We made a test run [of attending church] at our local parish, but it ended badly when Father Jerome Karcher (son of Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher), with a kind smile on his face, explained to [my wife] Greer that she was an adulterer because she hadn’t gotten married in the church.
“You don’t really believe that,” Greer said, laughing.
“Oh, absolutely,” Father Jerome assured her. “Jesus said it.”
We didn’t go back.
—William Lobdell, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace (2009), p. 54
Anyone have similar stories?
All of my qualms with church-going were philosophy related, I suppose. I was sufficiently indoctrinated by my parents that I didn’t believe in evolution, but I was constantly questioning the church over other matters. Conversations that usually ended in “He moves in mysterious ways.” (like why couldn’t God have defined free will differently, on a semiotic level, so that he could have manifested himself to us without affecting it?)
The biggest fault-line in Christian theology isn’t the process of creation or the Biblical atrocities. Reasonable, considered Christians don’t believe in the literal Bible and look at the atrocities as symptoms of another era. The biggest flaw is philosophy, or maybe more accurately the nature of God. All Christians, whether they believe the Genesis story as literal or not, believe that God created everything perfectly, and that at some point we fell from favour (hence Jesus, et cetera), but the problem is that there just isn’t any way a perfect and all-knowing being could create something that ultimately becomes so flawed. He presumably wouldn’t know how. Apologists get around this by saying that God either denied himself omniscience temporarily or that he couldn’t possibly have accounted for what free will in humans would cause. Neither are especially satisfactory answers.
I posted here a while ago about my cousin. He’s a symptom of Americanisation that scares me in a very big way – one of the new breed of British born-again Christians whose churches are oh-so-American. He’s taken to signing off his emails with a Ben Stein quote about “[sic]There are so many questions that evolution simply cannot answer!”
When I pointed out that I have a strongly scientific background and that my g/f has just graduated with a 2:1 in Human Sciences from Oxford and asked him what questions he would like answered, he completely ignored me. Pretended I hadn’t even spoken. I found that quite revealing.
To his credit, his signature is true. There are many things evolution can’t answer. A few examples:
-What did I have for dinner last night?
-What’s the latest box office hit?
-Why does Windows blue screen all the time?
-Where exactly do my socks disappear to in the dryer?
The old chestnut of ToE is wrong because it doesn’t explain how life began all though it’s always assuming to here a creationist troit this “killer” argument out. Well I suppose this means that the Theory of Gravity is also wrong as it doesn’t explain how life began either.
WTF … did I just write that?
The devil made you do it.
I’m actually living in a situation where my wife and the rest of her family is rather Christian, and we attend church (I gave her my word before we married) every Sunday. Unfortunately, I’m a science guy, completely atheist, and a philosopher (in the traditionalist sense, not as in “likes to stare into space” bollocks kinda way), so every freakin’ Sunday is a melee of logical contradictions, philosophical stumbles and innane belief-systems. It’s driving me absolutely nuts. Since I’m a science guy, I read up on everything related, study bucketloads, and try my darnedest to understand it all, building up a rather large body of facts and contra. So.
I’m planning to start a blog about it to ease the pain, but anonymising it to protect me and my (close) family (well, my wife). Just how much innanity can they squeeze into an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning? Anyway, any tips I could garner, both in terms of anonymising it and writing it in such a way that the sermons can’t be traced back to a particular church?
That’s both a terrible situation and a great testament to how much you must love your wife :) I’ve been all over to various churches both in the US and Europe (thanks, Dad!) and I can assure you that unless you have a truly innovative pastor there is zero chance of anybody tracing the sermons back to you provided you don’t post them in chronological order. I would stock up six or seven weeks of sermons and then tackle them as the ideas come to you, and avoid posting about them sequentially.
I wish you the best of luck because I know I couldn’t do what you’re doing. Nothing but admiration. I’d also like to suggest a new internet phenomena, “IM INSIDE UR CHURCH TEACHING SCIENCE TO UR FLOCK”
I feel for you George, but to be honest I think you need to be honest with your wife. If she loves you, then she should not want to force you to sit through something which you just don’t believe.
Out of interest, does she insist that you go to church in order to keep up appearances? Or perhaps she thinks that immersion in bullshit will make you into a believer? Or is it because she thinks she’s protecting your immortal soul despite your own beliefs?
I can’t think of any other reasons why she’d want you to go against your own beliefs, and frankly none of the ones I’ve thought of are very good reasons at all.
Honestly, I really think you need to be honest with her about this.
To make it clear, I promised my wife when we married that our kids will get teachings of both worlds. My wife know my stance and beliefs, so this is purely out of love and respect for my wife and my own adherence to my words.
Here’s to love overcoming all boundaries, for what the great biological instinct…nay, insanity will do, for it’s preservation of the connections we make, despite what we come to believe.
Anyway, any tips I could garner, both in terms of anonymising it and writing it in such a way that the sermons can’t be traced back to a particular church?
You could adopt a foreign accent. For example, if you would write “anonymizing” rather than “anonymising,” you might be mistaken for an American.
Try to go for a general principle rather than the specific details of a bad sermon. The same bad sermons are being preached worldwide.
Write your commentary, then store it for a while before posting it publicly on your blog to blur the time link between the inspiration and the response.
Bingo – don’t mess with your wife. Let her keep her silly little dreams. I flushed away a great girl playing world of warcraft. damn that sucked.
My husband’s grandmother said something similar to us just after our first child was born. She told us that God doesn’t recognize our (completely legal) marriage because we weren’t married in the Catholic church. She also told us that if we don’t have our children baptized they will go to hell, “but congrats on the new baby.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was never baptized either. She used to bring piles and piles of Catholic propaganda for me to read but lately I think she’s given up on me. Thank goodness for that.
PS I love this blog!
Next time just complain that what she’s brought over this time isn’t a soft and absorbent as last time …
My Aunt criticised us for living in sin. It was fucking hilarious when her daughter had a baby out of wedlock
Haha, same thing happened to me re: my Ex’s family. I wasn’t Catholic enough to be fully accepted into the family. After we broke up, he got some chick pregnant, then married a year later, THEN divorced a year after that b/c she was having an affair. Awesome. Of course their child will be attending private Catholic preschool next year (I’m sure on the insistance of his mother)… and they are currently fighting over who will pay for it during and after the divorce.
Is your aunt Sarah Palin?
Jesus said that? It’s been a while since I’ve read the gospels, but I don’t recall Jesus saying anything like that.I do know that is the stance of some on the Catholic church though.
I love when some Christians do things that actually drive people away. So much for the great commission.
There’s a saying I’ve come across a few times: “Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.”
Alas, most Christians seem to prefer “do as I say, not as I do”…
There is no end to the dumb and awful things people say in church. And there also seems to be no end to the dumb and awful preachers out there. I’ve expended a lot of energy trying to heal wounds of others who were hurt by religion.
I just want to make the point that challenging the credibility of religious communities does not really address the question of God’s existence.
“… does not really address the question of God’s existence.”
I’m not really sure what you think there is to address.
“challenging the credibility of religious communities does not really address the question of God’s existence.”
Uh, seriously?
Yes, God as a metaphysical postulate or a possibly formulable physical hypothesis or as an idealization of various powers for thought experiments has nothing to do with religious communities and their foibles. But that’s a totally different issue than the existence of Yahwheh, the God actually worshipped by these American religious communities. That God sure does get called into question by the consistent patheticness of those religious communities.
As I have argued to you before, Clergy Guy, it is a bait and switch to try to claim any plausible credibility for the supernaturalistic Christian God based only on the mere possibilities of a deist, metaphysical God’s existence. A principle of all being of some such philosopher’s God concept may be plausibly or defensibly physically or metaphysically formulated in the future but such gives zero credence to the notion that religious communities are specially guided by such a metaphysical or physical principle in a personal way. And religious communities’ long histories of being equally flawed to all other communities and especially flawed more than the non-religious in their own particular ways is a sound refutation of the hypothesis that a Holy Spirit in any way specially guides that community.
We atheists do ourselves a disservice when we let Christians equate Yahweh, who is just one particular ancient tribal deity, conceived in superstition, with the god of the philosophers which was long a metaphysically interesting source of contemplation and speculation for serious philosophers and might even be again. They really have nothing to do with each other and we need to combat their easy conflation because the zero-plausibility of Yahweh and Jesus is on god of the philosophers life support right now in the culture.
You’re correct that god is distinct from modern religious communities, but my incredulity stems from the poor phrasing of the assertion:
“challenging the credibility of [religious communities] does not really address [the question of God’s existence].”
Because it really does in Christianity. If you find the early church and its Bible to be bankrupt then the entire thing falls apart. A better way to phrase it would have been “challenging the sensibilities of modern-day religious communities does not address the question of a god existing.”
No, indeed. Just like how the fact that the Oracle at Delphi sometimes got stuff wrong doesn’t prove that Apollo doesn’t exist.
I am totally stealing that one, Wintermute.
No, wintermute, you totally missed the point. The point that’s being made here is that God’s existence as a topic for philosophical discourse is nearly independent from any particular denomination’s claim.
No, he got that point. He was just saying that it’s not really a meaningful one.
Just like Apollo’s existence as a topic for philosophical discourse is nearly independent from any particular oracle’s claim, right?
To put it another way: “God’s existence as a topic for philosophical discourse” is meaningless unless the involved parties can agree on a definition of “god”; it’s easy to define “god” such that its existence is trivially true; equally, it’s possible to define “god” such that its existence is trivially false.
Without accepting the claims made by a specific denomination (or group thereof), the statement “god exists” or “god does not exist” has no value. There can be no philosophical discussion, until we limit ourselves to a specific subset of potential deities with common attributes. Therefore, the claims made by the denomination under discussion are of paramount importance.
Yes, you can always shift the goalposts, saying “oh, I didn’t mean that god; I was talking about another god. The one hiding under that rock over there.” But that is a surprisingly unproductive line of argument.
I agree with wintermute. To connect it more fully to what Clergy Guy had said the problem is that the specific deities claimed by specific religious traditions are supposed to be believed in entirely on the credibility of the witness of those traditions. Without the Jewish people’s claims about Yahweh, there is no Yahweh, and without the Christians’ claims there is no Yahweh/Jesus/Holy Spirit trinity. These traditions demand that their “witness” be accepted and so they demand that they be credible. Even if they say, “well, the apostles were credible and the prophets were credible even though the contemporary church is a horror show of no credibility on anything” that doesn’t cut it. If you want me to believe that there ever was a divine guidance to a tradition, that it was sent Jesus to save it and the Holy Spirit to guide it, then let’s see with the fruits already. Let’s see evidence the entire tradition is credible. The entire tradition is supposed to be especially guided by God. If the tradition proves just as (or even actually more) susceptible to human vices as any other, then the claims that it’s a special source of credibility about the nature and existence of its gods are falsified. They’re refuted. The claim at least admits of confirmation and falsification if not full out final verification. And it gets falsified on precisely this credibility point.
I just want to make the point that challenging the credibility of religious communities does not really address the question of God’s existence.
Considering the beliefs of those communities are the only thing that “sustains” the existence of a god, I’d say it does.
Ah, nothing like the smell of logic fail in the morning!
“challenging the credibility of religious communities does not really address the question of God’s existence.”
So why then should we take any claim about God from religious people seriously?
The lack of evidence for the existence of gods has always been the main problem of addressing the “question” of gods existence.
But its fun to amuse ourselves with some stories of people in religious communities making an absurd mockery of themselves and the religion/gods they purport to believe in.
Well no, but it does challenge the validity of the churches in question, and therefore challenges *their version* of God.
After one year of college, I left the Midwest to work in a southern state for the summer. I was still Catholic at the time. I remember being informed by a Southern Baptist next door about how Catholics are not Christians.
Thankfully both my wife and I are atheist, so nothing of that sort. Although I did arrange that we could do a fancy church wedding (with military ceremonies thrown in) for her sake (as far as “every little girl dreams of a church wedding” thing. She was still in a more “unsure” state when we got married, but it was a big step from her fundamentalist upbringing).
Every time I hear something like that, I love throwing these three verses at people:
1 John 4:8 (NASB) – “God is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:4 (NASB) – “Love is not jealous.”
Exodus 20:5 (NASB) – “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.”
Oops!
Luke 14:26:
I love my family, therefore Jesus doesn’t want me in his gang.
wintermute – not a good example. It doesn’t really mean “hate” in this context. It means losing the attachments to your loved ones. In a sense, freeing yourself. This is one of the most powerful gospel verses. You do realize that you should take the bible literally when it’s cool to do so, and metaphorically when it’s not so cool right?
If it doesn’t mean “hate”, why does every translation I’ve ever seen use the word “hate”? Was Jesus really that bad at communicating his intentions? Why would he use a word whose meaning is so far from what he really intended?
And how do we know what he really intended, anyway? Why not declare that by “hate”, he really meant “murder”, on the grounds that he also claimed that to hate your brother is to commit murder? Is there any contextual hint you can point me towards?
You think that’s pretty clever, but the apologists are predictable in their retorts. In your case, it’s “you’re using the wrong translation.”
I agree, they should be using the lolcat translation.
Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to say “clever”? :P I was just having some fun. You are right though about the predictable.
I think I have the winner for the all time fundie insensativity award.
A few years ago when i was visiting my parents we were sitting in the yard when we heard a religious revival type of lecture from a distance (they do like to raise the volume). They live in a relatively small town in Israel with a population that is mostly what is refered to as traditional (i.e believe in god keep kosher and observe most holidays but also drive on Saturday and don’t dress like 17th century polish peasents) so it wasn’t that unusual to hear. The next day we ran into someone and found out that this wasn’t a regular public event but instead some SOB walked into the home of a family who’s son was killed in a car accident a few days earlier set up a PA system and started telling them and everyone within a 5 mile radius that their kid died is because his mom didn’t observe the required purification rituals during and after her periods and the dad stopped donating money to the local synegoge. Since the family were religious they set there and listened instead of calling the cops and have the ass arrested or more satisfying beating the crap out of him.
A mild knee-capping sounds in order, mostly so the prick couldn’t run from the serious beating they likely deserve.
Can’t say he’d have walked away from my house alive after that. I’m serious.
I have actually included in my last will and testament that anybody attempting to introduce any form of supernatural, spiritual or religious topic, theme or meme into my funeral, wake, rememberance or memorial is to be forcefully ejected. The really messed-up thing is that, if I died today, at least three of my extended familly would try to hijack my funeral for god-bothering purposes. One of them tried it with my uncle’s send off a few years ago. Arseholes, but you can’t choose familly.
When I was a child, my grandfather (who is a deacon in a Southern Baptist church) told me that my parents and I were going to hell because we went to a Methodist church.
I spent few years of my young life living with my single father. He worked long hours 6 days a week and wasn’t always able to attend church, however he did go occasionally while I attended weekly with my grandparents. One Sunday, the pastor of our small mid-western church told my dad that “If you are not going to attend Church every Sunday, you shouldn’t come at all”. He didn’t go back. I suppose this had that opposite effect that the pastor intended.
To this day I am not sure what my dad believes about religion, but he clearly disagrees with some of it.
I’d give $20 to hear everything my ex’s family says about me…
He’s one of 6 kids, brought up catholic but some are now more evangelical. None with less than 3 kids (but us, we had one). There’s only ONE divorce in the family…including the older generations…”Uncle Dick” who divorced Grandma’s sister. He’s gently reviled at family gatherings, although they do admit the marriage went down the tubes after their child died. Divorce is horrible! God doesn’t want it!
When I said I was divorcing Jim his one brother came into town and took us to dinner- for the sole purpose of lecturing me on how our kid would be ruined by the divorce (yeah, ya’ know like I’m the expert with the education degree, not him…hello). (I was a “bad pagan girl” at the time, too.)
…and how if Jim screwed up (cheater, liar, theif that he is etc.) I should forgive him and start over. And if it still didn’t work, forgive him and start over…as many times as it takes! Forever! It’s the christian way to do it!
Trouble is I tried that, and Jim had no intention of trying anything.
I was so proud of myself. I walked out of dinner and went down the street in the rain to a local coffee house and said they could get me when they were ready to shut up and go home.
*applauds* Damned right.
Daniel, you should know better by now my friend. These are the same folks that JC had the biggest problems with, saved the harshest rebukes for (the long robed religious types chock full of heart-suffocating rules and hypocrisy). I’m inclined to believe that (if the story is true) they were merely an easy target for UF, as the religious types always will be. Why go to a “parish” of all places?? It’s like going duck hunting with a surface to air missile.
Nowhere did JC say any such thing (having to be married in a “church”), hogwash. Religion is oppressive, burdensome and not at all what He is all about, just the opposite.
You are right. Do what I say or I will lovingly burn you alive forever and ever, isn’t oppressive or burdensome AT ALL.
That’s not the true message Travis, but because you abide in darkness, its what YOU hear, get it? So, what is the true message? You can hear that too…if you want to.
It’s interesting how so many Bible passages quite specifically contradict what you want to be the “true message”.
You should re-read such passages as:
Mark 16:16
Matt. 13:41-42
Matt. 10:28
Matt. 25:41
Matt. 11:21-24
Luke 10:10-15
Luke 12:5
Luke 3:16-17
John 3:36
2 Thes. 1:7-9
2 Peter 3:7
Jude 1:5
And of course most of Revelation
*Grabs popcorn and settles in for the log wait of “John C pretending not to read a point he can’t counter”*
Custy….and didnt respond to TRJ because we have had that same discussion many times in the past. All the best Custy!
Well, I’d still like to hear you defend these points:
- Jesus cursing entire cities to hell
- The constant references to fire and hell
- God’s ability and willingness to cast people into hell
Because I really don’t see a loving god in these verses, merely a vengeful tyrant. And I find most of these verse to be very direct, leaving very little room for a favorable interpretation.
I don’t expect a counter to each verse, but all in all I’d like to hear how a fiery hell for unbelievers is compatible with a loving god.
TRJ…first, what is Hell? Is it a place of eternal punishment, banishment from the presence (love) of God forever? Or did Jerome (latin vulgate)translate the word aeon/eon meaning a dispensation, a period of time into “eternal”? If all God’s works are redemptive in nature, then what possible benefit might come from unending torment, banishment from the presence of God, does that sound like “love” to you?
Consider the following quips from the (enlightened) mind of George MacDonald as a better response than my own to your questions:
“Nothing is inexorable but love. For Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind must be destroyed. And ‘our God is a consuming fire.’ It is the nature of God so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire. He will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us until we worship thus, if we do not worship God, but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God. In the outer darkness, where the worst sinners dwell, God hath withdrawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face is turned away, but his hand is laid upon him still. His heart has ceased to beat into the man’s heart, but he keeps him alive by his fire. And that fire will go searching and burning on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he is pure. But at length, O God, wilt thou not cast death and hell into the lake of fire even into thine own consuming self? Death shall then die everlastingly, and hell itself will pass away, and leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Then indeed will thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one,-O God, we trust in thee, the consuming fire, shall have been burnt clean and brought home.”
All the best.
Alternatively John C may pretty much ignore the question …
John,
Many Christians who feel uncomfortable with the whole torture-in-hellfire deal subscribe to Hell as being simply an absence from God (which I suppose would mean God’s not really omnipresent), while others regard the eternal torture literally.
Reading the Bible, I’d say it’s both. Some verses talk about a separation from God (which might be interpreted as a punishment or it might be simply a side effect of getting cast into Hell). Other verses talk explicitly about lakes of fire and punishment by eternal torture. The two views are certainly compatible.
I can’t say, but other Bible translations, such as NRSV, which are translated from Hebrew and Greek, use the words “eternal” or “everlasting”. This is also the case for, say, NIV, which avoids the very literal translation of NRSV in favor of contemporary idioms. Look up 2 Thes. 1:7-9 in different Bible translations, and you’ll find they agree about eternal/everlasting destruction. So no, I don’t think you can simply blame such uncomfortable passages on the translation used, much as you’d prefer to.
Yes, what benefit indeed? Your outlook makes you instantly assume that the purpose of Hell must be redemption and maybe ultimate salvation. The Bible doesn’t seem to support this. Hell is simply the final destination for wicked sinners and unbelievers (which are the same thing according to the Bible). Hell is punishment and your “just” reward. Hellfire is not cleansing, it is pain for the sake of it. You would think that if God meant Hell to be merely temporary, that the Bible would mention this.
Hell, according to the Bible, is vengeful payback for not obeying God, pure and simple. And don’t just take my word for it:
2 Thes. 1:7-9: “…when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,”
Luke 12:5: “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”
2 Peter 3:7: “But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgement and destruction of the godless.”
And, just to show what God thinks of unbelievers in general:
Jude 1:5: “Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, that the Lord, who once for all saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe.”
This is not love. It is petty malice. You can ignore these verses and continue to talk about love and grace and truth and light, embellishing your faith with continuous superficial praise, but the Bible itself makes such platitudes entirely unconvincing.
No see, I have the true message. I’ve already tried out your version and found it hollow. If following what Jesus instructed you to do isn’t burdensome, then you either aren’t doing it right, or are a very callous. I don’t even know how many nights sleep I lost, because I believed my friends were going to burn in hell forever, because I wasn’t smart or clever enough to save them. And you know what all my prayers got me? nothing, because theres no god out there to listen to them.
I know its hard to believe but life is much better out here on this side of things.
This thing you call “life” is actually Christ (spirit) Himself, not religion. Because you went to “church” or were “religious” at one time does not begin to qualify your understanding respectfully, actually it’s quite a hindrance when we have experienced past religious conditioning, view things thru that (limiting) lens. Going to church doesnt make one spiritually whole anymore than going to McDonalds makes us a hamburger (to borrow an old cheesy line…pun intended, ugg)
Religioin masquerades as Christianity, but those same religious folk were the very ones Christ had the most difficulty with, how do you explain this, by saying He was one of them? It’s not “reasonable”. All the best.
I will not allow you to belittle the faith I once had because it isn’t convienent to the worldview you have assembled. I find your comment to be incredibly rude. You don’t know me, you couldn’t possibly know what my faith was like, much less what my church was like. You’ve insulted me and you’ve insulted my family. If your faith is so fragile that you must attack mine, then I would suggest that you do some more soul searching.
Travis, you’re demanding of a rabid dog an apology for biting you. Just stay away from the rabid dog. It is John C’s rude, irrational way and energy spent on him is pretty much wasted.
John C has rabies? It all makes sense now. :-P
If John C had rabies, wouldn’t he make more sense?
Travis, check around, ask Daniel. It’s really not my style to be “rude”, I merely pointed out the past religious fallacy here that so many have experienced, your (spiritual) journey is not yet over. It’s a good thing that you discarded “religion”, its a great starting point. I sincerely wish you and your’s all the very, very best.
Camels, you and I have never engaged one another, you dont know me from adam (sorry, couldnt resist), perhaps you have rushed to judgement.
All the best…
No, I would say you are rude quite often, John.
So am I, but at least I don’t pretend otherwise.
Well as you’re asking John C, yes you are rude. A couple of things spring to mind, claiming that non-believers are a different species and stating that you don;t bother reading people’s posts before you reply to them.
Just as we’ve come to expect, more lies from John C.
@John
You wouldn’t have had to “engaged” you before on here to know how you are John. It just takes reading your interactions with others to see it.
Rude, sometimes, but we can all be from time to time when trying to prove our points. The thing that really gripes people the most about you on here though is your inability to answer direct questions. You can do nothing but dance around them so you don’t have to think outside of your “child-like mind”.
Theres something that goes along with that methodology; naivety.
I don’t remember ever being told anything that extreme when I was in catholic grade school (not by choice), but I do remember when the hypocrisy became apparent to me, which is when I was more or less done with Catholicism and started begging my parents to go to public school shortly after the incident.
In 6th grade, my class took a field trip to the Old Cathedral (in St. Louis, this is the church often seen under the arch). We were going to see the new stained glass windows they just had installed. I had never really been to the city at this point, being a county kid, so when we got to the church my entire class commented on why people got to sleep in the pews in the back of the church when we had to sit up straight and always pay attention. Our teacher then had to explain that they were homeless and the church sometimes let them sleep there when the weather was bad or cold, etc.
So, as the priest is walking us through and telling us how they paid almost a million dollars for the windows, I started to ask my teacher why they could spend a million dollars on windows when I thought we were supposed to use our money to help people like those sleeping in the back of the church, and she told me to shut up and just listen to the priest. After that I was just angry for the rest of the day and just quit listening entirely.
That was pretty much the beginning of the end of my involvement with the church.
Does anyone know where this commandment on marriage can be found in the bible? I don’t remember this command from Jesus. I do remember my church guilt tripping a couple who wasn’t married in a way that the church supported, though but I can’t remember what they used to justify it.
Frankly, it sounds like the preacher was making stuff up. I don’t think Jesus had anything at all to say about marriage. Paul mentioned marriage in very general terms, but he had nothing to say about the actual ceremony.
But maybe it’s part of the Catholic catechism? The Catholic Church has always been good at inventing their own rules without basis in scripture.
Figures, just like everything else regarding the bible/god’s stance on marriage, its completely made up, even by bible standards.
Yep. It’s a Catholic thing.
A good friend of mine, who is also Catholic, ran into this problem when he decided to get married. The only Catholic church in town, and the one he’d been going to pretty much since birth, wanted a very large fee for use of the church for the wedding. You also had to pay the priest for doing the service, and there were some other fees for various things wedding related. All told it was a huge sum, and one he couldn’t afford.
When he explained to his priest that he couldn’t afford to be married at that church, the priest actually told him to sell his car or take out a loan because, “getting married anywhere else would lead to fornication in god’s eyes.”
Pretty good scam, that. “Pay us to do your wedding, or burn in hell for eternity.”
Even Tony Soprano is impressed by that kind of racket.
Wow that is ridiculous. I do know that Catholic churches differ. I grew up in a very liberal church, yes Catholic, but Irish Catholic. I think they are more accepting of human error than other types of Catholic churches I’ve attended. For example, my husband and I were living together at the time we were engaged, and the priest said to us: “You know that the Church is against a couple living together before they are married.” We said yes, and that was the end of it. No big deal, no guilt, no fees. I heard that the mostly Italian Catholic Church across town was completely against such a thing and wouldn’t even marry you if you admitted to living together beforehand.
The fee to have my wedding in the Catholic church was only $100. Nothing to sell a car over.
Sorry, not human “error” but human “nature” which they may interpret as error
I’m 66 years old so it was about 60 years ago that I lived with my aunt and uncle for a while on a small farm in Kansas. They were very religious and the entire family—myself included—would attend an Assembly of God church every Saturday night and again on Sunday morning. One evening, just after dark, we kids were playing in our front yard when I saw (I didn’t know what it was at the time) a distant thunderstorm which caused orange light to dance on the horizon. When I asked my aunt about it, she replied: “That’s the Devil walking around over there and if you do something naughty, he’s going to come right over here and grab you!”
I didn’t speak aloud but I remember saying to her in my mind, “You’re lying to me!”
1. My father, as a recent emigrant from Ireland in the 60′s, married my mother twice. First at the Methodist Church, then the Catholic. Even though my parents are dead for 10 yrs or more, my father’s family still call that month in between “living in sin.”
2. I attended parochial school through the 8th grade, along with the requisite Mass attendance. The school did not require that you be Catholic, but that all students must adhere to the Sacraments. Its location made the school a great alternative to the local public schools, so there were quite a few Baptists and other religions.
At one of the school Masses, the priest told the entire student body that if you weren’t Catholic, you couldn’t get into Heaven.
The students were furious, but the priest held his ground.
He, the priest should’ve consulted the Papacy. Even they have a more flexible approach to that Unam Sanctam deal.
As if anyone with more then 3 brain cells would want to spend eternity singing praise and bowing to that bully god. Burning forever doesn’t sound that bad in comparison.
When I was a sophomore in high school, one of the juniors committed suicide. This was a smaller Catholic high school, so the death hit everyone pretty hard.
One of the teachers was a Marianist brother (like a monk). He was raised old-school, before the reforms of Vatican II. The very first thing he told his junior classes was that the kid had gone straight to hell because he had killed himself and that such a sin was utterly unforgivable. Needless to say, people were a tad upset over these comments.
On the positive side, the administration got wind of these comments and his teaching contract wasn’t renewed.
I’m noticing how many of these stories tie back to Catholicism. And people wonder why there are so many ex-Catholics.
I’m noticing how many of these stories tie back to Catholicism. And people wonder why there are so many ex-Catholics.
Odd. The Catholic high-school I went to was much more broad minded. That kind of judgmental attitude was exactly what we hated about the local Baptist population, and we tried not to emulate it.
Had a visiting brother pulled that crap, the nuns would have chased him out.
The school was pretty broad-minded, but that particular teacher was not.
Yeah, I’m affiliated with two very open-minded Catholic universities and so it skews my perception of Roman Catholicism to see it as much, much more reasonable than evangelicalism. There’s a disconnect between my stark philosophical and political disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church (and the pope in particular) on the one hand and my deep affection for the Catholic school where I have studied and taught for 9 years.
In the mid-90s I was active in the Methodist church, the church I had been brought up in. I was dating a guy who began to abuse me so I went to seek advice from the pastor. His response was “we don’t get involved in that sort of thing.” I never went back to church after that. And I got away from that relationship on my own.
Good for you on both counts.
Adulterer is not someone who had sex without marriage, but someone who’s married and had sex with someone else, or someone (married or not) having sex with somebody else who’s married. Two people (not married in church) having sex are just sinners, not adulterers (according to religion). But people often use that word in the wrong meaning, especially religious ones.
Actually, the Church has regarded all sexual acts outside of marriage as adultery, including masturbation and bestiality.
Also included in the mix is birth control, non-vaginal sexual gratification, and pleasure devices.
This is part of the curriculum in Catholic HS, confirmation prep classes, and RCIA for converts to Catholicism.
Wow.
By that list, even though I have never once cheated on my wife, I am an adulterer like three times over.
I’m just hoping it has nothing to do with the bestiality part…
;)
Don’t judge me, man!!!!
I declare that comment don’t ask don’t tell.
Apparently the Pope was going to give an interview about his opinions of birth control but he pulled out at the last moment.
*rimshot*?
That would be one way to avoid getting pregnant. but we already know about the churches view of non-vaginal interco…. Oh! Right! I see!
He’s got a million of em!
ah cha cha
Both of my grandmothers were Catholics who married Protestants, back in the day when such things were of general social importance. One grandmother apparently never spoke to her sisters-in-law after they found out she was Catholic and made it clear that that was not acceptable, a state which continued for decades until her death. I remember her moving back to her family’s home town, and one of my aunts asking whether she would catch up with the sole surviving sister-in-law, to which my grandmother’s reply was that if she saw her she’d knock her down in the street. I quite liked the imagery of two little old ladies fencing with their walking sticks in a little Australian country town.
My other grandmother had wonderful tales to tell, like the one about when the nuns from her convent school came knocking on her door, years after she married, to tell her that because she married outside the Catholic church her two small children were bastards.
I was originally Catholic because my mother is Catholic, of course. However, even when I was very young, I had some doubts about this religion thing. My mother got extremely upset with me around Confirmation time. I asked her what it meant to “be Confirmed” and she explained that I was to “vow to be Catholic and raise my children as Catholics.” I had never been to another church and had no experience with any other type (non-Christian) of religion, so I declined to be confirmed. I don’t think my mother has ever forgiven me for that. But that’s not the story.
When I was around 19 or 20, I had recently joined the Navy and was stationed in Millington, TN for school. I was searching, as we all do, for my spiritial center and met a guy who invited me to his church, an Assemblies of God Pentacostal Christian church. I initially started going just to hang out with him and continued to go because there were cute girls there (as good a reason as any). After I got past the friendship and the girls, I started to really enjoy the whole thing, even going as far as getting baptised into the religion and started calling myself a “born-again” Christian. At some point I was going to the bible studies led by the preacher’s wife and the question of who gets to go to heaven was being discussed. When I realized that, according to thier doctrine, if one had not “accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior,” then you were destined for hell. I questioned again, because my parents being Catholic had not gone through those steps, even though they were devout and generally good people, giving to charity both in time and money, so on and so forth. I was informed that under no circumstances will my parents be allowed entrace into heaven. They were bound for hell. I told the preacher’s wife that if my parents are going to hell, I’m going with them. I left the church and I’ve never been back.
A friend of mine (who’s parents are atheists even though she’s not) once said that she could never belong to any religion that would consign her parents to hell for their disbelief.
I don’t suppose Father Jerome could cite chapter and verse from any of the gospels, showing when or where Jesus said that only marriages inside churches were valid.
Anybody? I’ve searched, but can’t seem to find it.
I don’t know about adultery, but I do know that my parents were married in an Episcopalian church. Years later, when they (mostly my Dad’s family) wanted to baptize my older brother Catholic, they were astounded to find that the bishop would not allow it. Since they had not been married in a Catholic church, apparently they had not been married. Therefore they had to have ANOTHER marriage, going through all the essential Catholic rites, so that they could baptize Charlie (Mahou Sniper) and later me. Strange and annoying, if I do say so myself. And probably expensive and time-consuming, too.
And after all that effort, it didn’t take!
I was keeping a vigil for my best friend, who had suffered a major heart attack, along with her husband and friends from her synagogue. Three of us knew enough about medical science to understand that she would not wake up again; the rest were praying for a miracle. A woman announced to the group, loudly enough for me to hear, that my atheist “vibes” were keeping my friend from recovering. I felt obligated to leave, and had to mourn my friend’s passing alone.
Oh, wow. This one takes the cake for me. That is beyond despicable…I’m so sorry.
1) My mother could not take communion at her mother’s funeral mass because she was divorced from my and my brother’s biological father; and, funny story
2) She divorced a couple more times and married a great man (whom I consider a real father) who for some odd reason was interested in Catholicism (he attributed it to hating his Baptist upbringing and liking his Masonic training); well, she got it in her head he could convert to Catholicism, which somehow held her loyalty and affection still, then she would get her marriages annulled, get remarried to him and voila’ – god is happy with the paper trail and we are fixed UP; but
3) It didn’t happen due to too much paperwork (and money, hmmmm) and I politely pointed out that it would bring in to question the origins of my brother and I…
So, it always reminds me of a comedian who spoke of her post-annulment wedding album as, “Oh, that’s a play I was in…”
Reminds me of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGDndcxH-O4
Gee, my wife and I were married in the church (Catholic) back before we de-converted. I guess that means that we’re not adulterers, right? My wife’s boyfriend and his wife were also married in the church, so she’s double not-an-adulterer! My girlfriend, on the other hand, is unmarried, and her other boyfriend is divorced. His divorce wouldn’t make me an adulterer, would it? :-D
I think you are now technically a superadulterer, which gives you access to content in hell that is normally only available to premium subscribers.
But, I was baptized in a church before I de-converted, so doesn’t that give me a get-out-of-hell-free card?
Although I’m kinda bummed if it means I’ll miss out on all that extra content.
~Joreth
(Datan0de’s unmarried gf with one married bf, one divorced bf, and one married something-more-than-friends)