Religion Thread

[Nolan1971]

I am a catholic and have always been very spiritual. My greatest influence is St. Francis due to my love of animals and nature with
a native american influence since I might be Mohican.
I have not served in a long time but thanks to Butterfly Lady I might become active as a eucharistic minister again and serve in the charitable ministries
of each other's parish.

 

[Soup]

@ Nolan: What is a eucharistic minister & what does it entail?

 

[Nolan1971]

We serve the priest at mass and help to distribute communion and can also bring communion to the sick.
The host (communion wafer) & precious blood (wine) are the holiest things in the catholic church.

 

[Nolan1971]

The most challenging part of it as an Aspie is serving at mass with a crowd of several hundred people.
I really have to prepare myself to not get overwhelmed.

 

[Soup]

@ Nolan: Thanks for the info. I see how this would be a challenge for an Aspie. Even if I were a devout Catholic, it is something I could never manage. If you can bring solace & relief to faithful people who have become isolated or who are sick or shut in, then good for you! Some people are genuinely afraid for their souls & fear that not being able to go to mass or participate fully in religious events that there will be negative consequences. Sparing them from feeling either frightened or excluded is important.

Along the same lines....who gets your vote for next pope? Benedict is retiring (very rare for a pope).

 

[Nolan1971]

I'm not quite sure. I am much more focused on the faith & community than the politics of it.
I would love to see someone more like Pope John Paul II but we will see.

 

[Quart]

I would love to see someone more like Pope John Paul II but we will see.

If you want someone that dribbles, why not just watch soccer?

 

[Soup]

@Nolan: JP II was a pretty good guy. There's a bunch of gambling pools online & people are betting furiously on who will be next. Gamblers really will bet on anything whatsoever! Odds are high on our guy from QC: Marc Cardinal Ouellet (pronounced wuhlet). Marc Ouellet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He's a highly intelligent polyglot but ultra-conservative: possibly unsuitable for the modernizing the church desperately needs to engage in (serious problems with women, the LGBT community, abuse scandals, financial improprieties...) Benedict was a man from another era & his past as a Nazi left a bad smell. Had he been willing (like JPII did) to denounce the Holocaust for the evil that it was & apologize for the complicit role the church played in aiding & abetting it, it would've made a big difference for many people. This pope is more of a contemplative recluse type unsuitable for the glare of the media, the demands of modern society & public scrutiny. The days wherein the papacy is beyond the reach of criticism & the law are over.

Part of the problem with Ouellet is that Quebec is neck-deep in church related scandals: the most recent, a couple of weeks ago, involves a well known & respected deacon caught with a hard drive full of kiddy porn (small boys, some of it sadistic) that he was making, buying, selling & distributing. Ouellet also has spoken out against a woman's right to an abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Since the law here guarantees these rights, his opinions will not change a woman's access but it will cause great grief & pressure & guilt on victimized Catholic women.

What I wonder about is how all of this is affecting every day ordinary good Catholics in other places. Here in QC, only a handful of very old people attend church. Many churches were sold for funds to pay victims & were converted into condos, believe it or not. In my parent's day, QC was completely controlled by the church. Everything from hospitals to schools to all social work was controlled by them. The 60s generation saw sweeping changes ensue. Even at my daughter's secondary school, there were several nuns on the board influencing education. Immigration also influenced change as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Mormons & other kinds of Christians settled in.

Part of the problem is that the secrecy & blind trust that the church authorities could count on in the past is no longer there & they're not sure how to manage in light of the heavy scrutiny & accountability they now face.

 

[Nolan1971]

I think what I loved about Pope John Paul II was how much the youth loved him and he was both conservative & very liberal.
I don't think I will ever see another Pope in my lifetime as loved as he was but I would like to see someone more like him.
Here in my parish I see people of all ages including a lot of young people. Our parish has probably over 1,000 members and is very modern
focusing on a lot service in a ton of ministries. Most sunday's there are about 200-300 in attendance.
I see a lot of enthusiasm from young catholics. In my last parish in Somerville MA they had a mass exclusively for teens meaning
everyone serving lector, eucharistic ministers and choir were all teens and it was usually packed every time!

 

[Soup]

JPII was a one in a million human being: a stellar example of devotion, sincerity & service to others. All the world respected him (whether they were Catholic or not). As with Mother Theresa (who is being fast-tracked to sainthood), some people are just good people. He was a tolerant man of peace who managed to avoid offending those whose views & lifestyle were unlike what he advocated. He was not a businessman, a politician or a manipulator seeking personal glory (I strongly suspect Ouellet of this). People like JPII do not come along often.

I'm glad to hear that your parish is doing well (an odd thing for an avowed Atheist to say!) because I recognize the sense of peace, cohesion & community membership that the church can provide when it does things right. Centuries ago, there was a nun here named Marguerite Bourgeoys who founded a school: I'd say she founded modern education in Quebec! Marguerite Bourgeoys - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Now a saint, she was no ordinary teaching nun. She recognized cultural & behavioural differences in Mohawk children & instead of trying to beat conformity to them, she modified teaching styles & the curriculum to accommodate them (!!!). It has taken well into 2000 to get schools to begin doing what she figured out back in the flippin' 1600s.

She believed in teaching religious education BUT she also taught a pedagogical curriculum AND life skills. the original building her Ville Marie (old Montreal) school still stands, the street is named for her & the original cobblestones make the road. It is used as a school commission.

 

[Quart]

He was also a paedophile enabler. And the Church of Rome still cannot manage to get those stains out of the groin area of their outfits.

 

[supernova]

I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to post in this thread because I wasn't sure what to say about myself. I am a pagan/wicca mostly. I practice wicca. I tend toward the wiccan side of paganism have waffled in high school as I felt pressure from my private religious school that I was supppose to be Christan but that didn't help me any. I felt more alone there than with my wiccan culture. Now I am a practicing wiccan I am more earth based in terms of what I believe. However I am lone wiccan I do not have a circle to belong to...though I honestly thing that is more to do with being an Aspie than anything else....I love to answer questions about pagan and wiccan I love to just share info.

I'm also a practising wiccan who works alone. Good to meet you Arrashi.

 

[Soup]

@ Quart: Agreed to an extent. A BIG problem is that nowhere in the Catholic scriptures is paedophelia or even rape specifically & directly prohibited by either their god or Jesus. In fact, there are incidents in the old testament where it was in fact commanded. The church (like many other patriarchal authoritarian systems) were for thousands of years free to operate as they wished with impunity. Men could beat their wives savagely, beat their kids & even infanticide was tolerated. The laws & social norms that applied to the rest of humanity didn't apply to them. For the 1st time, they are beginning to face serious scrutiny, victims are coming forward & society & the law are no longer looking the other way. The entire world handled paedophelia that way (ignoring, looking the other way, discrediting victims etc.). This was by no means something exclusive to the church as an institution. It was all society's dirty secret. This is by no means an excuse: just a context. Even today, child molesters & parents who molest their own kids get shockingly lenient sentences & we all know how rampant kiddy porn in on the internet. Whenever such a network is busted, the exclusively male members are typically professional 'respectable' men. The church, despite the fancy gowns & golden gew-gaws is merely an institution founded & run by mere mortal human men. All the same faults to e found in others will be surely found in them.

Just today the UK's top cardinal just resigned under accusations by 4 priests of 'improprieties' with them & another scandal that goes all the way up to Benedict is about to break. What bothers me with the church as an institution is the way in which they've scrounged so much money from the poorest segment of society & have enriched themselves & their institution. The Catholic poor in South America (their biggest support base) are suffering under deplorable living conditions. The Hindu temple system is guilty of the same greed. But...look at the financial/banking/mortgage system: again here, the lack of oversight & accountability have given them free rein to do as they wish. If an ordinary person so much as steals a pack of gum, he will get busted. Steal entire neighbourhoods & drain the poor, the working class & the middle class of it's meager wealth & you're fine: it's business!

Clearly, the entire society needs an legal/ethical overhaul!

 

[Arashi222]

I'm also a practising wiccan who works alone. Good to meet you Arrashi.

Merry Meet and Blessed Be. )0( Nice to meet you as well.

 

[Bay]

@Nolan: JP II was a pretty good guy. There's a bunch of gambling pools online & people are betting furiously on who will be next. Gamblers really will bet on anything whatsoever! Odds are high on our guy from QC: Marc Cardinal Ouellet (pronounced wuhlet). Marc Ouellet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He's a highly intelligent polyglot but ultra-conservative: possibly unsuitable for the modernizing the church desperately needs to engage in (serious problems with women, the LGBT community, abuse scandals, financial improprieties...) Benedict was a man from another era & his past as a Nazi left a bad smell. Had he been willing (like JPII did) to denounce the Holocaust for the evil that it was & apologize for the complicit role the church played in aiding & abetting it, it would've made a big difference for many people. This pope is more of a contemplative recluse type unsuitable for the glare of the media, the demands of modern society & public scrutiny. The days wherein the papacy is beyond the reach of criticism & the law are over. View attachment 4465View attachment 4466

Part of the problem with Ouellet is that Quebec is neck-deep in church related scandals: the most recent, a couple of weeks ago, involves a well known & respected deacon caught with a hard drive full of kiddy porn (small boys, some of it sadistic) that he was making, buying, selling & distributing. Ouellet also has spoken out against a woman's right to an abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Since the law here guarantees these rights, his opinions will not change a woman's access but it will cause great grief & pressure & guilt on victimized Catholic women.

What I wonder about is how all of this is affecting every day ordinary good Catholics in other places. Here in QC, only a handful of very old people attend church. Many churches were sold for funds to pay victims & were converted into condos, believe it or not. In my parent's day, QC was completely controlled by the church. Everything from hospitals to schools to all social work was controlled by them. The 60s generation saw sweeping changes ensue. Even at my daughter's secondary school, there were several nuns on the board influencing education. Immigration also influenced change as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Mormons & other kinds of Christians settled in.

Part of the problem is that the secrecy & blind trust that the church authorities could count on in the past is no longer there & they're not sure how to manage in light of the heavy scrutiny & accountability they now face.

Just to be historically correct, the salute seen in Soup's post was widely used in Western society in the early years of the 20th century. I don't know whether it was used in Canada, but American schoolchildren used to use it daily when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Here is a link to the history behind its use in America Bellamy salute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Once the Germans co-opted it, no one else has wanted to have much to do with it, understandably. Its use early in the century does not necessarily mean that a person was a Nazi supporter. Of course, the recently-resigned pope is reported to have been one.

 

[epath13]

Today, one of my aunts visited me and my family, all the way from China. China is an atheist, communist country that recently experienced a revival in its own folk religions. She asked me what's my religion. I don't give an answer, because in the presence of my parents, I can't give my answer. But I know I am a non-denominational Christian.

I really envision the day I could be a pastor, organiser or board member of a decent church that holds a community together. But before that, I'd love to serve God in whichever capacity I can - and hopefully be good enough to serve at a higher capacity for the good for more people, which give me more satisfaction in the positive impact I make on other people's lives.

When you say "serve God" what do you mean by that?
I think you have a good heart and you want to help this world to become a better place, something like that? But what do you expect from religion?

 

[Soup]

@ Bay, Thanks for adding to the history of this salute! Before that, the ancient Romans used it too & the double lightning bolt SS symbol can be seen in ancient Japanese artwork on martial standards. Pope Benedict has admitted in interviews to having been a Nazi & a member of the Hitler youth.

 

[Loomis]

I think what I loved about Pope John Paul II was how much the youth loved him and he was both conservative & very liberal.
I don't think I will ever see another Pope in my lifetime as loved as he was but I would like to see someone more like him.
Here in my parish I see people of all ages including a lot of young people. Our parish has probably over 1,000 members and is very modern
focusing on a lot service in a ton of ministries. Most sunday's there are about 200-300 in attendance.
I see a lot of enthusiasm from young catholics. In my last parish in Somerville MA they had a mass exclusively for teens meaning
everyone serving lector, eucharistic ministers and choir were all teens and it was usually packed every time!

I wish the Catholic Church could elect another John XXIII. It is highly unlikely, however, because the last two popes appointed so many ultra conservative Cardinals.

 

[Soup]

@Loomis: Nice seeing you out & about. You've been scarce of late.

Despite the prevalence of ultra conservative cardinals, the rumblings of radical changes to the church can be discerned. When the Anglican church decided to allow women to be ordained as deacons & priests, many male Anglican clergymen chose to abandon Anglicanism. The Catholic church announced that it was willing to welcome these male defectors into their midst. These men, for the most part are married which thereby opens the window for a discourse for eventually allowing Catholic priests to marry as well. They've also abolished the absurd concept of limbo. I think, too, members of the church are forcing change & slowly chipping away at its exclusive top-down structure shifting the locus of ownership of the religion itself. The question, "Whose church is it anyways?" would've been inconceivable just a generation ago. Whenever the winds of change blew in the past, the church erected walls. Now that those walls are showing signs of irreparable erosion, they would be wise to instead build windmills.

 

[Geordie]

I expect nothing but a life contributing my talents to God. So long as I feel really motivated with the strength God gives me that I can feel, I will continue to serve Him for the foreseeable future. I try to do it as much as I can. If I really can't... time for more self-reflection, haha