popishsoap

[popishsoap]

this website would greatly benefit from learning about the plights of swana christians

[popishsoap]

"O my Lord," Rabi'a (717-801), Muslim saint & Sufi mystic

"My God, I Love Thee, Not Because," attr. St Francis Xavier (1506-1552), Spanish Catholic saint & missionary

[popishsoap]

the words of jesus of nazareth in dayspring, a collection of poetry and prose exploring the life of jesus christ and john the beloved

[popishsoap]

very deep in theological studies but i also hate liberation theology 😭 i find it very pretty to read but oftentimes it just comes across as so. hopeful? in a not grounded way. reminds me of people who think art is underutilized in the fight against capitalism or whatever. this is all well and good But i am a not-that-well-read baby communist in a heavily catholic country whose biggest student communist movement is literally christian and i need more opinions. do you have any suggestions for reading on the topic ;-; or care to share your own thoughts? i know im skewing the results by going to a blog i know dislikes liberation theology but 😭

Well it isn't very grounded because it's theology which is categorically not that grounded in material reality. I'm not saying religion is irrelevant to socio-economic movements in societies, but as a framework of analysis in itself, it has to rely on spiritual reasoning.

Liberation theology, through its very existence, proves the shakiness of its political foundations because it's extracting supposedly communist conclusions from the very same texts and concepts as the most violently imperialist, patriarchal and reactionary catholics, including the catholic church itself, use to justify themselves. If your framework can produce such antipodean conclusions, it's not very solid.

Besides, it does not have the ability to actually formulate an alternative to capitalism. Like anarchism, it's all well and good criticizing capitalism until it's time to believe in something concrete that can actually be built, then cracks begin to appear like a fractal along each individual, because liberation theology emphasizes the individual and what your own personal relationship with christianity is. Your comparison with artists is very on point regarding this.

[popishsoap]

Your closest experience to agitprop is Sesame Street. Your fatigue is so unearned, I can’t stand it.

x

[popishsoap]

“We owe a debt to third world women theologians who have noticed the similarities between Mary’s life and the lives of so many poor women even today. Giving birth in a homeless situation; fleeing as a refugee with your baby to a strange land to escape being killed by military action; losing a child to unjust execution by the state; our newspapers yield up these icons of suffering even today. Mary is sister to the marginalized women who live unchronicled lives in oppressive situations. It does her no honor to rip her out of her conflictual, dangerous historical circumstances and transmute her into an icon of a peaceful, middle-class life robed in royal blue.”

— Sister Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”

[popishsoap]

The Lamb of God (1432)

— by Hubert and Jan van Eyck

[popishsoap]

saint sebastian tended by saint irene but they're both drag artists

felt like this might be something this site would enjoy

[popishsoap]

“To say that straight men are heterosexual is to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e. women). All of which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honour, whom they imitate, idolise, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honour, reverence and love they desire....are those, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relationships with women, what passes for respect, is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honour is removal from the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic – it is man-loving.” -Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality

[popishsoap]

Diane di Prima

[popishsoap]

Tumblr is like "isn't it weird that Christians never think about this fairly obvious implication of their own theology?", then proceeds to independently re-invent an eight-hundred-year-old heresy that caused three separate wars.

[popishsoap]

VII, 16:

For a long time a person desired more than all gifts and suffering that God release her soul with a holy end. And our Lord said: "Wait for me."

The person said: "Dear Lord, I cannot control my longing; I would so dearly like to be with you."

Our Lord said: "I longed for you before the beginning of the world. I long for you and you long for me. Where two burning desires meet, there love is perfect."

Mechthild of Magdeburg tr. Frank Tobin, The Flowing Light of the Godhead (Classics of Western Spirituality)

[popishsoap]

every time a new SA allegation of a favored celeb arises, i'm reminded of the absolutely soul-crushing experience of the depp/heard trial in which i learned that dozens of ppl i loved + respected + trusted were also willing to engage in the basest form of misogyny if the woman Seemed Crazy Enough. there was a horrifying 2ish weeks on this website + much longer irl where i genuinely felt unsafe voicing my discomfort as i relived something eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of my own assaults playing out on screen, commented on by true crime youtubers like it was a red sox game.

it happens time + time again with every new allegation + it's truly the most agonizing + exhausting part of being a survivor. i am begging you all to consider that survivors are watching you engage with this stuff like theater + it erodes our trust in all of you + compounds our grief.

[popishsoap]

tired of cannibalism as a metaphor for love or sex. can we get into cannibalism as a metaphor for colonization.

[popishsoap]

If we read the Creed attentively, the whole Creed has nothing else to say to us than this: we believe in a God who is perfect, sacrificial Love, the God who creates us, calls us into being in an act of love in order to give himself to us. But as Saint Maximus the Confessor puts it, God can do everything but one: he can force no heart to respond by love to his love. And by creating us, he accepts rejection. He accepts that his love can be refused.

Met. Anthony Bloom, Churchianity vs Christianity

[popishsoap]

hi! i was wondering if you’ve ever talked about your thoughts on yoga?

um. no but i have a friend who writes about it in relation to early 20th century degeneracy theory in india—yoga was part of the whole physical and spiritual practice meant to counter degeneration and strengthen the race and nation, analogous in some respects to the emphasis on gymnastics in french medicine in the nineteenth century. also some overlap between this genre of degeneracy theorist and some of the major figures in the creation/popularisation of modern ayurveda (predictably predominantly hindu, upper-caste, some gaining positions in colonial government and synthesising eg sanskrit medical texts w/ anthroposophist ideas, etc). wish i could link his stuff but he hasn't published yet and doesn't blog

[popishsoap]

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”

— C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces