So, this is a little different than usual. Not gaming or book related, nor is it a thought experiment. This is just a straight up diary entry about some shit that’s on my mind, and that shit just so happens to be Catholicism.
Now look, I don’t like the Church, Vatican, or really anything to do with Catholicism. I was raised in a very anti-catholic household. Pentecostals, as well as many other protestant denominations, are known for their aggressiveness towards Catholicism, and with good reason. The Church hasn’t exactly been kind toward their fellow Christians, not to mention anyone else who disagreed with them. This all being said, I do not hate Catholics. My wife is a Catholic, and a proud one at that. Her whole family is Catholic. I do not hate these people, nor hold anything against them. This extends to all Catholics. Just because I have HUGE problems with the Church doesn’t mean that I hate the people in it. I do not believe that they are evil, nor are they against God or going to Hell. I was certainly taught that, but that teaching was/is wrong. Catholics are just as Christian as I am, even though I believe that the Vatican is mostly mislead. The Vatican is no different than really any big church or organization within Christianity. They’re all corrupt and evil in many ways. The Vatican being Catholic doesn’t make them any worse than the Mega Churches who exploit their congregations for monetary gain, or the many other terrible things happening within the other denominations. I also don’t believe that Catholics are part of a cult, despite some really culty shit going on, but every sect has cult within it. The Catholic Church is far from being as much of a cult as say the Mormom Church, who I have even bigger issues with, but I’ll save that for later. All in all, Catholics are not evil. The Vatican can be, but the people within the Church aren’t, or rather, not all of them. By people, I mean the people in the pews, not the people running the show.
Ok, we good? Everyone on the same page? I don’t hate Catholics, nor think they’re evil, going to hell, etc. Good, we got that out of the way. All of that being said, the Catholic Church is just full of made up shit. By made up shit, I mean stuff that has no basis in the Christian faith. Of course, you could say that it’s all made up, so what’s the difference? The difference is that the “Bible”, which has the words/instructions of Christ, is the basis for Christianity, yet there is so much about Catholicism that COMPLETELY ignores scripture, and this pisses me off.
Purgatory and Limbo used to be something that aggravated me to no end, as it has NO Biblical basis whatsoever, but the Church finally got rid of that. Took them a thousand years, but they finally realized that, “Hey, this shit isn’t in the Bible. Maybe we should stop teaching it like it is?”. Shouldn’t have taken them that long, considering EVERYONE ELSE thought this doctrine was wrong, but hey, A for effort. At least you got there, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. No, today, I wanna talk about Mary.
I could go on and on about the really WEIRD obsession that the Church has with Mary, but I want to focus on one particular aspect of Mary that I learned just a few days ago. This mind blowing fact is that the Catholic Church believes and teaches that the Virgin Mary was ALWAYS a virgin. We all know that she was a virgin when she got pregnant with Christ. This is not what I’m mad about. That’s kind of Mary’s whole deal. She was a young virgin that gave birth to the Lord. It was a miracle. We all know the story. What I take issue with, and what BLEW MY FREAKING MIND, was that they believe that she remained a virgin until she died. This is something they call “Perpetual Virginity”.
Ok, first things first. No where in the Bible does it every say or allude to Mary being a virgin for life. She was just virgin when she got pregnant with Christ. She had to be because of the prophecy, and blah, blah, blah, but after, she was still married to Joseph. She was a young married woman living in Judea over 2,000 years ago. My wife and I end up having sex when we can’t find something on TV, let alone if we were in a desert with nothing to do. You’re telling me that Mary and Joseph never hooked up once? That doesn’t make any sense, but hey, if the Bible never said that she had sex, then one could assume that she didn’t, right? There’s just enough evidence for this theory as there is against, right? Yeah, no. This theory might hold water if Jesus didn’t have a freaking brother.
That’s right, Christ had a brother. In fact, he had quite a few, but one of them was really prominent in the Bible. How prominent, you ask? Prominent that HE GOT HIS OWN BOOK! His brother was James, as in the St. James, and the writer of the Book of James. You kind of can’t ignore his existence. The Bible also refers to James as the brother of Christ MULTIPLE times, so you can’t say that he was his brother.
But what if James was his adopted brother, then he would still be his brother, right? What if it was a child from a previous marriage that Joseph had? Well, that could work, if you had any evidence for these claims whatsoever. Look, James didn’t have the powers of Christ because he was just a man. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, while Christ was God’s son who Mary gave birth to. That’s not that hard to understand, but for some reason, the Church found the need to ignore this possibility. They might’ve been able to get away with this if the Bible didn’t call James the son of Mary. That’s pretty cut and dry, but I guess they don’t see it that way.
This isn’t a translation or interpretation thing, either. The Bible says that she was a mother to James. It says that Christ had brothers. It also alludes to Mary laying with Joseph, because of course she did, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Look, protestants have A LOT of weird shit, too. Lots of stuff that’s not supported by the Bible. I was raised to believe that Jesus never drank wine, alcohol was evil, and that what they drank back then was juice. This is a complete and utter lie. Jesus drank wine. He freaking turned water into wine! He talked about drinking wine, and was even called a “winebibber” aka a drunk. The Jews and Romans had words to distinguish wine from juice, and while there are many translation errors, this wasn’t one of them. They just made it up because Pentecostals and Baptists are famously anti-alcohol. The doctrine fit their needs, despite it not being supported by the text. It’s evil and wrong. Catholics aren’t the only ones to just make up shit, but it’s what they chose to make up that bothers me. Maybe it’s because I’m not familiar with it, but this stuff truly boggles my mind.
I don’t get why Mary had to stay a virgin. There is nothing in the Bible that says that she couldn’t have had relations with her damn husband after Christ was born. Nothing. Keeping her a Virgin makes no sense. Does her being a “Perpetual Virgin” make her more pure in the eyes of the Church, cause that’s kind of fucked up. A woman’s purity/worth is not tied to whether or not she had sex. Also, Mary was married, so there’s no “sin” to worry about, either. Women have sex. Not only is that ok, it’s good. Mary had sex. She probably really liked it. That’s ok. She’s still an important figure. David literally had countless wives and concubines, and even committed adultery with another man’s wife, got her pregnant, then killed the husband so he wouldn’t find out. All of this, and he’s still considered the greatest King of Israel, yet if Mary even looked at her husband, she wouldn’t be as pure? Screw that. She still gave birth to Christ as a Virgin. She’s still the mother of Christ. Her having sex after doesn’t change that.
The Autistic Cowboy 