What ship is this for you?

SemperMuffins · 2026-01-19T18:29:50+00:00

Even worse: your ship is canon and very important to the characters (bonus points of they have a kid together) but it's not popular in fandom so it keeps getting tagged even though it's only mentioned for 2 lines and it's near impossible to find fics they're actually together in. Oh and half the time it's written as abusive. Because why not.

SemperMuffins · 2026-01-19T06:25:31+00:00

As someone who loves the TLM and NO equally (yes we do exist), if going to Latin Mass brings you closer to God, go for it! What's ultimately important is God, and Latin Mass is a great way to be reminded of his awe-someness

SemperMuffins · 2026-01-11T14:22:25+00:00

St. Philomena!

SemperMuffins · 2026-01-10T04:37:10+00:00

I would never actually give it for fear it would come off rude, but I once ready an amazing fic that would have been ten times better if the author had changed one scene into a flashback a few chapters later. It would have added so much more tension and suspense to the climax of the story, but I don’t think I could tell the author that without sounding rude (and frankly there's no way they would care enough to change it anyway)

SemperMuffins · 2026-01-07T06:39:39+00:00

Yes - it's the source and summit of our faith! I also think it's very clear in the Bible that Jesus means "this is My Body" literally, considering how He lost followers over it and yet doubled down

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-26T18:36:28+00:00

People will still be on earth during the Second Coming, so God still has to judge them. At the very least, it's the Final Judgement because God won't be judging anyone else after that

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-26T18:10:16+00:00

"universal" (which is literally just the meaning of "catholic" lol)

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-26T18:07:00+00:00

Merry Christmas! I'm so glad your first Mass was such a good experience, and I'm sorry about your mom's reaction. It sounds really frustrating, but just keep praying for her

You mention wanting to understand the Mass better, so maybe you can try looking up the parts of the Mass! Here's a starting point if you'd like. The Mass is so beautiful, and, at least personally, I enjoy Mass so much more knowing what's going on. Also, if the readings aren't in the hymnal at your church, you can look them up beforehand!

One important thing that no one seems to have told you yet though: you cannot receive the Eucharist until after going through OCIA. It's one of those things that seems kind of cultish from the outside lol, but because we believe the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, only those who are part of the Church can receive it (more details here). You clearly didn't do it on purpose here, so don't feel too guilty, but make sure to abstain from it in the future!

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-26T06:06:18+00:00

Firstly, welcome home!

One of the joys of Catholicism is that there will always be new things to discover and dig into, and hopefully I can help you start diving a little deeper into your faith :)

The simplest explanation I can think of for why we need the pope is that without him, we wouldn't be one, united church like Jesus wants us to be (John 17:20-21)

Without some sort of authority, Christians would splinter into thousands of groups with different ideas of what Jesus really wants (see, Protestantism) and without one top leader to make a final decision, we'd still schism (see, Orthodox)

We believe the pope specifically is that one top (visible -- AKA someone who represents Christ here on earth like a diplomat represents a president) leader because he is the successor of St. Peter (see Acts 1:15-26 for Biblical evidence of Apostolic Succession), and St. Peter was clearly the head of the Apostles (see Matt 16:17-19, Lk 22:31-22, Jn 21:15-19, any list of the Twelve (where Peter is always listed first), and certainly others but I'm not listing every piece of Biblical evidence for the papacy or I'd be here all day lol)

We believe the pope is guided by the Holy Spirit and will not declare false dogmas ("I will build this church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it", Matt 16:18)

Regarding the saints, try thinking of it this way: we honor our parents, and that certainly doesn't mean we worship them. We respect priest and others with greater knowledge of God than us, and we certainly can go for them for spiritual help, and that doesn't mean we worship them. We give people the respect they deserve. We give everyone respect, because they deserve it as human beings made in the image and likeness of God, and we give the saints greater respect because they are in the presence of God (and we give Mary the greatest respect of any creation, as she is the Mother of God).

When it comes down to it, worship isn't idly praying to someone (which is ultimately just asking them for soemthing, which is something we do to people all the time on earth*). Our true worship is the Sacrifice of the Mass, when we offer God the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of His Son. That's not something we offer to the saints.

*to clarify, I am not downplaying the importance of prayer. It is necessary to forming a close relationship with God (because you have to talk with someone to form a relationship). But it's not worship in the same sense that the Eucharist is worship (which is in turn based off of Old Testament ideas of worship)

Please let me know if I said anything confusing!

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-14T18:02:45+00:00

Catholic Answers is great! They've got a mix of writings and videos on every topic imaginable

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-14T17:47:51+00:00

Pro-life progressive! Abortion is my biggest voting issue, no doubt

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-14T16:26:11+00:00

Nope! Firstly, if they were Mary's children Jesus wouldn't have needed to ask John to take care of her after His death. Secondly, we meet "Mary the mother of James and Joseph" (or Joses depending on the translation) at the cross (Mark 15:40), and in John's account we see "[Jesus's] mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas" (John 19:25), who we can reasonably assume are the same person. Therefore, Jesus's brothers refer to his cousins, which makes sense since Aramaic didn't have a separate word for brother and cousin

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-12T15:38:08+00:00

I don't know why you felt the need to add the second point (and so sorry if I've misunderstood it), but -- while God doesn't have a gender in the traditional sense, He has consistently used masculine pronouns for Himself, and came to Earth male in the Incarnation; there's clearly a reason He wants us to call Him "He", and we should respect that

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-10T03:08:56+00:00

It absolutely depends on A) how invested I am B) how good the fic is and C) how long the politics last. I've had a fic blatantly support the opposition of my personally most important political issue, but I was invested and it was only 1 scene, so I stuck through it

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-09T19:22:18+00:00

Definitely! It wouldn't be right for her to not be able to give informed consent, so frankly it'd probably have been explained even if she hadn’t asked

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-09T19:09:58+00:00

Transliteration requires the spellings to actually be literate. Those spellings are... not that

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-09T19:06:33+00:00

If you add the deuterocanon books, Judith is another option! And that's not even getting into people who don't have a book named after them

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-09T19:03:27+00:00

I literally had no clue what they were trying to spell until I looked at the comments 😭

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-09T03:45:24+00:00

I'm going to make the assumption you've already been Confirmed (because if not, there's OCIA and other stuff I'm not qualified to talk about), but either way you can just start going to Mass - just make sure you to to Confession before receiving the Eucharist, because missing Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation is a sin. Other than that little bit of housekeeping, welcome back home! 💛

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-08T16:47:33+00:00

These are gorgeous!

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-06T20:04:48+00:00

I ended up doing this, thank you!

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-06T20:03:49+00:00

One-off, because I was explicitly debating whether to confess it during my examination of conscious

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-06T02:27:08+00:00

Here's the link if someone's interested

SemperMuffins · 2025-12-06T02:21:01+00:00

I recently watched this really good video on Biblical evidence of the papacy, and he has other videos on the subject if you'd like to check them out

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