the shepherd's flock

What really bothers me about convert Catholics is that some of them (absolutely not all or even a majority or half) are only attracted to some of the worst parts of Catholicism. I don’t want to judge, but some people like the VP seem to be drawn by the misogyny, patronizing attitude towards women and children and non-Catholics, racism, and imperialism. They don’t seem to acknowledge a lot about mysticism, especially women mystics. They only bring up Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo when they can twist the narrative or interpret their works to suit them. They don’t talk a lot about Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Joan D’Arc, or any female mystic or writer. They’re obsessed with families and babies to the point of idolatry, and frankly they’re not interested in poor or non-white babies. Families do play an important structure in society, but we need to acknowledge and accept that not all are supposed to be married or have children. They call themselves “pro-life”, but only in so far as telling women to close their legs if they don’t want a baby. They don’t mind voting to cut USAID programs, kicking thousands off their healthcare, canceling cancer research, cutting studies on maternal care and women’s health because the studies contain dangerous words like woman, female, and black, and allowing unregulated AI data centers to crop up in communities that will poison it so long as they can ban abortion. They’re okay with women bleeding out or dying of sepsis because doctors aren’t allowed to save them thanks to draconian abortion bans. Converts like these, especially if they’re men, I don’t think they convert for the right reason. I think they convert because they like to be self-righteous and domineering towards women, two problems that the majority of the Church does not address.

lord give me patience and strength… i cannot stand my new coworker

no, god loves you. no, he loves you. "but..." no, he loves you

"I asked chatgpt" oh okay well I asked Jesus and he said that everyone deserves rights soooo

One of the isolating parts of being a queer Christian is feeling like I can only be friends with a religious queer person. I feel like my presence in queer spaces puts people automatically on edge and makes people feel instantly unsafe, even though I make a point to never ever discuss my spirituality in queer spaces, full stop; I don’t want to make others feel unsafe, so I avoid most ‘queer spaces’. it often feels like the only people who don’t mind my presence are religious queer people, Christian or otherwise, and those folks can be hard people to find, and there’s no guarantee that we’ll even get along. So I just kinda float along. It’s lonely, ya know?

this and also trying to find somewhere I can talk about religion as an autistic person being near fucking impossible. It's a "blacklisted topic" almost everywhere and then also if I talk about it at work it's not ok (but my coworker talking about how Jesus was just a conman magician is fine apparently). I'm just fucking tired of it idk. so tired.