#tradcatholicism

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Pearl sounds like an anti-Mary protestant.

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Check out this video if you have littles that need help at Mass!

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Please pray for me, my family is in turmoil and I use lustful thoughts in order to distract myself and cope, as well as being lazy. I know that this isn't the right path for me, but God feels so far away so all I can do is ask for forgiveness, even if only through asking for your prayers. I hope that soon I will find my calling, whether I end up single or married, and that God will one day forgive me and guide me away from my sinful nature. - G S

God has already forgiven you, my friend. He does not withhold His forgiveness, ever. But we must co-operate (intentionally separated for emphasis) in that forgiveness by 1) seeking reconciliation and 2) forgiving ourselves as well. There is a lot of shame tied with those sorts of sins and and part of healing from wrong things we do, regardless of whether or not they are sins, is by learning to let it go and forgive ourselves and others. We were created for goodness, and we are inherently made for goodness. Even should we stumble, God doesn't wait until we are sorry to forgive us. The same way that if someone wrongs you, but then never apologizes or speaks to you again, you can't let them know they are forgiven, God feels about us. He already forgave us, but we need to go to Him in order for the relationship to be mended.

I will also pray for your family situation, and I implore you to seek advice from a priest. One time a priest gave me the advice to go and eat ice cream and watch a movie when I start to feel that way, in order to distract myself with something tangible. Something similar may help you as well.

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Models of different habit veils

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What should I do if I struggle with same sex attraction (exclusively)? I don't want to live in sin, but I also don't want to spend my life on Earth in loneliness.

I hate to break it to you but even if you were in a relationship, you could (and there will definitely be moments when) be lonely still. Meaningful connections need to be made all the time in our human lives, some of those meaningful connections come from a significant other, but most of them don't. There is a large influence in our culture to only get emotional support, affection, and love from a significant other. But that's not what the human condition is and it's also not what St. Paul advises. When I was discerning religious life asking my priest for guidance he talked to me about how the life of a priest (or any celibate person) is not one of loneliness, there is rarely a moment where someone is not seeking his advice or wisdom or help in something. And he said it's the same in marriage, but that the primary person(s) who are seeking your guidance from is your family, rather than the Church at large. That even in marriage, a married couple, just as they did when they were single, had a duty to their parish to serve as they can. That service may change as they have children, but it is still necessary to have someone who can do those things which the priest cannot oversee. The more you volunteer at your church, the more people you will come into contact with, and form meaningful connections and moments with, and that isn't lonely. Even while in my own relationship, there are moments of loneliness, because I'm working and going through the monotony of life. I'm not alone, but on days when I don't have a meaningful conversation with a coworker or some other person, it bears down on me like a weight.

Romantic relationships don't fight loneliness, they just mask it.

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What do you think of girls altar serving?

I feel as though this is a rather loaded question, and that the only reasonable response could be construed as ambiguous or a cop-out. However, I will answer it anyways.

I don't know of any moral reason why girls can't or shouldn't be altar servers. It is a good way to learn Mass and learn how and why the Eucharist is so important to the Faith first hand. However, having been an altar server and hearing from young men who have served with women, I think it should be reserved for when and if boys or men are not available.

I think there has been a large movement, at least in the U. S. where I am, to only have children (between the ages of First Communion and Confirmation) be altar servers, which when you don't have many young boys in the parish, can become problematic. However, if parishes treated it like the Magisterium says it ought, which is for either the serving of parish needs or as a step in discernment of priesthood, it should be reasonable for men of any age to partake, so long as he has had his First Holy Communion.

From my own experiences I can definitely attest that there is a great misunderstanding that can happen in young girls when allowed to altar serve but then told they cannot be priests. They help the priest in every way during the Mass but then will never be able to do that themselves. I think it requires a portion of cognitive dissonance to say that, it ends up becoming a very arbitrary line drawn in the sand about what women can do in the parish and what they can't.

Preemptively answering a possible follow-up question, I don't think proclaiming the Word in the First and Second Readings falls under the same category, if only because mothers are meant to be the first person to teach children Scripture. As, of course, we see Mary do with Christ, and her mother St. Anne do for her. But having also done that, it is significantly different than altar serving.

Now, in a convent, or at a women's retreat, I think it is definitely reasonable, assuming there are no seminarians around to do so. However, when seminarians are around it is technically their right to do so over any other lay person, whether men or women, and I think that speaks to what altar serving is about.

It's why even Pope Francis hasn't officially instituted any woman into that role like he did with being a Lector. Because it *is* an exclusive right to seminarians, and only if a parish or chapel does not have any, does it fall to the next step which is men, since only men can be seminarians.

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Is everything forgivable? I feel like that's the concept I struggle the most with. I can understand the majority of sins, since none of us are sinless, but I really have difficulty accepting that even pedophiles, rapists, and the like would somehow also be granted forgiveness as long as they were honest in their conversion and admission of guilt. It just feels 'unfair' in a sense, and I can't wrap my head around those types of people being granted any forgiveness at all.

In a way, things like 'murder', are easier to justify to me- someone was forced to because they were protecting a loved one, or had a psychotic attack, or was enrolled in the army, etc etc. And a woman might abort because she didn't realise that it is a life already at that stage, and because her partner didn't want to take responsibility and she was fearful to end up destitute & alone and not be able to offer the child a good life. Or an alcoholic might've robbed a store in a drunken stupor due to addiction. But child molestation? Rape? None of those things can have any excuses.

I'm sorry if this is heavy material, but I'm up late thinking about this and I thought maybe it would help to get some advice. I'm on anonymous because I don't want to draw any hatemail as I often seem to get on this app.

Yes everything is forgivable by God. We are imperfect and so struggle to forgive, but that doesn't mean God has that same struggle.

In a perfectly just world, it would be unfair for those sins to be forgiven. And in a perfectly just world, they wouldn't be. However, God is not only Just, but also Merciful. Because He is those two things, He would not apply Divine Mercy in an unjust manner. It would be unjust for a merciful God to say 'that sin is not forgivable'.

God is the embodiment of Love, which we know from scripture amounts to mercy. Luke 10:25-37;

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

The man did not deserve mercy or love for what he did, two people passed him by because they thought he was unworthy based on his state. But God does not give mercy based on what we deserve, because none of us would ever come close to deserving it. See Romans 5;

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We must work towards forgiving those who we feel are unforgivable, but it is easy for God, and we shouldn't allow our shortcomings to dictate what we think God should be capable of.