Wow. Just wow. This is some serious Henry VIII shit.

Now when Newt runs for president and people bring up his past he can say “Yeah, but I’m all Catholic now, so it’s all cool between me and God - and you don’t want to start attacking my religion, do you?”

It’s so awesome that Republicans don’t use and twist religion for their own power-grabbing purposes, otherwise I might start thinking Republicans use and twist religion for their own power-grabbing purposes.

But of course, it was Al Gore and the Clintons who would do or say anything to be president!

I love the idea that the Reichwing Fundnuts (mostly Protestants, many evangelical and fundamentalist) will accept a Catholic as a serious candidate for POTUS.  Most of them have been fed years of propaganda about The Whore of Babylon and how Catholics are all controlled by The Pope, etc.  Fear of the RCC is one of the foundations of fundamentalist belief.  I don’t think they’ll be able to just switch that off in the voting booth…

This reminds me of a passage of The Illuminatus trilogy, in which it is said the first heresy of Christianity (Satanism) is the idea that since Jesus in his sacrifice absolves us of our sins, it is showing the height of our love towards God and the Lord that we should partake in the most atrocious acts, up to murder and even bringing about the End of Days, and then accept repentance so that his sacrifice will be more meaningful (rather than live an holy life of restraint, where his sacrifice will have been moot given we will have no need of it).

I am thinking the Republican’s party religion makes a lot more sense if you assume that they pervert his teachings thus.

So Newt will continue to sin and confess but there aren’t going to be a lot of Catholics who will hold that against him. They understand why being a Catholic makes a difference

Yeah…there is a difference.  And the difference is that this “go ahead and sin b/c you can go to confession anyway” sounds like a Fundie describing Catholicism more than real Catholicism.

Part of the act of reconciliation, or confession, is receiving a penance.  Part of the penance, besides the Hail Marys and Our Fathers, is recognition that what you did is wrong, an attempt to atone or make up for the sin and make the offended party whole, and a promise not to do it again.

Fundy Evangelicals, to me at least, exude this whiff of “I’m better than you b/c Jesus is my savior, and no matter what I do, I’ll be Raptured (tm) because I believe in Jesus.”  That’s not Catholicism. 

Catholics will hold it against Newt if he continues to commit the same sin over and over and think that he can just confess it away on Sunday.  In fact, his fellow Catholics won’t overlook it, they’ll consider his confessions to be insincere mockeries of the sacrament. 

Not a good strategy, since he would be offending both conservative and liberal Catholics (they’re ALL Cafeteria Catholics; following your conscience is a doctrine of faith).

Okay, Newt…

Repeat after me…

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.

That’ll be the effin day.

Wait, let me see if I’ve got this right. If Bill Clinton had been Catholic and had gone to confession regularly before and during his presidency, these right-wingers would have had no reason to talk smack about him and no reason to push for impeachment? Riiight.

Oh, one more thing….

It all depends on how sincere this conversion is, and that, of course, depends on what kind of parish priest he has.

It’s one thing to be confirmed when you’re 10 years old (5th grade for me) or 13 as it is now (8th grade).  It’s another thing to swallow whole-bore the catechisms as an adult.  Those folks are a little scary to most Catholics. 

Newt might be an Opus Dei type now.  Maybe he wears a cilice now.

Catholicism, the faith of his third wife

lol

Bad link

No fancy stuff this time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilice

I’d like to see more process details here:

Newt has been married and divorced twice. Newt was raised a Southern Baptist, so presumably he was baptized. The Catholic Church holds that the marriages of the baptized last until death (Canon 1056). Marriage is the one sacrament that never requires a priest to perform—the couple do it for themselves.

So, in order for Newt to become Catholic, he will first have to resolve the validity of his previous marriages. Were either of his previous wives baptized? Are they still alive? Have the marriages been annuled?

He had to have the previous marriages annulled if he is to be married to the third wife in the Church.  There are plenty of Catholics who marry outside the faith and are divorced.  They aren’t supposed to receive Communion anymore, though.

I’ll bet that Newt’s parish priest was thrilled with the ‘conquest’ of Newt and pushed the paperwork through for him.  An annulment just takes time and a willing parish priest.

As for Hudson’s divorce after converting?  I bet that asshole still takes Communion.

Will Gingrich release his <strike>birth certificate</strike> papal indulgence?
I can’t imagine there is any other way to absolve Gingrich of his sins since confession only works if you actually “repent and sin no more.”

And does this work for everyone?  Can I just switch Judeo-Christian religions every 5 years to wipe my record?

If the catholic church can annul any marriage, what happens when there are children from that marriage?  Wouldn’t those children have been conceived out of wedlock then?  I was under the impression that the church would not annul a marriage if children had been conceived during it but I’m not catholic and know diddley-squat so if anyone can help me out here, I’d be mightly obliged.

You’re gonna love this, BadKitty.

Annulment doesn’t do anything to the status of the children of that marriage.  They are not made bastards, b/c the marriage was legal, and since it was a legitimate marriage, the children cannot ever be illegitimate.

That’s right, the hierarchy is making a specific distinction between the sacrament of matrimony and a civil marriage.  The sacrament is nullified, but the civil marriage is ended by a legal divorce.

Dana’s brain should explode about now.

Any bets on when Newt finds the next ex-Mrs. Gingrich and how soon afterward he gets this current marriage annulled?

Yeah…there is a difference.  And the difference is that this “go ahead and sin b/c you can go to confession anyway” sounds like a Fundie describing Catholicism more than real Catholicism.

This. (Caren, have I told you today that you are awesome?)

My father was explaining indulgences to my mother two weeks ago. He told the most amusing (snark) story of the man who steals a pig, goes to confession, and the priest offers him an indulgence for $5. The guy gives him a $10 and when he is questioned he says, “I’m going back for the second pig.”

My father, a Protestant, was pointing out that indulgences / penance make sin cheap because you can just “make up for it” with a Hail Mary. I pointed out, a little sharply, that - to a Catholic - his faith is even MORE cheap because he has no penance at all. “You don’t even have to pay the $10 - you can just run off with both pigs and mumble a prayer.” I pointed out that - to a Catholic - they would doubt that he was REALLY “sorry” if he didn’t have to go through the onerous process of confessing and making restitution.

To his credit, he looked thoughtful and actually conceded that I had a point. Not that he’ll switch religions, but maybe he won’t make fun of Catholics any more. The worst part is, he just was fed this crap (as was I) as mother’s milk and he doesn’t have people like Caren to make him realize how stupid these taught prejudices are.

*sighs* Now if only I can work up to getting them to accept Wiccans.

Just remember, folks, to the truly faithful Evangelicals, Catholics aren’t Christians.

Nope.

Not a bit.

I once spent an hour on the phone convincing a relative that her son - who was about to marry a Catholic - would not emperil his eternal soul by converting.  I discussed the early history of the Church, the foundational documents of the faith, the translations of the Bible, the liturgy, Martin Luther, Calvin, the Scottish Church, the theology of predestination, the symbolism of Mary as Mother versus idolatry, the rise of literacy as a necessary precondition to Protestantism, the Episcopalian Church, the struggle between Church and Emperor in the Middle Ages, the 30 years war, and the expulsion of the Hugenots into Germany.

In the end I just said, “look, y’all read the same book, it’s just in Latin, right?” and that seemed to calm her down.

We’re not too far removed from the Evangelical Protestant conception of Catholics as being Filthy Fifth-Column Papists.

Oh, and I forgot to mention to her that if I weren’t a non-denominational liberal secular humanist by upbringing I would have ended up being a good Catholic myself…which just added another layer of irony to the discussion.

Ah, Deal Hudson, another philandering convert.

Cradle Catholics generally distrust people who convert to Catholicism. They assume that there’s something wrong with the converts’ heads. And converts are usually insufferable fucks. So Deal [convert] Hudson is an idiot: Catholics will see Newty up in the front row with the other converts and insufferable types, and think him as much a philandering fool as they did before he converted.

Let me revise and extend: Deal Hudson isn’t just a philanderer, he’s a nasty sex pest, and I could say worse though I suspect the insufferable bastard would sue.

That thing about sincere repentance must have been part of Vatican 2, I guess.

Cradle Catholics generally distrust people who convert to Catholicism. They assume that there’s something wrong with the converts’ heads. And converts are usually insufferable fucks.

Ha!  So true.  The couple who taught my confirmation class were converted Catholics, and they were the most batshit religious nuts I’ve ever encountered.  I suspect they came from some kind of Protestant fundamentalist background, because they combined the insanity of right-wing Catholicism with the completely different insanity of right-wing Protestantism.  They once chased me out of a class, screaming at me, because they caught me drawing space aliens on the back of my worksheet and thought I was channeling Satan.

People who convert to Catholicism are often specifically attracted to the rigid, authoritarian hierarchy of the Church, or else they’re escaping some religious upbringing that was even more oppressive.  Either way, they tend to be very conservative and way more into the authoritarian aspects of the Church than most American Catholics.  (There are also converts who are attracted to the Church for progressive reasons, like its strong intellectual tradition or its focus on social justice and good works, but these seem to be less common.)  Also, converts to any religion tend to be overenthusiastic about it, and Catholicism doesn’t get a lot of converts, so they stand out in a congregation.

I just hope someone explained very carefully to Newt that he isn’t allowed to have any more wives now.

I find it tres amusing that the repugs assume the evangelicals, especially Baptists will vote for Newt in his Catholic version. 

My favorite “Catholics are not Christians” story is when my mother told me that my young cousin was going with his church missionary group on one of their “convert the heathen” tours. TO IRELAND. I nearly died laughing, asking exactly who the hell they were planning on converting before I decided I was horribly offended by the idea that they felt they needed to convert the good Catholic people of Ireland.

And I’m not even CLOSE to being Catholic - just really strong of-Irish-descent blood running through my veins (adopted, so my British/Scottish descent mom doesn’t understand).

Cradle Catholics generally distrust people who convert to Catholicism. They assume that there’s something wrong with the converts’ heads. And converts are usually insufferable fucks.

Mostly because they decide that they’re better Catholics because they chose to be Catholic while the rest of us were merely born into it.

Not to mention that they take the bullshit from the priests a lot more seriously than the priests themselves do.

Oh, and if you were raised Catholic but have never seen “Father Ted,” put it in your Netflix queue right fucking now.

Two things I know:

1) Republicans convert to a new form of Christianity because Jesus touches their hearts and shows them the error of their ways. This is evidence that Republicans’ are good honest people and God loves them and forgives their sins.

2) Democrats only convert to any form of Christianity because they want to “play the God card” in the press and fool good Christians into voting for them. This is evidence that Democrats are lying, scheming hypocrites (or secret Muslims) who will do anything to get elected.

Oh, and if you were raised Catholic but have never seen “Father Ted,” put it in your Netflix queue right fucking now.
Mnemosyne on 03/30 at 08:55 PM

And a great read is “The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice Cream God” by Powers

This little bit of reporting is as skewed as the one that goes “if we allow same-sex civil marriage, they’ll make us marry gay people in our Church.”

And the bigger problem is that even a lot of Catholics (and other Christians in similar situations within their own denominations) actually believe that the media has it right.

Confession, or absolution, more accurately, wipes out GOD’s stake in your issue. It most definitely does NOT erase the interpersonal or civil repercussions of it. Just because you were absolved in confession, it doesn’t mean you don’t get arrested, or have to pay for the broken object, or have to make amends.

There’s a little part in the Bible that explains that if you realized you hurt someone when you approach the altar, you have to go fix it first before you even try to talk to God about it.

HOWEVER, the RC hierarchy sure didn’t follow that with the child-raping priests, so why should they with Gingrich?

On a different note, not sure about any denomination’s twist on it, but St Paul was very clear that if you were a married pagan and you both convert, your marriage becomes religiously valid, but if you convert and your spouse doesn’t, then you have a clean slate as far as Christian marriage goes.

Wouldn’t apply to Gingrich either way, since his previous marriages were Christian, just of a different franchise.