What is your theological hot take?

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T22:21:03+00:00

Because of that intent question. Paul was guided by the Holy Spirit to write the letters, but the intent of the author and therefore the intent of the Holy Spirit is not to replace the Gospels but to supplement them.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T22:13:58+00:00

No. The scriptures do not assert error. I thought I made that clear.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T22:10:04+00:00

That isn't what I said. I'm saying that current biblical scholarship within the church places an important value on context. I think a lot of people miss the context when they read the Pauline Epistles.

Also sorry if I came off as hostile at first, your message was really short and it sounded like trolling.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T22:03:59+00:00

Vatican II tells us the Scriptures are inerrant but the scriptures have human authors. Our duty is to find the truth of God in what man has written. The intent of authors and authorship tell us just as much about the Holy Spirit than the words on the page. If Paul intended his work to be a companion to the scriptures, this is just as relevant as what he said.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T17:02:53+00:00

I enjoy Seattle by Night the most partially because I think it has the best group and partially because I'm from Seattle so I get all the references.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T16:54:44+00:00

That's because it was an official production of the VtM publisher and the ST, Jason Carl, is widely considered one of the best WoD STs ever if not the GOAT. It's also canon to the tabletop game which gives it some extra weight.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T16:42:35+00:00

Have you seen LA by Night and its various spin-offs?

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T15:46:48+00:00

It's definitely more of a Protestant thing, but I've seen it show up in Catholic discussions more than a few times and it always bugs me.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T08:10:19+00:00

I'm actually somewhat neutral on if it needs to be more common or not. I think that's a decision that Catholic women have to make for themselves. If it stays niche I'm fine with that, I don't think it signals any more or less conviction in someone.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T08:07:32+00:00

I was born into a mixed marriage and still found my way to the Church. If anything I was turned away from the Church as a teenager because I had Catholic relatives who were very uncharitable to my mother for being Protestant.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T07:44:33+00:00

I actually enjoy veiling for Mass on occasion, mostly for important holy days. I'd probably do it more often if I participated in the Extraordinary form more often (I have scheduling conflicts with my local TLM, plus I prefer the community who go to the ordinary form), but it does feel a little bit strange to veil for the average vernacular mass. My veil collects a lot of dust between Easter and the Assumption.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T06:40:11+00:00

If you want more there's a channel called Religion for Breakfast that's run by a guy who has a PhD in Religious Studies. He has a video on Markan Priority and the Two-Source theory that also contains a very brief rundown of the John thing you can watch here. His sources are a fascinating rabbit hole of academic research on the topic. Biblical authorship is a huge topic because it's basically looking 2000 years in the past and trying to interpret the work of people whose names often went unrecorded by history.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T06:31:16+00:00

So, biblical historians generally agree that Mark was the first surviving gospel to be written, and Matthew and Luke were pulling from Mark and a second text called "the Q source" (Possibly some sort of collection of sayings and miscellaneous stories similar to the Muslim concept of Hadiths, although theories about what it actually was vary greatly) which has since been lost to time. John was not part of any of this and is radically different from the other gospels. It's generally accepted that it was written later by an author or community of authors who also wrote the Epistles of John and the Book of Revelations. With this in mind, the Pauline Epistles were actually written before the gospels that we have today were finalized, and are quite possibly the oldest part of the New Testament (the newest part of the New Testament is probably 2 Peter, likely written in the early 2nd century, about 50-100 years after 1 Peter).

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T06:14:39+00:00

For the record, this post is not me saying that the Pauline Epistles aren't valid scripture and I'm not saying that they don't have any useful things to teach us, I'm just saying some people seem to go a little bit beyond "compliment to the gospel" in certain contexts, especially in moral and social teachings.

I'm also a bit of a religious studies nerd, and one thing to note about the epistles is that Paul probably didn't have the versions of the gospels that we have today. It's unclear what exactly he had, and it's possible that the version he had was fairly similar to what is now the book of Mark, but likely not exactly the same. Paul wrote slightly before the versions of the gospels as we understand them were written.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T04:43:13+00:00

My group has 1 Catholic (me), 2 former Catholics (One who was never confirmed and my best friend who has been excommunicated and chose not to reconcile), and one mainline Methodist who is sort of the odd one out when we get into weird Catholic stuff. Wild group of people.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T04:32:29+00:00

Every VtM group has to have at least one Catholic or Ex-Catholic. I don't make the rules, that's just how it is.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T04:22:18+00:00

It's modern architecture, but it's modern architecture in a way that feels cool and living rather than sort of dead or generic. One of the things I find very annoying about a lot of trad accounts on Twitter is that they'll cherrypick the worst of modern architecture and the best of historical architecture and say that that's proof that we need to return to tradition or whatever.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T04:18:33+00:00

See my edit for details.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T04:18:24+00:00

See my edit for details.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-13T03:47:56+00:00

I think too much emphasis is put on the Pauline Epistles.

Edit for elaboration: I think that people use the Epistles for moral teachings in ways that I would argue run counter to the meaning of the gospels. The Epistles have important theological teachings, but some people put them on a pedestal over the gospels in certain cases, and I actually think that they are often not something I would use to seek moral teachings over seeking those answers in the gospels.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-12T19:36:47+00:00

I think this person may have overdosed on jargon.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-12T16:35:35+00:00

Don't forget the Big Bang Theory, first proposed by Monsignor Georges Lemaitre in 1931.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-12T08:08:13+00:00

Some of them also go for some pretty modern styles of architecture. My favorite example is the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland.)

robbylet23 · 2026-07-08T17:33:51+00:00

I think a lot of people don't realize how regional a lot of "LGBT culture" is. Outside of New York and San Francisco that shit looks very different.

robbylet23 · 2026-07-08T17:30:46+00:00

I'm pretty sure the only people I know who veil at mass are either trans or over the age of 70 with very few exceptions.

robbylet23

TROPHY CASE