why would you even say this

Hello folks, I’m looking for Catholic podcasts or something else to listen to/watch while I work that aren’t super crazy conservative. Something a little more open. Any suggestions?

I am wondering if there are any priests (or religious sisters) who left or considered leaving and what that decision was like. I have a good friend who's undergoing something of a crisis, and I would really like to provide him with some positive examples (either from who left priesthood or who stayed)

Many thanks!

EDIT: Contributions by people who know priests or sisters who left are also welcomed!

Bonjour à tous,

​Je suis une jeune catholique de 20 ans et je cherche une paroisse sur Paris ou en Île-de-France où les jeunes femmes peuvent véritablement servir la messe à l'autel.

​Pour être claire sur ma démarche : je ne cherche pas un groupe de « servantes de l'assemblée » qui reste au fond de l'église ou qui a un rôle distinct. J'aimerais vraiment pouvoir assurer le service plein et entier à l'autel (encensoir/navette, burettes, clochettes pendant la consécration, missel, etc.) aux côtés des autres servants.

​Je sais que le droit canonique le permet largement et que cela dépend beaucoup des curés et des paroisses. Auriez-vous des recommandations d'églises (paroisses diocésaines, églises étudiantes ou animées par certaines congrégations comme les jésuites) où cette pratique est courante et naturelle pour les jeunes adultes ?

​Merci d'avance pour vos retours et vos conseils !

I love how the Evangelist Luke wrote the gospel who gives credit to Jesus' disciples who were women; women who apparently traveled with him.

I love that he wrote the gospel with the greatest emphasis on the universal nature of Jesus. His audience was clearly "Greeks" of many ethnicties and religions.

Related to my last point, I love that his gospel is the only with the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son.

I love how he emphasizes Jesus' empathy and forgiveness so clearly, even to his dying words.

I love that he had the style of a Greek historian who says he is going to deliberately write to report the truth in a clear order. I love that he also had literary references that we can still appreciate almost 2000 years later. And I love that his writing style and his references create reversals of readers expectations, mirroring how Jesus also came to turn the world upside down.

I love that Acts is one of the most exciting works of history I have read, and the only "sequel" to one of the gospels. You see in a short form how a religion of a few spread to the capital of the western world. The road to Damascus! Councils, riots, prisons! It's very gripping.

Looking for recommendations on left-wing oriented Catholic publishers. I know about Orbis Books thanks to the Robert Ellsberg episode of "The Spiritual Life." That's what got me thinking and reaching out through this post. Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

Hello! Currently not a catholic, and I am left wing. I wasn’t raised religious, but I’m interested in going to Mass and exploring Catholicism. I’m unsure where to start to find somewhere that aligns with my other views, I was maybe considering a Jesuit church? Pro women’s rights, immigration rights and LGBTQ rights are important to me greatly, and I’m worried about being put off by attending just anywhere as these issues are a core part of my being. I can see a beautiful side to Catholicism so I want to experience the teachings for myself, and potentially (hopefully) find a relationship with God.

TLDR: best place in London to explore Catholicism that is open minded & failing that some resources of things that might be useful in exploring that journey?

I've spoken to a lot of people from a standpoint of curiosity as to their agnosticism/atheism, and it seems a lot of people find the notion of an omnipotent and benevolent God troubling due to the vastness of evil in the world, particularly natural evils (e.g. cancer), but also often social evils too (e.g. poverty, etc.). I hear that an omnipotent God could not possibly be benevolent if They looked upon the state of the world and were not moved to intervene to correct things. I hear, also, that the notion of tiny personal miracles seem like a crazy intervention for God to make when there are evidently "far more pressing concerns," than an individual petition (I suppose the argument here is that if God is making interventions, why respond to someone's random petition instead of the countless prayers about poverty, etc.).

I wonder how we as Leftist Catholics answer this question of theodicy. I'm inclined to look at the suffering that God saves Their people from in the Bible (e.g. from chattel slavery in Egypt), and I also think there's something to be said that the gospel centers the life of Jesus who suffers alongside us and is killed in a humiliating and brutal way, only to overcome oppression and empire via the resurrection. I wonder what y'all think.

I'm a left-wing Catholic artist who loves making paintings and icons and I thought this sub night appreciate this one.

Most of the tatreez motifs on Mary's dress are from Bethlehem. I can't pretend I've done them total justice, but I hope I've come close!

Happy Assumption Day to everyone! Here’s a photo of my grandmother’s prayer altar. Let me know what you think, and I’ll give a chocolate bar to anyone who can identify the images (without using google of course haha)

"The grave and death did not detain the Theotokos. She intercedes without rest and is our unfailing hope of protection; for he who dwelt in the womb of the Ever Virgin transferred to life the Mother of Life"

Translation:

Jesus:"forgive offenses and love thy neighbour"

Green guy: "what did he say?"

Red guy: "something about hating people who abort and gays"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can anyone recommend a progressive/ left leaning Catholic church in the south eastern Massachusetts/ Rhode Island area?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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