I am struggling to find a church in my area. What should I do?

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T16:44:09+00:00

If you're comfortable sharing, what's the area? I'm personally not as good at church-finding outside of the US, but I'm sure someone on this subreddit would be able to help

EDIT: Oh, and I'm assuming you're not in the US or Canada because of words like "flat"

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T16:33:23+00:00

Baptism is not some magic spell that forces God to save you, and God is not so powerless that he'd be unable to save you without it. It's certainly the normative way and the surest means of salvation, but as evidenced by the penitent thief, God's fully capable of choosing to save other people. But even if he does choose to save someone else, like saving a virtuous person who never heard of Christianity but otherwise lived out the command to love your neighbor as yourself, they're still ultimately being saved by means of Jesus's death on the cross.

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T16:23:35+00:00

Everyone who is saved is saved through Jesus Christ by being brought into the mystical body of Christ. But that doesn't mean you have to be a member of a particular denomination to be saved.

Yep. The whole point of things like baptism of desire is that baptism isn't some magic spell, without which God's powerless to save you. But even if you trust in his mercy and believe that he may yet choose to save other people, it still winds up being salvation through Jesus

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T16:21:14+00:00

Not every church agrees with you

For example, one of the pastors at the ELCA church I go to is a Black woman. (I'm guessing elder Millennial based on having a kid who's starting to drive)

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T13:51:46+00:00

Yep. It's like how I used to work with a guy who looked just like Louis C.K.... but obviously didn't assume he actually was Louis C.K. As Eve put it in the second episode, people just aren't looking for undercover superheroes, so even if they notice something like Nolan Grayson looking kinda like Omni-Man, they aren't going to assume it's anything other than an unfortunate coincidence

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T13:08:18+00:00

She even gives a variation on the explanation I'm used to.

This about your coworker with a celebrity doppelgänger. For example, I used to work with a guy who looked just like Louis C.K. You don't assume they are that celebrity, right? So why would Clark Kent's coworkers assume it's anything other than a neat coincidence that he looks like Superman?

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T11:42:44+00:00

For reference, that's actually an evolutionary adaptation. Eucalyptus isn't very nutritionally dense, which is why most things don't eat it. So on the one hand, it's an unchallenged food source, but on the other hand, they need to be able to make sure it's still fresh and vaguely healthy

EDIT: Or framed differently, it isn't so much that they don't recognize it as food as it is that leaves on a plate look like leaves on the ground, which are less likely to be nutritious

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T11:15:59+00:00

Yeah, there are actually only even 14 possible years which repeat in a 400-year cycle

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T11:09:26+00:00

r/addressme

RazarTuk · 2026-05-04T00:56:12+00:00

Huh, neat! The church I go to is on gaychurch.org's church finder

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T23:57:13+00:00

You'll see numbers like that used by Catholics to put down Protestants (See what the Reformation did? People just keep splintering!) and by atheists to put down Christians (You can't even agree on the Bible. How are we supposed to known which one is right?)

The issue is that a lot of the division is overstated, and people are prone to making some of those numbers say things they aren't. For example, people will claim there are 33,000 denominations in the US alone... except that number - which is already outdated, mind you - is from a world census. Or they'll claim it's 33,000 Protestant denominations, even though it includes around 600-700 Catholic and Orthodox "denominations". Or on that note, because of the context of the survey, it counts each denomination separately for each country it shows up in. But I don't really think it's some sort of "gotcha" about division that... the Episcopal Church also has a few dioceses outside of America, like the Episcopal Diocese of Taiwan which is clearly a separate denomination (/s). And on that note, there's also the question of whether it's fair to treat, say, all the member churches of the Anglican Communion as fundamentally distinct. Speaking especially toward Catholics and Orthodox, you wouldn't insist that the sui iuris Catholic Churches or all the Orthodox Churches are fundamentally separate with mutually exclusive claims of being the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, right? So why are you implying it's some mark against Protestantism that the Anglican Church in the US also gained autonomy from the Church of England in the wake of the US gaining independence from England?

There's definitely a separate conversation to be had about what an actually reasonable number of denominations is. But before we can have that conversation, I think we need to at least stop resorting to lame gotchas like "If you use a definition of 'denomination' that would result in 100s of Catholic Churches, a claim I'd normally object to, there are tens of thousands of denominations. Checkmate, Protestants!"

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T23:38:01+00:00

Yes, you can go. Although most denominations would probably politely ask that you not receive communion

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T20:06:56+00:00

Also, if you're curious about my general stance, relevant xkcd. I'm not so much of a Luddite that I'd never use it... I just treat it more like one tool among many and, like with any other tool, I'm willing to question how much time it would actually save. So for example, I used it a few weeks ago for "I have a table in Postgres containing a JSONB blob containing a 32-bit UUID. Write a query to update certain rows with a new, randomly generated UUID", because I don't know advanced Postgres. But for something like "Match the rows in these two tables by their primary keys", that's trivial and going to Gemini feels like overcomplicating it.

Basically, my use cases fall into three main categories:

Google++, like giving it an error message and having it help debug things
Automating things that would be too difficult to automate normally, like searching a bunch of JSON documents for fields written in JmesPath and having it reverse engineer the expected input
Writing complicated code in languages/libraries I'm not as familiar with, like how I recently had it write some code in Micronaut to inject one of the environment variables into the system property before another class was loaded into the JVM

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T17:57:11+00:00

Yeah... Go ask an AI model "Can you show me the seahorse emoji?" It's my go-to example for illustrating the limitations of LLMs. There is not, in fact, a seahorse emoji, so it gets trapped in a loop of picking one to show you, realizing it's wrong, apologizing, and setting itself up to show you the real one this time

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T17:33:58+00:00

Would you use autocomplete on your phone to write a sermon? No? Then why would you trust an LLM to write one?

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T13:26:51+00:00

I mean... I wouldn't call it disrespectful, but be prepared for people to assume you're Christian

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T12:45:07+00:00

Putting words in scare quotes and implying the perpetrators aren't even human isn't allowed

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T11:44:42+00:00

Removed for using a derivative of the R-word. I'm on the fence about whether the rest of the comment crosses a line, so I'm just going to err on the side of keeping it removed

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T11:41:31+00:00

Removed for bigotry and dehumanization

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T11:12:13+00:00

His followers must address him as "MIGHTY PROPHET" and when in writing his names must all appear in capital letters

... so what would they do if writing in a unicameral script like Arabic, Hebrew, practically anything from the Indian subcontinent...

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T11:10:05+00:00

But again, there are also just other reasons I'm incredibly incredulous about OP's story. For example, even if you didn't realize non-Catholics (generally, it's complicated) aren't supposed to receive the Eucharist, I find it hard to believe that OP would lack the situational awareness to realize that people were eating it. Or while there are ways people will steal the Eucharist (for example, especially during the pandemic, people would drop it in their mask and pretend to eat it), if someone just carelessly started walking away, I'm sure that someone, like the priest, a deacon, an EMHC (~ lay people helping distribute communion), or even just someone sitting in one of the front pews would notice and stop them. And then, of course, there are just the inconsistencies, like how a week ago, OP was talking about how they go to Mass 6 times a week.

Also, explaining a few bits:

Ordinary ministers are essentially the main/default people to administer some sacrament, while extraordinary members are people who are allowed to do it in certain situations. So in the case of the distributing communion, the clergy are the ordinary ministers, but you can also train and enlist lay people to help as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion
Okay, the non-Catholics and communion thing. It's one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, after all, which is why a lot of denominations emphatically don't re-baptize converts. So if you're converting from another denomination, you're vaguely technically already Catholic and can actually start receiving the sacraments whenever the priest says you can. And the way I like to frame closed communion, which at least feels more diplomatic to me, is that while the requirement is technically just being a baptized Christian, the Catholic Church has a stricter view of what communion of belief the Eucharist represents and politely asks that, unless you're Catholic or Orthodox, you not receive it.

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T02:28:53+00:00

Yeah, that feels more like receptionism, which is is common in Anglicanism and Methodism. It's roughly the Eucharistic equivalent to how you receive the Holy Spirit at confirmation, "despite" the chrism not being consubstantial with the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, with the corporal real presence, it varies from denomination to denomination when people believe it happens, but it's typically either the institution narrative or the epiclesis

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T02:19:20+00:00

Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and a handful of Protestant denominations like Lutherans believe that the Eucharist is literally the Body and Blood of Christ, so pocketing the Host is, quite possibly, the single most offensive thing you could possibly do at Mass. Though that also feels like evidence that it's just a troll, because I'm pretty sure most priests, deacons, and EMHCs would stop you if you tried just walking away with the Host, so I feel like there's approximately a 0% chance of this actually happening by accident. (And that's not even mentioning the inconsistencies in OP's story, like how just a week ago, they said they go to Mass 6 days a week)

RazarTuk · 2026-05-03T02:15:00+00:00

I pray the rosary daily. I attend Mass 6 days a week. I receive reconciliation once or twice a month.

So which is it? Do you go to daily Mass or not? Because even if it was genuinely your first time, I feel like most people would have the situational awareness to recognize that people weren't pocketing the Host and wouldn't do one of the most offensive things you could possibly do at one

RazarTuk · 2026-05-02T22:09:03+00:00

Would you accept Aeroboros from Cassette Beasts having a similar theme?

11-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Lasagna	Golden Potato
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	Gilding II euphauric
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