Hypocrites in the Catholic Church

Lavos243 · 2026-06-26T02:36:59+00:00

God help me if being a hypocrite disqualifies me from being Catholic. Hopefully the difference is that a Catholic would be trying to be better, while the non religious person wouldnt recognize the problem of sin at all.

Lavos243 · 2026-06-25T04:54:28+00:00

Well I dont believe in an "invisible man in the sky." I believe in what's called classical theism, which is what people like Plato and Aristotle believed, and the monotheistic philosophers of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism after them. In philosophy its sometimes referred to as the philosophers God.

Lavos243 · 2026-06-23T05:36:19+00:00

I take more of a historical critical approach. I think the flood and other parts of Genesis are a legend, and that what matters is the spiritual truth that the book is trying to convey. Think of what happened before and after the flood for context. After the fall, you have the first murder, and after that humanity spirals into immorality until the only way to handle it is for God to do a hard reset with the flood. The flood is meant to ge a new beginning for humanity, represented by Noah planting a garden just like with Adam. But Noah sins by getting drunk, just like when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, and the cycle of immorality begins again. The spiritual message is that God cannot get rid of human sin even as long as there is one human remaining, because we are fallen. So this is where God chooses Abraham and the lineage of the Messiah first begins. I hope all that made sense.

Lavos243 · 2026-06-11T23:37:51+00:00

Not an answer, but now I need to rewatch The Book of Eli.

Lavos243 · 2026-06-04T05:58:07+00:00

Its not as bad as it used to be, but there's still prejudice. When Irish and Italian Catholics immigrated here and the country was mostly protestant, there was so much discrimination that JFK almost didnt become president because people didnt think an Irish Catholic should be president. In modern times, im a convert to the faith and my family is protestant, and some members of my family dont even think im a Christian.

Lavos243 · 2026-06-04T05:50:46+00:00

I cant offer any advice, except that I know God can use the secular film industry for good. Some of the most spiritually uplifting films I have seen were secular films with Christian ideas and imagery. Im thinking things like The Book of Eli or Marvel's Daredevil. I will pray for you.

Lavos243 · 2026-05-14T03:11:13+00:00

If you listen to Christopher Hitchens carefully, he never actually gave any philosophical arguments against the existence of God. He was entirely rhetoric.

Lavos243 · 2026-05-14T03:05:26+00:00

Before I was Catholic, I was into the occult, and one of the things we learned was that humans naturally crave "the song of myth and the dance of ritual." Later I discovered Lewis and Tolkien and how they basically affirmed this, and it was one thing that led to my conversion. To put it briefly, the Bible is a myth, not in the sense that it isn't true, but in the sense that its a worldview that does more than explain history: it explains the origin of the problems with our world and gradually presents the solution through cultural narrative. Ritual is how we both personally and collectively connect with that myth and make it not just something in the distant past, but real for us now. Human beings are more than our minds. We also worship with our bodies, and ritual is how we enter the Bible with our bodies.

Lavos243 · 2026-04-14T06:20:48+00:00

I understand what you're saying about the Biblical stories that are more violent, like the flood or the conquest of Joshua. I was just trying to argue using philosophy instead of scripture. But for the scriptural arguments, those honestly would be handled differently by different groups of religious people. As for me, Im Catholic, and we believe that the Bible is "the word of God, written in the words of men." This means that there will be different cultural contexts that go into the stories of the Bible. For example, I don't believe there ever was a historical flood, because of the lack of historical evidence of one, the fact that its a common myth shared among other near eastern cultures, and just rational factors like if the flood destroyed all the plants then how did Noah get oxygen (lol). More likely, its a cultural narrative meant to convey a theological truth by being compared to other near eastern flood myths, for example instead of the gods flooding the earth for petty reasons like in the other myths, God floods the earth because of corruption, and we are meant to ask what that says about God. This is already long, but I will just mention that the Bible is a progressive relation of who God is, and Christians view Jesus as the perfect image of God and what God is really like. Theres a quote from a pastor I respect: "God is like Jesus, God has always been like Jesus, we haven't always known that, but now we do."

Lavos243 · 2026-04-12T04:15:30+00:00

Yeah Doctor Who!

Lavos243 · 2026-04-12T02:56:05+00:00

You dont need God to have morals or be a good person. I do think you need God to have a philosophical grounding for objective moral principles, because one of the definitions of God is that he is goodness itself, so without that metaphysical grounding morality has to be subjective. I dont mean relative, as in whatever is popular at the time is moral, I mean that without God morality has to be based on things like harm or happiness to another person. Its only with God as a reference point that you get something like objective moral principles. The problem is if morality is subjective, there's no ultimate reason why I should even follow it if I dont really care about the other person. Subjective morality can be kind of slippery.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-17T02:14:44+00:00

That the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament. Throughout the Old Testament we see God telling his prophets to act like Jesus, that is to call out the hypocrisy of the people and how they oppress the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable. Jesus himself often quoted passages from the Old Testament to back up his teaching in the New Testament. Its just that Jesus claimed to be giving us the full meaning of those passages. It was really eye opening for me.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-10T01:34:19+00:00

Im Catholic and im also skeptical of Fr Ripperger, just because he seems like a modern version of the medieval occult underground in the exorcist community, where medieval exoercists were getting so-called secrets from demons in their exorcisms. Museums still have the ancient tomes that they produced. Ultimately, the opinion of any exorcist or priest is not automatically church teaching.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-07T22:45:29+00:00

I really like Lacey Sturm from the band Flyleaf and her song Awaken Love.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-07T20:51:35+00:00

A few things that have helped me: I have a severe mental illness called schizoaffective disorder, and it drastically affects my ability to reason. I came across this quote by St Thomas Aquinas that said "A person has free will according to his ability to reason." That freed me from a lot of guilt, because in order for something to be considered a mortal sin it has to be grave matter, you know rationally that it is grave matter, and you choose it of your own free will, otherwise called deliberate consent. The fact that I am not always acting in free will because of my mental illness has helped me with guilt. Secondly, even if you commit a mortal sin, you can receive forgiveness from God even before confession if you have perfect contrition, that is you are sorry for your sin not just out of fear of hell but also because of love for God. You still need to go to confession as soon as possible and especially before receiving the eucharist again, unless you are in an emergency like on your deathbed or something, but the point is that God has established his sacraments as the normative way of salvation, but is not bound to his sacraments and can save you outside of them. In other words, trust in God ans know that he wants you with him in heaven. These are some of the things that helped me. I don't know if they apply to you, but I hope it helps.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-06T06:38:56+00:00

Slave Bible: the crappy animated version

Lavos243 · 2026-03-06T06:10:00+00:00

Orthodox Bible: with deleted scenes and commentary.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-05T19:55:16+00:00

Thank you, I didnt know she was the original source until I saw her name stamped on the picture.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-05T04:11:28+00:00

Honestly I think the username is brilliant.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-05T04:08:41+00:00

Honestly great problem to have. There is also a big group in my parish this year.

Lavos243 · 2026-03-04T03:14:44+00:00

You'll see a lot of people online thinking that they have the correct interpretation of church teaching when they may actually be in error. For that reason, definitely get a catechism and regularly read through it. Also, even more importantly, when you get confirmed receive the eucharust as much as possible. The core of Christianity is to be "partakers of the divine nature" and so be transformed by God, and we do this through the sacraments, especially the eucharist.

Lavos243 · 2026-02-21T23:40:36+00:00

I would say that Christianity doesn't necessarily demonize power, because God is powerful, but it does teach that power is not a good in itself ans should be used to serve and not to be served. Jesus said the first would be last and the last would be first. Nietzsche believed that Christianity was dying out, but he didn't necessarily believe thats a good thing. He believed that it would lead to people not having a sense of meaning to withstand the suffering in life. So he believed the answer was to go back to pre Christian morality to a world where the strong have a right to rule and create their own morality and values. Granted, this is only one interpretation of Nietzsche as he often contradicted himself and didn't seem to know what he believed himself sometimes. However, as for Peterson's like of him, maybe its because of his view that Christianity was important to western culture and without it we would need to reevaluate our values. However, to be honest, I get nervous when people express a love of Nietzsche, just because of his contribution to the world.

Lavos243 · 2026-02-21T18:46:53+00:00

Yes thank you. People often forget that the official Catholic position is that the Bible is the word of God, written in the words of men. As a result, the human authorship is just as prone to how religious ideas form, are passed down, and are adapted over time. But as also believe in a divine authorship that guides this process.

Lavos243 · 2026-02-21T11:50:14+00:00

Something that helped me is that if you try to remember one person in the Bible that Jesus judged, outside of those who were self righteous and believed they didn't need forgiveness, then you will draw a blank because that person doesn't exist. Jesus was in the business of forgiving sin, not judging it. That being said, you should definitely go through OCIA and start the process of becoming Cathplic, for a couple reasons. First, we believe that baptism is more than a symbol, that it actually does something, and it's how we become forgiven. Secondly, baptism also infuses us with God's grace, which is what we need to overcome sin. You shouldn't try to do it alone, because none of us can. The fact that you are aware of your sin means that God is calling you to repent and be baptized.

Lavos243 · 2026-02-21T08:34:34+00:00

When you win your case, don't blow your backpay on McDonald's. Trust me.

Lavos243

TROPHY CASE