Interview With a Vampire author Anne Rice did some religious flip-flopping today. After saying in a Newsweek interview in 2004 that she would “only write for the Lord” going forward, she posted a message on her Facebook wall this week saying she has quit Christianity.
It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.
In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian.
Rice’s son, Christopher, is gay — and even when she was a member of the Christian faith, she was a vocal supporter of LGBT rights.
I guess I found this odd because I never really thought of it as an organization you had to actively turn in a letter saying you were quitting. Most of us just sort of drift away and say to hell with it all.
Mnemosyne
She still has to run through two or three more religions before she catches up with Rod Dreher.
Cacti
Well, if you’re Mormon, I know you do have to formally resign before they’ll strike you from the membership rolls.
Lev
@Cacti: On a related topic, I knew someone who got kicked out of BYU after someone spotted his car (with a BYU bumper sticker on it) in front of a strip club.
Jon H
In Germany you have to de-register. It has something to do with tax money.
Theron
Well she publicly embraced it, so I guess she felt the need to publicly disavow it.
Jon H
My cynical take: the Christian market wasn’t as receptive as she had expected.
El Cid
What happens is
if you don’t give 2 weeks notice, it’s really hard to find a replacement in time.
Cacti
@Jon H:
I was thinking the same thing.
I think the gay vampire thing probably did her in from the start.
New Yorker
I had been drifting away since I was a kid (reading about the dinosaurs when you’re 8 makes you wonder why they’re missing from the Book of Genesis, and that started the whole thing snowballing for me) but I did make a conscious declaration to myself that I was done with religion after 9/11.
Bob L
Isn’t she Catholics? Apparently like the Mormons you have to formally renounce Catholicism.
xochi
Christianity certainly didn’t help her writing.
Politically Lost
Fortunately, (at least from my perspective) I was never inculcated with the religious goo in my formative years so I never had to drift away from it nor quit. However, during my teens I got interested in the ways of their force and went some of the bible thumping mega church stuff in Orange County California where I grew up. (OK, OK I got interested in a girl.)
When it’s new to you, that getting seizing by the holy ghost shit is just weird. The music is maddeningly repetitive and the contradictions inherent to the whole philosophy seem to leap out to make it all very unpalatable.
Even more fortunately, I lost interested in that girl and found a godless goth emo girl that was not interested in reading me the psalms and wasn’t scared of my motorcycle.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Yes, well, Rice has always been a bit … prolix.
.
kindness
Most of us practice a cafeteria style observances. I like this, I’ll have some, but that is horrible and I want no part of it. And we still feel at one with the flying spagetti monster. Thank the FSM…..
Zifnab
@Cacti: You mean when she wrote about the rich, spoiled, denizens of the Old World that feasted on the blood of the poor and the helpless, while indulging in forbidden sexual taboos under cover of a secretive elite heirarchy of…
Wait, am I talking about gay vampires or the priesthood?
Nick
I actually wrote a letter of resignation to the Archbishop of New York after Question 1 passed in Maine.
Midnight Marauder
@Cacti:
But sometimes, they’ll just add you to the membership rolls even if you are dead.
Zifnab
@Politically Lost:
/high five
eemom
I think it’s more about the fact that she wanted to make a public statement about her disillusionment with “official” Christianity, than anything else. “Quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous” are not usually the stuff of 2 week notices.
Jay in Oregon
@Theron:
That’s my take as well.
And frankly, better that than becoming the kind of shameless hypocrite so many other self-described “Christians” are.
JGabriel
@New Yorker:
For me, I was 7 and it was the Apostolic Creed that started the ball rolling. Specifically, the part where it said something like “We believe in one church …”
I thought, “Wouldn’t all the other religions believe that too? And if they’re all saying or thinking that, then how can you tell which one is right?”
Since there was no way to determine that, I figured none of them could legitimately claim superiority over the others, which meant they were all likely to be wrong.
I still went on to be an alter boy. I was 7, and not too confident of my reasoning yet.
.
eemom
@Midnight Marauder:
The Mormons are also big on converting Jews, whether they like it or not. Apparently Jesus gives them extra points for that, or something.
Elizabelle
Sounds like she’s tired of political “Christianism.”
An additional Rice Facebook comment (via John’s link) says (paraphrasing here): “In the name of Christ
Sounds like the Balloon Juicer faith!
JGabriel
@Nick:
Did you get a response, or acknowledgement even?
.
geg6
I’m pretty sure that Rice went the Catholic route and, as I found out a few years ago when my sister got married, you are considered by the Church to be Catholic until the day you die unless you formally renounce. So after the wedding, that’s what I did, writing a letter to the bishop.
I gave up on Rice when she went all religion. I always found her books fun and even collected quite a bit of her erotica, which she wrote under the name A. N. Roquelaure. My sister tried to get me to read her Jesus books but…well, no fucking way. I have no interest in Jesus or anything related to him or anyone who is enamored of him. The less Jesus, the better for us all, AFAIC. Guess Anne Rice learned the same lesson the hard way.
TaMara (BHF)
When I left my church, I gave them a letter. It’s a way of being taken off the rolls so you don’t get solicited for money and stuff.
My hope was they’d see me as such a hopeless sinner they’d leave me the fuck alone.
Jody
She must be broke.
Geeno
@eemom: That’s an epic two week notice.
scarshapedstar
This is one instance where the drama-instigating party really DOES have a book to sell.
adolphus
Only to be reconverted after death by your still Mormon descendants.
OOPS! MM beat me to it. Sorry.
eric
I blame obama.
PurpleGirl
@Bob L: That would be news to most Catholics who mostly just stop attending a church.
I was raised Catholic, drifted away and no one from the parish came to see me because like they don’t keep track of church attendance that closely. In my mid-20s joined a Lutheran Church. When I began drifting away from that I told the Pastor that I was resigning from the Education Committee, which I chaired.
HumboldtBlue
I did my damndest to get excommunicated from the Catlicks, but fuck, non one paid attention to me, so I just gave them a big middle finger. I mean, what could be cooler than to hold up at the dinner table than official excommunication letter from Pope Urban The Boy Fucker or Cardinal Lecher of the Society or Child Rape?
Who does the actual excommunication any way? Is it the office of the Inquisition?
parksideq
Yeah, ex-Christian here as well (grew up Seventh-Day Adventist which, for those unfamiliar with it, is so conservative it asymptotically approaches Peak Wingnut). My turning point was realizing there was no way in hell a family of 8 could be cooped up on a yacht for a month and a half with every animal species on the planet and either not get eaten or be suffocated by the stench while shoveling all that animal poop off the side of the deck.
And don’t even get me started on the shellfish and mixed fabrics restrictions.
Mark S.
Why doesn’t she just join some liberal denomination that isn’t anti-gay and anti-all the other stuff? It sounds like she still believes in Jesus.
flounder
That’s the difference between you and someone living off the popularity they gained writing a couple popular books twenty years ago.
EconWatcher
I was 10 when I decided I was an agnostic, but couldn’t tell anyone about it in my Catholic school. I remember thinking the whole story I was being told just seemed… implausible.
suzanne
@Cacti: And they make it a big pain in the ass to do it, too, so most people who leave the Church don’t bother. This is why the membership data they give out is so highly suspect.
I’m all pissed off at the LDS Church today after learning that the mall development project they funded is going to cost in excess of $3 billion. Which is more than double what they’ve spent in humanitarian aid FOR THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS combined. Not to mention, they’re funding it privately so they don’t have to comply with affordable housing laws for all the people who are being displaced.
Bill Section 147
@JGabriel: I had already decided young but at my school all of the alter boys got a day off school and a special picnic at the park. Needless to say I never brought up my doubts before the alter boy picnic. We also got to leave class early every First Thursday and First Friday of the month to set up. As I had to go to church anyway, and I was an early riser I would volunteer to do the 7 am Mass on Sunday. No Homily, no songs, one-half hour in and out, plus donut.
Bill E Pilgrim
Can you get unemployment if you’re the one who quit?
Damn, my soul is only covered for six more weeks unless they pass an extension in Rome. Oops, I mean darn. See?
djork
I was having a busy day at work Googling myself (sounds dirty) and my name popped up on my childhood church’s website. They were basically wondering where the hell I was. They still had me on the membership rolls, even though I haven’t darkened their door in over 20 years. Apparently one does not quit the United Methodist Church so easily. I’ve since found out from my father (still goes to church) that they keep you on the roles until you ask to be removed.
As someone mentioned upthread, there’s a fundraising element to it. Likewise, in the case of the UMC, I think they get money and support from the national office or whatever and that is based on membership rolls.
Addendum: Actually, I think they PAY money to the national office based on membership rolls. Hence, the church tries to find me after all of those years.
eemom
@parksideq:
interestingly, the only deeply religious Christian I’ve ever known who I’ve thought was absolutely, totally, 100% pure in their faith and Jesus-modeling was an Adventist.
Caren
You do have to formally renounce Catholicism. Most just stop going, and the hierarchy pretends they’re just sinning and might come to confession someday if they don’t get a note.
Often, the bishops will write back refusing. That’s really funny, b/c how do you make someone believe what they don’t believe?
No surprise there, since the Catholic hierarchy does a shit job of educating its laity on its dogma. It much prefers to have the flock just listen and obey and revere.
Or it would like to have that. Unfortunately for them, enough of the laity know how to read and know their faith and really really don’t think the bishops should be allowed to get away with shifting pedophiles around.
Chris W
Anne would have made a fine Unitarian. They put on a pretty good Renaissance Faire. And everybody at the Faires dresses like Anne Rice.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Caren: Really?
So I’m actually still Catholic all this time, after 30 years?
Is there any interest?
ellaesther
@Nick: That’s several kinds of awesome.
Bill Section 147
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Obviously not on your part.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Rice: “For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed.”
This suggests she wasn’t serious in the first place. One of the central tenets of Christianity is that you have to actually believe it, strangely enough. Christians In Name Only (or CINOs) are singled out for special vilification in the New Testament.
ellaesther
I actually find this very interesting, and would like to someday read her thoughts about it (not a Facebook posting. That’s a note scribbled into the wind, not “thoughts”). What exactly was this process? Why? What pushed her over the edge, in both directions?
The announcement that she would write only Christian stuff, in retrospect (from which one always has a better view) sounds like those cases where couples renew their vows only to get a divorce a year later — a grandiose gesture meant to save something that was probably already lost.
But of course I’m not Anne Rice, so I have no real idea!
QuaintIrene
I always wondered what spurred her re-dedication to the Church. Atonement for all that porn she wrote under another name?
It’s one thing to feel a need for a more spiritual side. Another to phrase it as ‘writing only for the Lord.”
Keith
I dunno, I could see Newt Gingrich maybe doing something like this…for Israel or something. “Callista and I have decided that it would be prudent at this point in time for me to leave Christianity in the name of Christ. Mazeltov!”
Roger Moore
@Midnight Marauder:
They did the same thing to many Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The central church claims that the proxy baptisms are not approved by the church hierarchy, but they don’t seem to take much care in preventing them from happening, and seem to be surprised at how offended people by the practice.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bill Section 147: Well if I’ve been earning any all that time, sure there is!
Reminds me of Woody Allen in Sleeper:
“I haven’t seen my analyst in 200 years. If I’d been going all this time, I’d probably almost be cured by now.”
eemom
@Bill E Pilgrim:
There is, but it’s only payable in Communion wafers.
Bubblegum Tate
@Caren:
Holy shit, seriously? That is hilarious.
“Dear Catholic Church–
I don’t believe your stupid bullshit anymore.
Signed,
Ex-parishoner”
“Dear Parishoner–
Yes you do. You believe it. Yes you do. Yesyoudoyesyoudoyesyoudo.
No backsies,
Catholic Church”
Mark S.
She was raised Catholic, lapsed for about 30 years, and then came back to it. source
YellowJournalism
Shorter Anne Rice: I quit this bitch.
Frank
@Cacti:
And not only that; I have read that you need to have the letter notarized and it needs to be sent priority mail. Or the risk is high that the LDS church will claim they never received it.
And even at that point, chances are they will send a couple of missionaries to “persuade” you to stay in the church.
Ned R.
I was raised Anglican. Most relaxed way to let it all slip away ever. My eternal hero in said faith is this guy.
Svensker
Well, she said she still believes in Jesus, just not in the church as it is organized. She may drift away, or she may become a Unitarian, Quaker, etc., etc.
She didn’t say nothing about being no atheist.
Uloborus
@geg6:
But… she can’t write. I mean, she really can’t write. I mean, she REALLY REALLY can’t write.
@Politically Lost: Goth and emo are entirely different, dang it! However, both kinds of girls are *delicious*.
And to the topic at large: I am more stunned to find out she has children. It implies that she’s ever had sex. Her entire writing style seems to be based on the fact that she’s not getting any and it’s driving her insane. That she became really Christian doesn’t surprise me at all, since she’s so messed up she had to make up nonexistent erotic thrills to write pornographically about.
Uloborus
@Roger Moore:
Growing up Jewish I got a phone call once from a woman explaining that her congregation had just converted an old synagogue into a Baptist Church and inviting me and my family to attend. She actually thought we’d be flattered. Seriously.
stickler
@Roger Moore: Roger: Not only did the Mormons posthumously baptize murdered Jews, they also … wait for it … posthumously baptized the gentlemen who orchestrated their murder. Or so the story goes — the Mormons were pretty quick to try to hush up the whole thing, and it’s still not clear that The Man With The Funny Mustache was baptized. But several of his closest henchmen clearly were.
As I recall, the LDS hierarchy orchestrated a “sincere apology, please don’t ever speak of this again” response. I think it happened in the ’90s.
New Yorker
@parksideq:
Yeah, the story of the flood bothered me from an early age too, as I was interested in the weather and said to myself “there isn’t enough water in the atmosphere to flood the earth even if every last molecule rained out”.
Of course, there are so many other things about that story that are beyond absurd that I just absolutely cannot believe allegedly sane people believe it. I’ll just end by wondering why the Ark didn’t come to rest on K2 or Kangchenjunga or Huascaran or Denali or any of the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of mountains on the planet that are higher than Ararat.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Uloborus: Her husband Stan was a fairly well-known poet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Rice
I don’t like her novels either but maybe go easy on the sheer viciousness about people you know not much about.
Cacti
@Caren:
It’s funny that they do that, because it actually holds no weight.
I can’t remember the case off the top of my head, but the courts have addressed this issue, and once you’ve communicated an unambiguous statement of resignation, the church may no longer treat you as a member.
stickler
Regarding the Flood myth: let’s all recall that most Near East civilizations had a story of a catastrophic flood, and that we now know that the Black Sea (thought to be one of the first cradles of civilization) probably experienced a catastrophic flood when the Mediterranean rose at the end of the last Ice Age. So for any folks unlucky enough to be resident around the Black Sea when this happened, the Noah story would be quite plausible. Then, have people repeat the story over the campfire for three to five thousand years, and hey presto! Multiple, now-implausible, civilizational flood myths.
Uloborus
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I’ll admit it. Bad writers infuriate me.
Southern Beale
Just to be clear: I take issue with the implication that Rice quit because of her son’s sexual orientation, which isn’t overtly stated in Rice’s Facebook post. This strikes me as an assumption taken by the Afternoon Delight blog.
There are plenty of Christians who support gays and gay rights, and plenty of Christian denominations — mainstream protestants like the UU, UCC, PC(USA) or Episcopals, down to independent churches and even more New Age-y denominations like Unity — who openly support and affirm GLBT families. I’m tired of all Christians being lumped into the same intolerant stew as the fundiegelicals who have dominated the media for the past 10 years. I’ve written about that enough and won’t go into it again.
That said, Anne Rice is a bit if a headline grabber and the fact that she’s “quitting” what she calls a “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” seems about right. Yes we are quarrelsome, hostile etc. but that’s nothing new. Been that way for about 2,000 years. In case she forgot, the founder of Christianity was executed for challenging the status quo: IOW, being quarrelsome, infamous, disputatious, etc.
Whatever.
Svensker
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I never liked her books either but jeez, she’s had some bad times in her life. Can’t criticize her for coping as best she can.
AZmando
I was walking home from work one evening, and a van full of teenagers in white shirts and ties stopped me on the street. They asked me if I would like a copy of the Book of Mormon to read.
I explained that I was one of a small minority of people who actually know the one true and correct religion existed at Easter Island a few centuries ago. A few of the kids had actually heard of the huge stone heads on Easter Island.
I explained that the people who lived there built those great big heads and then disappeared. I said that they went to heaven, simply because they built the heads and propped ’em up all around the island. God was pleased and lifted all those people to heaven, so that must have been the one and only true religion.
Then I told them their church was no different than Islam or Buddhism or Christianity – all modern religions are on the wrong track . If they wanted to get to heaven, get going on some big rocks quick!
Then I dared them to prove I was wrong. They were unable to make a any rational argument, so they just assumed I was nuts and drove away.
SpotWeld
On the topic of Anne Rice
Nuff said
stinger
You’d think she would have investigated the religion’s tenets before deciding to join.
frosty
@New Yorker: I gave up on Christian Science at the age of 12 when praying didn’t cure the sniffles.
The education in the scientific method and engineering did the rest. I mean, really … if something can’t be seen or measured, and there’s no physical evidence of it, you want me to think it exists?
Also, reading all of Mark Twain at an impressionable age pretty much cures you of any religious impulses.
parksideq
@eemom:
I don’t know; as someone that grew up (and vacated) Adventism, I think it blows especially hard as far as Christian sects go. Beyond the fact that they pretty much believe that the Bible is God’s inerrant word verbatim (never mind that it’s been translated six ways from Sunday at this point), it’s hella restrictive. It got to the point where I wasn’t able to do certain extracurriculars after school if they fell on Friday nights, which is hell on earth when you’re growing up. I finally just got tired of feeling like enjoying life was a sin.
@New Yorker:
The other biggie for me was Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs totally existed, and my church thought otherwise, even going so far as to try and say they were bio-engineered by man trying to usurp God’s master plan. Why dinosaurs are a challenge for a deity that can theoretically do anything is beyond me.
frosty
@Politically Lost:
Woo hoo, you dodged a bullet there, didn’t you!
WereBear
I once scared away a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses by going on and on about how “God wants us to be happy.”
I don’t know why that’s supposed to be a bad thing…
eemom
@parksideq:
I hear ya, and I can’t embrace the “God’s word” thing either — though for me the real deal-breaker has always been the exclusivity part. So all these other true believers — or nonbelievers who lead good lives — are goners in the afterlife because they don’t do Jesus? Can’t get on board with that.
The thing about this friend of mine was not about her Adventism — it was that she really was a true believer, and she really was a Jesus-like person.
Eh, guess you had to be there. : )
Ken Pidcock
Loss of faith in youth seems a common theme in this thread. A flattering quotation from Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger, who wrote a book (Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith & Others Abandon Religion) on the subject:
We think the apostates rejected their religion primarily because their religious training made them care so much about the truth and having integrity. It’s not that their upbringing failed; indeed it worked so well that ultimately the family religion failed the test it helped establish.
Jager
@New Yorker:
The world was much smaller then and flat, also.
Anoniminous
Is she resigning from Christianity or Goldman Sachs?
fucen tarmal
@Bill E Pilgrim:
try buying COBRA for your eternal soul.
Christ.Omnipotent.Buddha.Ra.Anyone….that stuff is expensive because everyone gets a cut.
luminous muse
I couldn’t give a hoot about her religion. What I can’t forgive her for is ruining vampires. Before her stuff they were scary, which is the way they’re supposed to be. She made them all hoity-toity, then gay, then whatever (hard to tell in the later stuff ’cause the writing got so bad.) Paved the way for this Twilight nonsense.
Read Bram Stoker, or Salem’s lot, or best of all They Thirst.
That’ll get you looking under the bed.
Matt
@luminous muse:
Dark Shadows did it first.
SRW1
@Jon H:
If you don’t de-register, the tax office automatically deducts a certain percentage of your salary as ‘church tax’ and pass that money on to the denomination you belong to. This ‘church tax’ represents the largest part of the income for churches in Germany.
lethargytartare
@Caren:
interesting conundrum: if I follow the Vatican’s rule that say I “have to formally renounce” my Catholicism, have I really renounced it?
I think I’ll stick with just thinking all their rules, including the ones about getting out, are absurd.
I did, however, contra your follow up, appreciate the education I got from Jesuits and Franciscans, fwiw.
Cat Lady
@Matt:
This. Barnabas Collins helped me get through high school, especially since all that shit was supposedly going down in New England somewhere – it was the obverse of Peyton Place. There were succubuses, and bats and crypts and all manner of dark arts and implied kinky sex happening in black and white on daytime TV! I felt subversive watching it, and now if I watch True Blood, it feels dirty. Vampires are made for skulking around on black and white 13″ TVs.
TooManyJens
I’m getting a kick out of picturing Anne Rice going around hollering at all the other Christians, “You’re interrogating the Bible from the wrong perspective!”
Jeffro
@Zifnab: High five seconded!
Anne Laurie
Not a Rice reader, but I can sympathize with her problem here. She seems to have grown up in The Church, as it calls itself, during the period when the Jesuits informed me it was impossible to “renounce” one’s Catholic baptism. Once you’d been chrismed (which, for us, happened within the first few weeks of life, so it’s not like we’d had much choice), you were STUCK — you might ‘wander away’, but there was no escape clause, not even for the worst monsters. Rice, like many ‘cradle Catholics’, did drift away… and then, according to what I’ve read, she had some kind of Experience of the Numinous that convinced her that the “Jesus” of her childhood was really God. Tragically for her, ten further years of interaction with the modern guardians of Christian Jesus in America have broken her heart, or at least her religious spirit. Doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a genuine spiritual experience, or that she’s not honestly unhappy about the actions of the Church hierarchy to which she did her best to submit…
kommrade reproductive vigor
Shorter Anne Rice: Get offa my lawn Stephanie Meyers! Yo, Charmaine Harris! Back off, bitch!
Dear God, this damn woman’s going to unleash another 150,233 vampire books on this poor old world.
KS in MA
@Ned R.: Colenso sounds very cool.
sneezy
@Caren:
Seriously, what’s the “or else” in this scenario? That is, you have to formally renounce it or… what? What consequence could failure to do this have?
I did (admittedly only) a little googling, and it seems that if someone does renounce their Catholic faith through the proper channels, that fact will be recorded in the Church’s baptismal records (as “defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali”).
So I guess it comes down to “you have to formally renounce your faith, or… the Church’s records will be wrong.”
But if I read this correctly:
“It remains clear, in any event, that the sacramental bond of belonging to the Body of Christ that is the Church, conferred by the baptismal character, is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection.”
it means that while they will note your defection, as far as they’re concerned, you’re really still Catholic.
Jon H
Not too long ago, Anne Rice was on some TV show: 60 minutes, perhaps. They visited her house, and talked about her religious turn. She showed off her fancy crucifixes, etc. She doesn’t live in New Orleans anymore, now she lives in the desert in California. She made a big deal about how the scenery supposedly reminds of the locations of the Bible stories, etc.
I dunno, seemed like mostly a pose to me. A marketing spiel to show her new market that, really, she’s a true-believer and they can buy her books!
Not surprised she flounced like this.
Xenos
@JGabriel: I still enjoy going to church, and consider myself some sort of Christian, but I never have been able to get past that part in the Creed that goes on about the Virgin Birth. Just a dogma too far.
Corner Stone
Anybody ever read Anne Rice?
She crazy.
eco2geek
@JGabriel:
Saw her interviewed on Charlie Rose once. He asked her about her editor, and she said she didn’t let anybody touch what she wrote. That explained why she took about two pages to say what she could have said in a paragraph.
(It’s been so long since I read her, I can’t even remember which book it was that turned me off by her verbosity.)
daniel thomas macinnes
You know, folks, there is an easy solution to this whole religion issue. It involves taking what Terence McKenna called a “heroic dose” of psilocybin mushrooms – 5 dried grams. You may meet God and you may not, but you’ll definitely experience something.
If that still doesn’t work, just send me some money.
cschack
@xochi: Next you’ll claim Dylan made sub-par albums with Jesus or some other crazy notion.
Dpirate
Wtf?
luminous muse
@Matt: Might be. Never saw that show.
toujoursdan
@Xenos:
There are different ways to believe in these dogmas. The default for modern people is that factually, literally and historically happened, but ancient people didn’t necessarily see things that way. Virgin births were often a way of signalling that this person is very, very, very different than everyone else and needs to be paid attention to.
I don’t believe the Gospels were even meant to be biographies, but theologies. They attempt to assemble a picture of who Christ was through story telling. No doubt (in my mind) some of the events in the Gospels really happened. And some probably didn’t happen as described, but they are included because the writers are attempting to paint a picture of what they encountered.
Again, it’s hard for the modern mind to wrap our heads around this concept because we believe that unless something happened as described it isn’t true (and that the writer may be lying.) Or that myths are somehow less true than literal facts and descriptions. But ancient people drew a firm distinction between fact and truth. They aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Caren
Late return, but if you don’t formally renounce your Catholicism…
…it means you don’t have to go to catechism to rejoin. You don’t have to jump through hoops other than confessing that you didn’t go to church for a L-O-N-G time.
Because you’re going to come back. Really, you are! and if you don’t make it to confession, you’re going to go to purgatory for a really, really long time!
It’s just ridiculous, b/c you have the hierarchy whining like the ultimate Nice Guy ™ boyfriend. “You can’t break up with me unless you do it in person, and I get the chance to tell you why you’re wrong, and why I’m the best guy you’re ever going to date. And then you won’t want to break up with me!”
No. I’m done. I’m out. I’m not writing you a pretty note telling you that I’m glad to be done with it.
Jennifer
I dunno. I remember thinking at the time Rice announced her embrace of Christianity that it was just another example of post-9/11 stress disorder. We went through 3 or 4 years of heavy duty “all fear, all the time” and it really messed with a lot of people. For others, I think the overwhelming bias in both political circles and the media for kow-towing to Christian fundamentalism convinced them that they needed to get on the bus, even if they weren’t consciously aware that this was why they were doing it.
Once you escape from that climate of fear, the more intelligent and rational members of the tribe look around and say to themselves, “hey, what the hell am I doing here with all these morons and crazy people?” If you’ve noticed, Rice isn’t alone: polls and surveys have shown evangelical Christianity losing ground these past few years, after growing (like a wart, or cancer) for the previous several decades.
les
@sneezy:
Well, the “you’re still really a Catholic” status is important for punishment purposes. Although I’m not sure I get gradations of eternal torment, my memory is that it’s worse if you had the true faith and left, than if you never had the privilege in the first place. So, lists of apostates are necessary to assure retribution.
dianne
I was raised a Methodist, became a pragmatist. I still have to suffer the slings of relatives praying for me and my godless ways, plus I’m a Democrat which, in their eyes, is even worse. The internet and it’s viral hate being forwarded about is the worse thorn in my side of all. The back home relatives do love to forward. Or did – I’ve learned to return the hate with a personal note which they just aren’t used to. Everyone back there feels exactly the same except for me (a requirement of their religion) and a voice speaking up that does not refect their own views really throws them for a loop. They then strike me from their broadcast list which was the whole idea in the first place.
RobNYNY1957
We left the Catholic Church when I was about 10. My mother was divorced, handicapped (left side paralysis from a brain tumor), had four kids less than five years apart in age (that Catholic thing), on welfare and vocational rehabilitation and going to college full time. She graduated with honors, and got a job. There was a little article in the paper, and the priest dropped by to ask her to start tithing. My mother’s reply: “You son of a bitch. Where has the Church been for the last four years? Get the hell out of my house and never come back.” And that was that. Warms my heart to this day.
drkrick
@cschack:
Although you did get the hilarity of Dylan turning down an offer to be a presenter at a Christian music awards show because he had to be at his son’s bar mitzvah. Got to think it was the first time they’d heard that one.