Women Are the “Ebal”

Yes, that’s what I said.  Women are evil, well, according to certain people.  Mainly traddie Catholics and disgustingly, a lot of women.  Especially ones in the traddie camp.  Or ones in the quiverful/patriarchy sects.  And they’re still stuck in my head, give voice to a really nasty element that hates women and is working on making me hate myself for not subscribing and living the way they dictate.  And I want to listen to them because maybe by listening to them life will be better.  My mother will finally love me.  I’ll finally be successful at something.  I’ll be making everybody happy.  What if that is what God really wants for me and I’m disobeying, sinning even by not listening?  I won’t be happy but that doesn’t matter.  I don’t matter.  But the horrible voice is still there.

I finally start therapy in a few weeks after finally making an appointment.  That was scary.  It still is.  What if I that say I’m not sick and that I don’t need help?  What if they say I’m too sick and lock me up for the rest of my life?  The medication only helps a little.  What if I lose my job over this?

I found a WordPress app that finally updates here.  I
wasn’t dead, just not near a computer nor had an app to use.  Plus, work has been really bad. 

The idiot I complained about in the last post is gone but now the idiot I work with opposite grave has turned into an ass.  I believe the asshole is trying to get me fired.  He’s certainly bullying me into doing what he wants by lying about me.  He’s even lied to our boss right in front of me when our boss talked to both of us two weeks ago.  But this ass now has me needing to call into the supervisor when I arrive at work AND making sure that my radio check is a minute before my shift starts even though I don’t get paid for any of it.  Bullied because I’m a woman.  He gets his way and I get punished.  I hate him and I hate how I’m treated.  There’s a lot more going on than I’ve mentioned here but I don’t want that asshole in my head any more than he already is which is way too much.

Darkness and Light

I finally get to go back on my medication.  I went to the doctor this morning and found out that I should have been able to pick up the next phase in my medication but it wasn’t made clear to me.  It totally sucked to find that out.  It also sucked to find out that I needed to tell the pharmacy tech that I had a 90 day  supply and not a 30 day supply to pick up.  I was in tears most of the morning.  But at least I get to go back on the medication.  That should help because this past week has been Hell.

Up till this week, it had been years since I had any sort of suicidal thoughts but this weeks brought about those thoughts.  Thankfully, I didn’t have them long or act on them but they were still there and they still happened.   That’s a really fucked up week.

We have a real ass at work.  I already have to deal with chauvinistic pig (a “man” who sees women as objects to please him sexually) and a misogynistic pig ( “man” that sees women as less than and worthless than men and as property and not people) at work, now I’ve got another pig who is a misogynistic pig that is also a bully and a tattle tale.  I have to give this “man” a break in the morning but he refuses to leave (which is against state law, I think, and our post orders), talks down to me, treats me like I’m an idiot, and tells me how to do my job when I’ve worked there longer and know more than he does.  But I’m not the only one he does this to.  He’s also been a bully to other coworkers (male) and harasses our supervisors (though the one doesn’t care) but until he does something really egriguous he won’t be fired.  He’s taken the tactic of wearing us down so that it gets to the point that we are so tired of dealing with him that we won’t say anything so that he gets away with all this since all we want to do is do what we have to and then leave.

Thursday I got so fed up with his attitude that I told him that he needed to leave for his break (like I said this is the rule) and that if he didn’t leave then I was going to leave and he wasn’t going to get a break.  He whined at me that it was cold out.  Well, duh but if I have to work out in it and in much worse weather, he can walk out in it for a few minutes.  He has his jacket on but no, he whined.  I told him he needed to leave.  He told me I could call the supervisor and tell him that he wouldn’t leave.  I told him again that he needed to leave otherwise he wouldn’t get a break and I would leave.   He told me he wasn’t leaving and I told him fine, then he wasn’t getting a break and then left.  He then calls the supervisor to whine about me.  The supervisor then talks to me that I needed to give this asshole a break, in the future, and that if he didn’t want to leave that was okay.  He also said that if he didn’t want a break that was okay but I still needed to write it down in my log that he took one  (which is illegal since our logs are legal documents and that would be perjury and fraud and against the law because he legally has to take a break).  I felt that this asshole was being given all the consideration and I was the one being punished.  I hate how bad coworkers are rewarded and good coworkers are ignored or punished for their bad coworkers bad behavior.  I know all this will turn into something really bad but I’ll be the one hurt and the asshole will get off scot free.

Then there was this thread at CAF and all I wanted to do was give voice to the narcissistic, self-righteous, wrathful asshole that has become a voice in my head.  I wanted to log in under a fake handle and tell her that yes, her daughter is immodest, should be learning how to be a wife and mother not involved in worldly concerns and that these people were right in breaking off the friendship because not only was the daughter bad but the mother is horrible as well. That nasty voice wanted to tell her that her daughter needed to be in dresses all the time as well as her while wearing veils, that Facebook was of the devil, that they both needed to understand that being a wife and mother was the only thing a girl was good for, that they needed to stick permanently to the EF parish because OF parishes are hotbeds of immorality and heresy, and that her and her husband needed to find their daughter a husband fast and have her married as soon as she turned 18.  They also needed to spank her (so what if she is 16) and restrict all her outside access to just Mass and Adoration.  She should not be allowed friends at all.  Her family was all the friends she needed.  She was already in the devil’s clutches and that meant she was leading men and her friends into sin.  They needed to get back on the real Catholic track and things would be right.  Homeschooling wasn’t enough.  They needed to be completely cuff off from all evil influences.

I hate that voice but that voice is now there from the traditionalists, the whole quiverfull/patriarchy garbage that I have read and come in contact with.  What’s worse is that the quiverfull/patriarchy garbage has seeped into Catholic circles especially homeschool and traditionalist circles.  You can see some of it in these friends of the thread’s OP and in other threads on CAF.  I don’t know why this garbage is so exciting and enticing but it is.

This garbage promises control and power and the right path to God and holiness and being better and truly Catholic than Catholics.  You see it every time a new Michael Voris video comes out.  The traditionalists support his rhetoric and name calling and condemning of fellow Catholics and definitely priests and those that see Voris what his video and rhetoric really are are shot down, called heretics and liars and Protestants, and  doing all the same stuff that make Voris problematic to say the least.  Traditionalists don’t crave truth, they crave being right and public adulation for being right and true “Catholics” all the while demeaning and even hurting other Catholics for not agreeing with them.  This thread talks about this pretty well.  Traditionalists are extremely focused on the external thinking this is all that matters when it comes to determining the real Catholic from the Protestant.  They don’t care that the Church Herself allows a lot of variety in prayer and worship.  To traditionalists, external reality determines not only internal reality (which it rarely, if ever, does) it also determines the need for everyone to conform and  who is really a REAL CATHOLIC and who is not.  Actually, traditionalists want conforming and uniformity not unity.  They don’t understand that unity and uniformity don’t mean the same thing.  They don’t want them to be separate things.

For unity and uniformity to be separate things, then they would have to accept that there is more than the EF, more than prayers in Latin, more than living in 1960 with every family like that in Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best.  They are so stuck on externals that they don’t see the trees for the forest.  Uniformity means that everything is going the way they want it and doing what they want.  They want clones and automatons not real individuals.  Individuals are to be despised and forced into conformity not appreciated and grateful for being made individuals by God.  Traditionalists are trying to dictate to the Church and to God on how they want to run the Church, which is funny since this is what they accuse other Catholics of doing.

Reading how the rod verse means understanding and developing the child’s abilities and talents from this post by Elizabeth Esther had me in tears.  When all you were taught was fear and terror and pain, having your abilities and talents recognized is hard to handle or consider because that would mean that you were seen as a person worthy of love and respect not an object to be reviled and punished.  I have a hard time understanding or even accepting or even considering that I have talents and abilities.  I wasn’t encouraged to have dreams and the dreams I had very squashed and reviled.  Even right now I have no dreams for the future because the one dream I had and nurtured was dashed repeatedly.  What’s the point in having dreams when all they are going to be is destroyed.  I don’t have dreams.  All I care about now is surviving and getting through the work week.  I have no future.  No possibility of advancement or achievement, no possibility of doing anything useful with my life.

I was raised to fear everything which colors my life so much today.  I look at the things I’ve done like graduate with two different bachelor’s degrees or travel abroad and wonder how I even achieved those kinds of things because all I ever heard was that I was a failure and that I wouldn’t amount to anything.  I did everything to please my parents especially my mother but it was never enough.  I was never smart enough, pretty enough, athletic enough, good enough, helpful enough, etc.  I didn’t act exactly as she wanted.  I wasn’t a boy.  I wasn’t perfect though I certainly acted that way thinking it would help.  I was always afraid.  Always afraid to set her off.  Always afraid of doing something wrong and I would be punished and screamed at.  The spanking wasn’t nearly as bad as the screaming.  My mother loved to scream at me.  She loved to shame me and make me feel guilty for every little thing. I still feel that shame today.  I still heap that shame on myself.

I mess up and I blame myself, telling myself I am a failure, that I should have done better, that I knew better and shouldn’t have done it, that I shouldn’t eat that or I needed to lose weight because I am so fucking fat, that I am going to Hell for not being good enough, that God hates me and can’t love me because I’m such a screw up and that if I wasn’t such a horribly evil person things would be so much better, that all the bad stuff that happens like traffic are punishment for my screws up like getting up late and getting to work on time rather than twenty minutes early.  Any more I feel like I need to be punished.  That if I was punished then everything would be better.  That my mother would finally love me.  That I would have friends.  That God would finally love me.  That I would be acceptable as a person.

But I am not punished and I think that I so far gone that I can’t be saved, can’t be helped.  I feel that I need to be punished for God to really love me since that’s how my mother worked.  She spanked me and screamed at me therefore she loved me, right?  I ruined her life when I was sick as the age of six but she didn’t get rid of me like she always threatened.  She kept saying I was going to hell for being a bad girl but I’m already in hell so I’ll never be a good girl even though I was very much the good girl for a very long time.  I thought being the good girl would keep me safe from punishment but it didn’t.  I expect to be punished for every little screw up and sin so even as an adult I have to see bad things as punishments for my very bad decisions (I’m not capable of making good decisions) by God.  I only learned about a God who punishes, not a God loves, well a God who loves everyone else but me.  I’m not lovable.  I’m only good for being punished.  I need to be punished.  Why doesn’t God really punish me like I deserve?  Give me a terrible, incurable disease.  Cause me to be a horrible accident where I lose all physical function.  Kill me.  Punish me. That’s all I deserve.  Love is only for good people.  I am not a good person.  Never have been.  I deserve to die not to live.  Isn’t that what everybody wants?

I hate that I am in this place.  These last few weeks have been hell and this past week pure hell, so bad that I have considered suicide.  Depression is no fun.  I don’t think it will ever get better.  This hell is where I will always live.  That’s what it feels like.

 

In the Box

No, I’m not in the penalty box in a hockey game.  It’s where I feel I am in regards to several issues that I’m dealing with right now.

First, the medication I am on now does actually seem to be working.  However, switching from being a graveyard shift to a dayshift is causing havoc on my body.  It’ll be several months before everything settles down. With the new schedule, I have managed to get away from one of the biggest work problems and that’s a good thing for me.  My body and mind still haven’t realized it yet but they will and things will be much better.  Another good thing about being on dayshift is that I am doing a lot more so my energy level goes up.  It also means I’m more tired at the end of the day but I also feel like I accomplished things and actually did something.

Second, I am and am not sure I can handle going back to Mass.  I was able to finally attend an All Saints day vigil Mass Monday night.  Yet, I am having problems with the thoughts in my head.  Reading the stupid crap traditionalists have written on CAF and whatnot have really screwed me up.  I still have thoughts about how to bash on women (they worthless, useless, always causing men to sin, should be stay at home mothers and wives, women are property, never to be educated, etc) which is really bad since I’m a woman.  I hate that I’ve learned to hate myself because of my sex.  My own family didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was a woman.  I had to figure that out on my own.  I was made to hate and ignore my own body because I was a woman and because I wasn’t what my parents wanted.  Now in my attempts to get away from that I’m running right back into it from so called traditionalists and faithful Catholics.  I won’t even get into the whole Quiverfull/Patriarchy/Vision Forum fringe garbage.  It’s like any advancements women have made are forgotten or ignored or labeled satanic and that if women just went back to being their husbands’ slaves then everything would be perfect.  No it wouldn’t.  Denying who you are and what you like and squashing all that down and stuffing it into a box is bad but that’s what many want.  They think of women as children and property not as people.  And many of the people with this attitude are WOMEN.  Why do women fear other women so much that they have to strike out and hurt them?

Third, I’m still stuck on the idea that other people get to do things that I am not allowed to do.  Like, they get to be happy and I have to be miserable.  They get to have dreams and lives they want and all I get is a dead end job with no possibility of advancement and stuck for the next thirty years.  Or they get to live their faith however they want (with in reason) and I have to follow a strict regime of rules and prayers and still not be a good Catholic.  Or that they get to spank and I don’t.  Now, I don’t advocate spanking but this is where this all stems from.  I got spanked, largely for anything and everything, especially for stuff my sisters did, while my sisters got rarely spanked if at all.  At least, growing up, I figured on some level that eventually I would be able to spank someone smaller and weaker than me and my rage and anger would be satisfied.  I feel like this got taken away from me, that my ability to spank and punish and hurt and let out the rage and anger were taken away from me and all I’m left with is this feeling of being told to suck it up this is the way things are going to be from now.  That’s it.  But wait, nobody else had these things taken from them because they never had them in the first place.  My sisters never had the rage or the anger or the pointless blaming for other people’s wrongs.  I got all that but they got away with murder and it hurts.  It hurts that they had my mother’s love and all I had was my mother’s anger and rage.  That’s the legacy she left me.  She never showed me love.  It was either rage, anger, neglect, or indifference.  Very little praise and never any love.

I think this is why I have a hard time making women friends (plus, I’ve been “betrayed” by several girl friends in the past) and look for someone to take her place.  I never had a mother in the emotional sense.  I physically have a mother but we have no emotional connection.   She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her.  What little love she did have she gave to my sisters.  Now I’m not saying my mother is evil or bad.  I realize, after reading several psychology books, that she was raised this way and didn’t make the choices to break free of this parenting.  It wasn’t largely her fault, it’s just the failings of past generations that have continued on down to mine.  My dad’s family wasn’t much better but his was also much larger and much different.  There was affection but my dad didn’t really know how to relate to having all girls.  They still are guilty of some things but not everything.

So I have a hard time with the concept of a loving God.  Distant, sure.  Occasionally there for a special moment, definitely.  But unconditional love is not something I’ve ever know or experienced so it’s not something I can fathom.  It’s too difficult.  It’s not real.  It can’t be real.  Someone love me for me?  You have to be kidding me.  I’m used to conditional love.  Being loved only for what I can do and not being loved when I can’t.  Only being “loved” when I make someone else look good.  I understand unconditional love in an intellectual sense but not in a heart/emotional sense because like I’ve said, I’ve never experienced it.  Yet I am asked to believe something I cannot wrap my mind around, that I am loved.  Actually, it’s more like I don’t want to believe.  When you’ve been unlovable as long as I have, being loved really screws things up.

I have no emotional attachment to the Catholic faith, at least it doesn’t engender an emotional response in me.  I almost feel burned out, numb even.  I don’t want to go to Mass. Confession, sure.  It’s the first step in going back but yet, it’s easier and harder as well.  I believe everything the Church teaches but the people make it hard.  The people and Jesus.  I don’t connect with any of them.  Being emotionally damaged, it is hard.  Right now, I’m not sure I can handle Mass.  I need to go but my body and my emotions can’t handle it.  Not right now.

 

Out with the Old Medication, In With the New; Women are Evil; and Abuse is Here to Stay

These are not all that I want to write about.  I’ve been trying to get away from really long titles.

These week in my depression: new medication.  The first one didn’t work at all.  It kept me wired instead of helping me sleep which not good for my mental health.  I need sleep to even remotely be on an even emotional keel.  So the one medication is out and a new one is in.  Hopefully, this one will work much better.

The last month has been difficult with all the changes at work. Dealing with the good supervisor leaving, being targeted by the bad supervisor, and having to deal with a misogynist jerk who refuses to work unless he is being watched by the supervisor.  Add another jerk who refuses to work and you have a disaster just waiting to explode.  The only consolation (and I know I’m bad for feeling this way) is that these idiots are on the bad supervisors shift.  They can deal with them.  There are some other issues at work that I can’t get into here but one that I can get into is the poor pay scale.  I top out at my next eval which is in December.  I will make the maximum amount for my position unless they give me a cost of living increase or I make supervisor which doesn’t seem likely since they keep hiring men.  At least I have the opportunity to switch to a day shift with the two individuals who got promoted to supervisor leaving their shifts.

Apparently, tonight is going to be one of my bad nights.  I think some of it is lack of sleep (doctor’s appointment yesterday morning threw off my sleep schedule), hormones (I should be getting my period in about the next 24 hours) and the depression.  I am in tears right now and I don’t know why.  But if I don’t continue writing, even in tears, I won’t get this post finished.

 

This post from And Sometime Tea (another Catholic blog) has a post on Blaming Women.  Some highlights:

A third thing also needs to be said: the reason for including the story out of Phoenix with the second piece is not because of the story itself, but because of the jubilant reaction to the story which I’ve seen in some corners of the internet. I don’t want to cite any specific comments because I’m not out to start a blog/FB/etc. war, but there have been more than a few of which the tone has been something like “It’s about time they kicked those blankety-blank girls off of the altar–they’ve ruined everything.” 

And that brings me to my point.

When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, the first thing he did was run off and leave Eve alone to deal with the serpent (which, according to Dr. Scott Hahn, was a fearsome dragon-like beast, not merely a little garter snake). The second thing he did was let Eve convince him to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit. And the third thing he did, when God asked him about it, was to point the finger of blame at the woman who was of his own flesh and say, “Hey, it was her fault! She made me do it.”

Given how longstanding a tradition it is, then, for men to tend to blame women for things that go wrong, it shouldn’t be surprising to encounter that attitude in regard to such things as female altar servers, immodestly dressed churchgoers, and (if we may be honest) tons of other church-related issues, from issues dealing with women who have the audacity to show up with the noisy, wiggly products of their fertility in tow (and who, gasp, sometimes even nurse them while still on church property!) to women who sing at you to women who get up and do some of the readings to women who respond when Father asks people to help out as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. All of this, if you have a certain male mindset, is the fault of the women. It is not the fault of men who gave permission (however it was granted) for female altar servers; it is not the fault of men who let their daughters out their front doors dressed for Mass as if they hoped to solicit in the parking lot afterward (if, indeed, things are really that bad; I’ve never encountered anything quite so horrible as the writer of the second piece describes, but then, I’m female, and tend to see in unfortunately-revealing clothing nothing but a fashion mistake that the woman will hopefully correct when she becomes aware of the problem); it is the fault of women for having children and expecting those children to attend Mass–or for not arranging for babysitting etc. so the children don’t have to bother anyone until they’re old enough to be altar servers; it is the fault of women that women tend to outnumber male singers in the average parish choir by a ratio of at least three or four to one; it is the fault of women that women also outnumber the men who are willing to lector at Mass; and it is clearly the fault of women that male priests ask for Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and that, once again, far more women than men show up in response.

I’ve seen and read comments made by men and women who say much worse than what the blogger posts.  I mean much worse, to the point that it is advocated that women be locked up and they are going straight to hell.  Because of these things I think these kinds of horrible thoughts, that I am evil, that I am at fault for men’s sins, that I am not loved by God and that God doesn’t even concern Himself with me.  Traddies are the worst because they use “tradition” as defined by them to execute this kind of oppression of women and no, I’m not talking about altar servers or readers.  They want women to be stay at home daughters who become stay at home mothers who have twenty children, who wait on their husband hand and foot, and are so useless and sinful that they will never get to heaven.  Actually, they are not unlike the Quiverfull/patriarchy movement in fundamentalist evangelical Protestantism.  They just dress it up with things like “tradition” and pull quotes out of context from papal documents saying, “See, even previous popes said women are evil and need to stay at home.”  Which is entirely untrue when you read the WHOLE document in context.

I hate that people still hate women and make women hate themselves while convincing themselves that this is a “holy, Catholic” thing to do.  It’s not.

 

Michael Pearl’s work is back in the news again due to a third child death.  Hana Williams is the third reported victim of Pearl’s “child training” ideology.  Why Not Train a Child? has several good posts about this latest little victim.  I suggest reading all the links in the posts.

Reactions to Hana Williams Story

 

A Closer Look at Pearl’s Teachings and their Relations to three deaths

The Parents of Hana Williams plead not guilty (several news accounts are listed)

The Pearls’ Official Response (I suggest having a bucket near by when reading this spew of lies)

A Closer Look at the Pearls’ Teaching and Adoption  (Hana was a child that had been adopted from Ethiopia by the Williams and had several medical and mental health issues)

A link from Why Not about older adoption which I link here just because it needed to stand on it’s own

This post about children and the myth of my happiness is a good example of the culture of death/culture of me first, always first

 

Anger, Rage, and Abuse

This post at Why Not Train a Child? really highlights some of the issues I have today.  The anger that I was not allowed to acknowledge or express when I was a child when my mother spanked me usually for something I didn’t do (my mother just preferred to spank me).

I was not allowed to be angry.  Anger was bad.  Only Mommy could be angry and when Mommy got angry I was in deep trouble.  When Mommy was angry, I was scared.  Even when Mommy wasn’t angry, I was scared because I didn’t know what would set her off.  It didn’t matter if I did or didn’t do something, if one of my sisters did something, I was the one that got in trouble, got screamed and yelled at, got spanked.  I was the Bad Girl.  I couldn’t do anything right and Mommy didn’t love me when I was bad.  I was almost always bad.  Bad Girls like me go to Hell.

Now I have a lot of anger and rage that boils under the surface and it wants out.  But I’m not allowed to be angry or have rage.  As a woman, we are taught that we are to be nice and happy and cheerful and never feel anything bad.  As a victim of abuse, I was taught that my anger was bad.  That my feelings were bad.  That I was bad.  When I was being abused, I didn’t know that I was being abused.  I thought everyone went through the same thing.  Everyone got yelled and screamed and spanked by their mother.

Now I know I have anger and rage and it sits there.  Sometimes it’s pretty quiet and I don’t have to worry about it coming out.  Then there are other times (like reading garbage by traddies) that it just wants to burst out and beat the crap out of somebody.  But I’m not allowed to have anger or emotions.  Feelings are bad.  Other people can have them.  I can’t.  I have to hide, squash the anger and the rage and deny it’s existence if I want to be even remotely acceptable as a person.  Other people are allowed to feel and express anger.  I am not.  I am expected to keep quite and be nice and happy.  But I can’t.  I just want to pound the stuffing out of something.  I feel like if I don’t get the anger and rage out then it will consume me, that I’ll end up in jail (not because of what I did but because of me) or locked up in a mental hospital because I am not socially acceptable to my family (which I already am not) or to society (which I pretty much am not anyways).  I feel like there are rules and expectations and freedoms for everyone and that those rules and expectations and freedoms are different or are not allowed for me at all.  Other people get to have fun and have friends and be loved.  I am not allowed to have fun or have friends or be loved.  I am not worthy of those things.  I am BAD.  Therefore, I must be so horrible that a whole set of rules apply just to me.  I am not allowed to have anger while everyone else is.  They are allowed to express their anger and there are not consequences while I am not allowed to have anger at all and if I showed that anger in anyway or even just felt it then I would need to be harshly punished.  Remember, I am BAD.  I deserve to be punished.

That mentality led me to doing some very harsh things to myself because I believed that if I was punished enough then everything would be alright, that I would be good enough, that I would be finally lovable, that I would be worthy, that I wouldn’t be arrested and thrown in jail for the rest of my life (still not sure where this came from but it was a major fear for many years; I still get anxious any time I see a police car even though I have never committed a crime and have had mostly positive interactions with the police).  I am not the only one.  I also call myself names, hit myself in the thighs ( I didn’t want anybody to see or know how bad I really was).  While I wasn’t raised in a patriarchal/quiverful/fundamentalist/traditionalist household I was raised in a household that had a mother that believed in corporal punishment and kept a paddle in the kitchen in open view and was very willing to use it. I felt by punishing myself I could stop my mother from punishing and abusing me.  Granted, a lot of what I did I didn’t do until I was in my teens.

I remember once (I don’t remember what I did) that I believed I had been so bad that I couldn’t sleep in my own bed but rather had to sleep on the floor in the downstairs bathroom (which had a shower stall, a toilet and sink so it was quite small and it was off the laundry room).  I remember being in tears not wanting to be sleeping in the bathroom but knowing that I had to sleep there because I was so bad.  I was in there for some time.  I even lay on the floor, so much in tears, thinking this was the only way to make things better.  Eventually, I left the bathroom and slept in my own bed.  The thing is, nobody knew what I had done.  It was the middle of the night and everyone but I was asleep.  I didn’t know that at the time I was depressed.  I just thought I was worthless and needed to be punished.

Even on my own as an adult I’ve felt that I needed to be punished.  I remember cooking one of those pasta dinners in a box.  I hadn’t been watching it and a lot of it stuck to the bottom of the pan and parts were burned.  I have to step back a moment and add that I struggle with my weight and how I view my body.  Even though I was never overweight till very recently, I was never a size 2 either.  I was healthy.  Yet my mother saw me as fat and called me fat and stupid to my face.  Even when I was a size 6 and had actually lost weight (when you live somewhere where you have to walk everywhere to do anything you lose weight) my mother still called me fat to my face.  She also didn’t like the fact that I was a vegetarian at that time (though it was fine when K decided to be a one) Well, I saw that burned food and while regular people would probably throw it out and/or salvaged the part that wasn’t burned, I decided that since I had screwed up so badly and that I couldn’t waste food because that would be a sin, that I had to eat the burned part and then starve myself to lose weight.  And yes, I am in tears at this point.  I was forced to eat a lot of food I didn’t like or couldn’t eat (there are foods due to texture or the digestive reaction that I have that I can’t eat certain food) growing up.  I think I ate three bites of it, in tears (which is what I am right now, in tears), and eventually threw it away even though I believed that I would be going to hell for wasting food like that.  As you can tell, I still have problems with food even as an adult who can cook and eat anything she wants.

At this point, I am going to have to stop.  I am getting too upset.  And I don’t want to make my depression worse.

Why I Need to Get In Touch With My Inner Bitch: The Traddies are At It Again

After reading this post at The Church Fanatic (I am in the process of writing an article about it for this blog but I am doing a lot of research for it so it will be a while) and seeing this thread at CAF, it seems like the Traditionalists are trying to out-extreme the extreme fundamentalists.  What’s worse, is that they seem to be able to convince innocent people that their opinions are Church dogma and that if they don’t follow they are going to Hell.  To top that, I get persuaded that I am not being a good enough Catholic, I start thinking all these horrible thoughts that I need to dress in a burqa, consider myself leading men into sin if they see my wrist, and that I need to go to the Latin Mass because the Mass I attend isn’t good enough even though I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near those kinds of people and there isn’t one near me anyways.

Actually, traditionalists have had such an impact on me that my thoughts go towards thinking

-I am horrible just for being born a woman (not true) (what’s worse is hearing this kind of claptrap from women who hate themselves) God made me woman.  God doesn’t make junk therefore I am not horrible for being born a woman

-not wearing skirt/dresses all time means I’m not dressing right (I’ve gained so much weight due to my depression that I only fit into my pants)

-that I need to be a stay at home mom (I’m not married nor do I feel called to marriage and I have to stipulate that this thought is along the lines of I have to be a stay at home mom but everyone else that is other women can have careers and hobbies and such while I have to stay home and never go out except to Mass) ( it goes along with my depression and the thought processes that I learned/fell into growing up) I was taught/learned that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t athletic enough, wasn’t pretty enough so the only thing I was good for was being a mother and staying home.  Yes, my mother used to tell me I was stupid, that I wouldn’t amount to anything, and that I was going to Hell.  Can we say screwed up?  Oh, she loved to tell me I was fat when I was a size 6.

-that I am going to Hell because I’m not getting it, not living the Catholic faith “right”, not praying the Rosary 24/7 (I actually pray three decades of it on the way home from work because the local Catholic radio station airs it when I get off in the morning but I have issues with the concept to mother and Mary as my mother when my own mother abused me.  Plus, I want a mother all to myself and not one I have to share.  I know that’s selfish but that’s where I’m at emotionally when it comes to healing from the mother’s abuse.  Again, this comes from the traditionalists who want conformity and uniformity and not the universality that is the Church.  Traditionalists are so focused on the external that Jesus and God are practically forgotten except as a hammer to beat people over the head with to force people to follow the “traditionalist’ way of doing things.

There are more and they are usually worse at work (I work graveyard security and the radio doesn’t work in my patrol vehicle so I’m left with my thoughts).  Suffice it to say, I need to get in touch with my inner bitch.  What I mean by that is accepting and being pleased with the fact that I am a woman, that I have power as woman, and that I can and do make things happen.  That I can and should stand up for myself.  That taking care of myself is okay.  That I matter as a person.  That I am worthy of love and respect, not because of what I do but because of who I am.

I am me and that is Good.

I do not need to be afraid of me as I was taught.  I am not a bad person because my mother said so or because I don’t adhere to some anonymous traditionalist’s ideal.

I am me and God is okay with that.  He loves me for me.  He created me.  Like I said,  He doesn’t make junk.

 

 

Depression Sucks

As the title says, depression sucks.  I’m stuck in a spiral, out of control, everything is getting worse world where no one even notices that I’m hurting or refuses to acknowledge it or want me to hide everything I feel because making them feel bad is the unforgivable sin.

I’m too fat.  Jeans I only bought two months ago have become too small.  I seem to gain weight even though I don’t eat bad food full of sugar.

I’m so bad that I deserve to go to Hell just like my mother and the traditionalists always say.  I starting to really believe it.  I must not be lovable or likable and I certainly don’t have any talents or gifts.  I’m just a useless, worthless, waste of space that deserves to die.  People would be much happier if I was gone.   I’m not even a person.  I don;t matter.  No one notices or cares if I’m here or not.  People say God does but it He cares about everyone so I’m not even a blip on the radar.  People say they at I’m doing this for attention, that I stay this way because I like being a victim.  No I fucking to do not want to be this way.

I want to be loved,  I want to be good at something.  I want to be a person.  I want to be cared for.  I want to be noticed and remember.  I want to go to Heaven not be damned to Hell.  I want to be special.  I want to be the go to person.  I want to be perfect.  I want to be more than a stupid mental illness. I want not to cry anymore.  I want to have actual dreams that actually come true rather than having to squash them in order to make everyone else happy or because I always make bad decisions.  I want to make good decisions.  I want to be thin.  I want to be pretty instead of the real ugly idiot that I am.  I want to be more.  I don’t want to have to settle for scraps.  I want to be free.  I don’t want to be like my mother.  I want to be me whoever that is.  I want to be a real woman not the fake woman everyone else wants me to be.  I don’t want to be the boy my parents wanted and so when they were disappointed that I wasn’t they abused and neglected me.  I don’t want to be abused or hurt.  I want to be accepted for who I am.  I want traditionalists to shut up and get lost.  I want to be something.  I want to be a federal agent.  I want people to take me seriously.  I want people to stop ignoring me.  I want people to acknowledge that a single woman is not a heresy or bad person or a failure or not a person because she isn’t married or has kids or what not.  I don’t want to keep eating emotionally.  I don’t want to be fat.  I want to be real.

 

 

 

There’s Something About Mary (with some help from a Fransiscan Brother)

Until a few days ago and a few post by Brother JR on CAF, I did not have a good outlook or view of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Now, I didn’t have a problem with her being the mother of Jesus or being ever virgin or conceived without sin.  I understand and accept all the Church’s teachings on Mary.

I did have a problem with people who claimed the Rosary was a “magic cure-all” and that just praying it once would fix all the problems in your life and you would be so holy and perfect afterwards.  I am not a big fan of the Rosary and it is nice that it is a private devotion that is not demanded of us.

As I have posted before, my  mother abused me while I was growing up so I have a problem with mothers and yes, the Blessed Virgin Mary is included in that.  She’s someone else’s mom.  NOT mine.  Yet, I would read and hear about people who supposedly had problems with their mother (I love the ones that compared her having a fight with her mother to the severe emotional, physical, and sexual abuse another poster mentioned and said that after praying to Mary once her relationship with her mother fixed and everything was better and that the abuse victim just needed to pray the Rosary and ask Mary to be her mother and her real life mother would be healed and they would become best friends) (gag me with a spoon) saying that they went to Mary and their own relationships with their mother was fixed or they took on Mary as their mother.  Abuse is hard and it takes an extreme toll on its victims.  We are not healed magically by saying a prayer and asking someone we have no interest or connection to to be our mother and heal all the damage that was done to us by someone who was supposed to love and care for us.  So when people told me that I could have the Blessed Virgin Mary as my mother, all I could think, was no, she’s somebody else’s mother and I’m without a mother who will love me.  People just don’t understand what that means.  It’s not like I can snap my fingers and everything will be fixed and healed and there will no longer be abuse in the world.  It doesn’t work that way.  I want my own mother but I’ll never have one because the one I had didn’t want me and didn’t love me and there is nothing that will change those facts.

Then there is the whole idea that Mary did nothing beyond give birth to Jesus and then led a quite life hidden in the background and was a two-dimensional background character.  Many Catholics, especially traditionalist Catholics, see Mary as someone who was practically invisible and the only model for women. They say that women need to be Mary-like and to them that means: quiet, servile (not in the loving service to others but more like a slave), inferior to men, baby-factory, stay-at-home mother, no emotions, no personal opinions, no education, passive, no personality, does everything that a man tells her to do, basically not even a real person but a robot.

Then there are the posts by Br. JR, a Fransiscan Brother of Life that tell the truth about Mary (and about women in general).  I’ll let his words speak for themselves.

First:

In fact, the Catholic Church was probably the most liberal institution when it came to women. Long before there was a women’s movement, Catholic women were very independent and powerful. It’s just not that noticeable in light of today’s culture. However, if you look at it in light of the world prior to Vatican II, Catholic women rather liberal compared to their Protestant counterparts.

We have a long history of women founders of religious congregations, monasteries and even some orders. Men did not govern these communities. In women’s monasteries, the Abbess ruled and no man ruled over her. In a religious congregation the Mother Superior ruled. In Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages and other Catholic institutions the sisters ruled.

These women ran their own institutions, managed their own property, had money and budgets, made laws that governed them, traveled around the world without permission and supervision from men. Some abbesses ran dioceses. A few wonderful examples are: Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa, Frances Xavier Cabrini, Katherine Drexel, and Elizabeth Ann Seton. These women were missionaries, pioneers in their fields of ministry and leaders in the Church. Mother Teresa was the most recent of these powerful women and she began her work in the world circa 1946, during the WW II era, but long before Vatican II.

No one dared to contradict them, not even the bishops. They were a force to be reckoned with. Teresa of Avila had a wit that could outshine any bishop or Jesuit. Mother Teresa made Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II nervous, though they loved her.

Elizabeth Ann Seton gave Archbishop Carroll a run for his money. When he gave her the statutes that St. Vincent de Paul had written for the Daughters of Charity so that she could model her congregation on St. Louise de Marillac, Elizabeth gave them back to the Archbishop and said that she would not lead the new congregation because there was no place for a mother in the statutes. Elizabeth simply told Archbishop Carroll, “I’m a mother first.” Archbishop Carroll had to add to the statutes that those sisters who were mothers could keep their children and raise them. As I understand it, there were two widows with children in the original group.

About Mary:

I’m not sure if I agree with the image that some people paint of being like Mary, because I would never say that Teresa of Avila or Mother Teresa were unlike Mary. I believe the opposite. They were very much like Mary. Like Mary, they conformed to Christ in all things.

If we look at Mary, she was a very strong figure, not a retiring figure at all. We know that she lived in different cities, that she followed the Church as it grew. She did not spend her life in retirement in Nazareth. We see her in Jerusalem when Jesus is crucified. Jerusalem was more than two days away from Nazareth in those days. Why was she there? She did not live there. The only conclusion is that she followed her son and his disciples to Jerusalem. We hear from the Church Fathers that she was in Ephasus after the Ascension. Why? She was with the Church, probably with John, according to Polycarp. Luke tells us that she went to the Hill Country to visit Elizabeth. Scholars believe that this may be the area that we call the Golan Heights, which is quite a distance from Nazareth. Regardless of Elizabeth’s physical address, she did not live in the same city. Mary goes out to her. Back then, women did not travel without their husbands. But tradition does not mention Joseph being present in Elizabeth’s home or at John’s birth. However, it tells us that Mary was present and probably three months pregnant when she returned home and rejoined Joseph.

We also see Mary in Cana. From the wording of the story, one can extrapolate that Jesus was with her, not the other way around. She was the invited guest and Jesus and his friends went with her to the wedding. This is inferred in the familiarity between Mary and the servants. No one approaches Jesus with the concern about the wine, as would have been the proper thing to do. Mary speaks to the servants with authority, “Do whatever he tells you.” It is probable that she died in Ephesus, which is a long way from Nazareth, if not in Jerusalem.

We tend to paint Christian women, especially Mary, as more demure and retiring than is historically true. I’ve often wondered if it may be a cultural influence, more than a Catholic influence. The Orthodox have the same stories about Mary, independent of the Western Church. They also have ancient legends that portray a more dynamic Mary and their nuns are also very independent and very influential in their Churches.

My answer to your question is that this absence of women in the forefront has nothing to do with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass or even with being Catholic. It’s really the culture or preference of a community. If you begin to tell women that they cannot do things that are not prohibited, that’s when you fall into gender discrimination. If women want to assume a more retiring role, of their own free will, there’s no rule that says they cannot do so.

And then there’s:

To understand how St. Therese understood Mary, you may want to read what I wrote in Post 33. St. Therese is identifying with Mary the contemplative, which is very true. She is not implying that Mary lived a hidden life or an inactive life. That is contrary to Carmelite Tradition. Carmelite tradition teaches us the opposite . . . Mary was very involved in the life and ministry of her son and the early Church. At the same time, she was also the contemplative. If we could blend Bl. Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese into one person, we would have a more complete picture of the historical Mary.

We have created an image of Mary that is more consistent with out imagination than with history. Our image of Mary is the quiet woman who is in the background and who is demure, says and does very little because she is humble.

Mary is humble. However, humble means honest. She is certainly that when she says that all generations shall call her Blessed. That’s not a demure woman speaking. That’s a woman who is very confident about herself and her role in Salvation History. She is very active in Jesus ministry. She’s present at many events, times and places outside of Nazareth. History tells us that she did not remain in Nazareth, but traveled with the Church as far as Ephesus. We’re not sure whether her last day on earth was at Ephesus or in Jerusalem, but we know one thing for sure. It was not in Nazareth in the quiet of her home. We also know that the Apostles refered to her as Mother. St. Polycarp gets this from St. John. The early Eastern Christians, who would later become the Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have a long oral tradition of Mary as an active participant in the life of the Church during Apostolic times.

We can see a woman who is very much a contemplative, a woman of intense prayer, silence and dedication to the Lord, but also a woman who was a missionary, an intercessor, and even a source of consolatioin for the early Christians. In other words, she was not hidden as we use that word.

Hidden, as St. Therese uses the word is more like her spiritual mother, St Teresa of Avila who did what she had to do and at the same time tried to do it without calling too much attention to herself. The truth is that she attracted a lot of attention, but Teresa tried very hard not to do so. The same is true for Bl. Mother Teresa and St. Therese. That’s the true meaning of hidden in Christian Mystical Theology.

Plus:

This is Mystical Theology speaking, not history. The Mystical Theologian focusses on the activityof grace on the soul. What was kept hidden from her contemporaries was the nature and scope of the activity of grace on her soul and the anatomy of her soul. God works on Mary in the secret and silence of her soul. Mary does not share that with the world. We can only assume and extrapolate from the bits of information that we have through Christian Tradition. There is the silence of Mary found in the writings of St. Louie and St. Therese.

St. Therese does this very well, because she’s a cloistered nun; therefore, she understands the whole concept of a hidden life, without being in obscurity. I think that many very traditional Catholics believe that being like Mary means being almost anonymous. That is not Mary. That is not the Mary of St. Therese nor St. Louie. Catholics to the other extreme, I hate to call them liberal, because in my book liberal has a very positive meaning, these other folks to the left, believe that Mary was a passive figure who did not do much. That’s not Mary either.

That’s why I said above, if we could blend the three Teresas: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Liseux and Teresa of Calcutta, that’s the real Mary.

Notice, that she’s such a complex person and there is so much richness to her soul that it would take three of our giants to give us a glimpse into the historical Mary. As far as the anatomy of Mary’s soul, you can forget that. Everything that God did there will remain hidden to us until God wishes for us to know it and only as much as he wishes for us to know.

There is a wonderful book about her by a Capuchin Franciscan Friar The Silence of Mary by Ignacio Larañaga. This book and the writings of St. Louie changed my life.

These posts were really helpful in giving me the first, real picture of Mary and what women mean to the Church.  NOT the burqa covered robots that some Catholics want and agitate for.  Mary was and is a real human woman and this is the first time I saw her this way rather than a lofty figure that was unreachable.  I am grateful of Br. JR’s words.

Warning: Traditionalists are Hazardous to Your Health

It’s true.  Reading “Tradionalist” material is seriously dangerous to your mental and physical health.

It will cause you to get angry because you start thinking you have been lied to, deceived, and that you aren’t a good enough Catholic.

It will cause you to get depressed because you start thinking you are a bad and horrible Catholic that will never be good enough, that you aren’t being heard or loved by God because you aren’t praying in Latin/veiling/not wearing skirts/homeschooling/praying the Rosary five times a day/attending only the EF and putting down and calling everyone else who attends the OF heretics and horrible Catholics and name calling priests and bishops because they aren’t forcing the EF on everyone and supressing the OF outright.

It will cause you to get angry because only you see how the world will be saved by going back to the EF and destroying the OF because it isn’t pretty enough Mass with horrible translations when you know that praying in Latin is the only way God will hear you and answer your prayers otherwise you are just babbling.

It will cause you to get angry that women have rights, can wear pants, work, drive, etc. when they should be confined to the home, barefoot and pregnant and if they get out of line, beaten to keep them in line because they are second class creatures that God created to serve men entirely and not to be individuals of their own.

It will cause you to start thinking that you are doing everything wrong because you not obeying these “wise and all knowing” “traditionalists” who seem to have it all together and are perfectly holy and even can read the mind of God.

It will cause you to beat yourself up, start starving yourself and calling it fasting since you didn’t go far enough during Lent, saying yes to everyone who asks you for a favor even though it will cause you great harm to agree, and allow everyone to walk all over you and abuse you because you’ve come to believe that this is what a “Good Catholic Woman” looks like.

It will cause you to start looking for all the sin in other people’s lives from not wearing skirts (which lead a man to damnation since it is a woman’s fault he sins), to sending their children to public schools which “traditionalists” all know are bastions of pagan homosexual anti-Catholic propoganda that will lead poor Johnny straight to Hell if you don’t perform an exorcism according the pre-Vatican II rite to using NFP which says that you are distrusting God and his command to be fruitful and multiply to women enjoying sex to talking about sex at all to women not submitting like a slave and doing whatever their husband commands and do it right now or you are going to Hell and taking the whole family with you.

It will cause you to start thinking of seriously beating yourself with a whip  show that you are sorry for all the mortal sins you committed just today (which since you are a woman means you commit more mortal sins and more horrible ones at that then men who are nearly perfect and women are demons from Hell) (women commit a mortal sin just by existing).

It will cause you to get very angry because you realize that no matter what you do or don’t do or dress or pray that you are going to Hell anyway, just like your mother always predicted.

I wish “Tradionalist” Catholics would learn that all they are doing is hurting people and the Church.  NO one wants to be hurt especially not in the name of Jesus.

Women Hating is Alive and Well and promoted by Traditionalists

In the Traditionalist forum at CAF, there are a couple of threads dealing with the role women play in the Mass and the leadership/servantship roles they play in the parish.  The “Traditionalists” are out in full force in wanting women to be kept in their place aka the kitchen.  They see women as baby factories (Not mothers and wives and with career vocations of their own, no sir) and as slaves of men.  They hate women.  They think women need to learn that their place is silent and unseen not only at Mass but also in the home with a man to make all their decisions for them since they aren’t capable of thinking properly or making good decisions.  Women are not even people worthy of dignity and respect because they are made in the image and likeness of God.  No, they are seducers and prostitutes and drag men into sin.  They need to learn their place and if that means a beating then so be it.

Now, thankfully the CHURCH DOES NOT TEACH that women are inferior or weak or need to stay at home or be uneducated.  Considering the highest example of humanity is a woman (Mary) and that THREE doctors of the Church are women, the Catholic Church is much more welcoming and loving of women.  Many of it’s members are not.  Male and female.  I have met many women who want to go back to having no rights, to not being educated, to having no legal protection, to getting rid of abuse and rape laws, to outlawing divorce, to keeping women at home and under the dictatorship of a man (not a husband that is the spiritual head which is much different).

They think these things are pleasing to God and that the Church has always taught this abuse of women.  She has not.  Yes, there have been men and women who have spoken and written that women are unrepentant seducers, that they are inferior and weak, and not capable of higher learning but they do not speak for the Church.  They Do NOT SPEAK for the Church.  The Church through Pope John Paul II wrote Mulieris Dignitatem that underscored and highlighted the value and dignity that women brought to the Church and to society at large.

The Catholic Church does not teach or endorse the abuse of women, their devaluing as members of the Church and society, or the twisted use of Catholic teaching to hurt women in any way.  By hurting women, you hurt men and you hurt the Church.  If I only knew and met only Traditionalists on my journey in the Catholic faith, I probably wouldn’t want to be Catholic or to remain Catholic if these were the kinds of people I would have to spend my life and eternity with.  They aren’t very happy and they don’t like women and they hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them.  I hate it when people hate women and would do anything to subjugate them or abuse them or even kill them because they don’t fit into their narrow world view.  Sexism is alive and well even in American not just among “Traditionalist.”

Signs/Symptoms of a Radical Traditionalist

Having come across so many radical traditionalists in my time on CAF and even one or two in real life, I thought I’d come up with a set of diagnostic criteria for a radical traditionalist, not unlike the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV for psychologists and psychiatrists.  This isn’t perfect and I know I probably forgot things but this is what I have so far.

For a diagnosis of Radical Traditionalist, three or more of the following criteria may be met (OB is obscure):

-Believes the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, usually referred to as the Tridentine Latin Mass (TLM) is the only valid form of the Mass.  Everything else is inferior, heretical, or Protestant.

-Holds the 1917 Code of Canon Law above the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

-Believes Latin in the only language of the Catholic Church.  All prayers, private or public, are to be said in Latin.

-Believes God only understands Latin.

-Believes Palestrina and Gregorian chant that is sung by an all male choir is the only form of music, esclesial or secular, allowed.

-Believes the Rosary is the supreme and highest devotion.  It is the only prayer, besides the Mass, that is necessary for salvation.  Believes anyone who does not pray the Rosary is not a Catholic.

-Believes the Ordinary Form of the Mass, normally referred to the Novus Ordo and refuses to use the forms of the Church, in the vernacular is inefficacious, is invalid, does not present a valid Eucharist, is inferior, and Protestant.  Believe people who attend the OF are either Protestants or heretics.

-Believes communion on the tongue while kneeling at a communion rail is the only way to receive the Eucharist.  People who are unable to kneel are deemed irreverent.  Communion in the hand is considered heretic and pagan.

-Believes the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima is the only Marian apparition or at least the highest.   Believed to be the best Marian devotion and the only one worthy of belief.  Believe Catholics who do not believe it, follow what was said, or refuse to acknowledge it are heretics.  Requires automatic believe in this apparition as a criteria as to being a real Catholic.

-Believe Confession is required every week.

-Believe most things are a mortal sin, especially if they say so.

-Believe no woman is allowed anywhere near the sanctuary.  This even means the first pew unless they are a nun/sister praying the Rosary.

-Believe there is a strict dress code for every occasion.  This only applies to women and children.

-Believes women are required to veil at all times.  Mantillas only.  Hats and other forms of headcovering are not allowed.  No hair is allowed to show otherwise a woman will be inciting a man to sin.  She is at fault if a mans sees even one strand of hair.

-Believes women are required to wear dresses or skirts (dresses are the preferred option) down to the floor with full length sleeves and extreme high collars.  The prefered style is fundamentalist Mormon.

-Believes women who dress in pants or skirts above the toe are inciting men to lust and other sexual sins and just asking to be raped.

-Believes women are responsible for men’s sins, especially sexual sins.

-Believes the Church does not go far enough is legislating modesty and dress.  Believes the Church should dictate a strict dress code for everyone that must be strictly adhered to at all times.

-Believes women are to be minimally educated.

-Believes women should never work outside the home.

-Believes no one should go swimming do to the immoral form of dress required.

-Believes women are meant only to be wives and mothers, and occasionally sisters but nothing else.

-Believe Natural Family Planning (NFP) is contraception and goes against God’s will.

-Believes the number of children a couple will have is should be entirely left up to the providence of God.  Any abstinence, NFP, or any other method is contraception and a mortal sin.  A mother’s health, a family’s finances, etc. are irrelevant to family size and having children.

-Believes all children should be homeschooled.  All other forms of schooling are tools of the devil.

-Believes colleges, universities, high schools, elementary schools, public and Catholic are bastions of radical feminism, secular humanism, and atheism.

-Believes sheltering children from every interaction with the world and especially other people will make them strong Catholics.

-Believes TV, radio, movies, computers, and any other media that is not explicitly Catholics is immoral, a tool of the Devil, and never allowed in the home.

-Believes EWTN doesn’t go far enough.

-Believes most Bishops, priests, and Catholics to be outright heretics and have no knowledge of the faith.

-Believe Michael Voris is the second coming and like his in the face style and name calling of bishops and fellow Catholics.

-Believe Colleen Hammond is the go to authority for dress and follow her rules exactly.

-Believes if the book is not the Bible, the Early Church fathers, or one of  a select few writers then the books are immoral and advocating devil worship.

-Believe only young earth creationism.

-Believes they must call all behavior not exactly like theirs a sin and everyone who does not believe like them a heretic.

-Believes they are the only one on the right path to Heaven.  Everyone else, except for a select few, is going to Hell.

-Believes having fun is a sin.

-Believes contemporary music is immoral regardless of the lyrics.  Some classical music by some Catholics composers is acceptable.

-Believes the organ is the only instrument.  All other instruments, regardless of use, is profane.

-Believes that quoting documents from Vatican II is sinful and will only cite pre-Vatican II documents to support their arguments, even if they are off topic or have nothing to do with a topic or are out dated.

-Will ignore, put down, or trash Vatican II.

-Believes happiness and joy are useless and pointless especially in the spiritual life.

-Believes it is necessary to point out every little flaw and mistake a priest makes as necessary to stop liturgical abuse.

-Believes liturgical abuse is extremely rampant in OF/NO parishes and have never existed in EF/TLM parishes.

-Believes the Baltimore Catechism is the only necessary catechism.

-Believe the 1950s were the Golden Era of Catholicism in America.

-Believes the 1960s were the end of the Catholic Church in America.

-Believes Council of Trent trumps Vatican II.

-Wants all Catholics to be exactly like them.

-Believe unity is the sam thing as uniformity.

-Believe the EF/TLM would solve all the problems in the Church, including but not limited to sex abuse by priests, lack of vocations.

-Believe a college education is worthless unless you are going to be a lawyer or a doctor.

-Believe they are the only true Catholics and everyone else is a Protestant heretic.

(OB)-Believe women who dress in pants or in skirts above the toe are guilty for their own rape.

(OB)-Believes all Protestants are going to Hell.

(OB)-Believes Jews were abandoned or are ignored by God.

(OB)-Believe Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox are to be Latinized.

(OB)-Believe that is a person receives any sort of spiritual consolation, you are doing something wrong or are possessed by a demon.

 

This is not an exhaustive list but it does include what I have seen, read, and heard.

A Realization

Why I have problems with certain views espoused by certain types of Catholics:

Your personal preference/opinion is not Church doctrine.

I see this rather frequently especially in regards to topics such as women, the Ordinary Form of the Mass, private devotions, people who don’t bow down and worship at the poster’s feet for their opinion (this one comes up the most), evolution, altar servers, dress code, et al., etc.  At the end of the day, we all need God’s help and grace not our hand smacked away because we are asking for help.  I see so much of the hand smacking and not enough the hand grasping and lifting someone up.

The Internet is For Idiots

It’s true.  Consider this my rant of the week.  The Internet is for idiots, well at least for people who come off as idiots.  And CAF is the cause of my rant this week.  I really should ban myself from the Traditional Catholicism forum because it seems chock a block with people who label and malign people who don’t agree with them 100% as damned to Hell or are telling people what to do and advocating their opinion as Church dogma, which it definitely isn’t.

Between the people who malign priests (apparently, priests are supposed to be perfect and holy as soon as they are ordained instead of being the real men in need of a saviour like the rest of us motley sinners) who don’t preach what they want (hellfire and brimstone for everyone but themselves with a sprinkling of ‘you’re a heretic because you don’t eat/sleep/pray Latin 24/7′, veil (not headcover and there is a difference) 24/7, or are a woman who works instead of choosing to be a doormat and stay at home mom who is the slave of her husband and woman are the cause of all the problems in society (yes, there are Catholics and Christians who believe and preach that) and don’t condemn everyone but the one individual to hell, the people who hate woman and blame them for the ills in the world (and plain out misogyny ), and the ones that believe their opinion and view is better than the Church and what Jesus taught, it’s a wonder anybody stays Catholic.  There’s so much hatred and no love for fellow Catholics.  The need to smack people down and take joy in that hurting of people.

There is no honor is maligning priests.  By insulting priests you insult Jesus.  Yet people do it all the time on CAF and think they are being holy and righteous and doing God’s work.  NO, you’re committing mortal sin (calumny and gossip and slander and detraction and not loving you neighbor all come to mind) and being disobedient.  You have no authority to say or advocate such things and you will be held accountable, if not this life then the next.

That’s actually the biggest issue: no authority.  The Internet forum and knowledge of the truth does not give you authority to dictate how other people live.  You cannot give yourself authority.  That’s not how it works.  The Church has authority, given to Her by Christ, and She passes on some of  that authority to Her bishops and priests, and the heads of religious orders/congregations/etc.  But an anonymous poster on the Internet has no authority to claim or to tell someone how to live their live or what devotions to follow or what to believe or disbelieve or even to obey or disobey just because they don’t like something.  I can’t tell anyone how to live their life.  They can ask me for advice or suggestions or what not but they don’t have to take it or even listen to it.  They are their own individual person as I am my individual person.  Someone who needs someone to tell them how to live their life is in serious need of help because they aren’t living their life but letting others control them and that can be dangerous.

God did not create automatons and He doesn’t want automatons but there are sure a lot of people who want everyone to be automatons and clones instead of the individuals God created them to be.

Discussion this week: Modesty and how does it relate to men and women

Discussion this week:  Modesty and how does it relate to men and women

Have at it.

Discussion of the Week

Borrowing this idea from another blog, I’m going to start a discussion post/thread every week dealing with something that relates to this blog.  This largely to see what people think and hopefully get people who come to this blog to comment even if they normal do not or are afraid to.

Rules:

• Anyone is allowed to post a comment.
• I will delete any that use extremely rude or vulgar language or that do not relate to anything in anyway on this blog.  If you post a comment Friday through Monday, don’t expect it to be read until at least Tuesday because those are the days I work and have no computer access.  So it’s not a matter of me being rude, just busy with real life.
• Keep comments charitable and hopefully on topic (it happens that people start on one thing and go off on another).  I will be doing an off topic thread that will allow people to post anything (with respect to the rules) without fearing that they aren’t on topic or feel like they don’t have something to say.
• Off topic can be anything that may relate to things I cover in this blog to your favorite recipe or lolcat pics to venting about something and looking for an answer to links to other blogs that you think are just awesome and you think people need to know about.  There are no forbidden topics for the most part.  However, follow the rules.
• Have fun.

I will also take suggestions for post topics.

Dress Code Dictators

So I spend time on Catholic Answers Forums.  While there are a few sub-forums that I don’t visit on purpose or that I am not interested in, the Traditional Catholicism sub-forum is one I read to help understand people who make claims that sound “more Catholic than the Pope” especially about things like dress, Mass preference, etc.  There are times when I wish I didn’t because the sheer gall and hatred and need to dictate other peoples’ lives angers me.  How does someone on the Internet have the right to tell me how to live my life?

This thread really ticks me off because it lays the decline of American society solely at the feet of women and how they dress.  Tell me, when did men get a free pass from sin?  Because, honestly, I see this attitude and these types of posts a lot on CAF, especially in this sub-forum.  Men can’t and don’t have to control themselves because WOMEN are the ones making them sin.  It’s those bad, mean, immodest women who causing men to sin and end up in hell.  BS!  Men make a choice to sin.  They are just as responsible for the decline of American society as women are because some of them dress pretty immodestly too (though that is not the only reason American society is Culture of Death).  So it completely unfair and untrue that if women dressed in dresses and skirts then men wouldn’t sin and society would be pure and wonderful.  Get out of Fantasy Land!  It has never and will never exist.  A world where everyone is virtuous and there is no sin only happened once and look what happened there.

I hate it when people, especially women, dictate what others should wear.  As long as it’s modest, it’s okay to wear jeans and t-shirt, or a skirt, or capris.  Each women will have their own individual style.  They shouldn’t be made to be fashion clones just so a small but horribly vocal group can pat themselves on the back for being the most modest and not causing men to sin and making everyone follow their narrow version of their interpretation of Catholicism while looking down on everyone else for not being as holy and perfect as they are.  You never hear a dress code dictated for men (they also have their own individual style that as long as it is modest is fine).  The Church only calls for modesty, not a strict list of what is and is not allowed.

I’ve also added a New Link to The Catholic Fanatic, a blog about someone who is recovering from the extreme Traditionalists and Dress Code Dictators.

A Declaration

Yes, at 4:40 in the morning.  Well, it is what time it is here.

I am a feminist.  There.  I said it.  And being a feminist is a good thing.  However, there are forms of feminism that are bad: radical feminism, any form that supports abortion and contraception and “sexual freedom” and bashing men and supports the homosexual lifestyle.  Those are anti-women and anti-men.

Abortion is anti-women because it’s about choosing to punish yourself and a baby for existing as a person and being able to give life and for being a women.  It’s also anti-men because it doesn’t care about men as fathers or as people.  Abortion is anti-people because it is indiscriminate in who it kills: girls, boys, gays, straight, the innocent, the potentially successful, the potentially disabled, etc.  Abortion basically says that you aren’t good enough to exist because you don’t fit in some arbitrary category about who and what a person is.  Abortion isn’t a choice or a freedom.  It’s a death sentence for the baby and for the mother.  It puts the mother in a continuous cycle of sexual abuse and prostitution.  A women who uses abortion to “get rid of a problem” abuses herself.  No woman is free when they get an abortion.  NO woman is free when they have sex with anybody outside of marriage.  They are abusing themselves and selling themselves as prostitutes that aren’t getting paid to have sex.

Bashing men also bashes women.  Men can’t exist without women and women can’t exist without men.  It’s biologically impossible.  If there was only one sex, then they wouldn’t be women or men.  There would be no concept of male or female, man or women.  The words and concepts wouldn’t exist in our language because there would be no need for them.  While I’m certain there are people who would love to eliminate such words, it’s impossible and entirely impractical.   It just wouldn’t work.  We need men and women and we need them to be different.  Yes, there are people who are trying to do with mother and father and what they mean but they will fail.  Not only do we need them, to eliminate them would eliminate what makes humans unique.  Actually, it goes beyond that.  It would destroy society.  Society as a whole needs mothers and fathers and men and women.

I believe in equal pay for equal work.  Now, it has gotten better but there’s always room for improvement.  There is also room for improvement in how people are compensated for their work and how work is valued.  Value shouldn’t be based entirely on monetary value but on what that person brings to the company or whatnot and not how much money they can make for the company at the expense of that individual’s health and personal relationships.

I believe rape, abuse be it sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual, verbal, psychological, or mental and neglect are crimes against people regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, creed, ethnicity, etc. and should be prosecuted as such.  A spouse has no right to rape their spouse or beat them because they are married or to verbally abuse them because they think they can.  Parents should abuse their children nor should children abuse their parents.  A gay partner can’t beat their partner and get away with it.  It’s a crime against a person.  While I have problems with the homosexual lifestyle, they are still people who should be treated with respect and crimes against them should be investigated and prosecuted.

I believe a woman has the right to choose what she wants to do with her life.  If she wants to be a wife and mother and work, I support that.  If a woman wants be a wife and mother and be a stay at home mom, I support that too.  If a woman wants to work but stay permanently single, I support that as well.  If a woman believes she is called to the religious life and chooses to follow that, I support that as well.  I don’t support people who dictate how other people should live.  I have no right to tell Woman A or even Man A what to do with their lives.  I can’t make them work in a particular field or make them get married and no one else should either.  They can seek advice and counsel from people they trust but should make their own choices about their life.  And I will defend a women’s right to determine her own life.

I believe women are the biggest oppressors of women.  They are the ones who watch others like a hawk and talk about people behind their back and pass judgement on them because they don’t live exactly as they do.  If a woman wants to dress like a Goth (does anybody still dress like a Goth anymore?), as long as she dresses modestly (this is predicated on her and the society she lives in) then she can dress like a goth.  Or a punk.  Or in jeans and a t-shirt.  Or dresses.  Or formal suits.  No one can dictate what she wears unless she works in a particular industry that requires a uniform for work (even the typical office has a “uniform” for how to dress).  Women are the biggest believers about the lies of women: that they are weak, inferior, support things that hurt women, uneducable, shouldn’t be allowed to work, shouldn’t be allowed to receive a college/university degree, that the only thing a women can do is get married and have children and stay at home, that women who don’t revolve their lives around men have something wrong them or are lesbians.

I believe people are individuals with their own unique life experiences. No one is automaton and people shouldn’t make people into clones of themselves just because it makes their lives easier or because they think they have the power to do so.

Now there are people who are going to have a problem with me, a Catholic, being a feminist.  Yet all that I posted doesn’t contradict anything the Catholic Church teaches.  Being a feminist isn’t anti-Catholic.  It’s pro-humanity.  The Catholic Church was the first feminist force in the world.  Now there were people in the Church, but not the Church Herself, that advocated beliefs and practices that were anti-women but they weren’t the Church.  They were sinners who got tangled up in the details and pushing their own agendas rather than focusing on Jesus.  Jesus is very pro-women as demonstrated in the Gospels.

Let the tomato and lemon throwing commence.

Sex Does Not Make You Free (While the Pill Turns You into an Unpaid Prostitute)

This article was linked on Patty Bond’s blog and after reading TWO, and yes I mean TWO articles about how the Pill “benefited” Mothers on Mother’s Day (what a load of tripe), I thought I would post a link and a response here.

The Pill didn’t benefit women.  It just made the ones who took it unpaid prostitutes.  Women used to be able to demand that men “man up” after they got pregnant from premarital sex (if they hadn’t waited because surprising to all those safe sex advocated, many did wait till marriage before having sex).  Actually, women used to be able to demand that men be men.  And men took responsibility. Not any more.  Now men and women have turned each other into sex toys that they can use and just discard with no care or concern about the other.  Men and women become objects that have no feelings, no responsibility, no life, no worth.  ”Carrie” can sleep with “Mark,” “Steve,” “Chris,” “Alejandro,”  ”Ling,” and “Sarah” while “Steve” could be sleeping with “Chris,” “Daniel,” “Ming,” “Victoria,” “Manuela.”   Neither “Carrie” or “Steve” realize, care to realize, or try to hide so that it is never acknowledged is that having sex with multiple partners is no way to have a relationship.  Sex is not and cannot be consequence free.  There are studies out there that show that the body actually releases hormones during sex to help the couple bond emotionally.

So by taking the Pill  or using a condom or using any other sort of contraception you already have the mindset that you will only have the physical connection but nothing else.  Guess what: our bodies aren’t made that way.  We are made to bond emotionally and physically.  And by inserting a wall in between one, you damage the other.  You’re probably thinking: hey that’s great, sex with no consequences.  WRONG!  Not only are you damaging the physical connection (you make think a little latex doesn’t mean anything but it does) but it also damaging the emotional connection.  By taking the Pill or using a condom or any other contraception you are saying to the other person that I am only using you to masterbate, to use you for my own personal sexual satisfaction.  The Pill makes it all about me and nothing about you.  Oh, you say that you help your partner reach climax but again it’s all for you personal satisfaction.  You can feed yourself all kinds of lies about how the Pill makes you free to love your partner but in reality it’s all about you.  You turn yourself and your partner into unpaid prostitutes for each other.  When “Carrie” takes the Pill, she’s saying “Steve” is only there to be used as a toy.  ”Steve” ceases to be a person in “Carrie’s” world and vice versa.  Dress it up in any language you want but it’s true.  ”Carrie” isn’t free, she’s just an unpaid prostitute and doesn’t realize it or doesn’t want to realize it.

Women gained rights NOT to become unpaid prostitutes but that’s what some feminists and society want you to believe, that by having sex whenever you want with whomever you want you are a free and liberated woman who’s on par with men.  Yeah, both are in the cesspool of garbage because they are using each other as objects and not treating each other as people worthy of dignity and respect.  That’s not rights or liberation: that’s oppression that we’ve willingly taken because we believe it sets us free.  Actually, it’s killing us and we go blindly to our deaths.  Sex isn’t everything.  Don’t believe society.  It doesn’t know what’s best for you.  It only knows what keeps people enthralled to it and away from God and responsibility and respect for others and respect for life.

Pants or Skirts, Pride, Salvation by Knowledge

So I frequent a particular Catholic forum that, recently, has gone over the deep end in some parts.  Pants vs. skirts were the topic of several threads.  The conclusion of some women: women MUST dress in skirts/dresses or they are being MEN and that MEN are ANIMALS who can’t control themselves.  The thing is the Catholic Church has never taken particular position on clothing except that it must be MODEST.  Modesty and fashion are two different things that unfortunately, overlap.  I had a bigger problem with women dictating how other women to dress, so much so that they were practically condemning those women to HELL for wearing pants and not wearing skits/dresses.  There were several FEMALE posters that I had to put on my ignore list because of their behavior and attitude towards women who didn’t agree with them.  It’s women who oppress women.  I also had a major problem with painting men with a broad brush and calling them animals who can’t control themselves.  While I know there are men who have to deal with sins against purity and sins against chastity, to BLAME WOMEN for their sins in extremely uncharitable and even ridiculous.  It is an individual’s decision to look at someone with lust, not the fault of the individual who dressed in pants and was looked.  And men and women can commit lust, sins against purity even if the individual they look at is dressed modestly.  So I take issue with people who condemn a group of people for other  people’s sins even though they had nothing to do with the first group’s sins.  It it up to the individual to determine what they want to wear as long as it it modest.  Pants on women are modest though there are several styles that are not.  The same is true for pants on men.  I guess I don’t  understand the issue in that even the Vatican in it’s dress code allows pants as long as they cover past the knee.

I just can’t stand it when the skirts/dresses only crowd demand and dictate that women must wear what they wear and that if the as-long-as-it-is-modest crowd disagree, the skirts/dress crowd crow they are right but the as-long-as-it-is-modest are idiots and need to convert to the skirt/dresses only crowd.  This is particularly true when Colleen Hammond, a lay writer who’s published HER OWN opinion on dress, gets brought up.  While anybody can write and she may have something relevant to say, she puts forth her OWN OPINION and extremely poor scholarship.  She thinks women are damning men to hell for NOT wearing skirts/dresses all the time, even when home alone with family.  As you can tell, I don’t like her view. She’s allowed her opinion but that’s it, it’s just an opinion.  It is NOT Church teaching which is what many of the skirt/dressed only crowd hold it up to be.  Church teaching only focuses on modesty not fashion and personal taste in clothing.  I won’t dictate another person’s wardrobe choices but I will encourage modesty.  That’s it because that is all I can do.

By the way, I don’t think men are pigs.  Many know how to control themselves and to avoid sins against purity and chastity.  I refuse to paint them with a broad brush let alone excuse them on their own sins or the encouragement of other people’s sins.  Meaning, if a man sins, he’s responsible for his sins but only if he sins.  Other people’s sins are not his sins.

My mention of pride comes from my reading the skirts or pants threads, the threads on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and the Ordinary Form of the Mass, and traditionalists vs. Catholics who are just doing their best to live their faith.  These posters (traditionalists though not all to differentiate) believe their opinion and world view is the only acceptable view of the Catholic faith and that anyone who attends/like the OF, dresses in pants, etc. is a heretic and is trying to destroy the Church.  And no, I’m not kidding about that.  There are many who believe that anyone who doesn’t believe as they do and spew their vitriol is damned to hell.  And they are pretty willing and wanting to send them there.

Now I grew up with the Ordinary Form of the Mass (OF). I have never known the Mass in Latin (Extraordinary Form (EF)) though I do support those that want it and celebrate it.  However, I will no beat someone over the head if they do not like the OF nor will I say they are less than Catholic let alone a heretic for worshiping God as best they can in a way they want.  I however will take issue with those that want to impose their opinion on others and demand that others take the same view and attitude as they do.  I take issue with those that say because I don’t pray in Latin that my prayers aren’t heard by God.  I take issue that people who can only attend the OF are les Catholic or Catholic not at all because they don’t attend the EF.  I take issue that praying the Mass in the vernaculer is destroying the Church and watering down the faith.  I take issue that women must be dressed only in skirts/pants, a headcovering and married because that is the only acceptable role for women when Jesus and the Church herself say otherwise.  I take issue that there are people who will not see me and other Catholics as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ because we worship God as best we can with what we have, because we don’t agitate for everything to be in Latin, that everyone must be obedient to the traditionalists and not to Christ, that are parishs were not build in the 15th century, that we don’t read only the lives of the saints and have a million devotions to them, that we talk to Protestants and not condemn them to hell just for not being Catholic instead of loving them and teaching them the fullness of truth the Catholic Church holds.  I take issue that the traditionalists believe they speak for God and the Church when they don’t speak for anyone but themselves.

Okay, salvation by knowledge.  I didn’t come up with this one though I agree with the phrase.  I read a non-Catholic blog to get a feel for what some non-Catholic Christians believe and what they will put out on the Web.  Salvation by knowledge, my working definition, is that the more one reads and writes about Christ and the Bible and living the Christina life then they will be saved by this knowledge.  Guess what.  That’s an old heresy called: Gnosticism.  Gnosticism was the belief that there was secret knowledge about Jesus and that those who possesed this secret knowledge (and not everyone could) would be saved and get to Heaven.  Actually, there might be more than that but that will do for now.

Salvation by knowledge/gnosticism is particularly trendy in some circles and for the most part isn’t confined to a particular denomintion.  People believe that by studying more, reading more, writing more that they will know more about God and that this knowledge will make them better, more holy, more Christ-like, more saved.  It won’t.  Seeking after knowledge for knowledge’s sake is sinful.  That’s what salvation by knowledge does.  It seeks knowlege thinking, believing that this knowledge will themselves be a better Christian.  It doesn’t.  It becomes a twisted desire to seek after something to the exclusion of all else. Now, learning in itself is neutral.  It’s what you do with it that matters.  If you place more importance on reading every book by your favorite Catholic writer, memorizing all four of the Gospels, and choose not to go to work or take care of your family, then you are sinning and have a severely distorted notion of knowledge.  We need to know enough to function, to do our jobs, to take care of ourselves and others.  Anything above that is unnecesary unless one is a philosopher but then that’s their job.  It becomes about us and not Jesus.  We commit idolatry.

We are human BEINGS not human DOINGS.  While we must keep Christ’s commandments, they don’t require that we spend every moment in study. That will only overload you brain.  We are required to love and love is an ACT of WILL.  We must act not sit passive.  We must cooperate with the grace that God grants us, not wait, sitting passively for God to come along and scoop us up and save us.  He does not reward those who sit idly by, who spend all their time in study and no time in loving Him and their neighbor.

Remember the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the Wedding Feast where the guest doesn’t even dress in wedding clothes?  That’s how we will be judged when we stand before Christ at Judgement.  Not by what we know but by what we did, how we loved God and others.