially stems from me wanting him to have a singular season of PEACE, which…I realized wasn’t possible without blowing up the bomb first (would’ve preferred to disarm the bomb but I’ll take what I can get).

[bakasara]

Trying to parse my thoughts on Izzy's death and why I had a different reaction to it than I thought I would. To summarize: I thought I wouldn't like it, but also that they wouldn't do it; the opposite happened– they did it but I'm ok with it.

I'm also feeling like talking through some mourning for an amazing character, so follow along if that's you, too 😌

(I should probably clarify the following thoughts are coming from someone who deeply enjoyed this season.)

I first wondered what would be of Izzy around the end of season 1. I expected him to have a heel-face turn – which I object to calling a redemption arc and I'll get into why, because the distinction ties into his death imo. A lot of antagonistic characters' changes of heart end directly in death, but I thought they'd subvert that trope. And they... did, actually, despite Izzy dying. Not an option I had imagined.

What the show avoided is the logic, the set of tropes attached to the deaths of this kind of character. These deaths usually come as a consequence of the character's changed ethics or "redemption". My being against that scenario came from the diverging natures of traditional redemption arcs and OFMD's rhetoric.

A traditional redemption arc functions by a kind of catholic logic, if you will: the villain can become one of the good guys by balancing out his "sins"/bad deeds with enough good deeds to tip a moral scale. This often involves a purifying suffering, which acts as an agent to expiate one's faults. To the viewer, this suffering can serve to activate our empathy and make the character more sympathetic. It can also legitimize his quest: our trust in the character's good intentions comes from seeing that the character is ready to make sacrifices to become better and he isn't deterred by the hardships of doing the right thing.

The death occurring at the end of a traditional redemption arc acts as the ultimate sacrifice and/or purification. A number of ideas might be at play behind it, depending on each story: only in death can the soul become fully pure, or a final sacrifice is "needed" to demonstrate the change once and for all, or change was only possible up to a point after which there is no viable/acceptable future – the character deserves moral points for changing, but not so many that he also deserves a full life, or past crimes make him more expendable, etc.

But these are all ideas that aren't evoked in any of the crew's journey in OFMD. For starters, the show isn't interested in "catholic" redemption; its focus is on reintegration/rehabilitation into the community. Rather than appealing to the more traditional (in Western media) and more christian principle of "purification of the soul through mortification of the body", it plays with notions of restorative justice.

We see it especially this season with Ed and Izzy. Ed's arc is a whole little lab for it. We have the community being made to decide whether he can stay or should leave; catbell!Ed is made to apologize to the people affected – which he initially does abysmally, with what fandom has dubbed his "CEO's/YouTube apology". Later, he's given the opportunity to have a more honest and genuine conversation with Fang where he learns about how he hurt him. He's made to repair some of the material damage his behavior caused. Some members feel repaid by the idea that they did to him the same he did to them (Fang) while others don't (Lucius), and the show touches on what this means for each/legitimizes both feelings. Arguably, Ed using his treasure to throw Calypso's birthday party – a much needed refrain and moment of social (re-)connection within the community – is an additional form of reparation. While Stede's belief in Ed has a clear role in helping Ed change for the better, Izzy's s2 journey focuses even more intensely on the role of social support within an individual's constructive (re-)integration into their community. The show is condensed by choice of format, but the beats are all there.

With that kind of rhetoric set up, I'd never be able to accept Izzy dying in a way that feels like a punishment for his past crimes, nor in a way that should "confirm" his positive change/"purify" him for good. And he doesn't! By the time he dies, we know full well he's deeply changed, it's already established to completion. How it happens has nothing to do with proving himself – he's randomly shot in battle. It's never questioned that the time he got to live surrounded by affection mattered. The speech he gives Ed is only possible because he's changed, accessing a completely different perspective on piracy/life than before, like we see when he talks to Ricky earlier. The reason the whole crew is paying respect and crying is because he became "the new unicorn", a treasured member with a defined role. But his death itself is the show going back to the initial symbolism of Izzy as ultimate pirate. The narrative function of his death is underscoring that the age of piracy has come to an end. It's nothing to do with his change. It's posited as the "natural conclusion" (again, by symbolic function) of a character that represented piracy through-and-through, not the "natural conclusion" of a process of becoming better.

And for me, that difference changes everything. I can see and accept the logic behind it, even as I mourn Izzy as a character. It makes the grief feel like a catharsis I experience within the context of the story I'm watching, rather than a grief I feel from a show "betraying" me.

It's also a difference that completely changes how Izzy's death relates to his queerness. Izzy's change is intertwined with being able to express queer affection openly. Becoming "a unicorn" is this extremely queer imagery already – a magical rainbow creature. His role becomes akin to a mother to the crew (the mother hen!Izzy many headcanoned last season, tapping into his potential), a position that isn't extraneous to older queens, including our honored real-life mean-old-queer men. Last season he threatened another queer man for showing too much delicacy, effeminacy, vulnerability. Now, his change is a process that culminates in him singing a tender love song among the crew in drag. He's given the privilege of playing the soundtrack to our protagonists making love for the first time, which ties him symbolically to the event in a way it does no other crew member. Suffice it to say that insinuating his process of change should end in death would have been disastrous, as far as I'm concerned. Antithetical to the show's supporting ideology.

But that's not how it went. Grief occupies a big role in the queer community, but it's so rare that we get to experience it cathartically. In real life, we often have to contend with the ways queerphobia causes us trauma or even shortens our lives, or the lives of our friends. In fictional narratives, a lot of characters that get to express queerness unabashedly still die for the transgression. They're still usually the only queer character with relevant screen time or at all, at best one of two that formed a tragic couple.

We almost never have the opportunity to just mourn some motherfucker who died because they meant something else as well that was central to their character. To mourn and know we're mourning someone who wasn't ever punished for being queer-as-in-fuck-you and going all out. To mourn and not feel like it's another message of queer doom, because for once the character is surrounded by an entire crew of other queer characters that go on to live and be happy. To know the story is saying something about life, not about being queer. To know this kind of crafting was deliberate, too, because the creator has talked about working to avoid those tropes. I struggle to remember another time I had the opportunity to grieve for a queer character like they're a human being, without the implication that it's queerness itself that's a death sentence.

And honestly? It feels good. It feels like a form of catharsis I do not dislike. That I'm maybe kinda glad for. OFMD is and stays a magical world. Beyond that, in a show full of queers, one of them dies after getting some extraordinarily meaningful happiness, and it's peaceful, and I get to just be sad for the fucker without the gutting of being reminded that if you're gay, better not shoot too high. It feels like a completely different emotion that no other show, for now, would give me, but OFMD. To me, it's yet another thing it's pulled off.

As it's been known to do.

[buddiebeginz]

I really wish some of you would realize that when actors agree to do these kinds of interviews most of the questions are preapproved before hand. There will at the very least be some kind of conversation between the actor's team and the interviewer about what questions they may not want asked. So if 911 and Abc really wanted to focus on Tommy and Buck and stop talking about Buddie (which would make the most sense if Buddie was never happening) I’m positive they'd stop answering questions about Buddie.

Also Oliver could have answered that question about Buddie in many different ways he especially could have done more to downplay Buddie happening if he didn't think it was ever in the cards. He's always been very careful to not try and get our hopes up.

He made it a point though to talk about how much chemistry Buck and Eddie (and him and Ryan have) have and said "there's stuff there" between them. He also talked about how if Buddie were to happen he wants the story to be done carefully so as not to perpetuate any queer stereotypes. He literally could have just kept his answer short and sweet and said like he's done in the past that he gets why people ship them and he's open to whatever happens next on the show but he didn't. I just don't believe he would have given such an in depth answer about Buddie if he thought the show was never going there.

Also like was pointed out in this post Oliver's body language was very telling in that part of the interview. He's also usually pretty articulate and he was searching for what to say there and it definitely felt like he was a bit guarded about how he answered so as not to give anything away.

The other thing I think some of you have to realize about will they/won't they storylines is up until the show decides to show their hand they're going to let the audience think that the story is going in one direction. So right now they want us to think that Buck is with Tommy and Eddie is straight.

But they've also been laying down the bread crumbs that will eventually lead to Buddie going canon. Buck's whole bi awakening was centered around Eddie and Eddie has been connected to things ever since. They had Eddie show up to Buck's first date. They had Buck more upset that he lied to Eddie than the fact that his date with Tommy didn't go well. They had Maddie talk about Buck having something he needed to tell Eddie. They had the coming out scene with Buddie mimic the kiss scene with Tommy in some ways. They have Buddie showing up to the bachelor party/wedding in a couples costume when Buck is supposed to be going with Tommy.

Then they're starting to lay the pieces for Eddie's Catholic guilt storyline which will ultimately (likely) lead to a coming out storyline for him as well.

Please do not let any of the interviews and articles get you down or make you jump ship. I’m more convinced than ever that Buddie is happening. I also don’t believe for one minute that Tommy is Buck’s forever love. That person is Eddie. We just have to be patient and let the story play out. We are closer than we have ever been before to seeing our couple together for real.