How to find a vacation parish?

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BaltoBetsy, I appreciate your concern, but I’m really not at all worried about my personal heresy. The line between heresy and orthodoxy is so very fine, and has shifted so many times across the centuries, that I have no doubt whatsoever that God is generous enough to forgive us many, many things. So no need to pray for my wayward ways. I know I’d rather pray for those who are unkind in the world, and ungenerous, and violent (I am NOT talking about things on here – I’m speaking of those who do not help their neighbor when they can).

Call me cavalier if you wish, but I’d rather be that than follow the Vatican like a sheep. Sheep are cute, but I’d make a lousy sheep.

Naprous
 
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naprous:
Call me cavalier if you wish, but I’d rather be that than follow the Vatican like a sheep. Sheep are cute, but I’d make a lousy sheep.
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Not everyone on here “follows the Vatican like a sheep.” I would be willing to bet that a majority of the people on this board have actively studied their religion and know why the Vatican says what it says about different aspects of the faith.
In my years of studying what the Vatican has and hasn’t said. I have found that more often then not when I found out what the Vatican really said about something and why it said it, not something that someone told me it said, I found I agreed with the Vatican. There are matters I disagree with the Vatican teachings but they are always things that we aren’t bound to believe in (i.e. dogma, official teachings, etc.)
Code: 
Not just going by some feeling that some teaching isn't right because X reason.

Be careful judging others.
 
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naprous:
BaltoBetsy, I appreciate your concern, but I’m really not at all worried about my personal heresy. The line between heresy and orthodoxy is so very fine, and has shifted so many times across the centuries, that I have no doubt whatsoever that God is generous enough to forgive us many, many things. So no need to pray for my wayward ways. I know I’d rather pray for those who are unkind in the world, and ungenerous, and violent (I am NOT talking about things on here – I’m speaking of those who do not help their neighbor when they can).

Call me cavalier if you wish, but I’d rather be that than follow the Vatican like a sheep. Sheep are cute, but I’d make a lousy sheep.

Naprous
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It is not so much the Vatican you should be worried about but God. Why should He forgive you over something that you yourself don’t care or at least are not sorry for?
 
Yes, of course, Marauder, you’re right. But I don’t agree with current Vatican policy on many things, including things that are fairly “hot” issues in the Church these days, so that puts us in a somewhat different position. And though once upon a time, I was briefly a Benedictine, obedience was definitely the vow that was going to be hardest for me! I love stability, I love the conversatio morum, but obedience was tough. Luckily, I’m not a Benedictine anymore.

And BaltoBetsy, I don’t think that forgiveness comes into it. Why should God forgive me for something that isn’t wrong? I do worry about God, but in a very different way that the way you imply. I worry that I will not have been generous and loving enough, not that I will have failed to follow some tenet of Church doctrine or practice.

Naprous
 
Whoops, redkim, I replied to you about women’s ordination on the other thread (on Meet & Greet, for those who don’t know). Getting my threads confused…

Sorry about that!

Naprous
 
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naprous:
BaltoBetsy, I appreciate your concern, but I’m really not at all worried about my personal heresy. The line between heresy and orthodoxy is so very fine, and has shifted so many times across the centuries, that I have no doubt whatsoever that God is generous enough to forgive us many, many things. So no need to pray for my wayward ways. I know I’d rather pray for those who are unkind in the world, and ungenerous, and violent (I am NOT talking about things on here – I’m speaking of those who do not help their neighbor when they can).

Call me cavalier if you wish, but I’d rather be that than follow the Vatican like a sheep. Sheep are cute, but I’d make a lousy sheep.

Naprous
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Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus Christ like sheep. Because He is the Good Shephard and has given His Church to St. Peter. (Matt. 16:18). Pope John Paul II sits in St. Peter’s chair.

What I think is disingenuous is starting a debate under the guise of asking for information. You can throw a rock and hit 3 churches from anywhere in NYC which you know since you lived here. Anyone with a PhD can find a church here.

You must really think we are sheep. (Catholic and Aglican…how does that work?)
 
Gosh, I’m really getting confused about these threads! Sorry everybody for mis-identifying people who have written to me! How many PhDs does it take to change a lightbulg? (please don’t try to answer that question!)

Anyway, yes, condan, I did sort of realize that the sheep analogy was a bad one. Happy to follow Jesus Christ like a sheep, but I’m less happy to follow He Who Sits in Peter’s Chair. There’s an awful lot we don’t know about the early Church – and not everything we DO know makes for nice reading.

One of “my” (14th-century) heretics once made a joke (reported to the inquisitor, of course): “IF the Pope ties a donkey’s tail on earth, does that mean that the donkey’s tail is tied in Heaven?”

And condan, I did live in New York once upon a very, very long time ago. I was a very unhappy and lonely young woman, a very recent Catholic convert, and I never did find any church where I felt at home. So it really was (and remains!) a real question. Of course there are a bazillion churches in New York. I can even name a couple of them, like St. Vincent Ferrer’s up on the Upper East Side where I went to an Easter Vigil once. Nice music – but the priest who heard my confession there was a real doozy (should have known better than to go to a Dominican church!). I really, honestly am looking for a congenial church to go to mass to this sunday. I may have located something on the Call to Action website, and people here have given me some useful suggestions.

Catholic AND Anglican? Well, I grew up Episcopalian, and converted to the Catholic Church when I was 19. I spent some time in a French Benedictine monastery in my 20s. I used to go to an Episcopalian monastery in Cambridge, MA for Compline every night. In recent years (and especially since my move here), I have not been very happy with my local Catholic options, so I regularly attend an Episcopalian “gathering” in a one-room schoolhouse in a nearby hamlet. I realize you’re probably not comfortable with that kind of ecumenism, but I am.

But enough about me.

Naprous
 
As a future Dominican nun hopeful, that cuts to the quick! 🙂 (more anti-Christ just for you)

But, since Dominic played a major role in the beginning of the Inquisition, I could see how you, as a heretic, might feel a bit put off… 😛
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naprous:
And condan, I did live in New York once upon a very, very long time ago. I was a very unhappy and lonely young woman, a very recent Catholic convert, and I never did find any church where I felt at home. So it really was (and remains!) a real question. Of course there are a bazillion churches in New York. I can even name a couple of them, like St. Vincent Ferrer’s up on the Upper East Side where I went to an Easter Vigil once. Nice music – but the priest who heard my confession there was a real doozy (should have known better than to go to a Dominican church!).
Naprous
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Exactly, redkim, that is JUST my problem. You see, I’ve been to Prouille, I’ve been to Fanjeaux, and I’ve just studied waaaaaaaaaay too many heretics prosecuted by Dominican inquisitors!

And these days, I hang out with the Franciscans a lot, too. “My” heretics were Franciscan, so there are a lot of Franciscans in my academic crowd – and not a Dominican to be seen.

I have met some lovely Dominicans though. The sisters at Fanjeaux were fabulous when I stayed with them a few years back. And there’s a wonderful Dominican library in Paris. So I’ll forgive you.

Naprous
 
Well, I was a Secular Franciscan until I formally entered discernment with Dominicans. But, I’ve never met a Franciscan heretic either.
 
Well, I’ve definitely met some hippy Franciscans… And the Franciscan sisters who are part of a group called WIFIT (Women in the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition) to which I belong just loooooove my heretics! We have taken to referring to them as “combustible women.”

Naprous
 
WIFIT?

Heretics are an interesting bunch, ya know. I want to find out where exactly their heresy is before I accuse them of being heretical.

From some of the heresies I’ve become acquainted with, it seems that they are justly called heresies, like donatism and gnosticism, etc.

What is interesting is that those particular heresies are, IMO, far more “strict” than Catholicism is.
 
I started off working on Cathar heretics, but have moved over to a group called the Beguins (affiliated with the Spiritual Franciscans). You’re right – they were very strict on the issue of poverty, especially. But they were also wildly apocalyptic, and were convinced, among other things, that Pope John XXII was the “mystical Antichrist” - they couldn’t quite agree on who the “real” Antichrist was!

And you are very wise to be discerning (if I may use that term!) on the issue of so-called heresy. There was a woman named Marguerite Porete who was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310 as a relapsed and unrepentant heretic. Among other things, she had refused to recant the things that she had written in a spiritual book called the Mirror of Simple Souls. For centuries, it was believed that her book had been consigned to the flames with her. But in 1927, a book by that name appeared in print from a Catholic press, WITH the imprimatur and nihil obstat, translated from a manuscript in the Bodleian library. The author was listed as “an unknown mystic of the 13th century.” Some years later, a scholar proved that the text was indeed Marguerite Porete’s, the very same book that had led to her conviction as a Free Spirit heretic. So what was “dangerously heretical” in 1310, was doctrinally sound in 1927. I find that dangerously ironic.

I always say a prayer when I go by the Place des Greves in Paris, where Marguerite was burned. Not for her soul, because I’m sure that is at peace, but for all those others out there who are persecuted in the way that she was.

Naprous
 
Oh I know! I periodically teach a class called “Saints or Sinners: Heresy and Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” and we do a whole week or more on Joan. How I love the The Passion of Joan of Arc, the silent film with Renee Falconetti…

Naprous
 
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naprous:
Fullsizesedan, thanks very much. I’ll definitely check out the Paulists! I appreciate your help.

Redkim, I suspect you’re right that many people don’t know much about why the Church holds the position that it does. However, I respectfully submit that I am not one of them. I have a PhD in medieval religious history, and have been interested and reading on the subject (and related subjects) for many, many years. I also agree with you that not many priests (even those who agree with me in private) would talk about it from the pulpit, and I’m not really expecting them to! But there is a HUGE difference in my experience between a church that preaches “toe the Vatican line or risk eternal damnation!” from the pulpit, and one that encourages tolerance for different opinions and persons. And the ordination of women is just simply one of those bellwether issues. When I have the chance to escape my rural parish for the weekend, I’m looking for a parish that reminds me of why I became a Catholic in the first place – not one that makes me second guess that decision!

Anyway, I’m beginning to realize that this site is really not a good one for me. I appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut and your suggestions, however. Despite the fact that we disagree, you’ve been very respectful and polite, and I thank you for that.

Best,

Naprous
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This issue is closed. The Faithful should no longer publicly discuss or agitate for it.

From the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of John Paul II to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
** Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful**
 
Charlemagne:

While I agree with the Church’s position on female ordination, I must say that the faithful still are able to discuss the issue publicly if they so desire.

It’s a good idea to publicly discuss it so that those of who agree with the Church’s teaching can at least educate those who do not.
 
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redkim:
Charlemagne:

While I agree with the Church’s position on female ordination, I must say that the faithful still are able to discuss the issue publicly if they so desire.

It’s a good idea to publicly discuss it so that those of who agree with the Church’s teaching can at least educate those who do not.
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Sorry, Redkim. I meant the “agitate” more than the discuss. That is, those who dissent from the document I cited should submit themselves to God’s grace and not continue to agitate for women’s ordination!
 
Well, yeah…I agree about the agitate thing. Female ordination is just not going to happen, nor should it.

Many women feel I am a traitor to “the women’s cause” because of it. Oh well!

But still, it is better to know why and agree with the Church’s teaching on the subject, than to simply “shut up” and submit like a robot.
 
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