#queer catholic

[lapsed-lys]

Giving a Rosary to a Catholic friend: here, I got you merch of your fave :>

consuming mass amounts of media related to my hyperfixation isnt enough i need to eat it

[blood-is-the-life]

[angelspearlheart]

Latest obsession: pocket shrine/altars

[shoutsofmybones]

being a queer Christian and ALSO being really into historical Christianity can be really strange, but not for the reason you think. For me, the weirdest thing is that I know for a FACT that many of the saints of the early Church, particularly early monastics, did not waste their time obsessing over people's sexual sins. Like, not even close to the amount of writing conservatives do today. What they were concerned about, however, was when their fellow Christians were judgemental and thought they were superior to their siblings in Christ (the term Saint Benedict uses is "puffed up," which is pretty funny). So, by the standards of the early Church, Christians who spend their time judging and putting down other Christians, instead of working on themselves, are committing the really problematic behavior.

So, because I love historical Christianity, every time I see a conservative rail against the "inherent sin" and "intrinsic disorder" of gay people, all the while holding themselves as the true ideal of a Christian? All I can think is "the Desert Fathers would HATE this."

[morellife]

I’m reading this book during Lent to address this since I don’t know much about the history of the Bible either! It was recommended by U.S. Catholic Magazine. If anyone is interested - maybe we could make a little book club for it. If you can’t afford it and still want to follow along I have an .epub or .pdf file I could send.

It’s not super long - about 125 pages and not so academically dense that it’s hard to understand.

Oooo I could make a little reading schedule and everything ~

Far-right Christians really do the Bible a disservice by treating it as a book God dictated and had wrote down for him. It's a living document, ever evolving just as Christianity has. It's an imperfect work written by imperfect people talking about the perfect God within the context of their time and culture. I really want to make a project out of rereading my Bible and reading it that way.

[dykecommunion]

sorry u don't see the inherent holiness of queer people and queer relationships. maybe u should praise God

[ohholydyke]

See the thing about fundamentalists and trads and Christian nationalists and MAGA evangelicals and ethnocratic bigots is that they render the faith so boring.

I take no issue with the fact that they would look at me and say that I’m not a member of the faithful because their faith is radically, inherently, ontologically distinct from mine. My God is too big and too loving and too esoteric to fit neatly into the gendered understanding of an authoritarian white father disciplining his children for not perfectly falling into lockstep. My Savior is the man who told the religious leaders “Caesar can have his idolatrous blood money, but give God your heart and your faith,” challenging the notion of an earthly ruler. My apostles wrote of the throne of man being empty—there are no masters or kings or governments, there is only Jesus Christ, Basileus Basileōn, king of kings. I believe in radical oneness with God through Christ—one flesh and one body, biblical marriage with the bridegroom whose flesh and blood make up the holy Eucharist. My faith is Queer, ancestral, esoteric, anarchist, insurrectionary, anticolonial, antiracist, unorthodox, disruptive, free. When I encounter the divine, or pray to the saints, or sit in the chapel to pray, I am experiencing communion with the sublime, in every sense of the word, the same presence that made the apostles fall to their faces before the transfiguration, that shaped the world from void, that animates the deep care and rage which boil into every aspect of my being.

When conservatives tell me I am not a Christian it is only because they cannot conceive of a Christ and a faith so big, so all encompassing, so beyond anything our human minds can comprehend, and they cannot conceive being in tune with this divinity and being left senseless by the knowledge that the divine above all else is us and loves us more than we could ever comprehend, such that experiencing this love is enough to leave one fundamentally, ontologically changed down to the fiber of their being. I feel sorrow for them. I pray that Christ may reach into their hearts and open their eyes, that they may see not only the horrors that they commit but also the deep love and freedom that awaits them through abandoning their fundamentalism and their bigotry.

Or, in other words, me every time I see another conservative Christian whining about how people aren’t doing Christianity right because they don’t adhere to a super narrow and watered down version of the faith:

[goldenangelbaby]

There is something so beautiful about queer Catholics and even queer people in any religion who are so devout despite people telling us we are a sin and damned. And yet, we still worship. And yet. And yet. And yet.

[transtheology]

i've seen a few posts recently here & elsewhere where non-religious queer people talk about the pope's homophobia, talking about how it's funny and/or how no queer person cares about his opinion.

i wanna say, to queer catholics: i'm sorry. you are good and holy. you deserve better. you deserve a religious leader who sees how loved you are by God and makes sure you know it, too. and you deserve a community that sympathizes with you, even if they themselves don't share your faith. you don't deserve alienation and demonization. you deserve better. you are good and you are holy.

you do not need anyone's approval but God, who made you as you are, fully loveable. you do not need to reject your faith to defy homophobia. i love you.

[catholicsapphic]

Queer Christian loneliness paired with regular gay loneliness and autistic loneliness is quite the treacherous combo. Which is why I’m honestly quite surprised God would give it to Me, the Whiniest Bitch Who Ever Lived

[thepsychopompsthrenody]

i'm really sorry but you're gonna find god in the Other Stuff, too. religious trappings are nice. so is tradition. it's good to have buildings to go to and things to wear and holy texts to read and prescripted songs to sing. it's comforting to have lineage and instructions. bless the treasure map.

but god's Elsewhere, too: out on the tips of skinny branches and wading in the weeds, left of center, left field.

so if you decide to test this theory and go rambling around calling out innumerable, unpronounceable names, know that you won't have to look too hard. divinity does a terrible job concealing itself. god willing you will take a shine to the idea that god happens everywhere, in everything, all the time.

[joanofarcs-stigmata]

not “bride of Christ” as in purity balls and promise rings but “bride of Christ” as in making out sloppy style with the Side Wound

[lightoml]

reminder to all my other queer Christian siblings out there

you are not alone 🩵 God loves you. you are fearfully and wonderfully made. God made you with a lot of care and consideration. you are a work of art, and He is the artist. He loves you so much!!!! you are not alone!!!!

[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.

[angelspearlheart]

[shoutsofmybones]

On change in the Catholic Church.

I've been seeing a post go around where people are defending their stance that if the Catholic Church was to change its mind about gay sex being sinful they would have to leave because the Church would have been inconsistent, and therefore they wouldn't be able to believe in the holiness of the Catholic Church anymore. Because the Church going back on a stance on the inherent sinfulness of a group of people would be a great betrayal, simply because it's a doctrine held for centuries. I saw well-meaning and (I believe) perfectly reasonable and vaguely progressive people add that they believe this.

Not to be that guy, but does anyone on this website know that the Church already did this, not very long ago? Like, y'know, in Vatican II?

The Catholic Church, for centuries, was extremely antisemitic. This is not news, this is not a controversial opinion, this is fact. The Catholic Church was the primary driver of antisemitic speech and action in Europe, over many centuries. This was due to an actual doctrine the Church promoted, which held all Jewish people responsible for the death of Christ--the "deicide" accusation. This was a normal, accepted, established belief held by the Church for centuries. In the latter half of the 20th century, for obvious reasons, Church authorities realized that this needed to change. That they were responsible for unimaginable suffering, and that the teachings of the Church itself had to be wrong.

So, they changed the teachings.

I don't write this to deliberately shake anyone's faith. I just write this to say, if you need the Church to be consistent in order to be believable, it's too late. The Church has already been inconsistent. And it's not the end of the world. It's fine, and good, that the Church decided to change that teaching. Nobody's been smited, or anything. And, in my opinion, if the Church can change its mind about antisemitism, something that so occupied its actions during the entire Middle Ages, then maybe, just maybe, it can change its mind about other things, too.