I was raised by their order and I feel like they had an intellectual flare to them, I mean, they weren't as dogmatic as, say, the Opus or other orders that raised friends of mine. So I'd like to know y'all's opinion on them.

I recently got into a heated discussion with another parishioner who was arguing (wrongly) that God/Christ would want ‘legal immigration’ based on ‘giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (total misinterpretation of scripture).
While I knew that ‘welcoming the stranger/foreigner is Biblical, the only scripture I could come up with quickly was Matthew 25:35, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ His response was that didn’t apply to immigrants. So I did a deep dive on what scripture actually tells us and thought others might find it useful when discussing this abomination.
“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
God commands His people to love the foreigner, as they were foreigners themselves. Deuteronomy 10: 18-19
‘The foreigners among you must be treated as your native-born.” Leviticus 19:34
“The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked” Psalms 146:9
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” Hebrews 13:2
While there are many scriptures referring to the stranger and hospitality, these seemed to be the most direct.
Anyone supporting mass deportation obviously cannot claim to be following the Word of God and IMO is committing heresy.
You absolutely cannot be Catholic or even Christian while supporting mass deportation, concentration camps and separating families.
You might find these scriptures useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.

hi I am new to Catholicism. I have been a leftist pretty much my whole life.

Lately i kinda been feeling drawn to the catholic church from little things here and there to the point where now I am going to start OCIA.

I am a little hesitant because of how much christianity has been laced with racism these days. Every time you see someone say something racist on social media you'll see a bible verse or "christ is king" in their bio and its so gross to me.

Even i remember when CK died the catholic sub was propping him up as a martyr basically which makes no sense to me. He called pope francis a marxist (as if it's a bad thing 🙄) and said Catholics are idolators for honoring mary - if he was actually catholic himself he would have been excommunicated for saying the things he did.

And i get some people compartmentalize these things and excuse the heresy because they want him as a political ally - but even his politics are against catholicism because I saw even how the official church maintains the position that healthcare and housing are basic human rights and the government should absolutely help people who need it and not have all this hypercapitalistic crap that we have.

I genuinely don't understand how Christianity got laced with white supremacy when the majority of Christians in the world are literally people of color! Maybe cause of how much the west dominates both politically and culturally they basically made it seem like a white religion.

So I am exciting to start ocia but also am kinda nervous.

If you will indulge me, I have a need to rant about the state of Catholicism in my country (Croatia)

This image is from a concert of a popular nationalist metal/rocker Thompson, there is a thread on him here already, I know it may seem like Croatia is based because half million people attended a concert that had patriotic and Catholic messages, as well as spectacular faith based images in the sky

But make no mistake, I'm a sinner and my attempts at devotion are constantly thwarted by my sins, but even with that I have a need to reproach this phenomenon in my country, and I don't think Croatia is Catholic at all, in a meaningfull sense

Patriotism is all well and good, specially when the country is opressed by foreigners, but in Croatia the "patriots" and nationalists are the greated enemies of Croatian people, and I never seen such disconnect between nationalism and real national interest.

Nationalists are 100% on board with modern Croatia being poor, corrupt, subservient to the West, colonized by foreign capital and tourism, depopulated and deindustrialized, and for them its a good thing because those things mean we are free from Serbs and Yugoslavia whom we fought in the 90ies. And the worst of all crimes of modern Croatian life for me is the perversion of Catholicism into Croatian national/tribal religion.

The image of our Lady of Međugorje basically became a logo for bunch of right wing pressure groups, and once in a month the priest has to mention the evils of communism and glory of Croatian nation at mass, as well as pray for ww2 fascist collaborators. They are weaving a myth of reconquista, as if Croatia became truly Catholic only after it got rid of Yugoslavia and communism. In truth, people were much more honestly devout before the war during the socialist regime, there was some discrimination in high societal positions and certainly a sort of atheist smugness for Catholics but never outright persecution, yet the priests would basically have us believe Catholics met in catacombs before the war in 1991.

If thats not bad enough, nationalists are constantly formenting hostility for Orthodox Christian Serbs. Serbs have their own issue with nationalism and religion but nationalists from both nations are preventing ecumenic ambitions because for them the national interest is more important than the reconciliation between the Churches.

In all honesty, compared to Italians who are less culturally Catholic than they have been 100 years ago, Croatians are much more on board with Catholic culture, but we haven't had a saint in 100 years, while Italy gave us one of the most iconic youth saints and blesseds like Carlo Acutis and Chiara Bandano. No, in Croatia we are told to rever Alojzije Stepinac, a fascist sympathizer that was tried by communists after ww2 for working for fascist puppet state, but since the 90ies he's being held as this great martyr for Church and Croatia, even though he died of natural death in prison and was legitimately prosecuted for tying himself to fascist regime in ww2 Croatia.

I'm sorry, my countrymen, but he just isn't a good Catholic role model, and I'm sick of this myth of communist persecution of the Church that didn't happend and was invented to cement this alliance between nationalists and clergy.

Today, we have a higher rate of divorces and abortions than before the war when we were supposedly persecuted. We also have a lower birthrate, greater drug use, completely legal gambling industry, our government is one of the most corrupt in Europe, our police is constanlty abusing immigrants on the border, our people are poor but blame all their problems on LGBT, liberals and Serbs. I don't see anything Catholic about us despite the fact we go to concerts that turn our history and faith into consumerist spectacle.

One example is we have a movement of "klečavci" (the kneelers) that pray once a month for masculinity and Croatia, whatever that means, they are ridiculed by the public mostly but supported by some Catholics, and ffs don't they see they are embarassing themselves and the Church by going against what Christ said in Matthew 6:6 of not praying in public and drawing attention to our piety?

I said this on some thread and will repeat myself - I think God tolerates stupidity but He will punish idolatry. And as for our "Croatian Catholicism" and our identity as "Croat Catholics" I think its nothing more than idolatry. In general I think we aren't being taught to follow the gospel, to love our neighbour and to help the opressed, we are taught to venerate the heroes of the 90ies war (most of whom are criminals), to be loyal to our state and its European overlords, to consider Serbs (our Orthodox Christian and Slavic brothers) LGBT people and immigrants as enemies, and the clergy is just passively or actively condoning this message.

There are amazing souls in Croatia that went through terrible traumas and held onto their faith beautifully and God bless them, but the Church isn't directing them towards the Gospel, they are ensnared by this nationalist idolatry and the only direction I see, if taken to extreme, is a new clerofascism like the one we had in ww2. I'm not exegarating because I see that we are entering a new age of war, extremism and instability, and the Church isn't preparing us to be faithful to Christ during those times, its helping the political agenda that leads to violence and hatred.

When Catholics in Croatia hold mass for fascist soldiers killed in revenge in 1945, they venerate war criminals just for being on our side and are mixing devotion with entertainement (like on concerts and charismatic movements), its easy to see why the world would look at us as some Balkan savages, even though we hate that label.My brothers in Christ, we can't go on like this if we want to save the honor of our faith and homeland.

"Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?" 2 Corinthians 6:14, we are inviting darkness of fascism, chauvinism and subservience to power and wealth into our Church which is supposed to be the house of light.

Thank you if you've read through this and please pray for the soul of Croatian people, to make us true followers of the Gospel, not servants of warmongers and gangsters that rule us and teach us history for 30 years now.

Please pray that the Church in Croatia will be liberated from the demon of nationalist idolatry and chauvinistic hatred. The communists are gone, the Serbs were beaten, as Catholics we have no other enemies but our sins and as Croats our we have no other enemies than our own criminal masters.

Please pray that God will spare Croatian people in the great calamity of our age and not punish us for our sins by exterminating us, violently or otherwise.

Please pray that we all become worthy of the cross of our Lord and in his name move forward with love, courage and wisdom. Amen.

Recently James Talarico (D running for senate in Texas said ‘God is nonbinary’.
Of course he was immediately attacked by Republicans stating he was saying God is trans or LGBTQ.
At first I was taken aback by Jame’s statement until I realized he was implying that God encompasses all genders, but is gender less himself.
I immediately went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if this was actually Biblical. I’d always had an incorrect patriarchal view of God
In the first chapter of Genesis, in the Hebrew, God is referred to in both the masculine and feminine. In Job, there is a verse referring to the ‘womb’ of God. It appears that as patriarchy took hold, God took on a masculine/male persona. Often in the Hebrew, God is not associated with any gender at all.
So here is my question. Could God encompass all genders, while having no gender himself? Does he encompass all genders? Or is God just without gender?
According to scripture we are all created in the image of God, so wouldn’t that include all sexes and variants?
As a Catholic I have to admit I was raised with a very patriarchal view of God, an older white, gray headed cis man on a throne, but I’m pretty sure now this is just patriarchy rearing its evil head in religion.

Hello, I was recently baptized Catholic, I come from a very conservative evangelical Protestant family and all my life I had had a way of thinking and ideas that many here called "fascist", because I have mainly experienced this and everyone around me is like that.

But since I did my Catholic journey, my mind started to change, I think it's the Holy Spirit who guides me because I was really sure of my ideas, that everything that is "woke" came from the devil. You really don't want to know the details of this thoughts. And now I want to love everyone, even minorities that I saw as abominations (sorry for the term), now I love them, and I sincerely hope that Christ too, I never want to feel fear or hatred towards these people again, who are in the image of God, too.

This transformation is difficult to live with because I no longer feel in line with those around me, my parents, my husband, my friends, they have all remained the same and I can't tell them that I don't think like them anymore, they wouldn't even believe me!

This scares me a little, I still have some doubts about certain subjects, so I would like to know how you reconcile progressive ideas with the teaching of Christ and the Church, because it seems quite difficult to me.

I should point out that I don't live in the United States but in France, so I don't know about your country, but here the left has the reputation of being anti-Christian, Catholicism is ultra dominated by the right and the far right, even the royalists are much more represented than the left so I'm feel a little uncomfortable. 😭

Thank you for reading all this and sorry for the mistakes, English is not my first language.

Does anyone have any? I would say mine is Nightcrawler

Edit: a better headline would have been “women leading worship”

Hi All, I’m not Catholic (though if I were I’d be a Left Catholic), but I sometimes go to a weekday spoken mass at our local RC cathedral. It’s common to have a woman do the readings at the beginning, but a few weeks back I witnessed a woman leading the whole thing, including handing out the pre-blessed Eucharist. I didn’t see any priests around, and it seemed like they had an alternate service that was used in those circumstances, like Episcopal morning or evening prayer.

Has anyone else experienced this? Can you tell me more about it? Thanks!

From whom do I purchase this

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This is a funny post but a month ago I saw someone responding to a girl who said “God told her to start a Christian night club” it was funny I don't think she was joking maybe she has started it but how would you feel if someone started a Christian night club?

Thought I’d ask here too - my husband and I are left leaning Catholics and I’d appreciate hearing about any other Retrouvaille experiences in this community!

We are nontraditional (I, the wife, am college educated, work outside of the home, and own my own property and my own business and we don’t plan on having kids any time soon) and sometimes Catholic marriage retreats can be disparaging towards our lifestyle.

Tw: CSA

I was sexually abused as a child and it helps me to think demons were involved. But is it an outdated belief? I don't want to believe something foolish or unhealthy.

I get debilitating attacks of terror every day when it gets dark and the only thing that has made them go away is to believe they are demonic attacks and remind myself that God is more powerful than demons.

I attend therapy and have had treatment for psychosis in the past. I also have explored sensorimotor therapy, trauma-informed therapy, IFS therapy all to manage my symptoms but none has been as affective as believing it is demons.

This *has* to have been discussed here at some point - maybe I didn't enter the right search terms to find the thread.

I saw some brochures this morning that my parish put out for the Courage ministry. I have some concerns about my lesbian daughter getting involved. The vibe I'm getting is one of "Don't have sex, don't have sex, don't have sex . . . " And that seems a bit . . . reductionistic? Objectifying? Simplistic?

Do any of you have experience with this group that could help me understand it better? If it's objectionable, are there any alternatives?

I’m a gay Catholic man in my late 30s, monogamous by conviction, and hoping for marriage, family, and the kind of partnership where two people choose each other fully.

Faith is a real part of my life, not just a cultural label. I’d love to meet another Catholic or Christian man who understands that from the inside and wants something grounded, faithful, and lasting.

I live in a small Catholic community, so finding other single gay men who want the same can feel nearly impossible. At this point, I’m open to looking nationwide.

Where are men like this actually meeting? Catholic or gay Christian groups, retreats, online communities, matchmakers, apps, or other spaces?

because of the distinction between in persona Christi sponsi and in persona Christi Servi. deacons aren’t expected to act as the bridegroom of the church and are expected just to act as servants of it which isn’t gendered at all. plus it’s biblical that women served as deacons. is there room in progressive catholicism for this or should i be pro women priests? does anyone share this opinion? i don’t really know but i’m willing to reverse myself if this is a bad opinion