Psychologian.ca | Once upon a time a Canadian Buddhist discovered the beauty of Eastern Christianity and decided to dig deeper…

Is the Church only for men and wives, ordained men and religious sisters?

How can we talk about bringing religion to young people who would benefit from at least understanding it if the only people welcome are Catholic professionals and married couples with their offspring?

We tell people who think that ending their life is a solution to difficulties that “it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. Similarly, for those who feel called to prevent abortions, the messaging should be:

“If you end the life of the human growing in your body, because right now it seems like what you need to do, we can help you through the practical difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, learning to care for a child. You need not allow a temporary situation of under-housing or a deadbeat dad or lack of finances lead to ending a pregnancy. We do this because five or ten years from now, it is very possible you might regret not having the chance to know the child you conceived.”

I know the Sisters of Life offer this kind of care to pregnant women. I have never interacted with them but I do think they have the right approach. Celibate bachelor priests who are cruel and filled with judgement, who are involved in Pro Life politics, hurt individual women, as well as the cause of protecting life from womb to tomb.

In my defense I had never in my life thought of myself or other Canadians are either Left or Right or Conservative or Liberal or Far Left and Far Right until I began going to Mass, talking to Catholics and reading Catholic media and seeing these terms used constantly.

Several people in Peterborough ~ key people like priests, Diocese staff, parish secretaries ~ over the course of the five years I lived there told me I was “so progressive”. I believe it was Deirdre Thomas who said I was “too progressive”.

In Facebook groups, I saw Catholics talking about libtards or libpedos.

I don’t know why they held this belief, or how they came to think so. My repeated attempts to simply have a conversation, and probe their beliefs about me were met with silence, or hard stares.

The most useful framework I’ve found to make sense of the obsession of Catholics over categorizing other Catholics is Jonathon Haidt’s moral matrix foundation. Conservatives have balanced views in all six moral taste receptors: loyalty vs betrayal, sanctity vs degradation, authority vs subversion, liberty vs oppression) whereas progressives (over?) emphasize fairness vs injustice and care vs harm.

We are body and soul. The Word made flesh. Part of divinization is understanding our bodies and integrating our slice of the Body of Christ / the Source with the raw material of our bodies.

Explicit instruction means telling inquirers what they need to know directly. I would like to see: less guided discovery (expecting learners to figure things out on their own), no hazing as rite of passage (humiliating or traumatizing people as a test of capacity to suffer or prove loyalty), no paranoia-inducing manufactured coincidences (monitoring the inquirer’s whereabouts and then dropping a comment to creep us out), less ambiguity about the initiation process itself (staff shouldn’t lord it over inquirers by withholding information; people need information about the process, the steps, the expectations, how catechumens are judged and evaluated earlier rather than later), no screening or surveiling anyone or using illegal means to check out new people. Background checks should be explicit and legal; the

I’ve been writing here since 2021 and I was very open in the early years and named names. Now, in 2026, I’m replacing full first and last names with first and last initials. This means the story will be clear to me but probably not entirely comprehensible to anyone but the most determined reader, and that’s how I want it.

Everything I say is factual. I don’t make things up. I understand others have their own version of events and might disagree with how I narrate my side of the story.

In particular, I want to explain problems I’ve had with Sacraments. I’ve had too many Catholics react badly to the idea that priests make mistakes, or even deliberately hurt people. I know that priests are very human, very fallible (fine) but can also be unwilling to own or apologize for what was said and done. Given the trust the community and individuals place on parish priests, we can do better.