#catholic nerdstuff

[theawkwardvirgin]

Got distracted from watching The Sandman because I looked up Robespierre and sorry now I'm just crying over the Martyrs of Compiègne who were declared "counter-revolutionaries and religious fanatics" and guillotined only 10 days before the Reign of Terror ended.

One of them was a novice who hadn't been allowed to make her final vows because the government outlawed religious orders. She made her vows on the scaffold before her execution and then started chanting the Veni Creator Spiritus, which is traditionally sung during the profession of vows, as well as the coronation of monarchs. She died before she could finish singing it, and all of her sisters took it up for as long as they could.

How fitting a song for them to sing as they received their martyr crowns.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Just remembered something that baffles me about secular media. They insist on framing spiritual warfare (and specifically exorcisms) as something that’s like…. “old church”, something that “oh well we used to do that, but not anymore, that would be silly to do that now in our ✨enlightened age✨”.

I’ve seen it in Criminal Minds and in Supernatural and I think in Lucifer as well?

And it’s just such a confusing choice??? Like, where did these people get this idea???? Why is it so wide-spread??????

Every diocese that’s big enough to support them has an exorcist. We’re not told who that exorcist is, but we have one.

One of my religion professors shared a story with us from a few years ago when he had traveling exorcist visit his class! The guy was based at the Vatican iirc and traveled around as needed. He was on sabbatical for a break.

I get that part of it is ease of plot and getting side characters out of the way do the MCs can do their thing, but even then I do not fully understand it because the truth is so much more interesting!!! You’re telling me you’d rather have Dean and Sam be shut down by a skeptical old priest who insists they don’t “do that anymore” when a real priest would be like “don’t do anything until I call up the exorcist and get a proper investigation going”?????? Now that’s new. That’s interesting and a new kind of challenge they haven’t faced before.

And I can’t help but think that part of it is because our belief in the spiritual and spiritual warfare makes people uncomfortable. It’s all hunky-dory as long as they can dismiss us as being “those Jesus people who have too many rules”, but the second we start showing a true belief in the supernatural, a supernatural that can and will TANGIBLY affect us, they lose their nerve and start watering it down.

I’m reminded of an episode of Buzzfeed: Unsolved where Ryan and Shane went to a Catholic priest before going to their one demon location a season. It was obviously for a joke, but the priest took it dead seriously, and I think it really threw the guys off. It was very entertaining, and a much more realistic example of what would happen irl.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Another glory story from my personal life, for @splosh-crime :D

When I was a baby, I wasn’t totally sure about the whole “being alive” and “breathing” thing. It just seemed like A Lot™️, you know? So I was out of the hospital but still had this machine that would monitor my breathing at night. If I stopped, it would set off the loudest alarm this world has ever known.

So. Our house had a small porch, and one day my mom spent the whole day staining it. (This is relevant, I swear.) She was exhausted by the end of it and just left the rags in a bucket on the porch over night.

Turns out a bucket full of rags soaked in a highly combustible substance sometimes just. Combusts. Who knew?

In the middle of the night, that bucket catches on fire. Where it’s sitting on a wooden porch that was itself just soaked in highly combustible chemicals. It’s outside, so no smoke alarms are going off. We’re all sleeping peacefully while the house is getting ready to burst into a massive fireball.

Then the loudest alarm in the world goes off.

My parents launch themselves out of bed and sprint over to check on me. The alarm is designed to turn off once I start breathing again, and it’s still going strong, so they fully expect to need to start baby CPR or something.

But when they reach me, I’m sleeping peacefully, breathing perfectly fine. (Apparently I wasn’t bothered by the loudest alarm in the world, which is hilarious given that the smallest noise wakes me up nowadays.)

Relieved, my parents assume a malfunction and reset the alarm. They’re heading back to bed when one of them glances out the window and sees orange light.

The next day, some expert tells them that, had the fire burned for just a few more minutes, the whole porch would’ve gone up, and probably the whole house with it. Because my alarm went off, they were able to put it out with only a scorch mark where the bucket had stood.

Thanks, guardian angels. We owe you big time.

[theawkwardvirgin]

What’s your favorite religion-related story? It could be from your life, from Saints, from the Bible, just anything related to religion.

Oh easy: My mom's conversion story.

My mom was basically raised atheist, and she had no interest in becoming Catholic, even though my dad was Catholic.

A few years after they got married, they experienced two sudden, devastating personal losses in a short period of time. My mom was in an extremely dark place for a long time. My dad found solace in his faith, and he tried to help my mom find the same by bringing her to mass and other religious events.

Eventually, my mom declared she wouldn't attend any more. She felt uncomfortable, out of place, and she wasn't getting anything out of attending. My dad begged her to come to just one more event: a charismatic healing mass. If she just went to that one thing, he would never bring it up again. She agreed.

For those who don't know, a charismatic healing mass is a mass followed by a special prayer service where the priest calls on God to heal people with different problems, asking the Holy Spirit to guide him to the right intentions to say.

My mom sat against the back wall of the church, just relieved that this would be the last time she had to come to this kind of thing.

And then the priest said, "Grant healing to all those with broken hearts."

My mom says that time stopped. Suddenly, the crowded church was empty except for her in the back and the priest at the altar. The priest looked up, directly at her, and she knew, even though his physical appearance didn't change, that it was Jesus standing there.

I don't think He said anything. He just looked at her with an intense love, and for the first time in months upon months of unending darkness and pain, she felt at peace.

After a while, time restarted. The rest of the congregation reappeared. But the peace remained. That's when my mom knew she had to become Catholic. And she's never looked back.

[theawkwardvirgin]

There are few experiences more powerful than renewing your baptismal vows in a packed church.

A thunder of voices reply, “I do,” and for a moment, you hear the echo of a billion others around the world, of untold billions already in Heaven, as we profess a truth that’s been held unbroken for over 2,000 years.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Conclave Ending Spoilers

CONTENT WARNING: I’m going to talk about the Catholic Church’s position on transgenderism and how that differs from intersexuality. If that’s going to upset you, I recommend skipping this post.

I was about to be upset at the ending of Conclave but then they clarified that Benitez was intersex, not transgender.

My Catholic ethics and morality professor suggested this way of thinking about transgenderism and intersexuality: God ordered the human person in a specific way. When the body and mind are out of sync, that means one of those elements is disordered.

In the case of individuals experiencing gender dysphoria, the body is usually ordered. That is, people can observe that the body is working as it should. Thus, the mind must be the cause of the disconnect and the thing that is disordered. The Catholic Church does not allow for gender reassignment treatments because they disorder the thing which is ordered instead of treating the disordered mind.*

(Ironically, Benitez’s line about how it seemed like a sin to change the body God designed for him is pretty much exactly why gender reassignment treatments aren’t allowed.)

In the case of intersex individuals, the body is obviously disordered. So, you’d go by the mind. In this case, gender reassignment treatments would probably be okay, since they order the disordered body to align with the ordered mind.

So, about the ending of Conclave: Benitez clearly considers himself to be a man and has happily lived his whole life as a man. Cool. Would he be allowed to be a priest/the pope if people knew? Or would he be able to tell people about it once he became a priest/the pope? Probably not. It would likely fall into the sin of scandal, where your actions/the things you say/the WAY you say things drive people away from God and the Church.

Since many people have never even heard of intersexuality, an announcement/discovery like that would cause mass confusion and chaos among the faithful and unfaithful alike, doubtless driving people from both groups away from the truth. Consider the way people reacted to some of the things Pope Francis did/said. He never once went against Church doctrine, but the things he said/did—or at least the way they were REPORTED on—caused mass confusion and chaos. (I’m not saying Pope Francis committed the sin of scandal. That’s between him and God, and a lot of the time reporters twisted his words/actions. Still, the results were the same.)

So. Those are my thoughts. Not really a fan of the movie tbh. I can see why it caught people’s attention though.

*Things like depression and anxiety are also disorders of the mind. However, please note that treatments for those focus on ORDERING the disorder—bringing the mind back to a healthy, ordered state.

[theawkwardvirgin]

I’ve realized part of my obsession with Mandalorians may come from the fact that they are, in some ways, extremely Catholic.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Just learned that the arm bone of St Jude is coming to a parish near me today. He’s the patron saint of hopeless causes, and it’s especially effective to ask for his intercession at the site where his relic is, so I’ll definitely be heading over there some time this afternoon!