#ex-Catholic

[samkingsketches]

If you call me an abomination, I will look for comfort in your other monsters

[fromthemouthofkings]

I want to crab rave with y'all, but I'm actually pretty worried by Pope Francis's death. He was not popular in the circles I grew up in, and as half-assed, muddled, and misleading as his calls for tolerance were, I'm worried that his hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner ideology was the only thing standing in between a lot of queer folks and a lot of more virulent, more violent hatred, especially from American Catholics, and that trads will take this opportunity to further disavow his quote&quote "Marxist" leanings and shove the Church even further towards the authoritarian right

[magnetictapedatastorage]

ok i figured it out. christian stuff became interesting because i’m not looking at it “as gospel” anymore, but instead as mythology. it’s declawed into something i can trace the edges of without the pressing weight of an all-seeing infinite being. I cut out the center of it so there’s just the bearable bits left. I cut out god. anyways the saint jude statuette is coming in the mail in a few days, and i might buy something from that cathedral furniture resell website

[winged-thinged]

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[wishbow]

reliquary of St Valentine - pam wishbow 2021

[profnicsnort]

Big things are happening in the Catholic fandom today. Seems like a controversial main character was written off. He was well-liked by many, even outside the fandom, but some hardcore fans didn't like him because he was too different from past main leads.

My fan theory is that the Pope tried to exorcise the demon from Vance, but due to his previous sickness, his body was not strong enough to endure alone, so the Pope went to get backup from heaven. Season finale is going to end on a cliffhanger with trumpets blowing - let's just hope the next season won't be the series finale!

[kings-speaks]

baptismal

my heart shivers when I walk into the old church with its drowning font and pews, the aisles gutters guiding tears from the weeping statues, tears from the dripping parishioners as dead as their emaciated lord strung up at the front.

once I knelt here and turned my heart out into this breathless air: my fault, my fault, my fault. the quiet music repeats and repeats the refrain: grief inside a mask of shame. once I wore that mask, the stone heavy but not yet cracked— once I sang that song, tasted it, rolling sweet across my tongue—

over the baptismal font looms the baptist. his face is alien but stern, his hand outstretched: an offering or a benediction? I grip his iron hand, and he helps me into the water. slowly, I sink down. the water swills around me: shed prayers and empty tears.

guilt is a cold vice.

when I try to rise again, that’s when I feel him. iron hands anoint my head. he holds me under. I try to scream, but all I taste is water. he holds me under he holds me under

[soihavesomethoughts]

"I believed in God as a kid bc I always felt so moved during worship songs at my megachurch and then I went to a One Direction concert and felt the same thing and realised I just like live music"

credit: likethabug (TiKTok)

[kael-writ]

did any other ex-Catholics have an advent wreath growing up? I really loved it. We had it on the dining table. It has 3 purple and one pink candle and you light one a week, the pink one Xmas week.

(I specificed ex- because Im hoping no current Catholic strangers shall perceive me on internet).

[gods-favorite-second-child]

I read somewhere that being an ex-catholic is to be tainted and sinful, but now there's no one to forgive you. I think about that a lot.

[winged-thinged]

You have to let people love you. You have to let people get to know you. You have to let people help you. Being so completely selfless that you try to erase yourself off the face of the planet and never ask for anything and reject everybody's offers of support makes you very hard to love! Unfortunately. Emptying yourself out of everything that makes you, you is not actually what your loved ones want from you, generally. They want to make you happy! They will be so so sad if you don't give them the chance. It's not all selfish. I promise.

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Oh damn the Catholics have joined in on the war against AI "art".

[elikaruna]

GUESS WHO GOT FUCKING GUILT TRIP INTO GOING TO MASS

im going to count how many times I hear jesus died for me

“jesus died for you” well i didn’t ask him to do that and my therapist says i am not responsible for other peoples actions

[headfullmanythots]

my mother takes me to church.

i watch as she looks for today's missal in the booklet,

listen as she sings the hymns

and says peace be with you to our neighbors.

i kneel,

not to pray,

but to watch as she does.

her lips mouth the words,

her hands steady as she makes the sign of the cross.

i don't believe in god.

i believe in my mother.

[giantkillerjack]

Adding "The only way to be a good person is to sacrifice absolutely as much of yourself and your own comfort as possible for other people all the time." (I grew up Catholic, in case that's not obvious.)

Things i learned as a child that probably no one intended to teach me

To grown-ups, being bad at stuff is a sin. Forgetting stuff is the worst sin of all, and also doesn’t exist - it is widely believed (and your behaviour will be interpreted thusly) that in some Freudian sense, it is impossible to forget things if you care about them or their consequences or the people who care about those things.

Your being happy and enjoying what you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether you are Fulfilling Your Potential.

Human beings do not require rest outside of sleep. Thinking that you do is called ‘being lazy’.

Who you show physical affection to is a matter of politeness and social protocol, and has nothing to do with your own desires

It is rude to inform people of your preferences, even if they seem to care about catering to them and therefore might find this useful information.

Etiquette centres around doing things in especially awkward, skilful and time-consuming ways in order to demonstrate superiority over people who aren’t able to keep up.

[winged-thinged]

A thing that I feel like not a lot of people fully realize or understand about Catholicism—including even Christians from other Christian denominations, sometimes—is exactly how terrible confession can be and how much the Catholic Church dangles the fear of going to hell over your head. Like, they make it sound like it's just a matter of going, oops, you did a sin? That's okay ^_^ just go to your priest, who is basically like a therapist, and talk to him about it a little bit, and then you get let off scott-free! Wow! Isn't God so great?

When in my experience, it's more like, oh, you sinned? You defiled your soul and severed the relationship between you and the person in charge of sustaining life on the whole entire world? You basically just set a ticking time bomb on yourself, because if you die before you next get to confession (and you aren't given last rights), you have just damned yourself to suffering in purgation. And you'd better hope that you only committed a venial sin! Was your sin a "grave matter"? Was it committed knowingly? Did you give your full consent? Then uh oh! That's mortal sin territory! Now you're going to hell forever, unless you get to a Catholic priest and confess your sins, now

(btw "mortal sins" include masturbation, lying in the confessional, and not going to church on Sunday)

(source: the Baltimore Catechism, 1969)

Did you make your confession? Was it a full confession? Are you sure?

You'd better be, because if not, you're going to hell!

Like, I think Martin Luther was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about this one. This is just moral OCD in a bottle. Or, I guess, in a book.