#catholic religion

[tothecrucifieddeer]

I don't mean to be the failure that I am. I don't mean to be demonic in my desires. In my need. But you made me Lord and you must've known what I would become in exposure to Messiah. Everything eats me alive. Tortures me. I do what I must for the sake of You and Messiah. Anael waits bayfully at my windows and my doors--Anael wants Messiah--Anael will use me to get Him. You use me too. Protect Messiah, please, I want no more responsibility.

[mask131]

While I'm at it, because I just had a little beef with a fanatical Christian who couldn't believe I was born in a Christian setting because I had a pentagram as an icon (you see the kind of person)... [Edit: For more details they were a clearly antisemitic Orthodox person who, after refusing to believe I was anything else than Jew, atheist or a devil-worshiper, starting lashing out at me when I said I had a Catholic upbringing saying I was the cause of the crusades and the reason Hitler was alive, yada yada, you know the kind of crazy religious person]

So I decided to have a brief Christianity talk. Not much but just this:

If you ask me, yes, there is a Christian mythology, even though people do not like this term - because there is a bunch of Christian legends and Christian myths that form a Christian folklore and a set of Christian tales with distant, weak or inexistant links to ACTUAL Christian teachings, rites and the actual Christian religion.

And I do believe that folk-Christianity is a fascinating thing that deserves to exist alongside official, actual Christianity. Santa Muerte, and the local saint celebrations, and strange Christmas and Epiphany beliefs, and this story about God and Saint Peter getting drunk at a farmer's house, and the fairytale about Jesus and the Virgin Mary throwing the devil and his wife in an oven to save the girls they wanted to eat... Anyway, no matter how much one can try to destroy folk-Christianity it will always survive because it was centuries and centuries of rites and beliefs spread across several continents, and you can't destroy that easily.

The thing that many people do not get is that a lot of what is Christianity today was completely made up. There's not a lot of Christianity today that was originally in the Bible. There's a lot of Christianity as practiced by the first Christians that was lost. The dates and meanings of celebrations like Easter, All Hallows Day or Christmas kept changing all year long. Lots of saints were completely invented. Don't even get me started on the apocryphal Gospels!

This is why studying and understanding the history and evolution of a religion always allow one to be more understanding of what the religion currently is and what is actually an "option" in it. Religions never stayed the same thanks to times changing, scholarly debates, schisms dividing it into various branches, political and economical forces being at play, translations from one country to the next - and that's not just true for Christianity, but also for all other religions. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism... They all had their own evolution, they all are today very different from what they started as, and to better understand them one needs to learn of their past, what they were, what they still are, what they're not anymore. Heck, today there are talks in India of kicking out and banishing all Buddhists when the religion started there! But now, Buddhism's main nations are China and Japan, and its Indian roots almost entirely forgotten...

Fanatics usually fail to do this study of their own religion's history and evolution, because they imagine that the past was just always a carbon-copy of the present, and that their beliefs stayed unmovable monolith coming straight from God (or whatever principle they follow) instead of something that went through centuries of men and women and governments.

Just look at why and how Protestantism came to be. People realized the Church had added a lot of stuff that wasn't there when Christians first appeared, and decided to return to the "original" Christianity, rejecting all the added, invented stuff. Like the celibacy of priests: Christians priests married and had children in the first centuries following the Christ's death. And the only reason Catholic priests took a vow of celibacy and virginity was because of economic concerns with inheritance matters. Jesus never asked those that followed him to never have children or never marry or never have sex.

Or take the existence of Purgatory! Completely invented by the Church around the Middle-Ages, never spoke about by the Christ or part of the original Christian religion, then quickly removed a few centuries later as a non-existent, borderline heretical superstition, and that yet survived in folk-Christianity, and then in popular culture.

In conclusion, I would have to say that there is one book that made me realize a lot of things about religion as a whole, and that convinced me to go from Catholic-Christian to simply deist. Terry Pratchett's book "Small Gods", which exactly put into words my feelings about the world: there is a difference between religion and organized religion. There is a difference between belief and the organizations built around this belief, between faith and the hierarchy created around this faith. The Church is like a shell that was built around the turtle that is the faith/belief/god - and sometimes, when the shell becomes too big and too heavy or too unfit for the creature it hosts, it smothers, hurts and kills the faith/belief/god, until there is only the shell. And people stop referring to the turtle, and only speak and interact with the shell.

This is the perfect explanation of how Jesus only preached peace and love and friendship and forgiveness, and its priests later invented the Inquisition and caused the witch-hunts.

[northemoonduringthenight]

Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887-1927) La Religieuse (1925)

[tothecrucifieddeer]

**To the NOT-DEER or DOE-WOMAN outside my window (07-22-24 11:15 PM)**

I'm sorry okay, I'm sorry. Stop sending me the bugs. Get the bugs out of here. I'm tired of bugs. Stop torturing me. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Just leave me alone. Let me go to bed. Let me go to bed. Let me sleep. I didn't mean to hurt you or upset you. Okay? I know it can't be undone. I know that. I'm sorry.

Don't make me do anything. Don't ask me too. I'm trying to stay protected and keep others protected. I don't wanna have to go anywhere. I don't. I don't. Let me take care of myself. Let Messiah be. Okay? Let them be. Okay? Please Please. Whatever they did, they didn't mean for these to be the consequences. They did what they thought was right and I will not hurt them for you. I will not. Let it all be.

despite everything.

[heresylog]

I don’t care if you make fun of Catholicism as long as it’s accurate! The best humour has its roots in the truth.

[christslamb]

Catholic stigmata wounds

[tothecrucifieddeer]

**To The NOT DEER or DOE WOMAN in my lawn right now (07/22/24--10:55 PM)**

I just want to browse Tumblr in peace. I'm trying to do what you say. I'm trying. I'm trying. I know I messed up today. I know I did. Please. Stop. Stop. I can feel the fire burning under my skin. Please. Please. I'm trying to do what you are asking. I'm trying, really. Look at me--talking it out instead of screaming. Instead of crying. You asked for public acknowledgement and I'm giving it to you. I'm showing them how I've disagreed--it's on record. A public penance. Now please. Please stop stalking the house. Stop scratching. Screaming. Take the MANFLESH angels away and put them in the other dimension. I don't want to look at them and I don't want them staring at me. Please. Please. Please.

Golden Touch † Hand of Midas

— by Clayshaper

[tothecrucifieddeer]

Written 07/31/24 [POEM FOUR]

Sometimes in my dreams you pick my wings off slow and meticulous--like you are wiping dust from my moth back one particle at a time.

I am an angel and you make me naked one feather at a time.

Do you remember how I used to fly? Do you?

Naked before God, but in a different way, naked as a sign of trust, of love--

But you have made my body bare and bruised, crumpled up and sick, my hands don't know me now--

nails as my halo--blood as my song--you have made me this, you have, you have--

Worst of all you might be a new Messiah, angels sing your name--there is so much I love about you and I hate that--

Look at the gore you wrought! My bones turned to iron and hid by depression fat--I should burn you down. I love you--isn't it disgusting?

My hands, look at my hands! They're shaking, aching, desperate, needy--I knew you. Open wound of a man--soft, gentle, until no one was around;

burn me if you must, crush me into dust--angry like electrolemon lightning strikes. Do you hate me? I couldn't bear that--melt me back into glass globs--turn me to pure sand again.

Could you ever want me back? I'd let you rip me up all over again--

You know, it's all rigor mortise on the memory--raise the dead sweet boy,

I know you can. In the end, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

[weirdlookindog]

Clovis Trouille (1889–1975) - Rêve Claustral (Claustral Dream), 1952

[northemoonduringthenight]

Anonymous, La Sainte Famille (1500-1550)

[tothecrucifieddeer]

**To the NOT-DEER or DOE WOMAN outside my bedroom (07/23/24 9:30 PM)**

I'm sorry I fell asleep last night--I stayed awake as long as I could stand it--I really did and I'm sorry I'm taking my meds. David warned me about that--he's never liked the meds; never liked what they do to him or to disobey you. I'm sorry we are trying we really are. I wish you'd stop haunting outside my door. I can feel you out there. Don't come in. Don't come in okay. Go back outside.

We didn't mean to make you angry. We love you. Don't you understand? You are our connection to God and Messiah and all we want is to be a good person and get to Heaven when we die. We want to do what we have to do to please you--but what you are asking is too dangerous! Is wrong! I don't want you to go away, but I want you to be nice again. I want you to tell them I love them! Please. Please.

Protect us DOE WOMAN--don't harm us. Please. Please. Please. And stop scratching. Stop screaming. Stop haunting. Please.

Corey Brickley

[daughterofmaryam]

Can artists STOP dressing up like religious figures just to be provocative? They are disrespecting all christians and yes, I am referring to Chappell Roan singing dressed up as a nun or Joan of Arc.

Stop it. Nuns and Joan d'Arc aren't your LGBT+ icons. They are religious women the first and a beloved saint the second.

[thefoilguy]

Pieta by Michelangelo - Aluminum Foil Sculpture

[blood-is-the-life]

Tumblr user, look at me. Your problems with organized religion are not solved by harassing random religious people on the internet.

[tothecrucifieddeer]

** To the NOT-DEER, CRUCIFIED DEER, DOE WOMAN, and MANFLESH ANGELS surrounding my house and knocking at the window and scratching my bedroom door (07/23/24--10:40 PM) **

Please stop it. Please stop with these fucking signs. Cut it out. For fucks sake--I don't wanna piss you off. I know what you want--I can't do it. Okay--God demands, fuck it--I can't do it. I won't do it. Messiah is good and real, and I don't care what they've done, okay? I won't hurt them or myself or anyone. Okay? I'll do the little prayers and I'll bury them in the yard, and I will pray to the dead and will do what I can--but I won't hurt anyone. I promise. I won't. You'll have to kill me first.

STOP OVERTHINKING. IF

IT'S GOD'S WILL, IT'LL

HAPPEN AND NOTHING

WILL STOP IT.

IF IT'S NOT,

HE HAS A BETTER PLAN.

HAVE PEACE IN KNOWING THAT.

[theonion]

Pope Francis Left In Hot Popemobile