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Re: How to Survive: Catholic (and high-stress) High School
Quote from: HarpingHawke;187210 ...as a teen under the pagan umbrella! Sigh, memories. I didn't mind liturgies, as at least we got out of class for a bit. I liked uniforms too because it made getting ready in the morning really easy. Religion classes were fun too, they are usually bird courses and can help boost your GPA. Catholic schools here in Ontario offer a World Religions course in 11th grade as the required theology credit for that grade, and 12th grade theology was more philosophical and less Bible-and-Jesus, if I remember correctly. Hang in there, it's not so bad! February 25, 2016, 05:16:02 pm |
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Pagan Nostalgia Around the Yuletide Season
This may be weird, but I find that I get the most nostalgic about my pagan practice around this time of year. Lord knows I'm not a big fan of pop culture Halloween, so I don't feel especially "witchy" around that time, but once the Christmas decorations come out and the carols start being played, I think about being a teenager and reading Scott Cunningham's, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner for the first time, and then subsequently asking for a bunch of pagan books for Christmas, much to the dismay of my family. Yule/Winter Solstice was the first sabbat I celebrated before I really even knew what I was doing when it came to the whole pagan thing. Coming from a non-religious family, I never attached much meaning to Christmas, so when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, I lost interest in the holiday season. Neo-paganism kind of gave new meaning to the winter solstice as the time of the sun's birth, and since most Christmas traditions are blatant appropriation of ancient folk customs, I felt like I could better relate to the wider culture during the Christmas season. I ended up going in a Hellenic Recon direction, where there is no real equivalent winter solstice festival, so I often celebrated it as the birthday of Dionysos or Adonis. The Rural Dionysia was celebrated in Attica around the full moon in the month we think of December, and some sources say this was the time of his birth. The mysteries of Adonis's death were celebrated around the summer solstice, so I think it makes sense to put place his birth at the opposite pole in the year at the winter solstice, and his Orphic hymn seems to give him solar associations, so I think it's appropriate even if the ancient sources are silent on the subject. Now as someone who follows Christian tradition in the Catholic Church, Christmas is a big deal, though I often miss the pagan understanding of it. Oh well, I'm not a very good Catholic anyway, and clearly not someone with an exclusivist understanding of religious truth. November 30, 2016, 07:36:23 pm |
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Re: I decided to become Catholic today
I have experienced alot of religious confusion because of past severe abuse but today I decided to become Catholic. I did so because I have a connection to Jesus and Mary and I still feel Mary is like my Goddess Hecate. I was baptized Catholic as a baby. I will still not be able to practice openly, I'll have to do so in private because my family and friends are Christian and are not comfortable with Catholicism. I think it is Mary and Jesus that made me want to become Catholic. Mary has attracted me for a long time and I see her as interchangeable with my Goddess Hecate. Id love to hear what people thing about this. I feel a lot of peace in my heart about the decision. As someone who did become Roman Catholic a bit over a year ago, my only advice is: don't do it. While the community is nice, and I have made some good friends in the Catholic Church, it's pretty spiritually barren and the modern liturgy is underwhelming. Aside from a few old ladies in a rosary group, there is even very little Marian devotion. There are fringe groups of Traditional Latin Mass Catholics who have all the bells and smells, but they are pretty wacko and generally unpleasant. It's not very edifying to be around such angry, negative people who also hold some very problematic social views. If you are looking for something esthetically similar, I would highly recommend looking into whether there is an Anglo-Catholic (high church Episcopalian/Anglican) parish near you, as the liturgy tends to be more traditional than most Roman parishes and the music is definitely much more beautiful, yet you aren't required to buy into any dogmas or difficult teachings. I still miss my old Anglo-Catholic parish a lot. There are also Old Catholics and more liberal breakaway groups from the Roman Catholic Church. That said, if you are happy just adding Jesus and Mary to your personal devotions and don't need something organized and communal, go for it. December 01, 2017, 11:53:08 pm |
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Re: I decided to become Catholic today
I realise the point is moot since the OP has stated their disinterest in further pursuing Catholicism, but this is hands-down the worst description of the Roman Catholic Church I have ever read. Please dear god do not take whatever whitewashed Spirit of the 60s parish you apparently attend and unquestioningly apply it to the entire Church -- oh and the rude, unnecessary, and entirely false characterisation of traditional Catholics was probably better kept to yourself. I've been attending the Solemn Latin Mass for a while now for various reasons, basically because I know a lot of people there and I like the music and liturgy, but in terms of overall experience, I think I would pick a "whitewashed Spirit of the 60s" parish any day. I stand by my characterization of traditional Catholics, I think their focus is directed at things like superficial liturgical issues and enforcing misogynistic gender roles, not to mention their attitudes towards "sodomites" (a term they seem rather fond of using). For some strange reason, I just feel like Christian faith should be centered on being an extension of Christ's ministry towards caring for the vulnerable and working for God's kingdom of justice. I am personally a big supporter of Pope Francis, as I think he is fighting an uphill battle to make the Catholic Church more Christ-like, though I realize you may disagree with me. We are each entitled to our opinion. December 02, 2017, 02:44:50 pm |
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Re: Another Religious Crisis
So the idea of willingly participating in that church as a gay person makes my head spin like Linda Blair. I've never understood why LGBTQ folks didn't just walk away in droves and find a more welcoming spiritual home. Were both of you raised Catholic? If it was ingrained from an early age and feels like "home," I guess I could begin to understand how it might be hard to walk away from; if deep down inside there would always be a part of you that couldn't help but think that Catholicism holds some sort of absolute truth. But especially if you're actively engaged in a same-sex relationship, I would think the cognitive dissonance between the heart and the soul would be a terrible strain. I can't fathom why one would subject oneself to that. Yeah, it's weird. I don't really understand why I participate in it myself. I wasn't raised Catholic, my parents are non-practicing (my mom was raised Presbyterian, my father grew up high Anglican), so I never went to church except on Christmas off and on. I went to a Catholic high school and it was a really good experience that I really missed once I went to university. While I was a practicing pagan from my mid-teens, I liked the community of the church, and I felt like there was a lot of overlap in terms of practice and ethics with some strains of paganism (and also some vast differences, of course). I thought of becoming Catholic in university, but I was well aware of the Church's teachings on homosexuality (and sexuality in general), and I didn't agree with the subordinate role of women. Protestant churches didn't appeal to me because they aren't very sacramental or liturgical, and I wasn't really interested in going to a lecture and hymn sing-along, which is basically what Protestant services are. I started going to church with my grandma at her Anglican parish, and while her current church is pretty mainline, her father was a very high church Anglican priest, who had a statue of Our Lady and stations of the cross installed in his church, and introduced incense, genuflection, and confession. My father grew up going to a similar kind of church, though the family tapered off going to church when he was a teenager. When I heard about all this from my grandma, I investigated their old high Anglican parish, and I really loved it. Since they aren't in communion with Rome they don't have to follow the Vatican II reforms, so they preserved all the bells and smells, plus they had the beauty of the Anglican choral tradition, and it's a pretty left wing place, so they are very welcoming to LGBTQ people. Unfortunately, Anglicanism isn't as strong of a cultural force as Catholicism, so a lot of the only people remaining are old ladies, so I felt like all the church friends my age that I had were Catholic. I also took a course with a really wonderful and inclusive Catholic priest, so when I was getting fed up with some of the petty conflict in my Anglican church, becoming Catholic seemed like the right thing to do, plus I still had my high school experience at the back of my mind, not to mention the conditioning that the Catholic Church was the true apostolic church and Anglicanism was invalid. Upon deeper reflection, I think my problems with Anglicanism were kind of petty, and I still profoundly miss the high Anglican parish that I used to attend where I actually felt like I could identify with Christianity. I'm pretty dissatisfied with Rome, both because of dogma and bad liturgy. However, I have a lot of good friends in the Catholic communities I'm involved with, and my partner is very serious about traditional Latin Catholicism, so I feel like a lot of my important social relationships are tied to the Church and it makes the most sense for me to stay, for the time being. You might find a more uplifting experience among Eastern Catholics who did not have their liturgies suppressed after Vatican II. Vatican II to my knowledge actually sought to preserve their liturgical traditions, so perhaps you will sense less anger in one of their parishes. Actually, I have been able to attend some Eastern Catholic liturgies lately. They are extremely beautiful, and I like the people a lot. They still have the same papal dogma, though, and I feel like I still identify the most with Anglo-Catholicism, as far as Christianity is concerned, but I do like attending Eastern liturgies. December 10, 2017, 09:14:31 am |
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Re: Up All Night: A Technopagan Solstice Celebration 2017 (10th Anniversary Edition)
Maybe at the bar I'll even get lucky... (solstice sex!) Any luck?  So without descending into racialist chest-thumping, what ebb and flow of human tides flows in your bloodline? Do you explore it in your paganism? I've always wanted to have one of those DNA tests done, though I'm worried they will tell me I'm predisposed to cancer or something. As far as I know, my father is part English and part Welsh, and my mother is Anglo-Irish, Scottish, and German. Not much of my heritage really comes into play in my spirituality, as I've always been drawn to Mediterranean cultures. I don't think I will be able to stay up all night, but I wish everyone many solstice blessings! December 21, 2017, 11:47:25 pm |
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Re: Your Winter Solstice Ritual
Huh... that reminds me of a certain liturgical tradition... what could it possibly be... A little religious appropriation never hurt anybody. December 24, 2017, 09:38:30 pm |
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Re: Your Season of Sex
Yeah, definitely. Similar to you, I'm much less "interested" in the winter when it's cold and my body just isn't in the mood, but I start coming back to life in warmer weather. Seeing the hot bods in less clothing is part of it, but also I think the warm weather and increased sunshine spikes my hormones lol. February 27, 2018, 10:21:42 pm |
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Re: Priests
What role does a priest have in your religion? Are priests representative of God? Should there be any priests at all? Do priests define what is religion and what is not? Do they have power over other common people? In most ancient cultures, like has been stated about Hinduism, priests were primarily in charge of maintaining the temple cults, and they were not really concerned with "ministering" to the people or dispensing sacraments like Catholic and Orthodox priests. Ancient priests definitely could wield a lot of political power, and people were often expected to participate in the state cults in particular, but as far as I understand, people could still practice how they wanted at home behind closed doors as long as they performed their civic duties to the state cults. August 29, 2018, 10:22:32 pm |
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Re: How to honor cadaver donor this Samhain
Hi all, I would agree with the suggestion of lighting a candle in honour of the person on your altar/shrine area, with a prayer for the repose of person's spirit/soul//whatever your conception of a person's spiritual essence is. October 22, 2018, 04:05:48 pm |
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