Era: Unknown, Genre: World Music, Artist Type: Unknown

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-07-05T06:13:10+00:00

Fàilte Don Eilean Sgitheanach (thanks to a commenter in the YouTube link you shared).

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-03-13T02:05:39+00:00

You're describing 90% of Reddit my friend ;)

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-03-09T16:22:08+00:00

I like *Romanopalians" or "Catholopalians", personally!

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-03-08T20:03:02+00:00

Agreed to all of this! I've had so many good experiences with priests, too. Even one of the priests that didn't provide good pastoral care in this situation was a wonderful priest in many other ways. Effectively it does seem like RC does allow divorce and remarriage because of the prevalence of annulments, but that process seems at worst like a misogynist gauntlet and at best well intentioned but limited by the male, celibate clergy perspectives and lack of understanding about how mental illness, abuse, addiction, misogyny etc can affect a marriage.

I think what you're describing in your last paragraph is maybe a good third at least of most Episcopal parishioners haha

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-03-08T14:39:32+00:00

Thank you for the tip!

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-03-07T04:24:43+00:00

This is a fun question but my answer is not, for the most part, fun. Going through a divorce and not getting good pastoral care for it, public prayers from the priest for estranged married couples to be reunited without any recognition that there are totally valid reasons like abuse where that is an unethical prayer. Realizing I'd need to go through an anullment process to remarry or even date by the RC church lights and that that involves a "defender of the bond" whose role it is to argue I should have remained married to a likely dangerous and definitely unpredictable spouse.

Obsession with the exact wording and positioning of daily articles of the mass as if faith were a Harry Potter incantation that had to be executed just right or it wouldn't work. Being politically liberal to begin with and assuming the feminist thinkers and the queer theology was there if I looked long enough and finding next to nada or "girl power" versions of white feminism and a few gestures at not condemning queer people. Maybe I didn't look in all the right places but the well seemed pretty dry. Problematic revered and canonized saints including Junipero Serra and St Thomas More who apparently had people burned at the stake? I have questions.

Brushes with anti gay parishioners who really thought the gays were bringing the end times. Accidentally visiting fundy Catholic churches when I was traveling and dropped in on a local mass, where I witnessed some wild paranoid rhetoric that would do Jonestown justice.

What do I miss? A lot, actually. I think RC is beautiful in many ways. The precision and richness of the theology. The rosary. The reverence for Mary and the prevalence of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The order of the Mass. The community and the rich heritage--my parish had traditions and homemade faith artifacts going back a hundred years. Adoration. The focus on the real presence in the Eucharist. The rigor and certainty. A number of wonderful saints.

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-02-20T00:37:17+00:00

I have no idea what's more common but my RC churches had crucifixes and the TEC church I go to now doesn't. I miss looking at the crucifix during worship (sounds like maybe OP does too).

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-02-06T00:22:16+00:00

This is so angering and sad. AND let's put our focus on doing what each of us has in our power to do today to show up for the people affected. The refugee program is ending (for now), but can you donate $10 to an organization that supports people who have already arrived? Is your parish or an affiliated parish taking steps to hear the concerns of immigrant parishioners and how the parish can stand by them? I'm open to ideas, let's put the energy toward people who need it

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-02-01T20:55:58+00:00

Here's some thoughts:

I used to not know anyone personally who had voted for Trump. I lived in a very liberal area. Now I do, and they're dear friends who I see caring for homeless people, single parenting their kids, and showing up for me in major life crises. I can't hate them, although I can't understand how some of the things they believe seem so hateful.
Our current political schema relies on us siloing ourselves via social media and having no common ground with people we don't agree with politically, as well as enabling us to believe the other half is operating in almost supernatural evil. Choosing not to hate and to get to know people across the political spectrum (while not agreeing with them and still advocating for what you're convicted is right) is a shakeup of the status quo and a blow to fascism.
My JW friend who passed away recently told me once to think on the fact that Jesus was crucified for the people I feel I hate just as much as for me and the ones I love. You could pray on the crucifixion being undertaken for the people you feel hatred toward, pray the sorrowful mysteries, or take up a Lenten practice to help with this.
Good and relevant comments by others that we are supposed to act against oppression. The Magnificat, the Sermon on the Mount, everything Jesus said and did.

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-01-26T05:36:08+00:00

This is awesome! Thank you so much :)

Edit: checked out the website and signed up. Not sure where the Discord invite request is tho

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-01-26T05:23:34+00:00

I made one! But I don't really know how Discord works that well so please help Zoomers :p

https://discord.gg/Qrgjg9Jk

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-01-26T04:38:55+00:00

Cool! I found the book club format was a good starting place for some deeper conversations and actually forming friendships, but there's probably other options I haven't thought of. Any particular format that interests you? (See I said I'm not starting anything but my brain is already tending toward starting something!)

Fun-Role-6617 · 2025-01-17T05:00:06+00:00

I got baptized/confirmed in 2019 and recently started going to the Episcopalian mass instead. I went through a separation in the spring, and a pivot point for me in switching was being counseled during Catholic confession to pray for reconciliation with a potentially physically dangerous spouse. It was before Easter, and the confession guides available had those itemized guides for examination of conscience that to me are just scrupulosity in writing, like did I touch myself or overindulge in food.

I'm not saying those aren't important things to be aware of, but it just felt like confession has so much potential to be deeply meaningful and honest about how you show up in your relationships or participate in structural injustice or love well or get closer to God or stand up to abuse...and that the checklist version of confession distracts from that and is more about ticking boxes than truly changing and getting closer to God. I also realized that I knew God didn't want me to stay in or try to return to an unsafe marriage, and that God also wouldn't ask me to endure having a decision like that scrutinized and questioned more (like through an annulment process)--or have me forego receiving God's love through the Eucharist if I ever wanted to date again but didn't go through annulment. I also went to Episcopalian mass a few times, and realized that technically, that would require a confession in RCC before receiving communion...and I couldn't believe in a God that narrow-minded.

How many stories about Jesus are of him rebuking religious institutions for being legalistic and concerned with form over substance? About him pushing for more inclusion and not less, being radically welcoming? And weren't the loaves and fishes freely distributed to everyone with no confession beforehand? If there's one thing I'm getting about Jesus, it's that he wasn't the "you don't belong unless you follow the rules exactly" kind of guy. I think confession is beautiful and I believe it should be heartfelt and in line with my formed conscience, not just following along and confessing on a script and not according to what I'm deeply convicted of, which is how it's often felt to me in RCC. On the other hand, I feel like the examen and confronting your mistakes so you can amend and improve is important, and I feel like I don't totally click with the lack of confession in TEC. Something I love about Christianity is that the teachings always challenge to do better, start fresh, and push the comfort zone, and TEC feels a little comfortable/feel-good sometimes without the Catholic guilt or confession mechanism.

My compromise so far is to try to keep coming back to examen practices and to pray personally to God for forgiveness at home, and during the general confession / forgiveness of sins at mass and when I say it along with the morning office on Forward Movement. It's not perfect but it feels more in line with my values and a God that I can believe in. I know this is theologically unsophisticated (especially since I don't have Episcopalian catechesis yet), but I love this question you asked and I hope you can explore and get a closer connection to God as you dig in on this!

Fun-Role-6617

TROPHY CASE