Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[kherbert05]

Oh my!  If I had a dime for every time I was told I was not a Christian because I was Catholic, I could probably have bought and sold the Vatican.  As a child, it didn't bother me much because when you are five those things don't make sense, but as a teen and an adult, I was first scared and then highly annoyed.

A dear friend/coworker who was an evangelical Christian once made the statement about Catholics celebrating masses in which they sacrificed children on the altar.  By then I was just plain mouth and didn't put up with this stuff and I said to her "Heck, when is THAT holiday?  There's a whole bunch of kids here I'd like to see sacrificed!"

After that she started questioning me about Catholicism and every other statement was "Well, we do that.  We do that, too.  Oh, we do that."  I don't know for certain, but I still hope that my fellow Catholic coworkers and I changed her mind about whether Catholics are also Christians.

On the flip side I once had a fellow Sunday School teacher (who was about thirty or forty years my senior) say to me "I have been praying for your father."

"Why?"

"He isn't Catholic, dear, and will be going to hell when he dies if he doesn't convert."

And after I picked my jaw up off the ground (who tells a 19 year old girl her father is going to hell?)  I said "Thank you for your concern.  Frankly, my Dad is a better man than many Catholics I know and his belief in God is stronger and if God isn't taking him in because of where he got baptized, then I don't think I would worship that God."

We did team teaching together and it was kind of chilly in our class room after that exchange.

Well the Monsignor told me my Grandfather was burning in hell after he died. I was three. Had nightmares of Pappa burning for weeks. Once Mom figured out why, she called the rectory every time I woke her up screaming in terror and woke up the monsignor. Thing is that isn't even doctrine.

Same guy refused to marry my parents unless Dad converted - also not doctrine. Another priest married them.

My family moved 3 times - and he ended up getting tranfered to each parish. The parish he left always had a big going away part - he wasn't invited.

When Sis got married, she told the lady that was booking things that she refused to be married by him. The lady basically said, We get that a lot - he doesn't do marriages unless specially requested and no-one ever requests him. (BIL isn't Catholic, so the Monsignor probably would have refused to marry them)

[Ereine]

Our high school might make brains hurt a little, but they don't have the problems with school districts because there aren't districts for high schools. Instead the students have to apply and the schools will take the best students that apply to that school, as many as they have places for. Which can lead to not getting into any high school, if your grades are bad enough. You don't also have to apply to schools in your own town which in my school meant that maybe half of the students were from neighboring rural communities, because my school was thought to be quite good (your grade average needed to be 8.3 when I applied, on a scale from 4 to 10). Which meant that if your grades weren't good enough you might have to go to a high school in one of the rural communities because there were schools that would take anyone. Other options would be staying an extra year in middle school to raise your grades or vocational schools, though some of them require grades higher than high schools.

It used to be that you had to make a choice when you were 11. You could apply to an oppikoulu (there was an entrance exam) which in turn led to high school and was pretty much the only path to university. If you failed the exam or your parents couldn't afford oppikoulu (they would have to at least pay for books, I don't know if there was tuition fees) then your options would be limited to vocation school, if that. These days you can get into university with a vocation degree, at least in theory.

[Melle]

This hurt not so much my brain, but my heart and stomach and other things that clench when confronted with severe egotism.

My train this morning stopped on the tracks before a station and the conductor informed us that we would be delayed because the train in front of us had to call an ambulance for a passenger.

A _lot_ of people on my train kind of lost it and ranted and raved how this was unbelievable and rude and that the whole train system basically sucked.

Alright, the train had already been delayed because of technical issues. But... a fellow human being is in such a bad shape that they need an ambulance! And the worst thing to happen to all those complaining is that they may get to work a few minutes later than planned!

One young man in particular used very choice words to let everyone in earshot know how absolutely outrageous it was that he would be late. I really, REALLY had to pull myself together not to go off at him and have him know that he should be grateful he's healthy and warm and not the poor person in the train in front of us. I would not have been able to find polite words.

Sometimes I could really lose faith in humanity
Even more so because, in the end, we didn't have to wait longer than five, maybe ten minutes.
I really hope the person they called the ambulance for is ok.

[JonGirl]

This hurt not so much my brain, but my heart and stomach and other things that clench when confronted with severe egotism.

My train this morning stopped on the tracks before a station and the conductor informed us that we would be delayed because the train in front of us had to call an ambulance for a passenger.
A _lot_ of people on my train kind of lost it and ranted and raved how this was unbelievable and rude and that the whole train system basically sucked.
Alright, the train had already been delayed because of technical issues. But... a fellow human being is in such a bad shape that they need an ambulance! And the worst thing to happen to all those complaining is that they may get to work a few minutes later than planned!

One young man in particular used very choice words to let everyone in earshot know how absolutely outrageous it was that he would be late. I really, REALLY had to pull myself together not to go off at him and have him know that he should be grateful he's healthy and warm and not the poor person in the train in front of us. I would not have been able to find polite words.

Sometimes I could really lose faith in humanity
Even more so because, in the end, we didn't have to wait longer than five, maybe ten minutes.
I really hope the person they called the ambulance for is ok.

Not in Melbourne are you?

[Melle]

Not in Melbourne are you?

I'm afraid not, I could really use the warmth

[cabbageweevil]

Oh my!  If I had a dime for every time I was told I was not a Christian because I was Catholic, I could probably have bought and sold the Vatican.  As a child, it didn't bother me much because when you are five those things don't make sense, but as a teen and an adult, I was first scared and then highly annoyed.

A dear friend/coworker who was an evangelical Christian once made the statement about Catholics celebrating masses in which they sacrificed children on the altar.  By then I was just plain mouth and didn't put up with this stuff and I said to her "Heck, when is THAT holiday?  There's a whole bunch of kids here I'd like to see sacrificed!"

After that she started questioning me about Catholicism and every other statement was "Well, we do that.  We do that, too.  Oh, we do that."  I don't know for certain, but I still hope that my fellow Catholic coworkers and I changed her mind about whether Catholics are also Christians.

Unfortunately, for most of the past two thousand years "Christendom's" default position has been, "Type A of Christians (us) are the only true Christians; types X, Y and Z only think, mistakenly, that they're Christians, and they'll go to hell." Widespread mutual acceptance between different varieties of Christian, is a rather recent phenomenon.

I gather that a scene on which all this was especially rampant -- with a huge number of different varieties of the Christian faith -- was the Byzantine Empire a millennium-plus ago; heightened there, by theological debate and dissension being a "hobby" which much of the populace engaged in passionately. Harry Turtledove has written a series of fantasy novels set in the imaginary empire of Videssos, which strongly resembles Byzantium; including a basic religion (with innumerable variations played on it) a good deal like Christianity, and very strong on the notion of eternal hideous punishment for everyone who does not believe and practice in exactly the right way. The people of this realm have a saying, "If three Videssians are shipwrecked together on a desert island, in no time at all there will be six heresies there."

[Piratelvr1121]

Well, we're looking at houses right now, and we're homeschooling.  So it won't even matter to us how good or bad the schools are, for our own sake.  But at least for us, finding a house in a good school district matters because we'll need to sell or rent the house out eventually, and *other* people will be looking for that.   So it's an important aspect of the value of the house.  Of course, it's probably more important to us since we'll only be stationed there for four years, whereas that may matter less to somebody who expects to live in that house for the foreseeable future, maybe the rest of their life.

I'd still be concerned.  The better the schools, generally the lower the crime rate.

Our school still had some crime around.  Can't tell you how many bomb threats we had at our school one fall.   Almost every time we got evacuated to the middle school's library but hey I didn't mind, I loved to read and it was a guaranteed hour at least that I got to sit in a comfy little cranny somewhere and read. 

Then one day, on my birthday at that, on a drizzly gray November day, the kid posted bomb threat warnings on the front doors of both the high school and the middle school, likely hoping that we'd get sent home. Nope, we just stood out a safe distance from the school waiting for them to do a search and let us back in.  I was rather annoyed at the kid who had done it cause at that rate we all knew it was a kid who attended that school.

Funny thing was the kid was caught.  By his mother. How? He had typed up the warnings on the family computer and saved the document!

[mmswm]

My brain broke trying to figure out how on earth these people thought this was a good idea. It was so astounding, I took a picture.  This was taken on a major South Florida highway (it only looks like there was no traffic...there was a wall of traffic behind me).  It's not a great picture, but if you look near the front of the truck, in the center, you'll see a man sitting on the ledge where the bed of the truck meets the cab.

[Jocelyn]

And after I picked my jaw up off the ground (who tells a 19 year old girl her father is going to hell?) 

My niece was engaged to a young man who was killed in an accident. My sister was trying to explain this to her 2 year old grandson, and told him that the young man was now in Heaven with Jesus. My sister's MIL interrupted to tell her not to say that, after all, they didn't know if the young man had been a REAL Christian.
As if it would be useful to tell a 2 year old that someone he loved could possibly be in hell because he wasn't the right sort of believer?

[gramma dishes]

My niece was engaged to a young man who was killed in an accident. My sister was trying to explain this to her 2 year old grandson, and told him that the young man was now in Heaven with Jesus. My sister's MIL interrupted to tell her not to say that, after all, they didn't know if the young man had been a REAL Christian.
As if it would be useful to tell a 2 year old that someone he loved could possibly be in hell because he wasn't the right sort of believer?

What was your sister's MIL thinking?  Good grief!!  The child is two.

Not only that, but in my opinion a "real" Christian would never even think such a thing, much less let such words fall out of her mouth!

[Piratelvr1121]

DH's paternal grandmother was very ill and I believe also was dealing with some depression.  Both which led to her taking her life.  I never knew her so I have no idea what she was like, just that she'd had cancer and was in a lot of pain.  DH I think was a teen at the time and at her funeral mass the priest said in front of her loved ones assembled that she would not be going to heaven because of what she did.

Being raised Catholic I know how the church felt about suicide but c'mon, you don't say that kind of thing at a person's funeral in front of those who are already mourning them. 

[Thipu1]

I would respond to this sort of thing with something a Catholic nun said in religion class when I was 15. 

'Because God is all just, we know there is a Hell. 
Because God is all merciful, we don't know if there's anybody in it'. 

[Lauds]

Our school still had some crime around.  Can't tell you how many bomb threats we had at our school one fall.   Almost every time we got evacuated to the middle school's library but hey I didn't mind, I loved to read and it was a guaranteed hour at least that I got to sit in a comfy little cranny somewhere and read. 

Then one day, on my birthday at that, on a drizzly gray November day, the kid posted bomb threat warnings on the front doors of both the high school and the middle school, likely hoping that we'd get sent home. Nope, we just stood out a safe distance from the school waiting for them to do a search and let us back in.  I was rather annoyed at the kid who had done it cause at that rate we all knew it was a kid who attended that school.

This reminds me of something that still hurts my brain to this day.

I was still at high school when the September 11 attacks happened. The high school I went to is in the New Zealand capital and within easy walking distance of my school was the US embassy, the British high commission, the Fijian high commission (and it was only a year or so after the George Speight coup), parliament, the high court, the court of appeal, the ministry of defence, the ministry of education, the crown law office, and probably a number of other government buildings and embassies that I can't remember. The brain hurty part? The day after the attacks, someone called in a bomb threat to the ministry of youth affairs.

I just don't get why you would pick youth affairs as your target with all those other buildings around. Especially at such a time.

[elephantschild]

Well the Monsignor told me my Grandfather was burning in hell after he died. I was three. Had nightmares of Pappa burning for weeks. Once Mom figured out why, she called the rectory every time I woke her up screaming in terror and woke up the monsignor.

*snip*

It's probably not eHell-appropriate, but I just want to say that I like your mom's style.

[KenveeB]

Well the Monsignor told me my Grandfather was burning in hell after he died. I was three. Had nightmares of Pappa burning for weeks. Once Mom figured out why, she called the rectory every time I woke her up screaming in terror and woke up the monsignor.

*snip*

It's probably not eHell-appropriate, but I just want to say that I like your mom's style.

I don't know, don't we frequently advocate allowing people to experience the natural consequences of their actions?