Catholic church

[Crios]

And they wonder why they are losing members…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10294299/Michigan-diocese-says-trans-people-given-sacraments-unless-repented.html

 

[stickygirl]

Could you quote it? I have a total aversion to anything Murdoch

 

[coati]

I've had a number of lovers during my long lifetime. I do not belong to a religion, but I have had sexual experiences with people from various faiths.

I must say, the Catholic obsession with "sex sins" seems to have the paradoxical effect of causing many of their parishioners to be especially sexually charged. All that talk about sin really seems to make their sexual experiences especially juicy. Must feel great for them to break the rules, because so many of them (of all gender orientations) are very expressive and vocal during non-sanctioned forms of sex.

I don't take their formal pronouncements about sins too seriously. I know the flip side involves increasing the pleasure quotient of busting through their own taboos. Plus, as others have mentioned, I know that they are facing a serious recruitment problem.

 

[Crios]

Could you quote it? I have a total aversion to anything Murdoch

Here ya go, stickygirl...a non-Murdoch version

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/catholic-diocese-says-gay-trans-people-cant-baptized-receive-communion-rcna8217

 

[Crios]

Not much of a churchgoer, but seeing how this diocese is not very famous among the rest and is being harshly criticized by others... The most interesting guideline to me is the refusal to baptize transgender and gay "sinners" because of their sexual or gender identity. Actually, isn't that the point? Name me any Abrahamic religion or offshoot of a religion, as cultish or as standard as you'd like, and they will basically take anyone no matter their opinions on The Degenerates.

Christianity and Islam are religions that emphasize conversion to increase their numbers. Since Christianity is the topic of the day, I'll focus on that. Catholicism has historically always taken in sinners in droves as a project to save their own and to "civilize" so-called "neophytes" (see the colonization of the Americas). We have old documents of confession narratives from new Catholic converts detailing their sins and their revelations. They were absolutely obsessed with sin, discussing and documenting what sins were better or worse than others, and how they should each be addressed. The Catholic Church does not assume that its converts will be without sin. They believe in the Original Sin, that we are all born with an urge to sin and act against the will of God. To be a Catholic is to do your best to follow the moral guidelines and repent for your mistakes. Sin would be a part of life, in a way, or at least acknowledging it and the possibility of it.

Truthfully, it's not totally unlike being an atheist, having your own moral guidelines, and then making amends for your mistakes, as doing so can count as a sort of ritual depending on how you do that every time... but it's just that the way Catholic churches often do this, and have done this, is a way that many people disagree with. Especially the interpretations of the Bible itself. Personally, I'm not religious, but I try to understand where I can.

So, obviously I think barring trans and gay people from a church is a misjudgment. Especially since my own interpretation here leaves room for us. There's the historic Metropolitan Community Churches (Protestant), and there are surely other extraordinary churches, but that's a minority case. What can I say? Some people say, "Whatever, all of Christianity is bad, LGBT people should just all leave," but that's not a solution. So many people in the world believe in God, or are religious in some way. They should be able to have a place for worship... not just for worship, but it's also a place for community. That's really, especially what the Protestant Church is often about, from what I know. I'm sure the Catholic Church is similar.

I was raised Catholic and attended church until our children became adults. I've become thoroughly disillusioned with the church and all organized religion for that matter. I do believe in God but religion has, for me, become all about control. The present Covid situation is an example. The catholic church in the US has fought and fought and fought against common sense virus protections in the name of religious freedom and getting butts in the pews.

Some examples:

• Neighborhood parish
  When they started lockdowns here, the pastor of the church we used to attend started a blog where he said lockdowns, social distancing and masks were anti-Christian and made claims that Covid was fake news. Enough parishioners complained to the bishop about him so he was forced to take his blog down.
• Parish in my old hometown
  Claimed that peoples' faces were the image of God so they must not be covered up with masks

Yeah, ever organization has its own bad apples but this is not a new trend.

 

[AlexBailey]

My parents belong to a particularly conservative and old sect of Catholicism. They joined it after the regular local Roman Catholic church became too progressive for them. They met at a remote monastery until so many lay people had joined that the Abbot told them they were being disruptive and needed to go create their own mission church. My parents offered their large old winery building for the new chapel, when the mission church began there were several young families and about eight very active men in their thirties who were good friends and very supportive of the church.

I was not part of their church but since they were always on our family property I interacted with many of them for projects around the site. Many of them were gay. The priest was gay too, but preached that sin was not in the desire but in the action. He tried everything in his book to turn them away from 'sin' until he finally gave up and officially excommunicated them.

These men were gay but were strong supporters of their secular community. Once the priest drove them off, the mission church was left to families busy with their 4-8 children each who grew up and moved away as soon as they were able. The mission church failed and left the parishioners having invested fortunes into property and improvements which were orphaned and sold for the benefit of the larger diocese.

Those gay men all left the church and put their community efforts into other projects that didn't need the permission of priests, abbots, and bishops, and turned away from the church's version of guilt and piety.

 

[Escierto]

After Trump got elected with Catholic votes, I was done with Catholicism. That was the last straw. I hope it withers away and disappears.