No. Just No.

[NastyWoman]

Jan 11, 2019 18:47:18 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

One girl confessed to our priest that she had sex and HE TOLD HER PARENTS!
All hell broke loose.

Secret of the confessional and all that. That sure was a vow he broke and all hell should have broken loose for HIM

[chapeau]

Jan 11, 2019 18:47:18 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

One girl confessed to our priest that she had sex and HE TOLD HER PARENTS!
All hell broke loose.

That is 2000000000000% against the rules. The sanctity of the confessional is recognized by courts!

Of course, that doesn’t help the poor girl.
I haven’t been to confession since 2000. I got in an argument with the priest on the other side of the screen about premarital sex. (The problem with a good catholic school education is the list of requirements to constitute a sin. One of those is knowledge/intent to sin. If you don’t agree that premarital sex is a sin, there’s no reason to confess it.) The priest disagreed.

[weltschmerz]

Even my anti-sex parents were outraged.
"He had no right to do that!"

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 18:03:25 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Jan 11, 2019 17:16:18 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

That (above) and when we made our first communion in the second grade and also made our first confession.  After the first confession, I asked the teacher nun what if I had nothing to confess.  She replied with "Make something up."

So I should lie.  Makes perfectly good sense to me.  

My standard confession: I stole a cookie and I lied.  The lie was often that I had stolen the cookie since we didn't have them often around.

Of course there was that one time (which I have told about before) when in 3rd grade or so I confessed to adultery → I needed a new sin to mix things up and the Dutch word for adultery is "overspel", the Dutch word for game/play is "spel" so I thought that was a reasonable choice and I could have done that.  Some very strange noises came from the other side of the confessional and I was told never to do that again. Well, I sure as heck never said that again since it resulted in double the Our Father's and Hail Mary's from my standard sins and I might have been willing to shake things up but not at that price!

I can picture a third grader wearing the big A.

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 18:47:18 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

One girl confessed to our priest that she had sex and HE TOLD HER PARENTS!
All hell broke loose.

That is one way the Catholic church loses the trust of its followers, young and old alike.

[weltschmerz]

Jan 11, 2019 19:19:48 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jan 11, 2019 18:03:25 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

My standard confession: I stole a cookie and I lied.  The lie was often that I had stolen the cookie since we didn't have them often around.

Of course there was that one time (which I have told about before) when in 3rd grade or so I confessed to adultery → I needed a new sin to mix things up and the Dutch word for adultery is "overspel", the Dutch word for game/play is "spel" so I thought that was a reasonable choice and I could have done that.  Some very strange noises came from the other side of the confessional and I was told never to do that again. Well, I sure as heck never said that again since it resulted in double the Our Father's and Hail Mary's from my standard sins and I might have been willing to shake things up but not at that price!

I can picture a third grader wearing the big A.

Yes.

"A" for Atheist!

[chiver78]

Jan 11, 2019 18:47:18 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

One girl confessed to our priest that she had sex and HE TOLD HER PARENTS!
All hell broke loose.

not okay. that would be the last time I'd ever have been in confession. so much for trust, eh?

[NastyWoman]

Jan 11, 2019 19:19:48 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jan 11, 2019 18:03:25 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

My standard confession: I stole a cookie and I lied.  The lie was often that I had stolen the cookie since we didn't have them often around.

Of course there was that one time (which I have told about before) when in 3rd grade or so I confessed to adultery → I needed a new sin to mix things up and the Dutch word for adultery is "overspel", the Dutch word for game/play is "spel" so I thought that was a reasonable choice and I could have done that.  Some very strange noises came from the other side of the confessional and I was told never to do that again. Well, I sure as heck never said that again since it resulted in double the Our Father's and Hail Mary's from my standard sins and I might have been willing to shake things up but not at that price!

I can picture a third grader wearing the big A.

I counted just for the heck of it and my full legal names contain 10 A's. Throw in my nickname and it goes up to 11 → maybe that would have been appropriate after all, though not in a Hawthorne sense

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 20:00:52 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Jan 11, 2019 19:19:48 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

I can picture a third grader wearing the big A.

I counted just for the heck of it and my full legal names contain 10 A's. Throw in my nickname and it goes up to 11 → maybe that would have been appropriate after all, though not in a Hawthorne sense

Beside the As, any Hs, Rs, Ls, Os, or Ts in your name too?

[NastyWoman]

Jan 11, 2019 20:46:09 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jan 11, 2019 20:00:52 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

I counted just for the heck of it and my full legal names contain 10 A's. Throw in my nickname and it goes up to 11 → maybe that would have been appropriate after all, though not in a Hawthorne sense

Beside the As, any Hs, Rs, Ls, Os, or Ts in your name too?

No H's or T's → I gave those to DS1 though

I take that back: I do have one H and a T. That is what you get with a first name, 3 middle names, a last name AND a nickname. Who can keep track...

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 20:49:27 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Jan 11, 2019 20:46:09 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Beside the As, any Hs, Rs, Ls, Os, or Ts in your name too?

No H's or T's → I gave those to DS1 though

I take that back: I do have one H and a T. That is what you get with a first name, 3 middle names, a last name AND a nickname. Who can keep track...

Put the A between the H and the R and then sound out the L, O, and T. Third grader indeed.

[NastyWoman]

Jan 11, 2019 21:09:51 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jan 11, 2019 20:49:27 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

No H's or T's → I gave those to DS1 though

I take that back: I do have one H and a T. That is what you get with a first name, 3 middle names, a last name AND a nickname. Who can keep track...

Put the A between the H and the R and then sound out the L, O, and T. Third grader indeed.

Overspel → to get from there to harlot is a bit much

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 21:13:50 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Jan 11, 2019 21:09:51 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Put the A between the H and the R and then sound out the L, O, and T. Third grader indeed.

Overspel → to get from there to harlot is a bit much

Sorry. Trying to make a funny. You confessed to committing adultery in the third grade. Which of course you did not. And then you mentioned all the As. I thought I would play with letters too.

My apolgies.

[NastyWoman]

Jan 11, 2019 21:18:17 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jan 11, 2019 21:13:50 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Overspel → to get from there to harlot is a bit much

Sorry. Trying to make a funny. You confessed to committing adultery in the third grade. Which of course you did not. And then you mentioned all the As. I thought I would play with letters too.

My apolgies.

No, I was messing with you (and I was fully aware of what I was doing) so I should apologize. Friends?

[Tennesseer]

Jan 11, 2019 21:21:43 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Jan 11, 2019 21:18:17 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Sorry. Trying to make a funny. You confessed to committing adultery in the third grade. Which of course you did not. And then you mentioned all the As. I thought I would play with letters too.

My apolgies.

No, I was messing with you (and I was fully aware of what I was doing) so I should apologize. Friends?

We're good and fine.

[tskeeter]

Jan 10, 2019 17:38:06 GMT -5 ken a.k.a OMK said:

Who knows more about sex then a Catholic priest? 

Based on the media reports, Catholic priests appear to know more about sex than many people think they should.

[haapai]

Jan 11, 2019 0:38:56 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

Now Quebec is rabidly and militantly secular.
When the pendulum swings, it doesn't stop in the middle.

So I have to ask, did Ireland's recent swing away from and continuing anger toward the Church surprise you?  Did you have a sense that the pendulum was going to continue to swing?  Or did you find yourself amazed and searching for explanations and then remember your own history? 

[weltschmerz]

Jan 11, 2019 21:58:53 GMT -5 haapai said:

Jan 11, 2019 0:38:56 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

Now Quebec is rabidly and militantly secular.
When the pendulum swings, it doesn't stop in the middle.

So I have to ask, did Ireland's recent swing away from and continuing anger toward the Church surprise you?  Did you have a sense that the pendulum was going to continue to swing?  Or did you find yourself amazed and searching for explanations and then remember your own history? 

No, not even a little bit.

All I know, is that here, there was disgust and fury with the church and its abuse of power.
It seems like one fine Sunday, people woke up and decided they're no longer going to church. They had had enough. It happened overnight, and nobody can explain it.
------------------

And one of the biggest mysteries for me has always been how decades back Quebec could have gone from being one of the most Catholic nations on earth to becoming one of the most anti-Catholic areas of the planet - a change that seemed to occur more or less overnight.



One day Quebec was an adoring elder daughter of Rome. The next day it was an anti-Catholic nightmare crawling with militant secularists determined to erase every last vestige of the Province’s religious past.

www.culturewitness.com/2017/07/falling-from-grace-rise-and-fall-of.html

[haapai]

I keep reading these history lessons that you link and I'm still scratching my head.  They seem to leave out the specific scandals and grotesque oversteps that led to rapid secularization. 

I hope that the Irish do a better job of remembering their turning points. It's important to preserve the memory of the specific cases that caused folks blood to boil. 

[weltschmerz]

Jan 11, 2019 23:11:56 GMT -5 haapai said:

I keep reading these history lessons that you link and I'm still scratching my head.  They seem to leave out the specific scandals and grotesque oversteps that led to rapid secularization. 

I hope that the Irish do a better job of remembering their turning points. It's important to preserve the memory of the specific cases that caused folks blood to boil. 

It wasn't really any specific cases. It was the tremendous overreach of the church, keeping its sticky fingers in every aspect of citizens' lives, from healthcare to government to education to being stewards of 'morality'.
The people finally realized there was nothing moral about prohibiting birth control, leading to huge families nobody could afford to feed.....and then the church demanding money from the poor to build bigger and more ornate cathedrals.
The cathedrals are still standing,but now they're spas, libraries and condos.

I'm firmly convinced that one of the angry schisms between the French and English was due to religion. The French resented that the English had more money. Of course they did! The Protestants were allowed to practice birth control.

[weltschmerz]

Surely, you've seen Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, where the father is forced to sell some of his kids for medical experiments so the rest could eat?  And the mother pregnant again? It was like that! It wasn't that far from Quebec's truth.

In any case, the 60s were a time of massive social upheaval, where everything changed, not just here but everywhere.
Womens' Lib. Protesting pointless wars. Burning bras. Free love. Rock and Roll. The Pill.
We just took it a step further.

[haapai]

I keep hearing claims that everyone just got fed up one day and that it was a tumultuous time and I'm having trouble believing that.  It stinks of memory failure in my opinion. 

The specific cases that galvanized support for the repeal of Ireland's abortion ban are pretty well known.  You can read about them here.  FWIW, both cases got enough international attention that you could probably guess what they were and describe them pretty well before clicking on the link. 

In my opinion, the article leaves out key elements of both stories that are crucial to understanding why the Irish changed their minds after so many years.  In my opinion, the thumbnail accounts don't really make it clear just how much authority figures went beyond what the 8th amendment required or how run-ins with the 8th amendment seem to have scrambled their competence. 

It's somewhat disturbing how quickly we can lose track of what part of a story outraged the public and led to these kind of big shifts.  The only remedy that I can suggest is to keep telling the original stories.  

[tskeeter]

Jan 11, 2019 21:58:53 GMT -5 haapai said:

Jan 11, 2019 0:38:56 GMT -5 weltschmerz said:

Now Quebec is rabidly and militantly secular.
When the pendulum swings, it doesn't stop in the middle.

So I have to ask, did Ireland's recent swing away from and continuing anger toward the Church surprise you?  Did you have a sense that the pendulum was going to continue to swing?  Or did you find yourself amazed and searching for explanations and then remember your own history? 

I think that the idea that Ireland’s vote on abortion is a backlash against the Catholic Church is the media making the news they choose to report.

The vote occurred in the middle of a two month trip we made to Ireland.  While towns across Ireland were blanketed with signs both pro and con, and there were advertisements on the topic, religion was not an element of the discussion.  That is until after the vote had taken place.  It was after the vote that the pundits began Monday Morning Quarterbacking and introduced the concept that the vote was a rejection of Catholic values.  Up until the vote, discussion centered around women’s right to control their bodies and the “rights” of the unborn.  One popular con argument was that, given the choice, parents who could have developmentally challenged children would make an inappropriate decision and choose abortion.

My observation was that the folks handing out literature and displaying signs were almost exclusively women.  And those women ranged in age from late teens to early 60’s.  This led me to conclude that the vote was a decision rights issue rather than a religious issue.  

[weltschmerz]

Jan 12, 2019 10:34:50 GMT -5 haapai said:

I keep hearing claims that everyone just got fed up one day and that it was a tumultuous time and I'm having trouble believing that.  It stinks of memory failure in my opinion. 

The specific cases that galvanized support for the repeal of Ireland's abortion ban are pretty well known.  You can read about them here.  FWIW, both cases got enough international attention that you could probably guess what they were and describe them pretty well before clicking on the link. 

In my opinion, the article leaves out key elements of both stories that are crucial to understanding why the Irish changed their minds after so many years.  In my opinion, the thumbnail accounts don't really make it clear just how much authority figures went beyond what the 8th amendment required or how run-ins with the 8th amendment seem to have scrambled their competence. 

It's somewhat disturbing how quickly we can lose track of what part of a story outraged the public and led to these kind of big shifts.  The only remedy that I can suggest is to keep telling the original stories.  

Believe it or don't believe it. It doesn't matter to me.
I provided plenty of links. You can call it memory failure if you like.
It was a time of social upheaval and these were the consequences in this province.
We are not Ireland.