- Oct 31, 2008
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I feel silly even posting about this because the answer is kind of Occams Razor, but I'm also debating whether I should respond.
Long story short: my cousin has begun a new career as a "life coach" (I know, ew) and she's gathered a big following on Instagram, almost 5,000 followers. She's older than me and has had a lot of trauma in my life, her dad was never around when she was a kid, her first husband walked out on her and their four kids, and then her second husband walked out on her because his son was becoming violent towards her.
What's really weirding my family and I out is that she's taking aim at Christianity as the repressive source of all her pain. She should be acknowledging that she's chosen men poorly and the culprit is the fact that she had an absentee father for the first 25-30 years of her life.
But now her posts on social media over the past six months to a year have taken a more inappropriate tone. She's been on the attack against Christianity's morality, especially revolving around the body, sex, and sexuality. She's made some uncomfortable posts about 'hiding' her femininity and then the straw that broke the camel's back for me was a post she made a couple days ago with a picture card that just said "Masturbation is not sin" followed by a long caption railing on Christianity for essentially being nosy about what people do in the privacy of their homes.
I just find that I'm offended by this new worldview she's adopted not just because of it's content but because she was basically raised by my grandma, one of the most pious and devout Christians I've ever known, and I can just imagine how deeply hurt my grandma would be by my cousin basically walking away from the faith and entertaining a lot of this new age, secular, feminist trash.
My first instinct was just to unfollow her, and I'm still going to do that, but I wonder whether I should respond first. I just don't know what the ripple effects might be of me wading into that swamp. For context, I've never been close to my cousins or any extended family other than my grandma. I think in part because my cousin was just old enough that she was always at a slightly different stage of life than me so we never tried to hang out, but we've get along well. I wouldn't call us friends though like a lot of people are with their extended family.
I typed up this response and I'm still debating whether I might post it to her comments, "Gotta disagree cuz. As a Catholic I affirm the Church’s teaching on the conjugal act which states that it must be both unitive and procreative. Anything that isn’t unto both of those ends runs contrary to the natural law, including masturbation. If I’ve learned anything in the last 15 years it’s that while Protestant doctrine is often (and almost always) arbitrary, Catholic teaching is always well-reasoned and developed from 2000 years of natural wisdom and divine revelation"
Long story short: my cousin has begun a new career as a "life coach" (I know, ew) and she's gathered a big following on Instagram, almost 5,000 followers. She's older than me and has had a lot of trauma in my life, her dad was never around when she was a kid, her first husband walked out on her and their four kids, and then her second husband walked out on her because his son was becoming violent towards her.
What's really weirding my family and I out is that she's taking aim at Christianity as the repressive source of all her pain. She should be acknowledging that she's chosen men poorly and the culprit is the fact that she had an absentee father for the first 25-30 years of her life.
But now her posts on social media over the past six months to a year have taken a more inappropriate tone. She's been on the attack against Christianity's morality, especially revolving around the body, sex, and sexuality. She's made some uncomfortable posts about 'hiding' her femininity and then the straw that broke the camel's back for me was a post she made a couple days ago with a picture card that just said "Masturbation is not sin" followed by a long caption railing on Christianity for essentially being nosy about what people do in the privacy of their homes.
I just find that I'm offended by this new worldview she's adopted not just because of it's content but because she was basically raised by my grandma, one of the most pious and devout Christians I've ever known, and I can just imagine how deeply hurt my grandma would be by my cousin basically walking away from the faith and entertaining a lot of this new age, secular, feminist trash.
My first instinct was just to unfollow her, and I'm still going to do that, but I wonder whether I should respond first. I just don't know what the ripple effects might be of me wading into that swamp. For context, I've never been close to my cousins or any extended family other than my grandma. I think in part because my cousin was just old enough that she was always at a slightly different stage of life than me so we never tried to hang out, but we've get along well. I wouldn't call us friends though like a lot of people are with their extended family.
I typed up this response and I'm still debating whether I might post it to her comments, "Gotta disagree cuz. As a Catholic I affirm the Church’s teaching on the conjugal act which states that it must be both unitive and procreative. Anything that isn’t unto both of those ends runs contrary to the natural law, including masturbation. If I’ve learned anything in the last 15 years it’s that while Protestant doctrine is often (and almost always) arbitrary, Catholic teaching is always well-reasoned and developed from 2000 years of natural wisdom and divine revelation"