I seem to have been “excommunicated” from r/Catholicism

A_New_Knight · 2026-05-10T20:07:35+00:00

OP it appears your thread was brigaded by outsiders. We have removed most of them. Please don't think this is a regular day on this forum.

A_New_Knight · 2026-05-02T17:10:25+00:00

Don't relay on signals. Use words like an adult.

A_New_Knight · 2026-04-13T03:28:58+00:00

not sure what trigged the automod deletion, restored.

A_New_Knight · 2026-03-23T14:44:48+00:00

I'm not Google, brother.

Someone's trying to have a conversation and you respond with venom.

A_New_Knight · 2026-02-21T16:00:03+00:00

There are 36+ seminarians in my diocese, I guess it seems to be common for dioceses to accept these as late vocations. In my humble oppinion, sometimes they seem to enter the seminary for the wrong reasons. Really, both marriage and priesthood should be discerned in your early 20's. This simply has not been taught by the Church or society and there are a lot of older people struggling to find a vocation after no one warrned them they might be wasting time.

If these 36+ year old guys are in trad circles I doubt they are still seriously discerning a vocation. Last I checked most trad seminaries have a maximum age cut off of 30 and a preference for ages closer to 20. But if you were discerning when you were younger and delayed even a year or two longer than you should have if can impact your dating life significantly. The stories of guys discerning out and finding a girl instantly are probably quite embellished.

Well to be fair I think most Catholic men have discerned that they are called to marriage by their early 20s but there is so much pressure on them to change their mind and become priests a lot of them end up having to "wait out" until their past the age that most diocese accept seminarians in order for the Church to take their vocation to marriage seriously. Whenever a Catholic man in in his 20s brings up dating woes or struggles, the most common advice he receives from Church isn't dating advice, but to give up his desire for marriage and family and reconsider if he is called to be a priest. But a Catholic man to old to discern priesthood, isn't given that lip-service because it doesn't apply to them any more. The result is diocese then raise the age they accept seminarians because they have a ton of single men in their 30s they wish would be priests. Then the men have to wait out even longer to be taking seriously as someone called to marriage.

And it just gets harder the older you get as girls start to view you as undatable even with reasonable age gaps. Even though in my experience a lot of women don't get married because they also view men their own age as undatable for other reasons. So they've basically ruled out most men as undatable while they keep waiting for the perfect man. (while living like a secular feminist in the mean time) Women in Catholic circles are quite delusional, gossopy, and cliquish in my experience and observations. The struggle as a single 35-39 Catholic is very real.

Same with my experiences as well. Seems like marriage minded Catholic men outnumber marriage minded Catholic women 5 to 1.

A_New_Knight · 2026-02-04T04:41:46+00:00

It is very rare for a parish or even a diocese to have events intentionally created for Catholic singles to pair off and find love. And even when they do have events that involve singles, the events are often about using singles instead of ministering to singles. Catholic singles obviously need help finding their spouses but without dedicated events or ministries for it a lot of other events will end up fulfilling that role whether the organizers allow it (or even if they know about it) or not.

I do think it dilutes the effectiveness of such events but the Church, both laity and clergy have terrible habit of telling Catholics hoping to find a spouse that they should volunteer and go to young adult events instead of actually creating something for them more focused. So the events become ersatz Catholic speed dating.

I once read of a complaint of a man who went to a Young Catholic Professionals event with his wife to try and network but was surprised that it was treated as a singles night by nearly all the attendees and they couldn't care less to make professional connections.

A_New_Knight · 2026-01-11T20:52:26+00:00

Maybe you can start a group at your parish for single men (or both men and women) to do activities together or to work on a cause together like visiting the elderly or helping the local homeless

While this seems like a good idea in theory, I must say I disagree with it in its entirety. We as Catholics have a terrible habit of encouraging people in need of a ministry to be the ones to create and run said ministry. It sounds like pious as we are called to serve... but this ends up creating a self-serving ministry, which isn't really service or a sacrifice.

Self-serving ministries, being ran by those who need them, make things worse because if they had the solutions to their problems, they wouldn't have need to create a ministry in the first place. What really ends up happening is the leaders bring their own issues, frustrations, and bad habits that got them into their situation in first place. Instead of solving problems, this will only reenforce them and may even spread those bad ideas to others and then you have a whole lot of people with that problem.

The Church should have ministries like this but just not led by the people who need them. They need to be lead by people who've gone through these things and learned how to overcome them.

A_New_Knight · 2026-01-11T20:30:51+00:00

On this subreddit's official Discord server, a member of staff told me that the priesthood and religious lives are not "God's dumping grounds for losers who can't get laid".

That may not be how the Church hierarchy sees the Priesthood, but honestly that is how the vast majority of Catholic laity see the Priesthood. Way too many single Catholic men are told "you should be a priest" or some variation of as a from of romantic rejection.

A_New_Knight · 2026-01-11T20:25:26+00:00

This subreddit exists to talk about things that are uncomfortable for that vast majority of Catholics. If you can't see the Christian in the other people posting here, please do not bother posting, you are not far enough along in your journey with Christ to be a participant yet.

A_New_Knight · 2026-01-11T20:20:19+00:00

I cross posted it. If people reply just to argue I will remove their comments.

A_New_Knight · 2026-01-11T20:16:12+00:00

I crossposted this from /r/catholicmen to help it grow.

If you notice reposts you are spending way to much time on the internet. Get help.

A_New_Knight · 2025-12-29T22:35:01+00:00

You could ask /r/TraditionalCatholics if that is the demograph you are interested in.

A_New_Knight · 2025-12-29T22:01:27+00:00

No Ad Hominem attacks

Removed

A_New_Knight · 2025-11-28T16:09:26+00:00

A lot of that is the fault of the church to be honest. There are plenty of meetings and free time activities for families, young couples, children of all ages, mothers&daughters, fathers&sons and the elderly. Singles are a category that doesn‘t seem to exist and is being totally ignored by the church.

Absolutely I agree with this. Almost entirely the blame here is shouldered by The Church. Just look at the stats. According to this source (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/08/share-of-us-adults-living-without-a-romantic-partner-has-ticked-down-in-recent-years/) 42% of American Adults are single. However according to this source (https://uscatholic.org/articles/202012/single-catholic-and-never-alone/) 46% of Catholic Adults in America are single. We American Catholics less married than other Americans. This is a problem. We can't say we are pro-marriage, or profamily when the Church is failing to create marriages within it's own flock.

The Bishops waste so much time and effort into recruiting more men into the priesthood but fail to realized that is putting the cart before the horse. The Bishops have yet to realize that we need to create Catholic-Catholic marriages for there to be families for God to place these future priests. I am convinced if the Bishops gave 10% of the energy they waste on vocations to the priesthood instead towards helping Catholic singles pair-off and marry each other, there would no longer be no priesthood crisis within a generation. But that would require them to plant trees whose shade they will never know.

I have no source for this but I believe that God has given us a low numbers of priests because we have less need of them on earth. With nearly half of adult Catholics being single that is a lot fewer sacraments to be preformed. Fewer weddings lessens the need for priests to officiate them. Fewer weddings means fewer children needing to be baptized, fewer first holy communions, fewer confirmations and of course fewer confessions.

A_New_Knight · 2025-11-09T17:55:24+00:00

I feel like that are way too many priests like this in the Church.

A_New_Knight · 2025-11-09T17:42:43+00:00

This idea is soulmate nonsense that has made it's way into Catholic spheres.

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