no scourge come near your tent @thomasmerton - Tumblr Blog

Art with Jesus having the kindest eyes and the scruffiest beard gets me every time. Like he purposefully didn’t look ‘holy’ or ‘regal’ he was your neighbor. He was your carpenter.

patron-saint-of-lesbeans

Yay an excuse to share my favorite paintings by Henryk Hector Siemiradzki!

eesirachs

jesus from nazareth? that's my oppa

A former evangelical leader is sounding the alarm about the direction his religion is headed in.

Disclaimer: Nobody is perfect, let that who is without sin cast the first stone, and also I'm not American and maybe shouldn't talk about American politics.

This is so crazy. I have never liked Evangelicalism because of the spectacle that Mass becomes, the preaching to everybody, megachurches, etc. But this is crazy because what we all have in common is Jesus' message, nobody can't say that doesn't apply to us, like some people say of the Hebrew Testament. It made me think that people who join Evangelicalism* are like the police or people in the army, who just want a excuse to harm people and also have a thing for the cult of personality, groups, and me against the other. These are all things that I see as part of American politics these days, I see it specially on a fraction of the population. The war is against evil, but evil is not your neighbor of another religion or country, evil is evil. Why do they go to church, can someone explain why they do to church? Isn't the Bible literal for them? Isn't the New Testament about Jesus? Do they go to listen to the pastor and his opinions?

There are people like this in all sects. In my country, a lot of die-hard Catholics are of the same ideology as the people mentioned in the article, for some reason, one of them because the Church has supported the past regime and it was us against the others as well.

I know thankfully this is not the majority, but it made me go crazy to read this.

*In my country, most people that join Evangelicalism are the people who are seeing as them by the Evangelicals against Jesus, so people from Latin America. I don't know why. Like I know how it arrived there:

Protestant missionary groups, mainly from the charismatic movement originating in the Deep South of the United States, were introduced deliberately as a strategy from Washington particularly during Republican administrations as a way to reduce the influence of left-leaning Roman Catholic social movements, such as liberation theology (which was popular among many far-left political parties and guerrillas), and the more moderate Christian socialist and Christian democratic parties

I guess people got disillusioned with the Church because of the abuses + not really being taught what the faith is about + several generations of shallow catechesis.

This post became too rambly.

orthodoxadventure

From the feast of Pentecost at Holy Cross Monastery, Wayne, West Virginia

faithshaped

hey if ur a queer christian blog or a christian witch blog or a progressive christian blog can u rb this

magdalenenymph

saw a post recently that said (paraphrasing) the catholic church doesn't allow for divorce when domestic abuse is involved. and while technically true, that's only because catholics don't have religious divorce.

however. and most importantly. it does not mean catholics cannot/should not leave an abusive spouse or get a secular divorce to sever legal ties. leaving an abusive spouse is enshrined in catholic law.

canon law specifically states: 1153. if either of the spouses causes grave mental or physical danger to the other spouse or to the offspring or otherwise renders common life too difficult, that spouse gives the other a legitimate cause for leaving

survivors can also petition the church for an annulment on grounds of domestic abuse. for example, abuse that began before the marriage would have made it impossible to give meaningful consent, and without meaningful consent a marriage would be invalid.

the church does not require or encourage us to stay with abusers. for any reason. domestic abuse, in the eyes of the church, is both a crime and a sin, a 'craven act of cowardice' that 'contradicts the very nature of the conjugal union.' (amoris laetitia #54)

information on domestic abuse from the national board of catholic women (uk) : 'A victim should never be encouraged to remain in the same house as the perpetrator in the hope of saving the marriage or for the sake of the family.'

information on domestic abuse from the united states conference of catholic bishops : 'we emphasize that no person is expected to stay in an abusive marriage. Some abused women believe that church teaching on the permanence of marriage requires them to stay in an abusive relationship. They may hesitate to seek a separation or divorce. They may fear that they cannot re-marry in the Church. Violence and abuse, not divorce, break up a marriage. We encourage abused persons who have divorced to investigate the possibility of seeking an annulment. An annulment, which determines that the marriage bond is not valid, can frequently open the door to healing.'

#I didn't know this

thomasmerton

May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. May the Almighty heal the breaches of His people Israel.

thomasmerton

May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. May the Almighty heal the breaches of His people Israel.

fear-not-beloved

That’s what happens in the early stages of contemplation. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That’s why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things that show up are wild beasts (Mark 1:13). Contemplation is not first of all consoling. It’s only real.

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer