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[tiresias-katolikos]

is there a patron saint of weather??

Yes! Several, in fact.

Saint Dimitar is associated with winter and frost, but I think that has more to do with the dating of his feast day than any miraculous winter hijinks.

But speaking of miraculous winter hijinks, Our Lady Queen of Snows is a title for the Virgin Mary, given to her after she caused a snowfall in the middle of August in order to designate the location of a chapel she wanted built in her honor. Growing up, my mother taught us the following prayer for when we were really hoping for a snowday: "Our Lady, Queen of Snows, dump on us!"

Saint Swithin's Day has a legend associated with rain; if it rains on his feast day (July 15th, so coming up), it's supposed to be followed by a very wet 40 days. If it's dry on the other hand, well, you get the idea.

Saint Méard is another rain-saint, but in this case he's specifically supposed to protect you against the rain. His legend says that he was protected from a particularly nasty rain storm by an eagle.

Saint Anne, the Mother of Mary, is associated with storms, too. Actually, there's a rather famous case of a man who asked for Anne's intercession when caught in a bad storm, promising to become a monk if he survived. That man was Martin Luther.

I'm sure there are a ton of others; there's one saint associated with wind, he is supposed to have saved a city from a fleet of ships, but I can't remember his name. But I hope this helps as a start!

[tiresias-katolikos]

If We Unite Ourselves with Christ's Self-Offering, by Elizabeth Wang

Christ […] in His Person is our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30): both the forgiveness of sin and the saving presence of God Himself.

- Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church (§22)

[tiresias-katolikos]

are there any Jews who view Jesus in a positive way (aside from like messianic Jews who, as far I’ve understood, are considered evangelical Christians by all other Jews)

Okay, ah, to answer this question simply: to my knowledge, as far as Jewish communities who (1) self-identify as Jewish, (2) consider themselves practicing Judaism, and (3) deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah go, none of them have an "official" stance on Jesus. Jesus may be a false Messiah, but this is only a "doctrine" in Judaism the same way that the fact that Vissarion of Siberia is a false Parousia of Jesus is a "doctrine" in Christianity — which is to say, not so much an actually asserted belief, but a natural corollary to more deeply held beliefs.

That being said, individual Jewish people have held a variety of beliefs about Jesus of Nazareth. Some of them are, well, quite negative. For example, one Hasidic story tells of how the Baal Shem Tov saw Jesus and Sabbatai Zvi (both false Messiahs) stuck in the same level of Hell together; the infamous Toledot Yeshu, a parody gospel, certainly does not paint Jesus or His Mother in a particularly good light; Maimonides doesn't even use the usual "may his name be blotted out" as he would when talking about an enemy of Israel, but instead uses "may his bones be ground to dust" after citing Jesus by name.

There are relatively sympathetic views among those whose views are negative too, for the record; for example, there's a story of a Rabbi, Yehoshua ben Prachya, who was said to have been incredibly cruel to a student, and by the time he chose to relent that student had already gone off to form his own idolatrous sect. Struck by the consequences of his harshness, he would go on to emphasize the importance of kindness and giving people the benefit of the doubt. Though the timeline doesn't match up (Yehoshua lived two hundred years before Him), some commentators identified this student as Yeshu the Nazarene.

But, let's actually answer your question. You will find a spectrum of relatively positive views. Bob Dylan technically falls outside the parameters I listed above because he does seem to believe Jesus is the Messiah, but I'll use him as the extreme example, because he continued to be active in his Orthodox Jewish community after his conversion. You also have Leonard Cohen, whose Jewishness was very important to him, who could at least understand the importance of the mystical connection to Jesus that Christians claimed as their own — "the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering."

You have some scholars, like Amy-Jill Levine; in the work she did in The Misunderstood Jew, The Historical Jesus in Context, and The Jewish Annotated New Testament, she tries to emphasize the idea that the Person of Jesus is something that can bring Christians and Jews into closer ecumenical dialogue; that if Christians could get more comfortable with the Jewish context of Jesus, and if the Jewish community could see the New Testament as a corpus of texts that isn't non-Jewish, but rather a particular type of first century Jewish, then there could be ground for both groups to better understand each other.

During the early modern period, there were attempts by some Jewish thinkers to reclaim Jesus. Rabbi Jacob Emden argued that Jesus never meant to abolish the Law, and that He has actually "done a double kindness in the world" by increasing veneration of the Torah and bringing light to the Gentiles, if only the Gentiles could learn how to properly interpret their own Scriptures (talk about flipping the script!). Moses Mendelssohn also claimed that Jesus never meant to abrogate the Law, and suggested that Jesus and the early Christian community could be models that modern 19th century Jews living among oppressive Prussian authorities could emulate.

The above paragraph was about Jewish individuals who tried to distance Jesus from traditional Christian understandings of Him. So I'm going to end, I think, with Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who engaged the Gospel on its own terms. In 1993, he published A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. In this book, Rabbi Neusner imagines himself as a first century Jewish man and tries to earnestly listen to and consider the words of Jesus as depicted in the Gospel of Matthew. This work places the words of Jesus in conversation with the Rabbinic tradition, and ultimately ends with Neusner being unconvinced and unable to follow Jesus as His disciple. Pope Benedict lauded this work as an authentic exercise in interreligious dialogue, and cites it frequently in his own Jesus of Nazareth.

[tiresias-katolikos]

Elevation of the Magdalen by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1460, oil and tempera on panel)

[tiresias-katolikos]

St. Paul himself called out the first kind of Christians (I'm trying to remember which epistle, but it stuck with me, even if the chapter and verse reference didn't).

Where are my Christians at that want to bear each other's burdens? I'm not talking about the Christians who give the cookie cutter answer of "Just read your Bible more.. pray more.. focus on God more.. JESUS IS THE ANSWER... I'll be praying for you! *forgets*" I'm talking the ones who are gonna sit down and listen and BEAR THE BURDEN. Who aren't just gonna say well "just stop doing that thing" or better yet, LEAVE because they can't handle it. Where are they at?

[tiresias-katolikos]

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

[tiresias-katolikos]

[tiresias-katolikos]

My nephew, holding a little crucifix: *tries to put it in his mouth*

Me: "no no, we can't put Jesus in our mouths!"

"well...I can, but you can't. Not yet"

Nephew: *tries to shove the crucifix in my mouth*

[tiresias-katolikos]

why are people still shocked that i, a christian, actually believe in christian values, be so for real

[tiresias-katolikos]

Straight Catholics, please listen

Many gay people like to be referred to as “gay.”  They like it better than the term, “people with same-sex attraction.”  

If a gay person asks you to call them “gay,” please do so, and let them use the opportunity to explain why if they want to, because one of the best ways to remind them that they’re equally part of our Church is to give them a chance to talk and be listened to.

That’s it.  Have a beautiful rest of your morning and a lovely Thursday!

[tiresias-katolikos]

what a beautiful thing, to be queer. how lovely it is to be strange, to have edges that spill out over the lines, to be undefinable. the oddity of our hearts is something to be treasured. never change for anyone.

[tiresias-katolikos]

From callmemannyyy on Instagram ❤️‍🔥

[tiresias-katolikos]

it is genuinely bewildering to me that adult human beings do not know this but if you are mean to people they will not like you. like tbh they are probably also not going to like you if you are mean to other people but they are definitely not going to like you if you are mean to them. it doesn’t matter if you are funny or if you can use r/aita rules to prove that you are in the right. people simply do not enjoy being treated like shit.

[tiresias-katolikos]

I’m full of hot takes today so fine here’s another:

Christians, stop adopting labels. If you struggle with anything LGBT don’t identify yourself as such. I still struggle with attraction to women as a married woman. I don’t label myself a non-practicing bi Christian. You should never give yourself the label of your sin. We don’t call ourselves lying, thieving, lustful, angry, drunk Christians. It’s not safe to wear sin as a label.

our label as christians is Christ. That’s all. We are to put to death our old selves, not wear it as a badge.

[tiresias-katolikos]

For those still thinking that you can be pro-LGBTQ or a gay Christian and still be a bible believing Christian, you literally can't.

You're either one or the other; not both. Homosexuality is still a sin. It doesn't lead to any amount of human flourishing. Doesn't contribute to the 'survival of the fittest' or any other materialistic naturalistic arguments that could be cropped up.

Sin is still sin regardless if its accepted in the society or not. Do I hate lgbtq folk? Nope, but I know people will call me every evil name under the sun because I point out that they live in sin which so happens to be apart of their identity. Ergo, that makes me look like I hate the person. But I don't!

I just see sin and call it as it is. Do I struggle with sin in my own life? Of course, all Christians still struggle with our out of place desires and selfish quirks but we fight. Not by our own strength but by the strength of God Himself; we do not have the power to resist sin on our own. Even in our own sanctification depends on the Spirit of God; not us.

But at the end of the day, you gotta love one or the hate the other. Which one will you choose? Hint: it's not both.

[tiresias-katolikos]

From saltandgoldcollection on Instagram ❤️‍🔥

[tiresias-katolikos]

I genuinely think people are uneducated and ignorant when it comes to Christianity. I've seen so many people argue the fact that Christians believe in 3 people. If you have two brain cells, you would know that Christians do not in fact believe in 3 people. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all one. The Father, God, is who we believe in. The Son, Jesus, is the PHYSICAL IMAGE of God. And the Holy Spirt/Ghost is very self explanatory. It is the SPIRIT of God that lives inside of us. This post is not meant to hate on others for being uneducated, but it's meant to open some people's eyes. (Every non-christian on instagram reels)