Have you gave religion away being gay?

[Olddaddy]

My Filipino BF who lives with me here in Australia wants to go to Church on Sunday , apparently it's a gay friendly church.

He comes from a religious family in the Philippines.

So anyway he is excited at going to this Pentecostal gay friendly church this Sunday, I'm not .

It may be a pro gay church but I don't believe in God or religion.

I'm going to go there with him but to me it's all fantasy and at any rate the Church don't like gays , these new "woke" churches are popping up supporting LGBT community but still I think religion can be evil.

[vinapu]

55 minutes ago, Olddaddy said:

 

He comes from a religious family in the Philippines.

So anyway he is excited at going to this Pentecostal gay friendly church this Sunday, I'm not .

 

so let him go and you stay home or drive him up there and return to pick him up after service

[Olddaddy]

3 minutes ago, vinapu said:

so let him go and you stay home or drive him up there and return to pick him up after service

No I will go just to see , haven't been to church for like 50 years 

 

[vinapu]

1 minute ago, Olddaddy said:

No I will go just to see , haven't been to church for like 50 years 

 

make sure you dress properly and behave  not to embarrass your boy.

50 years! Don't you have friends who die and you are supposed to attend service , often at the church ? Lucky you

[TMax]

I gave religion the slip when I was a kid and realized it wasn't for me, the only time I go anywhere near a church or chapel is for a family or very close friends funeral service. In the military if you didn't go to sunday religious service you ended up doing work detail, I did a lot of work details. 

[scott456]

I am a Christian, very spiritual and religious.  However, I haven't come out to anybody in my family or anyone associated with the church.  When people make negative comments about gays, I just ignored them, and I divert their attention to the corruption of the church itself, most of them would shut up.

I don't belong to one particular church.  But I pray, I listen to gospel songs and catholic chants everyday.  I visit and pray at many beautiful cathedrals when I have the chance.  

[Olddaddy]

4 minutes ago, scott456 said:

I am a Christian, very spiritual and religious.  However, I haven't come out to anybody in my family or anyone associated with the church.  When people make negative comments about gays, I just ignored them, and I divert their attention to the corruption of the church itself, most of them would shut up.

I don't belong to one particular church.  But I pray, I listen to gospel songs and catholic chants everyday.  I visit and pray at many beautiful cathedrals when I have the chance.  

Wow ! 

I'm shocked Scott 

[scott456]

56 minutes ago, vinapu said:

make sure you dress properly and behave  not to embarrass your boy.

50 years! Don't you have friends who die and you are supposed to attend service , often at the church ? Lucky you

Please don't wear flipflops or slippers to the church 🤣

[alvnv]

3 hours ago, Olddaddy said:

My Filipino BF who lives with me here in Australia wants to go to Church on Sunday , apparently it's a gay friendly church.

He comes from a religious family in the Philippines.

So anyway he is excited at going to this Pentecostal gay friendly church this Sunday, I'm not .

It may be a pro gay church but I don't believe in God or religion.

I'm going to go there with him but to me it's all fantasy and at any rate the Church don't like gays , these new "woke" churches are popping up supporting LGBT community but still I think religion can be evil.

I don’t know what Pentecostal Churches are like in Australia, but if they’re anything like the ones in the US, you’re in for a surprise

[Shonen]

You should go to make your bf feel better. He probably would like knowing you’re open minded to church. Most pinoys are very religious after being conquered by the Spanish.

Just go and day dream. Or think of the great sex you might have later. When I went to church with my mom, I would stand in the back and leave early, sometimes masturbating in the car.

[Ruthrieston]

Warning! Possibly this will be a long, boring story so read at your peril!

I was brought up in Scotland attending the local Presbyterian Church of Scotland until at the age of twelve the Minister visited my home to say that because I had not been baptised I must now be baptised otherwise I would not be allowed to attend Bible Class. This was the first I had heard of it, my older brother had been baptised as a baby but my mother had refused to have me baptised, and said I should be allowed to choose for myself. For the next year or so, with the assistance of my Religious Studies teacher at my school I visited many different religious groups, the ones I liked most being the Quakers for the silent meetings, and the High Anglicans for all the bells and smells (incense and flashy garb worn by the priests and assistants). The place that brought me closest to where I wanted to be was the Roman Catholic Church where I was counselled by a Benedictine monk for months and finally I was baptised and then confirmed, to the horror of my parents. On leaving school at 17 I entered an enclosed, silent Benedictine monastery, the Abbey was built in the year 1230 and was semi-ruined and being restored. The community chanted the Office seven times a day and the Mass in Latin, Gregorian plainchant. I had been visiting the monastery on retreat each year since I was 14, and the community had watched me grow up, and when I asked to be admitted as a Postulant the Abbot looked at me and said "Well we have been waiting for you, get on with it."

As a teenager I had tried to commit suicide three times because I could not cope with being gay. Converting to the Catholic Church gave me a focus and a community who welcomed me. I am quite sure the community was aware that I was gay, but nothing was ever said. And there was no mucking about, this was a good community of dedicated monks. After time as a Postulant, then a Novice, I asked to be allowed to take my first vows, called Simple Profession, the vows lasting three years, and then you would make Solemn Profession, vows for life. As the Bendictine Rule required, I was presented to the community by the Novice Master, then left as they debated my fitness to be allowed to remain and take my vows, then a secret vote is taken, each monk holding a white ball and a black ball and putting their hands into a wooden box so their vote is hidden from view. You need a two thirds plus one vote to be allowed to take your vows. When I was summoned to the Abbot's study, kneeling on the stone floor, I was convinced that I would have to leave, but after a long silence the Abbot said I had received the vote to stay and that as it was the 1500th centenary of St Benedict's birth I would be given the name Benedict. Then after an even longer silence the Abbot looked at me and said, "We never discuss the vote, but you need to hear this, your vote was unanimous." I was stunned, and that was the moment in my life that I finally realised there was nothing wrong with me, if these good, holy men could welcome me into their community then I could accept myself. I stayed for another three years to get the courage to leave and start to live my life.

On leaving I continued to have a deep faith, attending Mass every day and praying daily. I chose to train to be a nurse, and after three years when I qualified there were no jobs in my home town and I ended up moving to London and working in Charing Cross Hospital and then moving to St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham to work in one of the largest HIV/AIDS wards. This was 1987 when thigs were really bad. Every day we saw half our patients die, nine or ten mostly young gay men in their teens and early twenties. Many of their families disowned them, though many others came to support them. After a couple of years of this, losing friends and colleagues to AIDS, too many to count, my faith finally died. I tried really hard to hold on to may faith in God, but so matter how hard I tried my faith was gone. To this day I miss my faith, but it is gone. 

[Olddaddy]

1 hour ago, scott456 said:

Please don't wear flipflops or slippers to the church 🤣

We say thongs here in Australia but that means undies in America 🤣

[sydneyboy1]

40 minutes ago, alvnv said:

I don’t know what Pentecostal Churches are like in Australia, but if they’re anything like the ones in the US, you’re in for a surprise

I suspect the Pentecostal churches here in Australia are very similar to those in the United States. The main one is Hillsong, which has had its fair share of scandals revealing the leadership to be first class hypocrites. On May 21 this year the Australian people voted out our first Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Blessed relief!

[PeterRS]

9 minutes ago, Ruthrieston said:

Warning! Possibly this will be a long, boring story so read at your peril!

A wonderful post. Beautifully written with great honesty. You are never boring and always provide a different view from most of those expressed here.

I'm not sure if you enjoy classical music but some of your history reminds me of Britain's finest pianist Sir Stephen Hough. Deeply religious as a teenager, he believed he was destined to become a priest. Music was his other passion and when he won one of the world's top piano competitions aged 21, he abandoned ideas to become a priest and instead became a concert pianist. Although gay he remained celebate well into his 30s. Signing autographs after a concert in New York, a young professional Asian man asked about future concerts in London. They arranged to meet there a month or so later. They have been a couple for around a quarter of a century.

Hough is an extraordinary individual. In addition to being a pianist with more than 60 CDs to his name, he is also an accomplished painter, poet, composer and author.  The Economist magazine named him one of 20 living polymaths. I thorougly recommend everyone to read his first book The FInal Retreat. It's a small slim volume about a priest at conflict with his views about the Church. He is a middle-aged gay man who tries to face up to Church teaching and increasing sexual desire.  It is not about the recent scandals in the Catholic Church. It's more a personal journey which is troubling, depressing and . . . well, I cannot give the ending away. I hope those not interested in the subject will forgive my quoting from one chapter. Many focus on sexuality and gay sex. The focus here is on the priesthood.

"I look back over my priesthood – twenty-five years, my anniversary is next year. How pointless it all seems, as if I had sailed to a desert island after my ordination and begun to live some weird fantasy life there about which no-one knew anything or cared. My memories are like shells, dry and empty and dead, the tide creeping in and out and slowly reducing them to sand. Blank squares in a out-of-date diary.

"What did I think my life would be like after I was ordained? I'd iived around priests since infancy so I knew the public face, but I didn't know about the private failures and the sheer monotony of their lives. Failure: 'the omission of expected or required action', as one dictionary puts it. Interesting that it's defined as a passive fault ... omission. Jobs have goals, the achievement of which is their very definition. To be a pilot is to fly a plane. To be a bricklayer is to lay bricks. Priesthood is infallibly 'effective', so the theologians tell us ... but underneath theology's theoretical confidence is the constant undertow of practical failure. We fail to lift spirits or heal souls. We answer big questions with little lies. With a few exceptions we fail to make a difference, week after week. Omission is the invisible footprint behind every step."

[scott456]

To me (only me), spiritual living is to seek comfort and peace within my own soul.  I don't preach, I don't impose my religion to anyone and I don't judge someone if they don't share my belief, (I am religious but I am not a priest).  It is his own theory that a priest is a "job" like the "job" of a pilot is to fly a plane.  He fails to lift spirits or heal souls, he thinks that is the purpose of his priest job, if he fails it, who's fault is that?  But what about lifting his own spirit and heal his own soul?  Did he even accomplish that?  (I think some priests do lift spirits and heal souls, especially in people's grieving process).

[reader]

Olddaddy, you may take some flak for some of your topics but you’ve succeeded in stimulating a lot of conversation. And conversation is the essence of a blog like this. 

[kokopelli3]

3 hours ago, Ruthrieston said:

Warning! Possibly this will be a long, boring story so read at your peril!

 This was 1987 when thigs were really bad. Every day we saw half our patients die, nine or ten mostly young gay men in their teens and early twenties. Many of their families disowned them, though many others came to support them. After a couple of years of this, losing friends and colleagues to AIDS, too many to count, my faith finally died. I tried really hard to hold on to may faith in God, but so matter how hard I tried my faith was gone. To this day I miss my faith, but it is gone. 

A most interesting read!  However I don't quite understand how losing friends to AIDS led to death of your faith? 

[a-447]

One of the most interesting forum posts in a long time, Ruthrieston..

Thank you.

 

[Lucky]

5 hours ago, kokopelli3 said:

A most interesting read!  However I don't quite understand how losing friends to AIDS led to death of your faith? 

Seriously?

[kokopelli3]

3 hours ago, Lucky said:

Seriously?

Yes, seriously. 

[Riobard]

15 hours ago, scott456 said:

Please don't wear flipflops or slippers to the church 🤣

I had a friend some 50 years ago that attended and walked up to RC communion in bare feet. The idea being that it was consistent with JC’s messaging of simplicity and humility, contrasting with the bells and whistles of priests’ (hierarchy) garb. But ewwww, fungal risks. 

[t0oL1]

I wasn't particularly religious for years until recently.

Ok, an understatement.

But when a beautiful young Thai friend died I realized I needed him to have the beautiful afterlife he deserved.

Including me wishing him well each night in my prayers.

[Londoner]

Although, like Ruthreiston, I was brought-up in a Christian family, mine was  challenging and tolerant. My father was appalled by the Charismatic/Evangelical movement and, in particular, refused to accept the literal truth of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament with its violence and genocide. "God gave us brains, " he told me, "and we are expected to use them." Accordingly, he expected me to question what I was told, whether it be by politicians or by preachers.

There's no chance that I'd have been rejected had my parents known of my proclivities, only disappointment because it would deny me the support of a family as I grew older. I was taught that "Amor Vincit Omnia"- love conquers all, something that our wealthy mega-church preachers may like to consider. I chose not to reveal my sexuality out of deference to their love for me.

I still attend Church, a famous London one renowned for its music and its association with Palestinian Jerusalem. I believe much of what I  hear there, but not all. This would please my dad. My  closest friends aren't Christians. One is Buddhist- of course- and the other is a Muslim. They are both devout.  I learn from them; perhaps they have learnt something from me.

Like all of us, I've made mistakes in my life and have regrets. However, my sexuality I consider to be God-given; a blessing. Sadly, it took me forty-five years to come to terms with it. 

I don't believe in an After-Life, at least not in the traditional sense, but if I were to face St Peter at the gates of Heaven I think it likely that  one thing in my life would be met with approval; the constancy of my love for P amid eighteen years of challenges and difficulties.  The fact that this love is between two men  would be irrelevant. 

 

[floridarob]

On 10/7/2022 at 6:59 AM, Olddaddy said:

I'm going to go there with him but to me it's all fantasy and at any rate the Church don't like gays

I scrolled through the comments, thinking for sure, that there would have been a 3-way with the altar boy ...or more.

You're letting me down 😉

[Olddaddy]

That's another thing I don't like about the Church , particularly the Catholic religion, ridiculous that they don't let their priests marry .

I wonder how many of the younger generation now start as priests ?