The Catholicism Thread

Not that I'm Catholic or anything. But these talks bring me back!

lol I mentioned this on the Quieting the Imps in Your Brainz thread.

Here we go:

i used to sit in church when i was little and think about how easy it would be to stand up and shout obscenities loud enough for the whole church to hear and then i would get scared i was going to do it if i didn't stop thinking about it so i would stare at the jesus on the cross until the thought left me. later i dated sad-looking boys with prominent ribcages and said dreadful things to them.
― estela, Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:19 AM Bookmark

I am somewhat relieved to know that I was not the only one who did this. I remember feeling similarly when Laurel talked about it on the Imps thread.

i was always more worried about on of the immediate family doing something mortifying instead. My little brother knocked himself out sneezing into a pew at my confirmation, i hated him for hours. It was meant to be my day, goddammit.

the older i get the more actively i dislike religion and catholicism. i don't know where this comes from, but one trip to mass a year at christmas is enough to annoy me. i hate the subservience of religion and the fact that it attempts to have power over people. i can't stand the sense of collective guilt or shame that permeates catholic mass, i can't think of anything worse than a system which makes people's value of themselves descrease. people's sense of self worth is low enough without religion. just glad nobody young goes anymore.

yeah, i went to mass with family this past christmas for the first time in years and i was struck by how genuinely oppressive it felt.

when i look back on how the church affected me it's weird, b/c my parents were pretty "meh" about the whole enterprise, and i didn't have to attend catholic schools or anything, but somehow i managed to inculcate myself on my own with a lot of the garbage that the church promulgates. i think it's really sad and messed up how people are taught to fear something which should be a source of comfort and nourishment... and leading people to mistrust themselves and their natural impulses is largely spiritually poisonous imo. i respect people's trying to connect with god or expressing devotion to the saints or whatever, but in general it seems to me that catholicism presents a path of learning to be forever wary of one's self and throwing as many obstacles between one's self and god as possible

dell, I would make that accusation of all of Christianity, at the very least.

except when it doesn't.

"leading people to mistrust themselves and their natural impulses is largely spiritually poisonous imo"

It's a good thing you don't know about my natural impulses, then.

It's interesting to read these posts, since my experience is very different.
My family was/is Catholic without too much obsessions, we didn't have images of the Lamb of God in the bathroom (!) and I never felt particularly decreased in my self esteem.
Actually, the older I get (and after years of almost total disbelief) the more I'm interested in religion and Catholic thought, in a way that I find almost liberating.
Masses can still be very boring, though.

There are few sharper contrasts in my life between the utter fascination I have with Catholicism – the way folk magic hits its rococo doctrinal logic, the symbol overload, its giant mutating place in Euro history – and the total fucking boredom of sitting in mass listening to a priest.

there is a range of responses to different elements of the religion. I certainly see people being brought closer to God by some of it; it aint all Portrait of the Artist-style hellfire sermons.

I never liked this pre-Communion bit: "Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

More like Powerpoint of the Artist style, in most cases.

xp

my aunt's a doctor of theology, very devout, liberal and interested and knowledgeable in all aspects of pretty much all the major religions, afaict.

Catholicism is pretty much only as oppressive as you let it be, once you're out of the control sphere of y'know school or family or whatever forces may be pushing you towards it to begin with. There's obviously still a huge well of wisdom & positivity that millions of people, not all total idiots mind, find vital and relevant in their everyday lives or even just on the occasions where people usually return to religion/spiritualism.

Obviously thoughts very much not in character but i spent time with this lady yesterday and she's refreshed my usual world weariness and it seemed a timely event what with this thread in my mind.

I still skipped mass to play pool with my uncle in the pub though. Another week in purgatory then.

Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

fucking hate this.

and kneeling. i kneel for no man! nobody should ever have to kneel. if there was a god i'd hope he didn't expect this, and nothing in the parts of the bible you read in church seems to back up god as being this sort of god.

yeah i usually just sat on the edge of the pew with my knees bent awkwardly because i hated kneeling

sorry, GENUFLECTING

"Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed"

Cant elaborate more because I have to go, but I find this bit sort of poetic (but here we say "saved", not "healed", and the meaning seems quite different).

I kind of like kneeling actually . . . it seems sort of . . . poetic? And those padded pull-out things to kneel on are kind of cool. I just never knew the right time to stand, sit, kneel, etc.

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

i just define god as "the thing i'd kneel to"

I always thought the hand shaking was sort of nice. Wait - that's the peace be with you part, right? I remember ppl just started going "Peace, peace, peace, peace" and dropping the rest of the sentence after a while.

Man, as interesting as it is to read about all this stuff I am so so glad that I don't have to do any of this anymore.

"Peace be with you." "And also with you." Or just "Peace." Hug, kiss, shake hands, nod, smile. I liked that part.

Apparently people are so afraid of germs nowadays that they don't like to touch hands, even during the Lord's Prayer. Sacrilege.

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

Nightmarish. Should I shake with that person a row back and two left? Why is that person in front and four right shaking with everyone? That is escalation, we are not getting out quickly and politely with that attitude. And weddings! Buggers 2 rows back wanting a shake. You are my relative, I will drink with you afterwards.

Socially awkward mass-going penguin.

"peace time" @ church for me meant "time to peace"

Did any of you do the leaving right after Communion thing? Take communion, and just keep walking out the door? Some of my friends' families did this, but not us.

The good thing thing about catholic unworthiness, is that we are all unworthy, popes and prostitutes alike. If everyone is a sinner, and has to rely on God's extraordinary grace in order to be saved, then, however outwardly righteous your life may be, you have nothing on your neighbour. I don't actually see it as a submission to a higher power, more a recognition of the absurdity and helplessness and vanity of the human condition in the face of the infinite.

On the hand shaking....

on the rare occasions I go to mass - funerals, essentially, - I start worrying about it ages before. Last year, at a local politician's funeral, I kept hearing this vaguely familiar voice a little to my right and back, giving the responses in perfect Irish. When it came to the shaking hands, the familiar voice turned out to belong to Micheál Martin, then Foreign Minister, now leader of Fianna Fail - the first and only time I have shaken an FF ministers hand...I felt tricked and u.nclean

i went to church every sunday til i was about 14 or 15 and then my parents were both like "eh whatever" and we all stopped going. my dad was a seminary student for awhile but turned to a more philosophical bent w/religion because he hated the church's politics, i think in his mind he wanted to try to take it back to studying the core teachings of jesus and not so much the other bullshit that was added on by everyone else. anyway even after i stopped going with my parents, my brother and i would get dragged to church by my mom's parents whenever we were staying with them or on a vacation with them. my grandmother was pretty hardcore about not missing church, to the point that there was an incident during a road trip where we drove around eau claire looking for any church to go to for sunday mass (iirc we found one and sneaked in at the end in time for communion, and tbqf that three minute service was the finest church service i ever attended.)

the priest would call you out by name iirc

I just never knew the right time to stand, sit, kneel, etc.

for some reason i am imagining being an altar boy and jamming on that bell they shake during all the most inappropriate moments

shaking hands was my least favorite part of mass

at this last christmas mass i went to the priest did this thing where he tried to get everyone to ask the stranger nearest to them two personal questions, and then he went up to random ppl and asked them to repeat the information that they had gathered. i kinda suspect it was in part like his weird gotcha! thing to ppl who only attend easter and xmas services. anyhow it was shades of lame icebreaky things like you have to do on a corporate retreat or something... and most hilrar to me was that even my uncle who is like the most extroverted person ever and will in general fall over himself to incite conversations with random passersby was like "eff this s" and boycotted the exercise

What's weird to me is how much I actually do remember considering how long it has been since I stepped foot inside a church which has to be more than 10 years now. But, like, thinking about that Peace part - Peace be with you. And also with you. Lift up your heats. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give thanks and praise. ~bells~ Everyone stands. I mean - I'm surprised that I remember any of this stuff and yet it's all locked away in there somewhere.

I grew up near a lake resort community. In the summer, our masses were filled with people from outside the parish who would beeline toward the exits as soon as they got the Communion. Our exasperated priest would then stick a THE LAKE WILL STILL BE THERE IF YOU WAIT line to each sermon until after Labor Day.

did anyone else attend a church where the music was provided by a terrifying organ from up in the rafters and the songs were led by someone from up in that area whose voice sounded like the end of 'black narcissus' felt?

exasperated priest otm

peacing out after the host just seems plain rude imo

one time, on exiting mass, the priest told me he saw that i wasn't singing

ENBB, it never leaves you, xpost.

What nerve you had!

(I never sang)

Rude, but practical. You can get to car faster and don't have to thank the priest on your way out.

My closest experience with Catholicism was when I was engaged (derp) a few years back, to someone who was a not-regularly-attending Catholic, but whose mother worked at a Catholic school and was tight with the ex-bishop, and way too much other baggage.

The weirdest thing to me was that they had this complex where they felt guilty that I didn't feel awkward. I met a priest or two, and went to a mass once and a funeral, but everyone was nice. I was apparently supposed to feel very awkward that I wasn't kneeling and taking communion and such?

The handshaking thing is a weird one. At that funeral, my girlfriend ended up hugging her mother first, and I knew what was going on but wanted to give her a hug first, too, because I was actually moved by the funeral, but she was kind of "ahh, you're doing it wrong" about the whole thing. Other than that, it's just like... whatever.

did anyone else attend a church where the music was provided by a terrifying organ from up in the rafters and the songs were led by someone from up in that area whose voice sounded like the end of 'black narcissus' felt?

ahaha

yeah differences in churches are weird, though. like i would go to this church when visiting relatives and they sat in cushioned chairs, like no pews. crazy.

Oh yeah, apparently we were going to be married by the ex-bishop? I could have sworn that wasn't allowed, but apparently if you're no longer the bishop, it's ok to do a "not official Catholic" wedding with an unbelieving groom.

x-post Oh the Church we went to in the winter had cushioned chairs rather than pews.

shit. now I have the priests "Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world have mercy on us" sing songy bit stuck in my head.

I think I told this story before on ILX but...

My friend's auntie married a Turkish man and brought him to mass in Ireland one time. And during the muttered "peace be with yous" he was beaming at everyone and saying "pleased to meet you!"

I was once at a friend's mother's funeral, when I was in my early 20s. A Jewish friend was there with me. We're sitting in the pew before the Mass starts and there are two women up in the choir loft, singing beautifully, just really lovely stuff. My Jewish friend turns to me and says, "man, that is lovely...but where is it coming from?" I turn to him, dead serious, and say, "They're ANGELS." He gets this totally amazed-but-what-the-fuck! look on his face for a moment before I continue, "y'see, Catholics are REALLY God's chosen people, so He lets us have angels for Mass!" He then gave me a noogie.

lol @ both those posts

i never took any non-catholic friends to mass with me, but my closest friends were all jewish and i remember being totally jealz of the cushioned seats in the synagogues when i went to their bar mitzvahs

also when we practiced communion rites in CCD my teacher used ritz crackers, which meant accepting the actual sub-rice-cake cardboard disc they give you at mass was a total bummer

told this story before on ilx, but anyhow... when i was like fourteen or so there was this one mass where a super-young priest visiting from some other parish did the service. his homily centered around the evils of masturbation. he started things off by saying something like "i know this is not exactly a popular topic nowadays" and i thought he was going to talk about how people should give more money to the church or how abortion is bad and wrong or something... but instead he talked for fifteen minutes or so about the evils of beating off. "That guilt is there for a reason!" is one of the things i remember him saying.

naturally, teenaged me was fairly mortified to have to sit through that particular lecture, but on a redemptive note one the way home my mom, bless her heart, was like "you know, i don't think that was really appropriate!" or something and then proceeded to rip him apart for other reasons...