Catholics & Non-Catholics Dialogue Thread

[Clean Water]

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

So, my first proposal for discussion to Catholics is, if we are living in a "dictatorship of relativism," what is the alternative? I would argue that we are living in a world that has been in progress for 500 years, what we broadly call "modernity." The popular Catholic worldview is theoretical medievalism, and that worldview often (not always) fails to live in historical reality. Catholics often (not always) are in a flight from reality, and this is not unique to Catholicism but Christianity in general.

We all live in societies built on many different historical contradictions. So, for example, you have American Catholics who live comfortably and proudly in a country that, historically, was born out of a revolt from everything which Catholicism stands for. The basis of this country, and of modernity more generally, is an individualism which destroys historical continuity; in capitalism this is known as "creative destruction," the constant drive for decentralization and innovation. Many Catholics recognize this and retreat into traditionalism which is further removed from historical reality, similar to end-times fundamentalists in Protestantism.

Peace be with you Era Might. 57 years ago Blacks couldn't drink out of the same water fountain. That's not long ago. It wasn't until 1979 that US Bishops publically said racism was sinful. In 1999 Pope JPll made anti-racist comments in St. Louis and a monsignor on EWTN said, "This goes to show how ill- served the Holy Father is by his advisors because racism is no longer an issue in the United States." It's in Fr. Massingale's new book, "Racial Justice and the Catholic Church". There were never the good old days. Papal Bulls that gave Columbus authority to do what he did basically said Black and Indians weren't human. It gave permission to enslave them. And now because I have an accurate version of history I'm considered "woke" and will be looked down on trad sites like phatmass but it's all good. I'm not claiming things are perfect now. We murder babies thanks to Republicans passing Roe V Wade and failing to over turn it in the 90's when they could of. Trump could of gave a fatal blow to Planned Parenthood with an executive order but never did. Trads want to go back to the glory days when Blacks couldn't drink out of the same water fountain and women had no rights. Guys like Matt Fradd lead the charge and promote white supremacists like Timothy Gordon who says publically, "God bless the proud boys" "Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by vilgilante justice" and "Amy Barrett is scum for crying with her Black daughter when George Floyd died" You have Bishop Strickland attending the Jericho March trying to suppress Black votes and yesterday tweeting that "racism is bad but the real problem is athesism" Like it wasn't believers who embraced white supremacy and kept slaves. Dylan Roof was a believer and went into the Black Church and murdered all those people. That's my rant. Not sure how well it sticks to the points made in the text I quoted. But as a Catholic I have little patience for the trad movement or its advocates. Or even those who don't necessarily embrace it but don't call out the obvious toxic racism and hate that's attached to it. A trad site like phatmass which embraces hip hop had an article on the front page the other day attacking Amanda Gorman. Amanda is a Black Catholic and performed her poetry at the Biden inauguration. She attends an all Black Parish. The article ridiculed her poetry and even said its a letdown for Catholics that she's in the Church. So even though Phatmass embraces hip hop it's still a trad site and pushes the narrative Amanda is better not in the Church. Sure under the articles it says "may not represent our opinion at Phatmass" but then there's articles from EWTN which fired Black Catholic Gloria Purvis with no explanation when she spoke up last summer. While Raymond Arroyo is on Fox defending confederate monuments and a year earlier making jokes about the murder of Nipsey Hussle the day it happened on the Angle on Fox. Era Might I appreciate your focus on Christianity in Africa. Lecrae has spoke on it a lot lately in the last year. It's part of his theme on how he lost his religion but found his faith. I personally became great friends/brothers with a couple guys from Uganda. Both are Pastors and live humble lives. No plumbing ect We have been helping get people clean water. I appreciate the over 2000 years of Catholicism. It's a spiritual experience when I attend Mass sitting in the back pew knowing how wretched of a man I am. The Sacraments are real and I've encountered the super natural through them. When you study Jesus and how he dealt with the religious it's no surprise that things are the way they are still today. And how Jesus views it. He loves everyone though and it's the Father's will that all men be saved. I guess we can hope especially with Purgatory which can be just like hell but with the ability to learn and one day emerge your most high self and a god. And if a bunch of people end up in hell then that's a fact of life we must accept. But take to heart what Jesus spoke about the final judgement. Trads can do all the rituals perfectly and attack Black Catholic Amanda Gorman and say she shouldn't be in the Church. But if they didn't help the poor or love their brothers and sisters according to Christ they may be in trouble. But like when Rush just died I said 3 Hail Mary's for him. Not because I'm so good but I hope people who can't stand me will say a prayer that I make it to Heaven at my death as well.

 

[chrysostom]

3 hours ago, Era Might said:

For everyone else: I've ignored Peace and all his posts, I can't see them anymore, please use his posts as an example of what this thread is NOT meant to be, and please don't follow him down his rabbit holes. Thanks.

If you ignore the only person who actually put in effort to compose replies back, I'm not sure if this is going to be interesting at all.

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, Clean Water said:

Peace be with you Era Might. 57 years ago Blacks couldn't drink out of the same water fountain. That's not long ago. It wasn't until 1979 that US Bishops publically said racism was sinful. In 1999 Pope JPll made anti-racist comments in St. Louis and a monsignor on EWTN said, "This goes to show how ill- served the Holy Father is by his advisors because racism is no longer an issue in the United States." It's in Fr. Massingale's new book, "Racial Justice and the Catholic Church". There were never the good old days. Papal Bulls that gave Columbus authority to do what he did basically said Black and Indians weren't human. It gave permission to enslave them. And now because I have an accurate version of history I'm considered "woke" and will be looked down on trad sites like phatmass but it's all good. I'm not claiming things are perfect now. We murder babies thanks to Republicans passing Roe V Wade and failing to over turn it in the 90's when they could of. Trump could of gave a fatal blow to Planned Parenthood with an executive order but never did. Trads want to go back to the glory days when Blacks couldn't drink out of the same water fountain and women had no rights. Guys like Matt Fradd lead the charge and promote white supremacists like Timothy Gordon who says publically, "God bless the proud boys" "Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by vilgilante justice" and "Amy Barrett is scum for crying with her Black daughter when George Floyd died" You have Bishop Strickland attending the Jericho March trying to suppress Black votes and yesterday tweeting that "racism is bad but the real problem is athesism" Like it wasn't believers who embraced white supremacy and kept slaves. Dylan Roof was a believer and went into the Black Church and murdered all those people. That's my rant. Not sure how well it sticks to the points made in the text I quoted. But as a Catholic I have little patience for the trad movement or its advocates. Or even those who don't necessarily embrace it but don't call out the obvious toxic racism and hate that's attached to it. A trad site like phatmass which embraces hip hop had an article on the front page the other day attacking Amanda Gorman. Amanda is a Black Catholic and performed her poetry at the Biden inauguration. She attends an all Black Parish. The article ridiculed her poetry and even said its a letdown for Catholics that she's in the Church. So even though Phatmass embraces hip hop it's still a trad site and pushes the narrative Amanda is better not in the Church. Sure under the articles it says "may not represent our opinion at Phatmass" but then there's articles from EWTN which fired Black Catholic Gloria Purvis with no explanation when she spoke up last summer. While Raymond Arroyo is on Fox defending confederate monuments and a year earlier making jokes about the murder of Nipsey Hussle the day it happened on the Angle on Fox. Era Might I appreciate your focus on Christianity in Africa. Lecrae has spoke on it a lot lately in the last year. It's part of his theme on how he lost his religion but found his faith. I personally became great friends/brothers with a couple guys from Uganda. Both are Pastors and live humble lives. No plumbing ect We have been helping get people clean water. I appreciate the over 2000 years of Catholicism. It's a spiritual experience when I attend Mass sitting in the back pew knowing how wretched of a man I am. The Sacraments are real and I've encountered the super natural through them. When you study Jesus and how he dealt with the religious it's no surprise that things are the way they are still today. And how Jesus views it. He loves everyone though and it's the Father's will that all men be saved. I guess we can hope especially with Purgatory which can be just like hell but with the ability to learn and one day emerge your most high self and a god. And if a bunch of people end up in hell then that's a fact of life we must accept. But take to heart what Jesus spoke about the final judgement. Trads can do all the rituals perfectly and attack Black Catholic Amanda Gorman and say she shouldn't be in the Church. But if they didn't help the poor or love their brothers and sisters according to Christ they may be in trouble. But like when Rush just died I said 3 Hail Mary's for him. Not because I'm so good but I hope people who can't stand me will say a prayer that I make it to Heaven at my death as well.

Thanks for the great and honest thoughts!

I understand well the “sociology” of Catholicism that you’re talking about. I’ve experienced Catholicism in many different social contexts. I remember joining a men’s group which had a series of talks by different guest speakers. They were all friendly people, but they were all middle class, suburban white men, including the priests who gave the talks, and that was the lens through which they saw the world. Parishes reflect the communities that create (and fund) them. But I’ve seen Catholicism in other, very different contexts as well. I used to eat every day at a Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen which served the unwashed masses of homeless, mostly black and brown men, and many women. The Sisters would give little classes on the weekends to discuss spiritual topics. Before every meal they would read a Gospel and give a short reflection and prayer...sometimes the men would get restless and tell them to hurry it up lol, but usually everyone listened respectfully and was glad to get it out of the way to eat! The sisters usually served some slop made of spaghetti and who knows what, but sometimes we would get fried chicken or some other specialty. The Sisters themselves were very diverse, some from India, some from Latin America. Looking back I think they had a little too much of the death cult about them, always dwelling on suffering, what the homeless men needed to hear was life and strength and joy, but overall I remember the Sisters positively and fondly. There was a laywoman there who had given up a high-powered career in New York and dedicated her life to serving the poor alongside the Sisters, a sort of Dorothy Day. She would usually be the one to go around and talk to people and get to know them. This was another side of Catholicism, not merely in the sense of the diversity of people there, but also in their life experiences and the ways of seeing and speaking about Catholicism, very different from a suburban parish where, unless you're a typical suburban family person, you probably won't have much in common with the people there.

Little known fact: Marcus Garvey was a Roman Catholic. He was a Jamaican leader who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) after WWI in Harlem and throughout the United States and Caribbean. In my opinion, he is the greatest man in American history, alongside John Brown, the great abolitionist who started the Civil War with his attack on a military fort as he tried to spark a slave rebellion. They were the greatest not just for what they did, but because they were truly righteous men, men motivated by a zeal for God and true, universal human brotherhood. Marcus Garvey’s motto was “One God! One Aim! One Destiny!” Here is a great passage from The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, a book you should read ASAP if you want to be truly “woke” as you say:

“If the great statesmen and religious leaders of the world would only forget the selfishness of their own races, and call their conferences and give out their edicts not from the Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, Celtic or Anglo-American point of view, but from the view of all humanity considered, then we would indeed come face to face with a new world evolving a new civilization.

Friends, white cannot prosper to the disadvantage of black. Yellow cannot prosper to the disadvantage of brown, for in so doing we but pile up confusion and remorse for our children. This is history; it tells the tales of the past, it will of the future. Then why not make the future right?

Few the reformers are who struggle for such an ideal. Here and there a white man and a woman, a yellow, brown and black man, while the great army of selfish pleasure-seekers and their slaves march on to their doom. Gandhi in prison, a George V. in his castle; a Congo native massacred; an Albert of Belgium drinking his wine; a Senegalese Negro kicked on the plantation of his master; a Poincare driving in his landau in the Champs d’Elysees; a Negro lynched in Georgia; a Wilson, Harding or Coolidge talking about a world court or league; a Chinaman shot down at Kia Chow and the Emperor of Japan drinking tea in his palace at Tokio; a Jew murdered on the borders of Eastern Europe, and His Holiness the Pope seeing no further than the Vatican, will not save the human race. But that lonely man or woman, of whatsoever race, who cries out for justice to all humanity, including Europe with its whites, Asia with its browns and yellows, Africa with its blacks, and America and the rest of the world with their mixed populations, will, even though there be persecution and injustice done to him, bring succor and aid, late though it be, to the rest of us mortals that we may see everlasting life.”

Also, here is a song about Marcus Garvey that you might like:

Marcus Garvey’s dream was truly “Catholic” (i.e., Universal), not in the sense of praying rosaries but in the sense of creating a true universal brotherhood of man, not just in words and theory, but in reality. He based his philosophy on the doctrine of Imago Dei, that all men are created in the Image of God and are equal brothers under one Father. His great dream was see Africa rise and achieve what white men had achieved in the United States, which he admired greatly as a modern nation that stood as a beacon for freedom.

Garvey said that religion is fundamental, that every man has his own religion and there’s no point in arguing about religion. He didn’t say this because he believed in a “dictatorship of relativism.” Just the opposite, he believed that first we must be human, we must be brothers, we must acknowledge one God who knows no distinctions and shows no partiality, and only then can we discuss the “higher things” of God. Here’s what Garvey said:

“I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior, and that he'd intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the Doctrine of Imago Dei, "All men, regardless of color, are created in the image of God".

Now, from this premise comes the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that he created, of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and is most interested in brotherhood within his own race. Because if Negroes are created in God's image, and Negroes are Black, then God must, in some sense, be Black!

If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires. If the yellow man’s God is of his race let him worship his God as he sees fit. We, as Negroes, have found a new ideal. Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one’s own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the One God of all ages. That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship Him through the spectacles of Ethiopia.”

America is a very racially segregated society. I’ve seen this country inside and out, from the ghettos of the south and west to the depressing poverty of native peoples in the southwest to the colonized island of Hawaii. This country is undergoing an historical reckoning because white people in this country are waking up to a new world, and they don’t know who they are anymore or how to adjust to a world where they are not supreme by divine right. The world today needs a new language of unity and solidarity, because the old languages of nation and religion and class are failing us, though we don't have to abandon them completely, we just need to understand what they can do for us today.

The Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, had this to say in 1963, and I think it is the greatest vision of unity we will ever hear, if we have ears to hear:

”When I spoke at Geneva in 1936, there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the League of Nations. I am neither the first, nor will I be the last head of state to address the United Nations, but only I have addressed both the League and this Organization in this capacity. The problems which confront us today are, equally, unprecedented. They have no counterparts in human experience. Men search the pages of history for solutions, for precedents, but there are none. This, then, is the ultimate challenge. Where are we to look for our survival, for the answers to the questions which have never before been posed? We must look, first, to Almighty God, Who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image. And we must look into ourselves, into the depth of our souls. We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community."

[Clean Water]

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

I understand well the “sociology” of Catholicism that you’re talking about. I’ve experienced Catholicism in many different social contexts. I remember joining a men’s group which had a series of talks by different guest speakers. They were all friendly people, but they were all middle class, suburban white men, including the priests who gave the talks, and that was the lens through which they saw the world. Parishes reflect the communities that create (and fund) them.

Yeah exactly. And to be clear God bless the group you described above. The fact they were friendly is a great thing. You can't blame people for seeing the world through the lens they see it. Until the Holy Spirit prompts them to expand their view. And only God knows when that time is for every person and whether they accept or reject the invitation to see the experience of others they hadn't previously considered. Pope Francis has prompted this and a lot of folks have ignored him and written him off. So much hate was thrown his way by Conservative Catholics when he invited NBA players to the Vatican for Black Lives Matter discussions. Reading the comments on Catholic Connect (a big Catholic IG page) was sad. It was comment after comment of contempt and hate for the Holy Father and the players discussing this issue at the Vatican. Same thing when he accepted the Hawks Jersey for Martin Luther King Jr birthday and standing with Black Lives Matter.

 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

But I’ve seen Catholicism in other, very different contexts as well. I used to eat every day at a Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen which served the unwashed masses of homeless, mostly black and brown men, and many women. The Sisters would give little classes on the weekends to discuss spiritual topics. Before every meal they would read a Gospel and give a short reflection and prayer...sometimes the men would get restless and tell them to hurry it up lol, but usually everyone listened respectfully and was glad to get it out of the way to eat! The sisters usually served some slop made of spaghetti and who knows what, but sometimes we would get fried chicken or some other specialty. The Sisters themselves were very diverse, some from India, some from Latin America. Looking back I think they had a little too much of the death cult about them, always dwelling on suffering, what the homeless men needed to hear was life and strength and joy, but overall I remember the Sisters positively and fondly. There was a laywoman there who had given up a high-powered career in New York and dedicated her life to serving the poor alongside the Sisters, a sort of Dorothy Day. She would usually be the one to go around and talk to people and get to know them. This was another side of Catholicism, not merely in the sense of the diversity of people there, but also in their life experiences and the ways of seeing and speaking about Catholicism, very different from a suburban parish where, unless you're a typical suburban family person, you probably won't have much in common with the people there

I've been seeing Catholicism in other contexts as well. I started following Black Catholics (that's the page) on IG. The handle is @blatholics. Also @blackcatholicmessenger is another great page. A bunch of knowledge and history shared on these pages. Theconservative/trad/racismdoesn't existcrowd-media is so loud and dominating that it drowns out most of the other views and experiences. But the other views are out there you just have to find them and make sure you're not sucked completely into the previous. I've found a bunch of IG pages in the last year of Black Catholics shareing their truth and experiences. It's been great. Also a lot of amesome female accounts (White and Black) who aren't sucked into maga Catholicism and have a lot of truth to offer. Truths about abortion and healthcare ect. Truths on how the Church in 2018 is still making Saints of women who were murdered and saying they're Saints of Purity. And how offensive it is to women and how bad it is for a Church who has lost it's moral credibility. As if sexual victims who don't die are less holy or they are somehow to blame for their experience. And as if women can't tell the difference between rape and sexual temptation. And that rape would somehow have anything to do with if a woman is still a virgin. Here's the article: www.commonwealthmagazine.org/her-too

 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

Little known fact: Marcus Garvey was a Roman Catholic. He was a Jamaican leader who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) after WWI in Harlem and throughout the United States and Caribbean. In my opinion, he is the greatest man in American history, alongside John Brown, the great abolitionist who started the Civil War with his attack on a military fort as he tried to spark a slave rebellion. They were the greatest not just for what they did, but because they were truly righteous men, men motivated by a zeal for God and true, universal human brotherhood. Marcus Garvey’s motto was “One God! One Aim! One Destiny!” Here is a great passage from The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, a book you should read ASAP if you want to be truly “woke” as you say:

“If the great statesmen and religious leaders of the world would only forget the selfishness of their own races, and call their conferences and give out their edicts not from the Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, Celtic or Anglo-American point of view, but from the view of all humanity considered, then we would indeed come face to face with a new world evolving a new civilization.

Friends, white cannot prosper to the disadvantage of black. Yellow cannot prosper to the disadvantage of brown, for in so doing we but pile up confusion and remorse for our children. This is history; it tells the tales of the past, it will of the future. Then why not make the future right?

Few the reformers are who struggle for such an ideal. Here and there a white man and a woman, a yellow, brown and black man, while the great army of selfish pleasure-seekers and their slaves march on to their doom. Gandhi in prison, a George V. in his castle; a Congo native massacred; an Albert of Belgium drinking his wine; a Senegalese Negro kicked on the plantation of his master; a Poincare driving in his landau in the Champs d’Elysees; a Negro lynched in Georgia; a Wilson, Harding or Coolidge talking about a world court or league; a Chinaman shot down at Kia Chow and the Emperor of Japan drinking tea in his palace at Tokio; a Jew murdered on the borders of Eastern Europe, and His Holiness the Pope seeing no further than the Vatican, will not save the human race. But that lonely man or woman, of whatsoever race, who cries out for justice to all humanity, including Europe with its whites, Asia with its browns and yellows, Africa with its blacks, and America and the rest of the world with their mixed populations, will, even though there be persecution and injustice done to him, bring succor and aid, late though it be, to the rest of us mortals that we may see everlasting life.”

There's so many great Black Catholics. I've been glad to learn how many more there are then I imagined. God bless Mr. Garvey. Thanks for the book recommendation, "The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey". I need to read it. Being "truly woke" as you say is frowned upon. Just the other day Bishop Barron went on about it on Twitter. One great comment was from a Black Catholic named Nate. He used to write for Word On Fire but last summer his article was rejected by Barron and not allowed to be published. Here's what he said, "Back when Word On Fire declined a blog of mine basically for mentioning Trump and the Trads undersirable "flashpoints", to quote the editor....I realized there is a  problem. The modern Catholic apologetics movement has the same awareness issues as any other White American zeitgeist. It's telling that two major talking points of American Catholicism were off-limits to me a Black Catholic but Barron has free reign to pontificate on the Black Liberation movement with apparently NO meaningful knowledge of who's on the ground and why."

 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

"I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior, and that he'd intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the Doctrine of Imago Dei, "All men, regardless of color, are created in the image of God".

Now, from this premise comes the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that he created, of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and is most interested in brotherhood within his own race. Because if Negroes are created in God's image, and Negroes are Black, then God must, in some sense, be Black!

If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires. If the yellow man’s God is of his race let him worship his God as he sees fit. We, as Negroes, have found a new ideal. Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one’s own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the One God of all ages. That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship Him through the spectacles of Ethiopia.”

Gloria Purvis who was fired by EWTN for speaking up against racism had a great post. Here's what she said, 

“Researchers at {Stanford} examined how American Christians articulate their image of God. They arrived at a startling finding with significant social implications. They discovered that when people view God as a white man, they also are more likely to believe that white men are better suited for positions of leadership and authority than women or Black people. The chief researcher, psychologist Steven Roberts, summarized the major conclusion of his team’s studies: ‘Basically, if you believe that a white man rules the heavens, you are more likely to believe that white men should rule on Earth.’” - U.S. Catholic magazine

Could our icons help dispel racist attitudes? How would your parish respond to a crucifix with a Christ that is Black?

I hear a variation of this sentiment expressed on these signs whenever I share Black images of Jesus or and Mary etc.....

This is a picture of protestors of Bishop Harold Perry, the 1st publicly recognized Black Bishop ordained in the U.S., in NOLA in 1965.

(I can't post pictures but it's a picture of White Catholics holding up signs that says Jesus Did Not Choose Non White Apostles.)

[chrysostom]

6 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

Truths about abortion and healthcare ect.

What are some of those?

[Clean Water]

3 minutes ago, chrysostom said:

What are some of those?

That poverty is the #1 abortifacient and any "prolife" advocate who claims to be prolife but makes war on the Church's century old call for universal health care is full of s h I t and only interested in using the unborn, not in saving them.

[Clean Water]

56 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

Truths on how the Church in 2018 is still making Saints of women who were murdered and saying they're Saints of Purity. And how offensive it is to women and how bad it is for a Church who has lost it's moral credibility. As if sexual victims who don't die are less holy or they are somehow to blame for their experience. And as if women can't tell the difference between rape and sexual temptation. And that rape would somehow have anything to do with if a woman is still a virgin. Here's the article: www.commonwealthmagazine.org/her-too

Can't edit but to make clear the question is not if Anna deserves to be a Saint. She 110 percent does and is. She was martyred for the faith and showed so much courage and faith. That point is made clear in the article. It's a great read if you have time.

[Peace]

39 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

That poverty is the #1 abortifacient

No. RU-486 is the #1 abortifacient.

39 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

and any "prolife" advocate who claims to be prolife but makes war on the Church's century old call for universal health care is full of s h I t and only interested in using the unborn, not in saving them.

Either that, or they believe that private systems are the best means of providing quality health-care to the overall population.

 

[Anastasia]

58 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

Could our icons help dispel racist attitudes? How would your parish respond to a crucifix with a Christ that is Black?

Byzantine icons have been depicting Jesus Christ as a Mediterranean for ages. Chinese have painted His as Chinese. Ethiopians as an Ethiopian. Spaniards as a Spaniard. Russians as a Russian. It is normal for each nation to depict Jesus as their own, with their own national/racial features because it expresses their closeness to Him, the attachment to Him. 

However, when someone begins deliberately using icons and other sacred things for "reducing racisms" the result is always superficial and to those who understand the role of the icons quite offensive. If in the hypothetical church there are black people they can of course to commission an icon of Jesus to some black iconographer who can make a naturally (not deliberately) black Jesus, black Jesus coming from his personal spiritual experience. However, there is a difference between the desire of black people to have an icon of Jesus Who looks more like them, out of their spiritual needs and the desire to do this "to reduce racisms". The second is very wrong.

In my opinion, racist attitudes (both ways, white to black and black to white) and all other wrong attitudes can only be dispelled via true Christian life = union with Christ. 

[Ice_nine]

8 hours ago, Era Might said:

Nobody is whining. If you're not interested in the thread, then go to another one. This is a phorum. I started a thread for discussion. Some of us like discussing things. If that's not your thing, then please don't waste my time telling me how much of a stupid loser I am, or try to derail the thread because you're not interested in it.

I didn't call you a stupid loser. I'm taking somewhat of an issue with you telling me to leave. Starting a thread doesn't mean you own the thread. This is the internet hoss. I'll waste my time how I want.

I realize I'm being kind of a nudge. Don't take it too seriously.

[Peace]

49 minutes ago, Ice_nine said:

 Starting a thread doesn't mean you own the thread.

It's my thread now. I hijacked it.

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, Clean Water said:

Yeah exactly. And to be clear God bless the group you described above. The fact they were friendly is a great thing. You can't blame people for seeing the world through the lens they see it. Until the Holy Spirit prompts them to expand their view. And only God knows when that time is for every person and whether they accept or reject the invitation to see the experience of others they hadn't previously considered. Pope Francis has prompted this and a lot of folks have ignored him and written him off. So much hate was thrown his way by Conservative Catholics when he invited NBA players to the Vatican for Black Lives Matter discussions. Reading the comments on Catholic Connect (a big Catholic IG page) was sad. It was comment after comment of contempt and hate for the Holy Father and the players discussing this issue at the Vatican. Same thing when he accepted the Hawks Jersey for Martin Luther King Jr birthday and standing with Black Lives Matter.

 

I've been seeing Catholicism in other contexts as well. I started following Black Catholics (that's the page) on IG. The handle is @blatholics. Also @blackcatholicmessenger is another great page. A bunch of knowledge and history shared on these pages. Theconservative/trad/racismdoesn't existcrowd-media is so loud and dominating that it drowns out most of the other views and experiences. But the other views are out there you just have to find them and make sure you're not sucked completely into the previous. I've found a bunch of IG pages in the last year of Black Catholics shareing their truth and experiences. It's been great. Also a lot of amesome female accounts (White and Black) who aren't sucked into maga Catholicism and have a lot of truth to offer. Truths about abortion and healthcare ect. Truths on how the Church in 2018 is still making Saints of women who were murdered and saying they're Saints of Purity. And how offensive it is to women and how bad it is for a Church who has lost it's moral credibility. As if sexual victims who don't die are less holy or they are somehow to blame for their experience. And as if women can't tell the difference between rape and sexual temptation. And that rape would somehow have anything to do with if a woman is still a virgin. Here's the article: www.commonwealthmagazine.org/her-too

 

There's so many great Black Catholics. I've been glad to learn how many more there are then I imagined. God bless Mr. Garvey. Thanks for the book recommendation, "The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey". I need to read it. Being "truly woke" as you say is frowned upon. Just the other day Bishop Barron went on about it on Twitter. One great comment was from a Black Catholic named Nate. He used to write for Word On Fire but last summer his article was rejected by Barron and not allowed to be published. Here's what he said, "Back when Word On Fire declined a blog of mine basically for mentioning Trump and the Trads undersirable "flashpoints", to quote the editor....I realized there is a  problem. The modern Catholic apologetics movement has the same awareness issues as any other White American zeitgeist. It's telling that two major talking points of American Catholicism were off-limits to me a Black Catholic but Barron has free reign to pontificate on the Black Liberation movement with apparently NO meaningful knowledge of who's on the ground and why."

 

Gloria Purvis who was fired by EWTN for speaking up against racism had a great post. Here's what she said, 

“Researchers at {Stanford} examined how American Christians articulate their image of God. They arrived at a startling finding with significant social implications. They discovered that when people view God as a white man, they also are more likely to believe that white men are better suited for positions of leadership and authority than women or Black people. The chief researcher, psychologist Steven Roberts, summarized the major conclusion of his team’s studies: ‘Basically, if you believe that a white man rules the heavens, you are more likely to believe that white men should rule on Earth.’” - U.S. Catholic magazine

Could our icons help dispel racist attitudes? How would your parish respond to a crucifix with a Christ that is Black?

I hear a variation of this sentiment expressed on these signs whenever I share Black images of Jesus or and Mary etc.....

This is a picture of protestors of Bishop Harold Perry, the 1st publicly recognized Black Bishop ordained in the U.S., in NOLA in 1965.

(I can't post pictures but it's a picture of White Catholics holding up signs that says Jesus Did Not Choose Non White Apostles.)

Oh I know all about the Catholic apologetics scene! I go way back to the Golden Age of apologetics. This was before I even found Phatmass. I was a faithful subscriber and reader of stuff like This Rock magazine and Envoy Encore and and then Catholic blogs when they first started emerging. I remember when Gerry Matatics, a well-known apologist, went rogue and became a sedevacantist and then Robert Sungenis kind of followed him, and I was reading stuff like a bizarre website called Novus Ordo Watch and this must-read Rad Trad book called The Great Facade bwahahahaha. Good memories! I would stay up til 1AM to watch Mother Angelica Live reruns, this was before she had her stroke and went off the air.

Anyway the reason I say all this is to say I know how the religious mind works. Sometimes I would go to Mass 2 or 3 times on Sunday, spend hours and hours and hours praying before the tabernacle, pray 15 decades of the Rosary, recite the Liturgy of the Hours, go waaaay out of my way to attend Latin Mass, spend hundreds of dollars having masses said for dead people. I can tell your heart is in the right place and even though all those things I did were unnecessary, looking back, I did them sincerely and I don't regret them because it helped me grow as I groped in the dark for a God I thought I knew but was really ignorant of. I don't believe in God anymore because now I know him, I don't need to believe in him, I talk to him face to face, like Father and Son. He lives in me, I no longer need to go see Him in a tabernacle. But I found him there, too, before I found Him inside myself. He had to hide himself for many years before he could show me His face and tell me my name.

It sounds like you're becoming more and more conscious of a world beyond the world inside our little religious minds. That's really why I started this thread, to encourage you to keep the faith and keep expanding your mental and spiritual horizons. Don't get bogged down in too much superfluous stuff, the world isn't hanging on your shoulders, we were created to be happy and joyful and simple. These are serious times we are living in and it's a shame if we don't really know what's going on, who we are and where we're going. Life is not a mystery, there is only one God and he is our Father, all of us, without exception. Love is the answer to all our problems, it's a very simple problem that we make complicated. I won't be on Phatmass for long, but while I am here I wanted to share a piece of my heart and hopefully get to share a piece of someone else's heart. This is what we're here for. I understand we all have opinions and ideas, but those count for very little in real life. So thanks for sharing your story and I hope we can continue stepping outside the narrow confines of our usual conversations!

"God is love and he who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him."

[Peace]

I think it is downright hilarious that @Era Might created a dummy account named @Clean Water and is literally having a conversation with himself because nobody else would co-sign his BS.

[Anastasia]

34 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Anyway the reason I say all this is to say I know how the religious mind works. Sometimes I would go to Mass 2 or 3 times on Sunday, spend hours and hours and hours praying before the tabernacle, pray 15 decades of the Rosary, recite the Liturgy of the Hours, go waaaay out of my way to attend Latin Mass, spend hundreds of dollars having masses said for dead people. I can tell your heart is in the right place and even though all those things I did were unnecessary, looking back, I did them sincerely and I don't regret them because it helped me grow as I groped in the dark for a God I thought I knew but was really ignorant of. I don't believe in God anymore because now I know him, I don't need to believe in him, I talk to him face to face, like Father and Son. He lives in me, I no longer need to go see Him in a tabernacle. But I found him there, too, before I found Him inside myself. He had to hide himself for many years before he could show me His face and tell me my name.

The problem with “gnostics” is that they ignore the fact that Christ is God and Man both, the Divinity is expressing itself in the perfect human psyche. It means that “finding God” and being in union with Him does not abolish “little human things” like rosaries etc., as the numerous Catholic and Orthodox Saints confirmed. Just like the Lord who, being the Son of God and in union with His Father, still prayed regularly, often using formal Jewish prayers (Psalms), any person on so-called “spiritual path” still needs those little things – in fact the further he goes the more he needs them, to keep him on a right track. In fact, it is well-known sign of so-called “prelest” (“spiritual delusion” in Orthodoxy) when a person drops “little human things” = formal prayer, Mass, devotion etc because he thinks he is in union with God.

St Seraphim of Sarov still kept reading the Gospels and other books and prayed his rule so as St Teresa of Avila and other mystics. What they have never done though is to claim publicly that they obtained union with God. Actually, they spoke very little, mostly giving short advices to others who came to seeks their advice.

I wrote this not so much for you because I know that such a delusion prevents a person from perceiving the truth but for those to whom your texts may give wrong ideas.

[Ice_nine]

57 minutes ago, Peace said:

I think it is downright hilarious that @Era Might created a dummy account named @Clean Water and is literally having a conversation with himself because nobody else would co-sign his BS.

It does seem fishy but . . . Era is an OG. I actually liked the guy for the most part, from what I knew of him. For that reason alone I don't think that's what he's doing, and if that is what he's doing that would be very sad and (I'm not a doctor but,) indicative of some serious mental issues that I wouldn't find funny.

And I'm only talking about him like he's not in the room because I assume he's probably ignoring my posts at this point. More power to him.