u/ExtraEcclesiamUltra

What it says on the tin. We’re a community for ex-Catholics, but I contemplate that as a place for people willingly leaving the Church (or I suppose thrown out for ‘Catholicism is shitty’ reasons), not for people thrown out for ‘Catholicism isn’t medieval enough’ reasons.

Are SSPX under excommunication allowed here if they don’t defend the church or otherwise break the rules?

Edit: Just asking about a potential loophole in the rules. I’m wondering if we need to cut it off before it becomes a problem.

Leo dealin’ out some mealy-mouthed smackdowns, not even having the balls to call them “purported consecrations.” If you’re gonna excommunicate the whole lot, call them false, Leo! Do Lion shit!

48 hours out of the Church and they’re in schism. I’m gonna just assume I was a secret load-bearing member of the church. I have as much evidence of that as they do of Apostolic Succession.

I used to enjoy Church news. The whole Kremlinology of it all. The gossip, the rumors. It was kinda fun. Watching my still-Catholic friends tittering over the SSPX consecrations today I just feel sick to my stomach.

All of these doctrinal arguments seem so petty and childish now, but I know they’re going to cause real pain to some. I’ve never been one to celebrate another’s pain, but the sympathy still stings.

Anyway, Fuck SSPX though

https://preview.redd.it/3y3zd32ahdah1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbe8c154dcd386af3bce5d685a19ce9be3bc7dbb

It started here almost 15 years ago, with a golden crucifix gloating over a shattered statue of Mercury (Hermes). 

I took this picture in the Hall of Constantine in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museum. The painting is titled Triumph of the Cross by Tommaso Laureti. My tour guide was an art historian and explained this piece to us (as she did most of the art - I wish I could remember her name). After the Hall of Constantine we went to view the School of Athens, the much more famous masterpiece by Raphael himself, something like two rooms over. It was stunning. This was the Classical world laid out before us. These were our predecessors. As a descendant of Southern Italians, whose ancestors had come to from Greece 2700 years ago, this was my heritage. My ancestors were part of this world. My ancestors worshipped Mercurius and saw his statues cast down gleefully as the Catholic Church bulldozed their culture. 

Our next stop was the Sistine Chapel. 

Our tour guide wasn’t allowed to describe anything while we were in there. The floor was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder. Two stern men in black suits stood where the Popes are elected and boomed the phrase “no photo” over and over. 

Then we went to St. Peter’s Basilica. It was cavernous, and the architecture drew your eyes up to the heavens.

Except you can’t see the heavens from inside St. Peter’s. You see a dome, looming over you. You can’t even see outside. It felt like Papal Disneyland – lots of style, but you had to search for substance.

All I could see when I looked up were the looming words circling the inside of the great dome. Tu Es Petrus… A reminder of the Church’s claim to biblical origins, reinforced by squatting on the holy sites for twenty centuries. And when they lose such a site to others? Like the Tomb of the Patriarchs, they pretend it isn’t what it is. I’m not proud that my first instinct on learning about that place was to dismiss it as false solely because it isn’t in Catholic hands. 

I left St. Peter’s Basilica not feeling at peace with God as I had hoped. I stepped out onto the square feeling oddly hollow. My eyes sat on an obelisk scrubbed of any writing. If that work of human hands ever bore words of praise for foreign gods, they have long since been sandblasted by Rome or its Church. I thought back to the shattered god taunted by the golden crucifix. Jesus wasn’t golden, he was a man. He lived. He was a person, not a statue. His message is not in gold. It’s in the stories. The acts. The words. 

So yeah. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with the Catholic Church. It was a long journey from that day, but it’s finally over. The way I was raised and the faith I once professed will still be with me forever, but I’m free. I no longer feel pride at the four generations of my family that worshiped at our home parish. I feel like they were trapped.

I once took joy in the words at the end of the Baptismal rite: “This is our faith. This is the faith of our Church.” There was such joy in that moment — the sentiment that we all shared the same common core of faith passed down the centuries. Pretending we all had something in common even with the clergy. There’s no joy there for me anymore. Not within the Catholic Church. No longer. 

It’s been a long time coming. I can no longer lie to myself. I will no longer lie to myself. The church may be a slow-turning ship and requires generations to lean on the tiller. I can no longer bear that burden for generations I will never see. I won’t pass that burden to my daughter. It’s unjust. 

I was an altar server. A lector. President of my Parish Council. My feet have been washed on Holy Thursday. Twice. I have read the words of Jesus from the pulpit (the reading from Acts on Pentecost has Jesus present and speaking. I think it’s the only place outside the gospels but correct me if I’m wrong). My grandfather was a Trustee. I attended Catholic high school and college. 

At my confirmation, the Bishop told me “the Church needs strong leaders” in front of the entire congregation. He did so using my given name, not my Confirmation name. I knew he was right. I knew I’d be good at it. But I knew I couldn’t live with the cognitive dissonance that life would require from me. I didn’t want to be the person I would need to be in order to be a Catholic Priest. I also knew that, without being a Priest, I would never have a voice that mattered in the way my faith was governed. The day I chose not to become a Priest was the day my ability to affect the future of the Church ended. I was lucky enough to have had that choice. Some of the people who would make the best priests aren’t offered the opportunity by mere dint of who they are and how they were born. I refuse to pretend that is just. 

For decades, we’ve all seen the priesthood wane and wither. At my parish, one man – a good man, someone I considered a dear friend – was forced to do the job that three men had performed in my youth. His sole companion was a dog that lived with him in the rectory. That meager companionship was torn from him by the fickle decree of a haughty bishop that he had no say in and could not oppose. That led me to see the USCCB for what it had become, and was becoming. That same bishop nakedly attempted to shame and sway politicians. That bishop forgot the key lesson that Separation of Church and State isn’t just for the good of the State – It’s for the good of the Church as well. For the nearly two decades that man presided in my diocese, I felt powerless and silent. He was my Bishop, and he had been appointed by the Pope himself. How dare I question that – even when that bishop decided to criticize politicians and a different Pope. 

I don’t know why I kept going. There were long stretches where I didn't. Perhaps the message was still being conveyed in a way that felt true to me. I turned to the word of the Mass. I realized too late how awful the new translation of the Roman Missal was. It did nothing but further alienate people from a faith that purports to be for everyone. 

The blood of salvation “...will be shed for you and for…” Many. No longer All. It felt needlessly exclusionary. I looked into it. Pro Multis. Literally “for many.” But that wasn’t the way it was properly understood. It is best understood as “for the many.” Latin has no definite article. Neither did classical Greek. So why was it translated so literally? Because someone decided to do so. Someone whose name I will never know and who cared not one whit for conveying the message in a way that the people could clearly understand. Worse? There was a conscious decision to not include “the,” deciding that was a matter that properly belongs in catechism. Except virtually none of those parishioners would ever learn that. If the saying is that 10% of a Catholic parish pays for it and 5% run it, how many of those understand it? I was powerless to affect this change, and I wasn't about to undertake the catechism of an entire parish over the cause of three words.

I was a lector. We had a training where each of us would give a reading and the others would critique (I think - it’s not the part that stands out in my memory, but for a role that involves reading in public I think it was a worthwhile exercise). The reading was from Isaiah, the Prophecy of the Messiah. In one part it read (I think, I pulled the quote from Bible Gateway NABRE Isaiah 11:6): “Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.” The priest asked what it meant. The first answer was that would be a nice world to live in. That was that lector's understanding. If they knew that it was from the Prophecy of the Messiah (which in her defense she may have), they didn’t articulate it. From what I knew of them and their other roles in our parish, it shocked me that they didn't answer correctly.

Then, I came to learn of the belief that one drop of Jesus’ blood would have been enough to save all humanity. Except, of course, he shed far more than a single drop, leaving far more salvation than the world will ever need. For lack of a better explanation, the Pope distributes that surplus salvation as he sees fit. It left me feeling hollow again. By that logic, the Pope could issue perpetual salvation to all peoples everywhere at any time and he chooses not to do so. 

Am I afraid of what happens after I share this? After I let the Church know how I feel? What about extra ecclesiam nulla salus? What about sin? Apostasy? Heresy? 

They are, all of them, means of control. If ever they were for one’s own good, they certainly do not serve that purpose anymore. They are sources of shame and guilty. They only serve the power of the Church. These rules exist, now, solely so the Church can continue to exert control. 

The Church lied for centuries about the Donation of Constantine. The men who ran the Church wanted temporal power, and they would achieve it by any means. Even after the document was first questioned as a forgery, the lie persisted for hundreds more years. That lie is still commemorated on the wall of the same room as the picture above. (And it should stay there – lie or not, it’s still a part of art history. It’s in a museum, where it belongs, not in a place that celebrates or perpetuates the lie). 

Henry at Canossa isn’t a story that’s repeated because it’s about piety. It’s about control. 

I will not submit to that control one day longer. 

I’m done pretending that the Trinity makes sense. That it isn’t just a way of pretending that there aren’t three Gods in this religion. 

I’m done pretending that the Filioque Controversy isn’t ridiculous. 

I’m done pretending that the Church as it is can be saved without massive reformation that will never come from within. 

So, back to extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Am I damned if I leave the Church? 

I’ve decided that those inside the Church that feel like they need saving should be free to seek salvation. If they choose to stay there, knowing all that the Church is and does, I’m happy for them. I truly and sincerely wish them peace in life and beyond. I know that some people need that structure in their lives in order to live a virtuous life, and some choose to adhere to the Church for that reason alone. I no longer do. Perhaps I never did. I know right from wrong, and I see more wrong in the Church today than right. I’m saddened by that.

For me, at least, extra ecclesiam nulla salus is not “without the church there is no salvation.” There’s no salvation outside the church because salvation isn’t needed out here. At least, not for me. I’ll be fine on my own. I’ll live the most virtuous I can life guided by my morality, and by the prudential examples of the good people that have gone before me. Those people still include Jesus of Nazareth. I don’t need to adhere to the structure that purports to interpret those words in order to feel like a good person. 

I think of the old motto of Spain: nec plus ultra draped along the Pillars of Hercules. Nothing More Beyond. At the time, the Strait of Gibraltar was the end of the world. Nothing lay beyond except the vast emptiness of the Ocean Sea. But if you’ve ever looked at what the columns on the Spanish flag read now… Plus Ultra. More Beyond. Because they found that there was More Beyond. 

I’ve found there’s More Beyond as well. There’s life beyond the Church. 

I’ve finally gotten here. I am no longer Catholic. I no longer accept the shame and guilt and doubt that structure enforced, even if I may never heal fully from it. At least it is no longer an open wound.

That alone is enough.