The Papists

Introduction - Phillip of Be holy! Be happy!

Howdy! I’m the newest contributor to The Papists (although I’ve always been a papist at heart). My name’s Phillip, and I run both Be holy! Be happy! and Soultips.

I’m living and studying in Southern California, where I am an Applicant for Priestly Formation in my Diocese. Currently, I’m making my way through the diocesan application process, and God willing, I’ll be in the seminary in September.

For the past few years, I have been active as a lay member of the Pro Sanctity Movement, which strives to provide practical means for all people to respond to the universal call to holiness, and thereby become saints. We strive to counter the cultural message of minimalism with the Gospel’s message of maximalism. Our founder said, “Holiness is the maximum response to God’s infinite love.”

I’m also a recent addition to the Third Degree of the Knights of Columbus.

Lastly, and because this introduction has turned into a random amalgamation of my work in the Church, why not throw in a little devotion, too:

Favorite Christocentric title: Christ the King
Favorite Marian title: Our Lady of Victory
My Confirmation saint: St. Maximilian Kolbe

I’d like to thank the other contributors for welcoming me aboard, and I look forward to giving solid Catholic answers to your questions.

O Immaculate Heart of Mary, true model of every holiness, give trust to become saints. Amen.

Intro-Troy

Hey there from Franciscan U.

Hey all.

My name is Jordan (personal blog: empty-and-beautiful.tumblr.com) and I’m currently a second-semester sophomore at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. I’m a communication arts major concentrating in journalism. I am 19 (soon to be 20) and originally from Connecticut.

I was born and raised Catholic - baptized by my parents into the Church as an infant, received my first Holy Communion at age 7, the whole bit. However, around that time my parents fell away from the faith and took me, unfortunately, along with them. I struggled with depression and self-harm from about age 10 until I was 14. It wasn’t until the Steubenville East conference in the summer of 2006, when I was 14, that I rediscovered Catholicism, by my own choice, and truly became devoted to my identity as a Roman Catholic. 

I’m excited to apply my knowledge and experiences in answering any questions you might have. I hope that my thoughts will be insightful. 

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized byone Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

1 Corinthians 12:12-14

Hello! -Ansley

I always find these introduction things so difficult. How do I fit myself into one post? But I will try.

My name is Ansley Grace, for those of you who don’t know me, but on here I’m doubtingansley. I am a sophomore at St. John’s University studying Pre-Med Biology to become a Pro-Life OB/GYN. 

I was raised Catholic and have always had some belief in God but I don’t feel like I understood my Catholic faith in the slightest until this year. I was always one of those Catholics who goes to Church every Sunday but doesn’t actually live the Faith. After being in an abusive relationship in high school, where I was physically, emotionally and sexually abused and raped, I began to delve deeper into my faith. Sexuality has always been a confusing part of my life but it only became more confusing after my experience. I felt unworthy of God’s love and unclean but I became a much more faith-filled person. Even though I felt guilty for my past, I was charging ahead. 

After another difficult relationship in college, and a very unique healing experience in Lourdes, France, I finally decided to take charge of my faith. I researched all things related to Catholic sexuality and became more and more convinced that this is the life I want to live. All other things Catholic followed suit and I try to learn even more every day about my Faith and minister to others.

I am particularly interested in covenant sexuality and Natural Family Planning so if you have any questions about that - send them my way! I also get pretty down and dirty in the abortion debate (especially from a scientific, secular perspective). 

I can’t wait to see how this project unfolds!

So an introduction is in order?

Hello, world! I am Kai (aka randomnoisegenerator), a twenty year-old student of MA Political Economy in a secular but Opus Dei-run university. Interests lie in beauty, art, and philosophy - all of which are the reasons for my conversion.

For most of my life, I used to have in me those characteristics I now find inadequate in others. I was raised Catholic, but I had no idea of what Catholicism is about. I was driven by tepid love - I had no interest in finding out more about this religion I subscribed to, and mistakenly assumed that having been a ‘practicing’ Catholic for years, I already knew all I had to know. Some time four or five years ago, like any teenager who had the least bit of conceit with regard to her intelligence, I began questioning Catholicism and religion in general. This led me to believe first in religious relativism (with the postmodernist slant), then Deism. However, the more I learned about these new things I believed, the more I was able to refute them in my head. It was not long until I became restless. I philosophized and philosophized till I had found this new philosophy that I thought covered all bases. Imagine my surprise (and the deflation of my ego) when I had come to realize that this avant-garde religion turned out to be Catholicism!

Though philosophy pushed me to the right direction, it was art that sealed the deal of my conversion. And so I owe greatly my Catholicism to Dante Alighieri and GK Chesterton, both of which greatly influence the way I argue for the faith. Other influences include St. Josemaria Escriva, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine of Hippo, Bl. Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. Needless to say (but I will say it anyway), my apologetic “specialization” is in finding God in beauty and philosophy, quite similar to Pope Benedict XVI’s writings prior to his papacy.

With that, I shall end. Thank you for your time! :)

AMDG

Since everyone else is introducing themselves…

Hey everyone! My name is Kayla, aka approximatelyinfinity. I’m a 20-year-old science junkie majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Spanish. I currently reside in Music City, USA: Nashville, Tennessee. I belong to this super awesome Catholic community at my university, for which I will be eternally grateful.

My grandparents, my parents, and my brother & I are all cradle Catholics. I have never fallen away from the Church, and I’ve never missed Mass on a Sunday unless I was physically incapable of going. My faith was pretty lukewarm until recently, but I first got close to God on an intellectual level. I understood that God made the universe make sense and that God’s creation was amazing and beautiful. Early in high school, I was very confident in my understanding of why a god had to exist, some higher being. But then I grappled with: Why Christianity? 

Interestingly, the answer came in a book I read for summer reading, Life of Pi. I suppose it could have come from any number of other places, but that’s how it went. The answer is this: God died. GOD DIED. GOD. DIED. FOR. YOU. BECAUSE. HE. LOVES. YOU. Finally the question became: Why Catholicism? 

Disregarding, you know, apostolic succession and all that jazz… the short answer is this: “When we look at a crucifix, we see how much God loved us then. When we look at the Eucharist, we see how much God loves us now.” -Mother Teresa. I finally got it, and I fell in love. 

Sooo getting back on subject, since beginning my studies at college I have (unintentionally) done quite a bit of apologetics, especially on the topic of abortion. It got so intense that I started a separate tumblr for that purpose: prolifeadvocate. Now I’m excited to get my hands dirty with some more defending of our Holy Mother Church and meet some more Catholic folks!

¡Viva Christo Rey!

Just your friendly little red haired girl!

Hi everyone!  I see that everyone is posting an introduction.  My name is Meg, aka The Little Red Haired Girl. I am 22 years old and I am a double major in Theology and Catechetics (to graduate in May this year!).

I was baptized Catholic as an infant, but as a very independent person (even as a child) I greatly doubted the Church, and even came to despise it when I was around 13-14 years old.  My family was one that said grace together and went to Church on most Sundays and that was about all the faith formation I received outside of school (except for “You’re coming to Church or else!”).  So anyway, I hit middle school became fiercely rebellious, broke just about every rule there was, got involved in some things that people naively think that middle schoolers don’t do… and soon enough my life was in a thousand tiny pieces.  That’s when I went to a high school conference at the University I now attend, and I had this crazy conversion where I fell in love with God and have been trying so imperfectly to live in relationship with him ever since.  Now, I am at my University learning how to teach others about our loving God.  I still am fiercely rebellious and unafraid to speak my mind.  I also love to write poetry (though I am just an amateur writer), and I like to read and work out.  

My goal in college was to work in Catechetics.  However my dreams have changed in the past couple of years.  I want to be a teacher more than anything in the whole world, particularly in grades 4-5 but I’m open to middle school as well.  I would like eventually to run my own catholic non-profit in a low income area that offers free programs and services such as after school care, tutoring, mentoring, intramural athletics, summer programs, etc…  That is my ultimate dream, but for now I want to teach.  If you want to help my cause please pray for me.  I’m applying to a program at St. Joes University, so I’m begging St. Joseph for his intercession here.  :D

I’m excited to be a part of this blogging community, and I hope that if God wills we can plant some seeds in some hearts… :-D

Hello All!

My name is Javi and I run the blog bannerofthecross. For any of you who have been following me for a while this might be the first time you see my name, that’s cause it is. Originally I had my tumblr as an anonymous tumblr for many reasons but that got more difficult to do the longer I had it. So yup now you know my name.

I am 18 years old and a college freshman at a University located somewhere in the United States of America. I am a cradle catholic but I only really started diving in my faith after a retreat at my Catholic High School my Junior year. You can read my full testimony here. After that retreat I really looked into what Catholicism was all about and I fell in love with it. I’ve grown an obsession with the Mass and since I have been discerning priesthood for a year and a half now. 

Getting a tumblr really exposed me to the misinformation on the internet about the Catholic Church and it showed me that I don’t even know a lot about why we do things. Whenever someone would challenge the Church I would research why we believe what we believe and eventually I fell in love with apologetics and telling people what I learned about through the Church.

I am very excited to be on this blog and I hope everything we do will be fruitful in the end. So thank you for reading and I’ll pray for you :)

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear. -1 Peter 15-16

Introduction From Classy Living

Greetings in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, 

My name is Francis, I am 18 years old, and I am from New Jersey. You may or may not know me as classyliving. I have been on tumblr since I first came to believe in Jesus Christ, which was around September 2009. I am actually not confirmed into the Catholic Church, but have had many ties to Catholicism for quite some time and have decided recently that I will become Catholic. I was previously theologically Reformed/Calvinist and involved in an Evangelical church. Have mercy on me as I am not used to the language of the Catholic Church and I still have much to learn. I was surprised that I was invited to join this blog, but I believe God has his reasons for this happening and I felt the Holy Spirit tug me to join along. I truly desire to defend the honor and truth of the Church.

When I first came to believe in Christ, I actually believed that the Catholic Church was the most sensible denomination, but shut out that idea when many of the Evangelicals I knew taught me about the “unbiblical practices” of the Church. I always found something appealing in Catholicism (perhaps the strong sense of church authority, the liturgy, and/or the value of tradition) but still saw the Catholic Church as presenting a broken form of Christianity. I have even sat down with two friends of mine who were Evangelical and were pursuing Catholicism and tried my best to win them back to the “Protestant side”.

This year has shaken my view on the Church completely and a major paradigm shift occurred. Though I go to a Reformed college, my classes confronted me and my Protestant beliefs in many ways. My sociology class, Church & Society, confronted many of the anomalies I noticed as an Evangelical that I either ignored or excused, I came to see major issues in the structure and authority in Protestant Christianity. I also studied early church history in my theology class, and began to see that the early church was quite… Catholic. I even began to notice how St. Augustine, a saint who inspired John Calvin and continues to inspire many Reformed Christians, affirmed core Catholic doctrine that is often bashed by Protestants.

As I began to see the errors of the Evangelical movement and Protestant doctrine, I began to see the validity of tradition, the biblical basis for many Catholic doctrines, and the necessity of the papacy. I felt like pursuing Catholicism was intellectual suicide and was shocked that I was even considering such (for I continued to believe that the Catholic Church was an unhealthy sect), so I filled myself with Protestant apologetics, Protestant vs. Catholic debates, and discussions on Catholicism with other Reformed Christians so that I could return to affirming Protestant/Reformed doctrine in good conscience. I kept finding myself seeing the errors and misunderstandings on the Protestant side of the debate and found myself at a place where I could no longer honestly call myself “Protestant”. In fact, I had become basically Catholic.

After much prayer and study, I have decided to pursue full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I pray I may be used to speak the truth with love and kindness. I pray all of those blogging here may be used to shine the light of Christ into the tumblr-sphere. 

Pax vobis,

Francis 

Howdy

I find myself dangerously bored when talking about myself, which means it is safe to assume I’ll never write an autobiography. My biographer’s position is still open to be filled, so whomever would like to try out can bribe me ;)

My name is Chris, I’m 23 and I am politically Conservative and Catholic. I’m passionate and fervent in my beliefs but I’m the kind of man you would see sitting in the smoking section of the church. I enjoy theology, philosophy, history, politics, science, life, love, etc. But really, I like to get to the heart of the issue; the meat and potatoes of the soul that make men move, that inspire their hearts and click in their brains. 

Useless information: I graduated from Texas A&M University (WHOOP!) with a degree in Political Science and a minor (absolutely useless) in American History. I’m single and without children, although I’d like to have both one day. I’m a cradle to grave Catholic, never the perfect one, but also never the worst. I view the world through the lens of the mystical and supernatural. I find so much fascinating, but like my two year old nephew with a shiny object, I will lose focus and start grabbing toward the next shiny object I see. This is me.

My blog on tumblr is nonjeneregrette. Feel free to message me any time or follow me, although I’ll warn you, it is not a particularly interesting blog.