laceblade | (no subject)

I was thinking the other day that it's probably a lot easier for me to remain Catholic-ish than a lot of other people because I went to public schools for my entire life. If my parents had forced me to go to Catholic schools, I'm sure things would have turned out much differently & I would have stopped giving a shit about religion before graduating from high school.

As it is, I still care even though I haven't been to mass in a long time. I have been praying a lot lately, though - was praying a lot those first few weeks after surgery.

I feel angry about priests and their role in driving people away from the Church right now.
The priest who's at the church I grew up at is someone I have never met, but I know things about him.
He told a couple my age that he didn't feel "comfortable" performing their marriage ceremony because the dude in the relationship was Christian-but-not-Catholic, even though this violates no canon law.
He told a girl I went to school with that he would not perform her marriage ceremony if either she or her bridesmaids wore strapless dresses.

The theme of the Green Bay Diocese for the past few years has been "Welcome Home," an attempt to get kids my age (mid-twenties) to join the Church in their adult life.
This attempt is incredibly amusing to me, because all I see priests doing is their damndest to drive people away.

I don't think that this is because they're stupid; rather, it seems to be a coordinated effort that favors a smaller and "more pure" laity.
Pope Benedict's homily from Holy Thursday is basically entirely about this theme.

But not everything sucks.

Occupy Catholics exists; they're a group out of NYC who protest with the Occupy movement.
Their tag line: We are the 99%, made in God’s image, seeking God’s justice.

I'm also trying to learn more about Catholics United, a pro-labor progressive non-profit that focuses on protest & lobbying Congress.

I've really been liking Give Us This Day as a daily prayer alternative to Magnificat.
When I originally picked up GUTD in the Catholic bookshop, the clerk said something about it being "different" than Magnificat. For Catholics who don't know one another well, this could either mean "super conservative" or "super liberal." I picked it up and was pleasantly surprised.
The daily devotionals seem to make an effort to feature writings from women and people of color. The pages about "how to use this book" are really chill about emphasizing that you don't need to read the morning prayer, mass, AND evening prayer EVERY SINGLE DAY. Every copy has a reminder/instruction about how to do lectio divina, which I appreciate.
And there has yet to be a single mention of fucking abortion, I think!

And there you have it.

There are Catholics who actually give a shit about Jesus's social teachings & who connect with the United States's current movement to protest against socio-economic inequities (laity).

There are Catholics with sticks up their ass about clothing & who we marry. People who wag their fingers & spend their time focusing on rules that either cosmetic or that they fabricated so that they had more to finger-wave about (priests).

And then the hierarchy wonders why we dissent.
I know there are many who might read this post and ask, "So why the hell are you still Catholic then?"
For me, & for the people with whom I cultivated my faith in high school (mostly a group of my peers), it's kind of like, "the fuck if I'm going to let some asshole define FOR ME what Catholicism means."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I was just having a conversation with a friend last night about liberal supporters of social justice issues being practicing members of majority-socially-conservative faiths, and you were definitely on my mind as a really strong example of why that is important to me personally and why I try to be very careful to not distrust individuals of faith, even when the public positions of that faith directly and powerfully oppose people like me.

I really appreciate this post--I really appreciate how thoughtful and careful you are, in all ways.

omg, ty, <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I hate that the Catholics of this/previous two decades have totally destroyed what it means to be Catholic in the minds of everyone else, b/c Catholicism used to NOT be majority-conservative, like in my AP Government class when we were taught to stereotype people with outdated polling data and be like, "White middle class Catholic woman, how would she vote?" the answer would be LIBERAL!

It's this bullshit about abortion & gay people & contraception & etc. that some of the loud assholes focus on AND RUIN IT OMG.

And then you have to do the tiring "but the Church is not the congregation!" thing. I spend so much of my time when talking about my Catholicism trying to impress on people that the Vatican and the church hierarchy don't represent the laity.

So true about the last 20 years, because when I was little Catholicism in my circles was about hardcore social justice: feeding the poor, teaching the abandoned, supporting land reform in Latin America, &c &c.

"the fuck if I'm going to let some asshole define FOR ME what Catholicism means."

That is so much of the reason that I still think of myself as Catholic. As a massive fuck-you to the people who say I can't be a Catholic because of X reason, or Y issue. Yes, I can, actually. Because I can find, and will create, a place in the church for myself and for people like me.

YES!