+J.M.J+
Funny. Agnus Daily is a Catholic version of the Onion, but I think the quote from Stefani is authentic.
In Jesu et Maria,
Hmm, sure, guilt arises from sin. But scupulosity is a real problem for many people, and it's not surprising that it arises in Catholicism, where there are so many rules and ways of sinning that are completely foreign to other faiths. (Is there any other faith that has identified adultery-in-the-heart as a sin?)
K:
Ms. Stefani doesn't strike me as particularly scrupulous.
By the way, I apologize for calling you a prick the other day. That was out of line.
Hey I always that Catholic guilt was feeling bad about something that you are not responsible for doing! At least that is the way my wife (who suffers from EXTREME Catholic Guilt (ECG)) acts. She feels bad about a bunch of things (like we all do) but for whatever reason feels that it is because of something she did.
Pax
(Is there any other faith that has identified adultery-in-the-heart as a sin?)
Baptists, if Jimmy Carter was to be believed.
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/
histor...oyInterview.htm
Can't help but like that guy.
Mark, with me, you are always forgiven before you ask. Always. You're a waaay better Catholic than I am, and if I can't forgive you when your life is tense and you're writing stuff on the fly when someone is arguing with your friends, who the heck is going to forgive me? Not God, that's fer shur.
Besides, I wouldn't keep coming back to your cyber-home if I didn't feel welcome.
Marv:
Well, yeah. Anyone belonging to any remotely Christian denomination, really. I think my ineolquently-phrased point is that Catholicism probably has more rules than any other faith. The Code of Canon Law is the biggest book on my shelf, by far.
Jimmy Carter?
He's history's greatest monster!!!
Franklin,
You take that back!
Godzilla is history's greatest monster. Carter isn't worthy of a flick of his tail.
I demand a retraction!
Hmm. I think "Catholic guilt" is, I don't know, sexy, for some people.
It's a form of self-titillation, to tell yourself that you may feel guilty about some particular act, but are going to go ahead and do it anyway.
It's in this sense only, I suspect, that people like Madonna or Gwen Stefani suffer from Catholic guilt.
Y'know, as far as Catholic guilt sob stories go, this one is pretty tame. She's not actually bad-mouthing the Church or her teachings. It seems to me that she's just explaining that she isn't violating a particular value she was raised with (and she implies that the particular value is a good one, too). So it could be worse.
Alias clio has identified what I see in my own generation at least (I'm 21, whatever generation that makes me). It's part of the "cultural Catholicism" thing to make a big fuss over what a bad girl/ bad boy you are.
Amen to your comment about straying or ex-Catholics and how they feel about Reconciliation. It's almost the hardest Sacrament to make even "Catholics" believe is pertinent to their spiritual lives.
"Catholic guilt" has become more of an inside joke, I think. It's something carried on from how more recent generations view the chastisement parents and other authority figures (especially within the Church) handed out in a more "conservative" manner. At a recent mission, our group was joking about Catholic guilt, usually coming from parents, being a norm when we were younger (and I'm only 1
. For example, one friend talked about how when she acted up as a child her mother or father would use the phrase "Would you act that way if the Holy Family was sitting here?". Being Mexican American and Catholic, I would always play with the wax from the various candles around the house depicting the faces of Jesus Christ or the Virgin of Guadalupe and make a complete mess.My mother, "dishing out the Catholic guilt", would say, "You're making the Virgin very upset right now."
Certainly, the Blessed Mother couldn't have been that upset with me for pouring some wax on the furniture, and I'm not exactly sure the Holy Family would condemn my friend for not drinking all of her milk at dinner, but you better believe we felt the fear of God strike our hearts and felt like the worst sinners on the world...at least for a good five minutes before running off and playing.
God bless,
I think Catholic guilt is something that only cradle Catholics can really appreciate. Just imagine being a young child in Catholic school with nuns in scary looking habits as your teachers, then doing something "bad". Bad becomes even more bad because you've done something bad in the presence of Nuns, Priests, Brothers.
Then everywhere in the home, the car, at school there are crucifixes, statues, pictures of Our Lady and the Holy Family so that when I'd find myself calling my brother names, cursing, hitting what-have-you there would always be some picture of Our Blessed Mother or Saint looking right at me.
I remember one year for Advent my Mom decided to have us place straw in Jesus' manger whenever we were good, and whenever we were bad we had to take the piece of straw out of the manger. The goal was to fill the manger with straw for baby Jesus. Baby Jesus had a very barren manger that year. Mom never played that Advent game again yet every year at Advent when we would see the Creche we would cringe with guilt over the whole "incident".
Too bad some of these celeb's can't appreciate being a member of the Catholic Guilt Club.
"Just imagine being a young child in Catholic school with nuns in scary looking habits as your teachers, then doing something 'bad'."
They weren't scary-looking, they were like having angels or saints walking among us. I was in awe of them, not fear of them. Certainly I wondered if they had hair or went to the bathroom, but maybe saints didn't, made sense to us grade-schoolers.
I got my fair share of being shamed by Sister when I goofed up, but I also got more than my fair share of praise, and I still use some advice in how to pray I learned from my second-grade teacher.
I think Catholic guilt is great!
Take Gwen, for example. She gets to continue to do whatever she feels like doing, for whatever reason, but can point to her "good Catholic girl" upbringing to let people know that hey, she HAS morals and is wrestles with her conscience. Translation: she is a good person, or at least, a "good enough" person. Pride in disguise.
But since this is all being forced on her by the mean old Catholic Church (and its clerical inquisitors that apparently follow her day and night to keep tabs), it's actually a testament to her personal strength and independence to forge ahead and continue doing whatever she feels like doing.
Whenever I read this stuff, I am reminded about a quip I read in regard to a well-known politician (can't recall which) who often remarked on his personal struggles with his conscience. The quip was, "he's always struggling with his conscience...I just wish he'd let his conscience win one once in awhile."
Catholic guilt. It's sort of like having your cake and eating it too. Priceless!
The politician in question was Joe Lieberman.
Mark. you weren'r around to observe, muchless participate in the cultural phenomenon known as "Catholic guilt." Scrupulosity used to be a serious problem among Catholics after Trent, diffused from Jansenist French Catholics to their fellows to the Irish and so to the United States. In this diffuse form, "Catholic guilt" was the feeling that one was almost always in the wrong, that one might have broken one of the many (legalistically formulated) Church rules, and that one could never measure up to the plaster perfection of the saints. It wasn't a healthy attitude but it did really exist back in the Old Days.
I grew up Catholic, but my parents were English so they didn't raise me with the Irish cultural Catholicism that most people think of. Instead of correcting my behavior based on shaming the Holy Family or understanding applied morality (the 10 commandments in your life), they appealed to shaming THEIR family and social appropriateness: X behavior isn't gentlemanly or ladylike and proper.
Well, guess what, I grew up in the 70's-80's and at that time the Church was taking a hiatus from its old fashioned ways of teaching morality. My family were immigrants, so I wasn't really shaming the entire extended family. Once I was old enough to realize that other people weren't watching, perhaps doing worse things, and that the social rules had changed--anything goes!--then nothing held me back from doing exactly what I wanted to do, sinful or not.
I had to learn what was right and wrong much later in adult life and repent and seek reconciliation.
I wish I grew up with Catholic guilt. Maybe I love the Lord more for the many sins of which I've been forgiven, but really, I would rather be good and preserved from traipsing down the dark paths that I did.
BTW adultery in the heart is straight from the lips of Jesus. If you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery. If you are angry at someone, he considers it murder. Sin begins in the mind and heart before it becomes an action. We are to transform our minds from the way of the world--anything goes!--to the mind of Christ. Pure Bible, baby.
"They weren't scary-looking, they were like having angels or saints walking among us."
Maybe for you they were. For me, nuns were scary, cold and very willing to punish any kid who misbehaved by making him or her stand at the back of the classroom, go outside in the SoCal summer heat to stand in the blistering sun, or at the very least reminding everybody that God was ALWAYS watching everything you did, so you'd better not do anything bad or else you were going to HELL. Pretty scary even for the very well-behaved girl that I was (and still am, I hope). So yes, for me the so-called 'Catholic guilt' was very real, and fear of being punished by the nuns or teachers did give me nightmares from time to time.
Anyway, I think alias clio nailed it when he said that 'Catholic guilt' was kind of sexy for certain types of people, like Madonna. For them, it is something to laugh at, perhaps by thinking that they can get away with it, or that it makes their sins more alluring, perhaps.
Is laughing at and throwing off Catholic guilt really blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, for which there is no forgiveness in this world or the next? The Holy Spirit is the one to prick our conscience.
If it is, then we need to pray for these people. A deathbed conversion is better than none.
People are assuming that Mrs. Stefani-Rossdale is committing some sort of sin in her public life. Is she? What proof do you have.
Her catholic guilt thing is only her perception of having to live a Leave it to Beaver existence which never existed.
BTW, at least she still has a conscience.
Let's cut her some slack.
Dr. Eric:
I don't recall anyone accusing Stefani of sinning or not sinning. I'm honestly not sure what she is fretting about (feeling like a bad mom for taking her baby on tour or something? Whatever. I don't really care enough to cast stones here.)
But I am sick to death of the whole "I suffer from Catholic guilt" thing. Although Sandra makes a good point about Catholic history and scrupulosity, etc., that was then and this is now. If you hear someone whining about Catholic guilt these days, you can be fairly sure that they are not exactly immersed in formation.
Time to be a grownup in the faith Gwen, as Pope B16 says. If she's not willing to take it seriously, she should shut up about it, frankly. IMHO.
Sandra Miesel:
Scrupulosity used to be a serious problem among Catholics after Trent, diffused from Jansenist French Catholics to their fellows to the Irish and so to the United States.
Oh yes. My grandmother, the daughter of a French Canadian mother, had a very hard time after she'd married and was trying very hard to be a model wife ready to bring up a good Catholic family. She went to confession constantly, afraid that she'd committed a mortal sin, to confess things like having not had dinner on the table in time etc.
One day she came in and confessed that she'd thrown a rock at a cat to get it away from her washing, and the priest started laughing. Then he explained to her about scrupulosity, and was very helpful in getting her to work past it.
I am a middle school teacher and I am convinced that these kids have no guilt. We could use a little "Catholic guilt"!
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