#CULT ANIMOSITY NO SIGN LETTING UP SERIES#
#CULT ANIMOSITY NO SIGN LETTING UP FREE#

Of course it made no sense that my hair would somehow look better if people couldn't see it. Most disturbing about this conversation was his effort to make repression sound positive. I think the long kind would be best for you.' I recommend that for you - you have such pretty red hair, but it would even look nicer if you wore a veil over it. 'The long veils are the best kind - the really long ones, past the shoulders. Women look the most beautiful in church when they are veiled,' he tried to persuade. 'You should come to the Latin Mass instead and wear a veil. On one instance, a priest noticed I was showing up semi-regularly and approached me with a persuasive speech to convert me to the Latin Mass faction - disguising discrimination as encouragement.

#CULT ANIMOSITY NO SIGN LETTING UP FREE#

Immediately we stopped going to Mass at that parish.īut it wasn't the last time I would run into Latin Masses - or the Latin Mass sectarians, present today in many Catholic organizations.Īfter almost leaving the church as a teenager, I chose to stay Catholic by practicing my faith as a free agent - belonging to no parish, attending different churches for Sunday Mass. He advised her that genuine Catholic faith did not forbid wearing certain colors or allow priests to inflict a 'lifetime penance' for sins. After some while of this torture, my mother spoke with a different priest about the unbearable situation. A confessor there hit one of my family members with a 'permanent daily penance'- a rosary every day, forever, to atone for an alleged life of iniquity. For example, the color red was forbidden to be worn in the church. After over an hour spent every Sunday drowning in incense smoke and getting sneered at, we did not feel any closer to God. The people had the humor of a gallows crowd and the pastor, arrayed in lavish vestments, was more like a Renaissance baron. Needless to say, anything in the church looking remotely female was completely veiled. The treatment we got was slightly shy of the Spanish Inquisition. The church was going to welcome us, she thought. The last Masses my mother remembered attending took place before the Second Vatican Council, so naturally she started going to Latin Masses when she returned to the church because they were familiar. The Latin Mass rears its veiled head in this unholy history at several points. (It's a miracle that I'm still Catholic and became a Catholic journalist.)

#CULT ANIMOSITY NO SIGN LETTING UP SERIES#

My family's journey into the Catholic Church was a long, tumultuous and unpleasant road punctuated by a series of awful mistreatments by Catholic clergy, religious, schools and parishioners. Maybe this sounds like the beginning of a happy story of faith and discovery. From an early age, I believed in Christ and considered myself a Catholic - other relatives tried in vain to convert me to atheism while I was still in elementary school. My mother decided to return to the Catholic Church when I was young. In the branches of my family tree were relatives who might best be described as atheists, and others of a more traditional Christian type. My mother was a fallen-away Catholic who hadn't been to church in over 30 years. I grew up in a household of challenged but growing faith, which grew stronger over time. To receive the Eucharist, people must kneel at his feet. He is separated from the people he is supposed to serve by an altar rail - a barrier that gives him privileges. The priest is at the center of the spectacle. All people inside the church are expected to kneel on cue at various points. Aside from making occasional responses, the congregation plays no active part in worship. The priest keeps his back turned to the people for most of the ceremony. The liturgy - spoken in an ancient language no longer in modern vernacular usage - places all power in the hands of the priest. The Latin Mass fosters clericalist structures in the church. The stubbornly resistant, anti-modern practices of these Latin Mass adherents border on cultism. They utilize the Latin Mass structure to wield control over believers - particularly women, who are reduced to a state of discriminatory subjugation in Latin rites. The ultra-conservatism practiced by these Latin Mass groups is radical and narrow-minded. In the wake of much needed reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Mass has become a rallying point for change-resistant sects within the church. In a previous era, the Latin Mass was merely a uniform and standard way of celebrating the liturgy in the United States.

Cult animosity no sign letting up