Why the #LGBT Movement Betrays Us. #SSA

I am a person with Same-Sex Attraction (homosexual or ‘gay’ or ‘Lesbian’ orientation,) and before I became Catholic & embraced the chastity lifestyle, I felt I had to trust the LGBT movement. People like me were in danger, I had heard, and only the LGBT movement could protect people like me from being gay-bashed, arrested, or thrown into insane asylums. I worried about asylums, in part because I had undiagnosed Asperger Syndrome which my schools ‘diagnosed’ as ‘unhappiness,’ evidently in their eyes a mental illness. I wasn’t aware that the nations’ asylums were being closed down due to antipsychotic drugs and the fact that it was cheaper to keep psychotics as homeless street people than put them in even the worst-run asylums.

I believed in the LGBT movement— I even voted for the ‘wrong’ people because that’s what the LGBT movement wanted. The LGBT ideology was that all LGBT people were ‘born that way,’ They embraced famed Hollywood icons that never ‘came out’ but had gay friends and so were presumably ‘that way.’ The LGBT movement would protect everyone ‘born’ to be LGBT, right?

Then I heard about the discrimination against ex-gays. Was the LGBT movement fight that? No, it seemed to be INSTIGATING it. 

There was the case of a Christian musician invited to perform for then-president Obama. And then un-invited when the word got out that the man was ex-gay. The poor stupid Christian was just telling his perspective of his own life without worrying about conforming to the LGBT narrative, and so he was a non-person who DESERVED to be ‘cancelled.’

This is the truth. The LGBT movement is run for the benefit of progressive politics. It uses fear to get all people with Same-Sex Attraction or trans feelings on board, giving money to LGBT approved pressure groups and voting in the LGBT approved way. When people disrupt the narrative by telling ex-gay or ex-trans stories, they arouse another kind of fear— they bully or ‘cancel’ the person until he shuts up.

I have not got a lot of that kind of bullying so far. I had one attempted bully making what were meant to be personal attacks on me, who even called me a b~tch. The b~tch commenter did not realize I am a cat person, not a dog person. A female dog may be a b~tch, but a female cat is a queen. Yes, troll commenter, you may address me as ‘Your Majesty.’

If you have Same-Sex Attraction and don’t care to conform to the LGBT movement and its bullying ways, don’t despair. You are not alone. Try to hook up with Courage International ministries— they have a F~B page and a group. Even if you don’t want help from a Catholic ministry or any Christian one, you can meet other people who won’t give up their decision-making process to the bullies. [501 words.]

~  + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~  + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

COMMENTS are welcome on this post. Troll comments, bullying comments and vulgar language are not. Comments are moderated, which means if you are angry and try to bully me or another commenter, you are commenting to yourself. Your comments are not going to be approved. And if you should bully another commenter— I am going to PRAY for you. To Saint Anthony. Prepare to become Catholic.

~  + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~  + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

If you are interested in the topic of this post, you might like my F~B page and my MeWe group on this topic.

You might also like to follow me on MeWe or Gab. (I’m locked out of my F~B at the moment, but a friend, Niko Emery Armstrong, is keeping up the page for me.)

We Defend Traditional Marriage (FascistBook page): https://www.facebook.com/defendtradmarriage/

Defend Trad Marriage group: https://mewe.com/group/5bca1f9c73a3f14e7c8572e5

*MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

Gab (free speech alternative):  https://gab.com/nissalovescats

My books:

Getting More Blog Traffic: Steps Towards a Happier Blogging Life: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086H4FQ4M

Banned Books, Banned Girl (Lycian series.): A girl with an autism spectrum disorder escapes government confinement and works a ghost job removing banned books from bookshelves.: https://www.wattpad.com/story/269878745

Creative Mode, Critical Mode, and PAC Psychology

Dean Wesley Smith strongly encourages writers to write in Creative mode, rather than switching to Critical mode, which he says exists to stop you from writing.

Creative mode comes from a child-like, free version of you that likes making up stories because it’s fun.

Critical mode is your Inner Editor, which speaks in the harsh voice of all the adult authority figures from your childhood. Critical mode wants to stop you from doing ‘wrong’ things like being original and not boring and conventional.

In Transactional Analysis, we are said to have three ego-states— Parent, Adult, and Child. The Parent is based on the things our parents and other adult authority figures said during our childhood. The Child ego-state is based on our earliest childhood memories. Our Adult is the name for the thinking, logical part of ourselves— which is confusing since even a nine-year-old has an Adult ego-state.

Creative mode clearly comes from the Child, since we are at our most creative when we are like free, uninhibited children, before we learned to follow all rules and fear every criticism.

Critical mode comes from the Parent, and often echoes the mean things parents and teachers said to us when they didn’t approve of our creative side. Critical mode can also be called the Inner Critic or Inner Editor. When we have low esteem about ourselves as writer, it can act like a bully or an emotional abuser.

The Adult is the part of you that learns things like the rules of grammar and the scores of writing rules you find in writers’ networking groups. Most of which won’t apply to you and your work.

Your Adult’s job is to let the Child be creative and free, while providing correct spellings and grammar, and to banish the Parent/Inner Critic from your writing session.

You know that Critical Mode is in the room by the way you feel about your work. If you become convinced your writing is dreck, or that every original thought you express in your work is shamefully bad and you must write more like other, duller people, that’s Critical Mode.

When the Child is in charge and you are in Creative Mode, writing is fun— it’s the Child’s playtime. Your subconsious mind will be tossing loads of cool stuff into the story that you may not realize until later.

Our mission as writers is to stay in Creative Mode, let your child run free, and become a better writer, naturally.

---

I’m trying to connect with other people, especially writers, on Gab, since I want to build up more followers there before I’m banished from Facebook or driven crazy by the ‘fact checkers’ claiming people’s jokes are fake news. I’m Nissa Loves Cats there. A group I like on Gab is ‘Science Fiction and Fantasy’ and the group is a good way to connet with new people there. It could use a few new members.

https://gab.com/groups/307

How to ‘Witness’ to Catholics.

Imagine this situation on social media. There is a Catholic discussion group and the members are currently discussing good First Communion gifts, and a new group member breaks in. ‘Hello, I’m a REAL Christian, not like you hellbound Catholics. I know this is supposed to be a Catholic group. I lied about being Catholic to get in. But that’s OK because I’m here to SAVE YOUR SOULS by getting you to repent of your sins of worshiping Mary and the Pope instead of Jesus. And you call your priests ‘Father’ and my father always told me it’s a sin to call any man ‘father.’ I have ten great books written by the pastor of my church on why all Catholics are hellbound, I will give you the list, and you can buy the books, read them, and then I can explain to you all the things you don’t understand…’

Now, is this person witnessing, or just Catholic-bashing? Most Catholics would say the latter. It doesn’t matter how sincere you are, when you insult people you are trying to witness to, you are not planting seeds of your faith but pushing people farther away.

If you feel called to ‘witness’ to a Catholic, you must know actual facts about what the Catholic Church really teaches. Don’t go by some anti-Catholic book written by a member of your denomination, or even the testimony of someone who came from a Catholic family and got ‘saved’ in your church. Many childhood Catholics never had any sort of Catholic religious education and may know less about what practicing Catholics believe than anybody.

Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church to know what real-world Catholics believe. This document has many references to Bible verses or sayings of Early Church leaders that back a certain teaching up. If you are not willing to read from a Catholic source, perhaps you should restrain from making claims about what Catholics believe.

Read The Catholic Verses by Dave Armstrong. He is a former Protestant who became Catholic.

Another important point is to know what you believe and why you believe it. If your church has a catechism or statement of faith, read it. If you don’t believe in ‘doctrine ‘ but just in ‘what the Bible teaches,’ learn more about the many different teachings different Bible-believers find in the same Bible. Learn from Bible commentaries or by learning to read the Bible in the original languages.

Above all, be civil enough to see things from other points of view. You may think a Catholic is hellbound, the Catholic may think you are hellbound. Bickering and insulting is not the way to win people over.

I find that a good number of those who purport to ‘witness’ online are just exposing their ignorance and incivility. Remember, Jesus did not win over the Samaritan woman by declaring she was a whore from a false sect. She had heard insults before, she would not have been moved. But Jesus cared enough about her to be kind even when she was in the wrong on some things.

Let us hope we can all be more like Jesus and less like the online jerks we have all encountered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Contact Nissa Annakindt on MeWe, the less censored social medium.

Preaching To or At Catholics Online

Jesus. He’s a Friend of mine.

I am a former Protestant (Presbyterian, Lutheran) who is now a convert to the Catholic church. And lately I’ve noticed something that bothers me. There are Protestant/Evangelical preachers or would-be evangelists who troll Catholics in the comments section of various posts on Facebook and MeWe, and I have also noticed at least 2 who have joined Catholic groups under false pretenses, don’t interact with the group, and post long, long sermons, clearly Evangelical, in those forums. In one group a guy was posting sermon-videos at a rate of one a minute for a while. Another fellow posted the exact same sermons in two groups, one Catholic, one about Christians who support Israel. That sermon mentioned neither Catholicism nor Israel.

I am a firm believer in the idea that throwing sermons at the unwilling is not a way to win over hearts and minds. Nor is calling Catholics or other non-you Christians ‘hell-bound’ going to do the trick. Other Christians are mostly as convinced of the truth of their branch of Christianity as the online-preacher is about his.

And being insulting isn’t too convincing. Since I have a controversial, pro-man/woman-marriage page on Facebook, I have a lot of ‘athiests’ calling me a crazy liar and calling my disabled kitten ugly, and somehow those insults never made me doubt my faith. Nor want to become that kind of ‘athiest.’ If I lost my faith I would be an atheist— properly spelled— and I would still be civil to other human beings, because that approach is better. I can’t imagine the beloved writer C. S. Lewis, during his atheist youth, insulting other people’s disabled kittens to spread the atheist nonfaith.

What if these fire-breathing Protestant/Evangelicals had instead joined the Catholic group, made 10 encouraging and denomination-neutral comments for every one that might be perceived as being a bit non-Catholic, and had never posted any long sermons at all but just done a little ‘seed-planting?’

I believe in is seed planting. You can plant seeds of faith, and trust the Lord to bring the harvest. Yes, I know, Jesus preached long sermons like the sermon on the mount. But you are not Jesus. Jesus also spoke in parables— short illustrations— and we don’t know for sure how often He used the one method rather than the other. 

If you honestly think Catholics are ‘hell-bound,’ using an approach that will give the Catholic in question one more story about how Evangelicals/Protestants are hateful of Catholics is not effective. That’s how you get Catholics who question whether Evangelicals/Protestants can even be saved enough to get to heaven.

You want to save some Catholics? Do this: Buy a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a Bible with the Deuterocanonical books (Apocrypha), and get the little leaflet from CHResources on how to read through the whole Bible and Catechism in a year, and do it in a year. Next step: get a good book by a Catholic apologist that explains why Catholics believe the things we do, such as ‘The Catholic Verses’ by former Protestant Dave Armstrong, and read it. 

Then you will be equipped to go out amongst Catholics, knowing what they really believe, and plant seeds of what you think are the essentials of the Christian faith. Be encouraging, kind and loving. You may find after your studies that you no longer believe that getting Catholics to doubt their faith and leave their Church is your goal. Perhaps you will think it’s enough to lovingly encourage Catholics to draw closer to Christ and to the Bible, even if they stay Catholic. 

My personal belief— and I’m just a laywoman not a priest, pastor or bishop— is that God wants us to follow Jesus in the best way we know how, and even if we are in the ‘wrong’ church and believe false doctrines God still wants us in heaven if at all possible. I do believe my Catholic church has the correct and Biblical teachings, but I know there are also people who don’t believe like I do and who love the Lord. Let’s ignore the sad Christian divisions and recognize one another as fellow believers when we can. 

 

Was ‘Out’ Gay Poet Ginsberg a Pedophile?

The ‘beat’ poet Allen Ginsberg was known as an ‘out’ homosexual; but his involvement with the pedophile advocacy group NAMBLA and the pedophilic content of some of his poems are less well known. Now, in the earlier years of the Gay movement NAMBLA was far more accepted in that community that it is now. Perhaps Ginsberg thought that pedophilia would become socially acceptable along with homosexual behaviors?

But now, today, when we have experienced the stories of many childhood sexual abuse, and how that abuse affected their later life, there is no excuse. Pedophile sex is not a good thing— it does lasting harm to children. So it’s hard to say that the poet Allen Ginsberg must be admired when he has NAMBLA ties and poems with ‘pederastic themes.’

Now, I am not an expert on Ginsberg or ‘beat’ poets in general. My information source is a rather scholarly article online. I found the article hard to link to on MeWe or FB, so I thought I would copy out a bit into this post so that people could see it.

“The late “beat” poet Allen Ginsberg illustrates the seamless connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Many know Ginsberg as an illustrious “out” homosexual poet: fewer are aware that he was also a pedophile.

Biographer Raymond-Jean Frontain refers to Ginsberg’s publications in both NAMBLA Bulletin and NAMBLA Journal. He discusses how Ginsberg’s biographers failed to discuss his poems that contained pederastic themes:

Although both Shumacher and Barry Miles (Ginsberg’s initial biographer) frankly discuss Ginsberg’s sexual politics, neither refers to his involvement with the controversial North American Man/Boy Love Association. . . . I reread Collected Poems and Ginsberg’s two subsequent collections, surprised by the pattern of references to anal intercourse and to pederasty that emerged. 

Ginsberg was one of the first of a growing number of homosexual writers who cater to the fascination with pedophilia in the gay community. ”   — Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D.

Now, as a woman with same-sex attraction (‘Gay, Lesbian’) I am not thrilled with pedophilia and the NAMBLA crowd. I feel for the victims— and a disproportionate number of persons in the ‘LGBT’ community have experienced sexual abuse in childhood. I might feel compassion for the pedophilic perpetrators and their defenders, but I feel way more for the victims. And as a poet I feel that Ginsberg should LOSE ‘great poet’ points for his NAMBLA connections instead of gaining them for being an ‘out’ homosexual before that was cool.

Poetically yours,

Nissa Annakindt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Break free of FB! Join me on MeWe:  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

My Pro-Traditional-Marriage group on MeWe: https://mewe.com/group/5bca1f9c73a3f14e7c8572e5

What To Read: Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew

(Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series)

Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri

And now for a bit of more serious reading…. Back when I was a Protestant I liked to read Bible commentaries. A Bible commentary is a book which explains, verse by verse, what the verses of a book of the Bible actually mean. A good Bible commentary is written by a Bible scholar who teaches in a seminary or a Christian college, who knows the Bible book in its original language, who is familiar with important archeological discoveries that shed light on the Bible, or important issues about the surviving manuscripts involved.

When I became a Catholic it felt like all the work I did studying Bible commentaries and attending college Biblical theology classes were all in vain. I had to relearn everything ‘in Catholic.’ But finding a good Catholic Bible commentary was not so easy— until the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series came out.

These commentaries are just like the Protestant commentaries I am more familiar with. They are accessible to lay persons, but have enough content to be a reference for pastors/priests preparing a sermon/homily.

One difference, though, is that each section ends with a short ‘Reflection and Application’ section. This is good for the Christian, because Christians believe that we are not supposed to just interact intellectually with the Bible, but apply its teachings to our lives.

This first volume of the series (they don’t have commentaries on the Old Testament books. Yet.) is on the Gospel of Matthew. A Gospel is an account of the life of Jesus Christ, and the four earliest-written Gospels were written by Apostles— leaders of the early Christian church. In the case of the Apostle Matthew, writer of the Gospel of Matthew, we are dealing with an author who was an actual witness of the life of Jesus Christ— Matthew was chosen by Jesus Christ to be one of the ‘Twelve,’ an inner circle of disciples who received more teaching and, in the traditional interpretation, were ordained to be priests/pastors at the Last Supper.

The Gospel of Matthew really starts off telling the story of the Incarnation of the Son of God from the beginning— with a genealogy list. The authors of the commentary are very aware that this genealogy is a stumbling block to some readers of the Gospel— especially those new to Bible reading who start off with the first Gospel.

The whole text of the Gospel, in the New American Bible translation, is provided, which I like because I don’t like having to flip back and forth between two books, a Bible and a commentary. OK, I do that anyway because I prefer the KJV translation (and have one with the Deuterocanonical books.)

Protestants unfamiliar with Bible commentaries may get upset about quotes from Early Church Fathers and saints and the like (even though I first learned about Early Church Fathers from Protestant sources,) but you don’t have to pay attention to these things if you are not interested in them.

I very much enjoyed reading this commentary and I plan to buy and read more in the series. I ALSO intend to buy and read more volumes in the old Tyndale Bible commentary series, which I have liked since my teen years.

Lenten & Wuhan-Coronavirus Greetings from

Nissa Annakindt, her cats & critters, plus new lamb Daisy

Daisy

 

 

 

 

 

---

My Facebook author page includes updates when I post a new blog post, so if you are on Facebook, please visit and ‘like’: https://www.facebook.com/nissalovescats

---

PERSONAL UPDATE:

I have recently finished a short book about blogging, called ‘Getting More Blog Traffic: Steps Towards a Happier Blogging Life.’ I’m currently trying to figure out how to turn my Scrivener project into someone the Kindle Create software can work with. (Wish me luck!)

The Lutheran Rosary & The Jesus Prayer

Rosary with Lutheran Rose on cross.

Many Lutherans (and other Protestants) are uncomfortable at how much the Hail Mary prayer is used in the traditional rosary devotion. One division, or decade, of the rosary has 10 Hail Mary prayers, preceded by the Lord’s Prayer and followed by the Gloria Patri (and possibly the Fatima prayer.)

One way to get around that is to replace the Hail Mary with the Jesus prayer. The Jesus prayer is a very ancient devotion in the Eastern Orthodox church. ‘The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God’ by Frederica Mathewes-Green is a whole book about the Jesus prayer by a convert to the Eastern Orthodox church.

The way to think about the Jesus prayer is this: in those early days in the church, no one had personal Bibles in their home for daily Bible reading. You got your ‘dose’ of Bible from the Bible readings in church. And so hermits and early monks would snatch on some Bible words they remembered and repeat them over and over to get closer to God. It was a way of to ‘pray without ceasing’ as in I Thessalonians 5:17.

The Jesus prayer is: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’  There are many Bible passages in the Gospels in which people ask mercy from Jesus Christ, as in Mark 10:47: ‘And when he [Bartimaeus, a blind beggar] heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.’

In the Eastern Orthodox church it is customary to use a ‘prayer rope’ of knotted wool to count one’s repetitions of the Jesus prayer. Many people make thousands of repetitions of the prayer a day!

In the Lutheran rosary, it is combined with meditating on the rosary Mysteries, or Life-of-Christ meditations, just as one does when one uses the Hail Mary in the rosary. Since the Jesus prayer can be said more quickly than a full Hail Mary, one can pray a rosary more quickly to the end.

The hard part is when you are using an audio or video rosary from Catholic sources to help you learn the rosary. You can learn to say (or think) the words of the Jesus prayer when everyone else is saying a Hail Mary, but it’s a bit of a learned skill. If you want to regularly pray the rosary along with Catholic friends and you just cannot say any part of the Hail Mary, you can learn to pray your Jesus prayer silently and just pray aloud with the Our Father and Gloria Patri prayers. But it is a learned skill. I’d practice with an audio or video Catholic rosary, such as those on EWTN television, before I would try it with real people. (I recommend the ‘Holy Land Rosary’ which is on at 630 Central Time in the US.)

The first step in learning to make the rosary part of your spiritual ‘arsenal’ is to memorize the prayers you will be using, and that includes the Jesus prayer if you will be using it, along with the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria Patri prayer. You don’t want to fumble around reciting the prayers from books if you can help it.

The Jesus prayer, all on its own, has been used as a serious prayer tradition. Using it in your Lutheran rosary is not ‘cheating’ or doing less than a full rosary, but can be a real blessing to you.

Lutheran/Protestant Rosary: The Mysteries

Lutheran Reformer Martin Chemnitz

The rosary prayers are commonly dismissed as ‘just for Catholics,’ but the devotion pre-dates the formation of the Lutheran and other Protestant churches at the Reformation; not only that, the rosary continued as a private devotion, especially among European Anglicans and Lutherans.

It’s certainly more of a Christ-based practice than getting into Transcendental or Eastern meditation using a ‘mantra’ derived from Hindu or Buddhist religious practice.

Many Protestants do use the rosary. When I was a Presbyterian child, I looked in the window of a Catholic church, seeing a rosary in the hand of a statue of Mary, and I counted the beads and tried to reproduce a rosary of my own in knotted string, since I didn’t know anywhere that one could buy a rosary. In college, at the Lutheran Concordia College, I managed to sneak away to a Catholic store in downtown Chicago and buy a rosary and an instruction leaflet. I prayed the rosary in my dorm room. I felt a bit guilty and unlutheran for doing it, and so I confessed to a Lutheran-from-birth friend that I prayed a modified rosary. She may have been a bit offended— she prayed her rosary unmodified.

One of the unique things about the rosary that sets it apart from similar non-Christian meditation is the use of mysteries. Mysteries are a group of Biblical events to think about (meditate upon) while you are reciting the words of the rosary. There are Catholic leaflets that have a small illustration for each rosary mystery.

Commonly one prays a group of 5 mysteries each time one prays the rosary. For each mystery, you say 1 Lord’s Prayer or Our Father, 10 Hail Marys (or substitute the Jesus Prayer), and end with one Glory Be (to the Father.) Catholics sometimes add the Fatima prayer after the Glory Be, but this is a modern addition.

A Lutheran rosary (with Lutheran rose symbol in the cross.)

The Joyful Mysteries are prayed on Mondays and Saturdays, and are optional for Sundays during the Advent/Christmas season. These mysteries tell the story of the birth and childhood of Christ.

The Sorrowful Mysteries are prayed on Tuesdays and Fridays, and are optional on Sundays during Lent. These mysteries tell the story of the suffering and crucifixion of Christ.

The Glorious Mysteries are prayed on Wednesdays and Sundays. They tell the story of the resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and some traditional events related to the end of Mary’s life on earth, and her going to heaven. These mysteries, being outside the scriptures, are often modified in Protestant use.

The Luminous Mysteries are a new addition to the rosary, made by Pope Saint John Paul II. They are prayed on Thursdays. (Before this, the Joyful Mysteries were prayed on Thursdays, and the Glorious Mysteries on Saturdays.) These mysteries are not part of the common Christian heritage of the rosary, but since they are all Bible-based stories about Christ (Christ’s baptism, the wedding at Cana, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper), they are easily able to be used by Protestants as well as Catholics.

The advantage of having the Mysteries is that when you are reciting the prayers of the rosary and your mind starts to wander or daydream, you have the mysteries to force your mind back on a more prayerful track. I myself, as a person with Asperger Syndrome (autism spectrum disorder) am very distractible, and so I usually keep a leaflet with pictures illustrating the rosary mysteries on hand when I pray the rosary. Keeping my eyes focussed on the picture help me keep my mind on track.

Posts on this blog related to the Lutheran rosary and Protestant rosaries: https://myantimatterlife.wordpress.com/category/western-civilization/christianity/lutheranism/lutheran-rosary/

My earlier posts on the Lutheran rosary are the most popular ones on this blog. I have decided to post a series of posts related to the topic on Saturdays. The next few will cover the four groups of rosary mysteries, and then we will move on to the prayers of the rosary. Next Saturday (God willing): the Joyful Mysteries

Wikihow: How to pray the Lutheran Rosary (12 Steps)

Chemnitz Society blog

 

Nominal Christians in Fiction and Real Life

Particularly for authors who are Christians of one sort or another, or authors who write for the Christian fiction markets, it is important to distinguish between Christians and nominal Christians.

In the United States, a person can follow any religion he likes, or no religion. And he can call himself a Christian whether or not that is particularly true. So there are a lot of people walking around with the ‘Christian’ tag on them who do not meet the normative definition of ‘Christian.’

Some Christians say that real Christians are ones that have had a ‘born again’ experience that they remember, or that have gone forward at a ‘altar call’ in Evangelical churches that have that practice. Other Christians say that being an active Christian can start at the sacrament of baptism, even an infant baptism, and can continue as a child is raised in a Christian home where prayer and church attendance are the norm.

A nominal Christian is a Christian ‘in name only.’ Why does he take the name of Christian? For some people, claiming Christianity as a religion is just another way of saying ‘my family is not Jewish.’ If they have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who were raised as Christians, they feel they are Christian enough— they are just not ‘fanatics’ about it.

Other people honestly think that if they believe in God and sometimes ask this God for stuff, like help in an emergency or a winning lottery ticket, that makes them Christian, unless their family was Jewish or they have taken up Buddhist meditation.

It does not help that in addition to the faithful Christians— Protestant and Catholic— who believe something that a Christian from 200 years ago would recognize as Christian, there are also very progressive Christians who make headlines. For example, some progressive Christians have blessed abortion centers and said that committing abortions is what Jesus would do. That reinforces a perception that in Christianity, anything goes and you can believe any old thing and it can be part of Christianity.

Nominal Christianity is not the same thing as progressive Christianity. Progressive Christians, as far off from the New Testament as their faith can be, are living a faith that they believe is the modern version of Christianity. Nominal Christians aren’t actively practicing any faith at all. They don’t usually know enough about Christianity to know there is something missing in their faith life.

In fiction, nominal Christians play a role in Christian fiction often by being an obstacle or a challenge to active Christians. In the ‘Left Behind’ series, the main characters included nominal Christians who became real Christians after the shock of the ‘rapture’ event.

In secular fiction, nominal Christians are often seen as sensible and non-fanatic Christians by those writers who know little. Though I’ve never read a book in which a man who doesn’t own a Koran, has never fasted for Ramadan, and who has never been to a mosque or said even one of the five daily Muslim prayers is named as a ‘non-fanatic Muslim.’ Muslims are expected to have some hints of their faith in their lives, both in fiction and in real life. Christians should have that as well. If they don’t, but still say they are Christians, we may suspect that perhaps they are nominal Christians.

Authors who know better should never present nominal Christians as ‘better’ Christians, any more than the no-mosque, no-prayer guy is a ‘better’ Muslim. Religions, both in the real world and our fictional worlds, have content. Nominal Christians, or nominal Muslims, or nominal Buddhists lack that content and so should not be representative of those faiths.

Purgatory: Mud-Room of Heaven

Non-Catholic Christians often misunderstand purgatory as a second chance at heaven for damned souls. Nothing could be more untrue! Damned souls go someplace warmer. Purgatory is only for folks who have ‘died in friendship with God,’ which is a Catholic phrase that means ‘born again.’

Purgatory is like a mud-room. The mud-room is at the entryway to a midwestern home. It’s the place where you take off muddy boots and manure covered barn jackets, and put on something cleaner. Using the mud-room makes you ready to walk through the home’s kitchen and living room without getting yelled at for tracking in mud. Purgatory is like that, since it is the place where a soul can get ready for the bliss and holiness of heaven.

Many souls are just not ready to meet God, but they are trusting souls who have tried to follow God in the best way they knew how. They may not have known much, like the good thief on the cross. Or they may have been too proud or arrogant or simply lacked insight, so they may have committed serious sins without being aware of them as something they need to repent of, and confess to God (and the priest) about.

My current devotional reading is a devotional book about the ‘holy souls’ in purgatory. It gives another reason for purgatory— to get souls less attached to worldly things. Imagine an older woman who dies, but is constantly fretting over what her daughter-in-law is doing with her house and possessions. She needs to set her mind on heavenly things and not the horrible wallpaper her daughter-in-law chose for the front bedroom!

Some Christian souls, like martyrs, are deemed to be ready for heaven straight off. Jesus said to the good thief that he would be in Paradise that day. So, either Jesus considered purgatory a part of heaven (the mud-room?) or else the thief was given the grace to go direct to heaven or perhaps spend only 20 seconds in purgatory to get ‘ready.’

C. S. Lewis is considered by many an authoritative model of the modern Protestant Christian, but he admits to a belief that ‘something like’ purgatory is needed to make us fit for heaven.

There are Bible verses held to speak of purgatory. An article by apologist Dave Armstrong lists some of these verses. I would suggest that you read the article to understand more about the Bible and purgatory.

25 Descriptive and Clear Bible Passages about Purgatory: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/darmstrong/25-descriptive-and-clear-bible-passages-about-purgatory

The important thing about purgatory is that it is not a substitute for accepting Jesus Christ as your savior now, or living a Christian life now, or avoiding sin now. Purgatory is for the ‘holy souls,’ not for people who want to ‘have fun’ now and worry about their souls later. When ‘later’ comes, in the form of death, there is no more mercy available for the damned soul. No damned souls are in purgatory, any more than they are in heaven.

As a Catholic convert who was not brought up on belief in purgatory, and who once knew a lot of (often silly) arguments against it, I find myself a little behind on knowing the concept. I recommend two devotional books by Susan Tassone and published by Our Sunday Visitor, Inc, for other Catholic converts wishing to gain greater knowledge of purgatory and the Holy Souls. [Where do the ‘holy souls’ get their ‘holy?’ Jesus, of course!]

Thirty-Day Devotions for the Holy Souls – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/809593.Thirty_Day_Devotions_for_the_Holy_Souls

Day by Day for the Holy Souls in Purgatory – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23490846-day-by-day-for-the-holy-souls-in-purgatory