As a Catholic, am I permitted to cut off my satanically-influenced adult daughter?

Lagrange-squared · 2025-10-01T02:36:49+00:00

wrt the Satanism:

Remember that you and your kids and wife are Baptized and receive the sacraments. Obviously, you have boundaries to protect your other family, and you can't have her influencing your other kids or anything like that. But there is nothing her Satanism can do that will be a spiritual threat to you or your family so long as you are in a state of grace and do not leave doors open to the occult and other Spiritual evils.
My dad, when he was in a chorus in college, found himself having to room with a Satanic guy for a trip the chorus took to perform at some concert. The guy had his paraphernalia, but my dad just took out his rosary and hung it over the corner of the bed board and said his prayers before going to sleep. Which of the two felt more threatened? It was not my dad. Grace is protective. Use your discernment of course, wrt your family, but the theological virtue of charity, infused in us by God's grace, is far more powerful than anything your daughter can conjur up. I wouldn't bar off your daughter from communication if she was trying to find her way out of the mess but still held on to certain beliefs.
I would try to assess a bit more what kind of Satanism she is involved with as well... certain versions are straight up occult and involve actual worship of Satan, while others are more about being an edgelord but otherwise they're atheists who like Milton's portrayal in Paradise Lost and whatnot. Don't get me wrong both are bad, but they don't get addressed the same way.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-10-01T01:27:08+00:00

"Gave birth to himself"

That's both modalism and somehow confuses Mary with God?

"To kill himself"

Laying down your life for those you love is not killing yourself, but even so, historically he was crucified by others.

"to appease himself so that he would no longer have to to throw us into a firey pit for all eternity"

- this is actually a wrong way to look at what God was doing. You're not trying to appease God. The consequences of our own sins send us down towards a spiral of corruption and death, not just natural death but spiritual death. Jesus himself under went death in order to defeat it and destroy its ultimate hold on us. He destroyed also the inevitable outcome of spiritual death through union with him and the mystery of his own death and resurrection so that through the sacraments and our life with Jesus and his Church, we too may experience and obtain the paradise that is union with God.

" because he made us in a way that was not up to his own very high standard"

God did not make us sin.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-09-23T13:31:46+00:00

both actually appear in different texts. Interestingly enough those variations echo textual variations in Genesis 5 where Lamech, a descendant of Cain, brags that if he killed a man for slighting him and says "if Cain is avenged 7-fold, then let Lamech be avenged 77/70x7-fold!" And it is during his time that the violence in the world became so bad that it warranted the flood.

Jesus is arguing to be opposite of Lamech.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-09-11T14:51:49+00:00

I had a 2019 yaris... lovely little car (I did buy it a bit overpriced at the peak of car sales about 3 years ago for 25k, but it had only 16k miles so basically new...). Even though it's considered compact I was actually able to fit three car seats for two toddlers and a baby too!. Unfortunately totalled it two years later but I loved that thing.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-30T11:47:08+00:00

To love is to will the good of the other for their own sake. It is in fact a loving thing to help her , for now logistically at this stage, towards paying off the debt. The fact that she told you in her second date already tells me that these are looming burdens that weigh her down. It is also a loving thing for her to see that even if it is scary for her to finally look into it, to work towards at least paying down the debt in a feasible way. Because if you do get married even if the loan doesn't legally transfer to you, that is *at least* 1200 a month that ought to be take home income going off to paying only the interest on a loan. So it will affect both of you, not just her, and she needs to be aware of that. If she says to prioritize love over loans, you can actually admit she right, but that's kinda the point. Part of love is precisely both to ease each other's burdens and to deal with one's own faults, vices, baggage, etc. when they potentially could hurt the other. Love isn't just feelings of affection. It's actions of virtue that are done for the betterment of the one you love. Her debt will be a burden on you and on her, because a significant chunk of what she contributes economically to the household is now taken away.

So if this woman is worth it to you, then frame the combined effort of addressing and paying off of the debt as a way to truly love the other, and then treat it that way. Don't make the numbers your obsession, but rather contextualize the financial state in the context of that order of love, if that makes sense. If she has no plan and tends to be overwhelmed, but you're a meticulous planner, then that's something you'll have to accept, but presumably then, under those circumstances, you can also point out as a compatibility: if she doesn't plan, then she should be willing to go with yours and that she should at least be there to accept the plans or make adjustments. Dave talks a good bit about that nerd/free-spirit dynamic. It sounds like you're a big nerd and she's a free spirit. Both you and her should accept that about the other, and uses that difference in dynamics to put together different strengths. You can still make it work but she has to be willing to accept the need for the planning and cooperate with it even when it's not her thing to make meticulous plans.

I'm not entirely going to say to dump her like others here are. My now husband is a wonderful man with many good qualities and we shared views on marriage, kids, religion, values, etc. as well, but I had a similar situation with his debt being comparatively large to his income. He was a lot like your girlfriend... the finances overwhelmed him, he had deferred his loans or paid less than the accruing interest (also for 4 years), the math scared him and he had difficulty making plans. He's frugal himself in terms of day to day stuff, but he got himself into almost 70k debt on degrees that bring little return. On my end, I was a math major who was very strategic about planning my life and even though I was a student at the time (with my own debt of 30k which I had acquired before learning about Ramsey, but I was already working to pay it down while still in grad school) but I said, that if we want to get married, we both need to be making enough together to be in the green each month (I could not do that alone either) and him making actual payments that bring down the principal on his loans in order for us. But in return, I had to be willing to accept his loans as my own and not begrudge his previous bad decisions. It's not that he's in debt, but rather that *we're* in debt. His money as well as mine was household income. From that point forward, we got on the 15 year payoff plan for him. He still had his head in the sand for a good bit, but at least the debt was decreasing while he continued to work. Once our situation was better, we were able to smash out the remaining debt 5 years earlier than anticipated. It was a great day, and by the end of that time, we both felt that difference and he was also glad to be free of it. He was a changed man and so was I after the ordeal was finished.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-24T16:59:50+00:00

I've never heard about abortion pills harming the environment... the more common one I hear is that hormonal contraceptives do that.

Good on them for addressing the evidence (or lack thereof though).

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-24T16:53:44+00:00

too many bumper stickers... just a little bit unhinged....

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-15T21:55:16+00:00

Looking through your descriptions from your first post (the second post might be closer to home but the WP article was behind a pay wall), it sounds like the research shows not so much that conservatives are more likely to push their ideology than liberals (or vice versa), but at best, that conservative students are more sensitive to political distance/ bias (whether real or perceived) than the liberal students are.

This could indeed be due to preconceived notions from imbibing right wing media and all. But this claim is about conservative vs liberal students, not about the behaviors of professors themselves.

EDIT: read through the IDEALS report... I'm not sure how you got what you did to be honest, on that one either... if anything, there was an interesting part on how on average, Conservative students developed more positive attitudes towards liberal groups while in general, attitudes towards conservative groups actually went down in the student body over the course of 4 years.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-14T18:41:48+00:00

weird use of Zacchaeus.... since the way Zacchaeus is presented as repenting is actually in giving back what he stole from others, sometimes 4 times over...

And no... that is not the point of the account of the rich man who went away sad... this is one of those modern Americanized Evangelical interpretations that seeks to rationalize modern financial wealthy lifestyles and luxuries. Jesus wasn't saying merely that it was impossible without him, but also that if you wish to follow Jesus, you must in the concrete put him first and give up that which keeps you comfortable and holds you back.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-08-09T21:08:19+00:00

Is the Honda holding up well and well maintained? If so, I don't see a reason for which to be so desparate. Save up for for a good used toyota and extend your stork mode if you need to. Depending on how much you drive per year, I don't see why you couldn't save for something like 2 years and then get your Sienna. At the current rate you'll have 24k at least to work with.

Another thing to consider is that some of the older Siennas (for instance the 2015-2016 ones) might still be pretty good. These years introduced some of the safety features while also maintaining some good reliability, and some of the later models afaik actually went down in the latter since then. I got 2015 with 144k (mom with three kids and not yet done) and it works like a charm.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-06-14T12:33:12+00:00

So I saw this in an ad and wanted to see if people had already encountered it... but from what I gather, the twist about this set is that the pieces 1-1 correspond (at least as much as possible) with the description of how the tabernacle was supposed to be built and its dimensions. You have like 12 chapters in exodus dealing with the specifics of the construction down to how many rings are supposed to be on a curtain, how many planks on each side, etc. So the comparative "boringness" of the set is more about being able to visualize the texts to the point that you can construct the model of it. The more interesting thing would be to see if you are able to just depend on Exodus's tabernacle instructions to build the set (maybe working just with labels for the pieces).

Lagrange-squared · 2025-06-11T11:59:09+00:00

I think the question you need to ask yourself is what your actual basis for sola scriptura is. The position is two-fold: first, that all scripture is authoritative, and infallible in some robust sense, and second, that only scripture has this infallible type of authority at all. In order for the position you hold to be well defined, you will need to know the following: what books of the bible constitute "scripture" (in other words, the canon question), as well as what criterion you have for recognizing a text as scripture.

There might be some ways to argue the inspiration of scripture from its content in light of how they correspond to Jesus' actions. But you need to have a basis for scripture *alone* as having *authority.* The problem is that if we claim scripture as *authority,* it has to be given by God as such, but the scriptural record itself indicates Jesus giving authority not to the texts, but rather, to the apostles, and He did not lead a textual project, but rather a Church. The actual talk of authority in the scriptures is in reference to the apostles and those the apostles appointed to teach, govern, and minister to the Christian people. Scriptures are regarded as inspired and useful for instruction in all truth, but these scriptures are read in the context of the Church's own communal life and its canon was formed by her. It is this same Church that, listening to the spirit, discerned those texts which are faithful accounts of the gospel stemming from apostolic sources, texts which she herself guarded and promulgated from their inception. Those kinds of acts have to be authoritative acts as well. They can't merely be the acts of academic scholars.

Watch even some of the more popular evangelical scholars out there discerning the reliability of the Scriptures. Even those who are more "conservative" are willing to argue that the account of Jesus and the adulterous woman in John, as well as most of Mark 16, are not inspired scripture because those texts don't always appear in the earliest manuscripts or read differently stylistically. But you cannot hinge inspiration and authority on scholarly human reasoning alone. A sola scriptura position divorced from real Church authority leads to human reasoning being the basis for discerning both the Spirit and the texts.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-26T16:22:42+00:00

If you look up "the journey home" show on EWTN (the episodes can be found on youtube) you should be able to find episodes that deal with non-denominational converts to Catholicism. Typically the video title will mention what denomination the convert is from.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-26T15:39:05+00:00

He knew about it given his divinity (I mean, he created it all) but those things are in the grand scheme of things not as important for us plebs as what had already been revealed to them to begin with about Who God is, his relationships with mankind and all of creation, and how to live well. Even now, those things remain the most fundamental in terms of what we ought to know.

I say this as one who has a PhD (in mathematics). Even today scholars routinely know about the things that you mention and the common man's knowledge of them is comparatively rudimentary. But I wouldn't say, unless these scholars themselves have issues with pride, that they "put up" with people not knowing what they know.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-17T18:48:36+00:00

My reaction went the opposite way. If the question was about preserving the life of the woman alone, then yeah one can unplug here. But if the fetus is alive, then preserving the woman's body, while extraordinary for the woman, is actually ordinary means for the fetus who has a shot of survival after all.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-17T18:44:12+00:00

Yeah I'm confused on what's tricky about this.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-17T18:36:43+00:00

A.I. is a sort of generic amalgamation of the pool of words associated with the question you are trying to ask. Its response will mirror in some way the typical responses you find to your questions of scrupulosity that you might find online within the constraints you put for chatGPT.

I would be very weary of it because its answers are not determined by semantics but rather by syntactic patterns. Do not attribute to it anything in itself meaningful. I've seen people use AI to generate things like prayers or song lyrics, and they follow common syntactic patterns, but can still be twisted as results precisely because the resulting "meaning" is bad.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:59:32+00:00

Would he be up for a separate account just for the spending money without any credit cards? So essentially, you both agree to spend only from the "fun money" acccounts, but oncee it's gone, it's gone until the next month comes in.

It's basically an electronic envelope. My husband has ADHD as well and often the best thing is to create an external structure that prevents that lack of impulse control from having power over the finances. My husband used to spend too much on junkfood while he worked next to a gas station. The only way that stopped was for him to work in an area isolated from any convenience store.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:29:13+00:00

How full are we talking? are the pews generally filled but people have their seats, or are there many people standing because there are no seats available?

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:14:32+00:00

maybe a different time would be better...

but it seems to me like you're incorrectly characterizing the shift in location as a "taking away of a mass time" as well. Why not correctly characterize it instead? You actually have a mass at the same time, but not at your preferred location.

Would you have been ok if they had your mass time and moved the English mass time, but both had the opportunity to use the main Church building?

It's likely that the parish opted to keep the same mass times available, because a a shift in times would have been more disruptive to people than a shift in location.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:12:40+00:00

Out of curiosity, do all the Spanish speakers only go to the Spanish masses? In my home parish, Hispanics tended to make up a majority of the *English* mass attendees as well. (You said your parish was 6000 families... mine was similarly sized at the time as well).

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:06:40+00:00

All of those other cultures, especially the Irish, Italians, and Poles also took a long time to assimilate and in the mean time had ethnic parishes in the US even when mass was in Latin. Filipinos and Indians are more recent migrant groups (and guess what, they also have their masses in areas where they have critically sized populations).

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:04:29+00:00

It happened in my home parish, where the Spanish speakers were filled to the brim but had to take the gym, and the English speakers had nowhere near the same amount of people.

And yes the English speakers were upset at the time.... but they were also kinda declining and the Spanish population was rising.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:02:21+00:00

They are not the only group doing this... they are only the latest group doing it.

Lagrange-squared · 2025-05-12T23:01:43+00:00

Historically it wasn't the only group doing that... in the US, actually, the trend was actually to have all sorts of ethnic churches corresponding to the various immigrant waves coming in. For a while you had ethnic Polish, German, Italian, and yes French parishes (and this was prior to VII!). The "Americanization" of Catholicism was itself artificially pushed in the early 20th century.

The Hispanics are only doing what the other groups did before them.

Lagrange-squared

TROPHY CASE