I am a 34 year old convert coming from a non-practicing Methodist background.  I have a master's degree in education, along with a bachelor's in child and family studies.  I have been married for about 10 years, and I have 8 children so far.  I found this forum interesting, to say the least, and thought I would join it to learn more about my faith.

Quote from: Jamie

I am a food fanatic (it is my hobby) and have in the past worked as a professional opera singer (in NZ and the UK). I am also a computer programmer.

What did you sing?

I sang a lot of oratorios (such as Haydn's Creation), concerts (arias and art songs), and was in a number of operas.  My favorite role was that of Duke Bluebeard in Duke Bluebeard's Castle by Bartok (which some here may consider too modern to be good music - but I love it).

Greetings,

I am a 32 year old male from Dublin Ireland interested in converting to the Catholic Faith. My main interests are classical music (particularly Beethovan), literature and history.

Ah Littlerose! You give sustenance to my old heart.
I don't say that I will always agree with you about everything but I appreciate your down-to-earth view.

Yes, I'm new here...disgusted from Fisheaters, I'm old; about 55 in fact,and only really interested in having a yarn with like-minded catholic folk.
 I particularly dislike the incessant unprovoked activity of the silly thingys to the left of this message.

I'll come back again when I'm less bothered.

A Polish Feeneyite!  

It's like me and "CM" ( having a hard time getting used to that ) have blended into one strange beast...

Ah, but alas alack, they're una cuм.

Welcome anyway, my consonant-encuмbered fellow Pole.  I'm half-Polish.

I have found answers among the discussions here to some of the questions I had about why things were so confusing back in the 'sixties when the adults in my Catholic community were up in arms over VatII. I did what most teenagers do when perplexed by their elders, just took off on my own.

Now I am older and feel a little bit like a returning war refugee picking through the wreckage of a bombed village, trying to reconstruct the old homestead.

I received my first Holy Communion in 1968. By the time I was in 5th or 6th grade, I convinced my parents that I should not have to go to CCD anymore. All we were doing was coloring and playing with felt and glue. It was a tragedy that was going on everywhere. So I was never Confirmed until I was an adult.

I'm from the Chicago area. A couple of things happened that destroyed the faith around here around that time. Vatican II is the no-brainer. But, Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing was also going on as ethnic Catholics headed for the suburbs and found themselves in watered down parishes in suburbia. This never dawned on me until I read E. Michael Jone's book The Slaughter of the American Cities. But, as it turned out it was the untold story of my family, and I'm sure countless others.  

I highly recommend that book.

Quote from: Thurifer

Quote from: littlerose

I have found answers among the discussions here to some of the questions I had about why things were so confusing back in the 'sixties when the adults in my Catholic community were up in arms over VatII. I did what most teenagers do when perplexed by their elders, just took off on my own.

Now I am older and feel a little bit like a returning war refugee picking through the wreckage of a bombed village, trying to reconstruct the old homestead.

I received my first Holy Communion in 1968. By the time I was in 5th or 6th grade, I convinced my parents that I should not have to go to CCD anymore. All we were doing was coloring and playing with felt and glue. It was a tragedy that was going on everywhere. So I was never Confirmed until I was an adult.

I'm from the Chicago area. A couple of things happened that destroyed the faith around here around that time. Vatican II is the no-brainer. But, Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing was also going on as ethnic Catholics headed for the suburbs and found themselves in watered down parishes in suburbia. This never dawned on me until I read E. Michael Jone's book The Slaughter of the American Cities. But, as it turned out it was the untold story of my family, and I'm sure countless others.  

I highly recommend that book.

I don't want to read that book. I remember too much of it, posted in a reply here:
http://www.cathinfo.com/index.php?a=topic&t=8625

I just finished reading your posts in that thread, littlerose. That is one incredible story and you are one heck of a writer. Thanks so much for sharing that. You really ought to write a book. That story needs to be told widely.

You are definitely very well informed on what was going on. The insurance for the mills, etc. So, yes I would agree that you lived it. But, hard as it might be for you to believe, you lived just a portion of it. That book is so well docuмented and goes back so far that I am sure you will learn something and make some connections that you never knew existed. So, I would still recommend it to you.

Hello, Everyone,

I was an SSPX seminarian (St. Thomas Aquinas Winona) from 1989-1991.  Prior to that, I received a BA in Latin & Greek, so I ended up teaching Latin to the 1st year seminarians during my second year.  Left to become a sedevacantist.  Spent some time with Father Jenkins in Cleveland (where I got to know Joseph Santay pretty well as we both worked on their TV show).  I then became a seminarian under Father (now Bishop) Sanborn.  That ended pretty badly for me.  I returned to SSPX for a little while, vacillated back and forth, and left again.  I spent a few years studying Greek and Latin at The Catholic University grad school in Washington, DC.  I finished all the courses but not the actual degree.  I became a computer programmer so as to make a living and am now married with four children.

Somehow along the way I've gotten to know very well quite a number of bishops:  Williamson, Santay, Sanborn, Fulham, Neville, Webster, and Elmer.

I now adhere to a middle position between SSPX and sedevacantism which I feel resolves the very real difficulties with both of them, and I hold a stricter interpretation of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (but again more of a via media between the extremes of say a Most Holy Family Monastery and what I believe to be a wrong/weak SSPX position -- if in fact one could say there's some kind of monolithic SSPX).

I felt that forums such as angelqueen were way too dogmatically SSPX (actually censoring the very word sedevacantist), so I started my own forum--though I didn't get very much traffic on it.  As you can perhaps gather from what I wrote above, I believe in allowing a certain amount of latitude around the diabolical disorientation which has infested the Church.  I have my opinions of course but don't feel as though anyone who disagrees with me should be therefore condemned as a heretic.  Unfortunately, I got into that mindset under Father Sanborn, and that pretty much destroyed my vocation to the priesthood.  But, alas, those are very long stories.  So I happened upon this forum and was encouraged to see a tolerance of people with various viewpoints.  I am very much disheartened to see a lack of charity and compassion among Traditional Catholics towards those who take different positions.  I've run the full gamut and have been blessed to know so many good sincere souls in every camp.  If people have veered off in the wrong direction, then we should only be sad for them.

Looking back, the happiest times in my life were those I spent at St. Thomas Aquinas.  I hate living in the world, and daydream a lot about being back at the seminary.

Yours in Jesus and Mary,
Laszlo Szijarto