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Poll--Were you raised Catholic?

Go to CruxDreams.com
Yes, this is a ploy to smoke out responses from the majority of our 155 members who don't post.

It's also a semi-scientific way to find out what percentage of people with this fetish were raised in a faith whose central image is a vaguely effeminate, mostly naked guy hanging from a cross.

You need only answer yes or no. Further comments are at your discretion.

My answer: Yes. Attended parochial school until 9th grade to boot.

Raised Protestant Evangelical by comfortable hard working middle class parents. Grew up listening to stories of Jesus and the thieves on the cross...always hid away from my mother pieces of her satin, nylon, and silk sewing fabric to make loincloths since I was a little girl. :D

I loved going swimming and playing on beach driftwood. I loved Easter times and the inevitable passion plays. My nightly fantasy sessions were and still consist of me taking my nightgown off and slipping into my loincloth... :p

"Save yourself and us!" :D
 
So hard to ignore twelve years of guilt indoctrination.
Indeed, we free (wo-)men never can ignore our psychological past, even a radical turn or switch into another direction lets carry away your earlier life-experience. Tragic of life, not so free as we think or will be... Physically we possess or heritable genes.
 
If this site has a proper poll feature, I wish I could find it. A running bar graph would be useful.

In any case, so far one yes, three no.

Interesting.
Sorry I'm ten years late. I had a catholic parent and although I was brought up free church I was occasionally taken to a catholic service. I will admit that when I see a crucifix I do get a little twinge - bigger if it were a female martyr. Now I am quite happy to be an unbeliever.
 
Seeing the high altar in some churches makes me want to clear away all the artefacts and replace them with a naked virgin draped in gossamer strips which hardly hide anything.

Dammit - think I'm on the wrong site. - lol

No, I think you're on the right track. A mass to worship the naked tortured soul, so really feat upon the body of the crucified and not pretend to ignore what our hearts and minds and private parts are telling us to feel.
 
Seeing the high altar in some churches makes me want to clear away all the artefacts and replace them with a naked virgin draped in gossamer strips which hardly hide anything.

Dammit - think I'm on the wrong site. - lol
That's pretty much how I imagine myself when I attend a Mass or Eucharist -
being led up the aisle at the Offertory, handed over to the priest,
taken to the altar and laid there, made ready,
lying there during the Preface, Sanctus, Benedictus,
then during the Consecration the priest raises a knife, shows it to the congregation,
then plunges it in me. After that he fills the cup with my blood, holds that up,
invites the faithful to come and drink...​
 
That's pretty much how I imagine myself when I attend a Mass or Eucharist -
being led up the aisle at the Offertory, handed over to the priest,
taken to the altar and laid there, made ready,
lying there during the Preface, Sanctus, Benedictus,
then during the Consecration the priest raises a knife, shows it to the congregation,
then plunges it in me. After that he fills the cup with my blood, holds that up,
invites the faithful to come and drink...​
Sugar - that is one hell of a graphic image involving a whole load of emotions
 
Dear all,

today i like to tell and show you some personal facts of my childhood and adolescence.

As child i was educated in the Christian-Jewish context, later i lived about ten years in a boarding school of St. Michael's Abbey run by monks of St. Benedictine Order. At the age of twenty i passed the final examinations.
During this time between crosses, praying monks and the spirit of a catholic education my crucifixion fantasies and anything else relating to tortures and bondage grew slowly but constantly.

St. Michael's Abbey at Metten is a house of the Benedictine Order in Metten near Deggendorf, situated between the fringes of the Bavarian Forest and the valley of the Danube, in Bavaria in Germany.
The abbey was founded in 766 by Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch. For many centuries Metten was under the lordship of the Dukes and Electors of Bavaria. When Charlemagne stayed in Regensburg for three years after 788, Utto turned his abbey over to the Frankish ruler, making the Ducal Abbey a Royal Abbey. After the Carolingians became extinct, Metten was turned into an Imperial Abbey. Besides the work of land clearance in the Bavarian border territories, the monks were very active in education. Members of the abbey were not only schoolteachers, but also members of the Bavarian Academy of Science in Munich and professors of philosophy and theology in Freising and Salzburg.
After secularisation in 1803 the abbey's property was confiscated, and by 1815 had all been auctioned off. Over a number of years Johann von Pronath acquired the greater part of the former premises and succeeded in persuading King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1830 to re-establish the monastery, which by 1837 had been set up to incorporate a boarding school (Gymnasium), in continuance of its educational traditions, which the monastery has run to this day.
The re-founded abbey was very active in re-settling new monasteries. Since 1858 it has been a member of the Bavarian Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation.
Besides the boarding school, the abbey runs various craft enterprises. The library, which is open for tours, contains over 150,000 volumes on theology, philosophy and history.

Attached you will find some fotos of St. Michael's Abbey (monastery, church and library)

Abbey Metten - (1).jpg Abbey Metten - (2).jpg Abbey Metten - (4a).jpg Abbey Metten - (4b).jpg Abbey Metten - (5).jpg Abbey Metten - (10).jpg Church Metten - (2).jpg Church Metten - (3).jpg Library - (1).jpg Library - (2).jpg

Feel free to ask me anything ...
 
Because of my interest in medieval literature - much of which was of course written, and copied out, in monasteries,
I've tried to get some idea of life in present-day monasteries - obviously not easy for a woman to do!
My impression is that Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries in Britain tend to try to recreate the ambience of mediaeval ones -
in their architecture, furnishings, decoration (or lack of it), etc. - Metten looks quite palatial by comparison!
 
Because of my interest in medieval literature - much of which was of course written, and copied out, in monasteries,
I've tried to get some idea of life in present-day monasteries - obviously not easy for a woman to do!
My impression is that Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries in Britain tend to try to recreate the ambience of mediaeval ones -
in their architecture, furnishings, decoration (or lack of it), etc. - Metten looks quite palatial by comparison!

In Bavaria, there are many Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries (of nuns), my two favorites are in Landshut and Frauenwörth.
Frauenwörth itself is an island / Chiemsee nearby Salzburg / Austria, but still Bavarian.

There is further more the possibility to be a guest for some days ...

Attached you will find two links and an first image of the surrounding ... enjoy it ...

http://www.frauenwoerth.de/english/
http://www.frauenwoerth.de/english/the-abbey/monastic-life/

Fraueninsel.jpg
 
That looks a lovely place! I've stayed in the womens' guest house of a monastery in Britain - interesting, indeed quite a powerful experience, especially attending the Night Office - but again, more simple, indeed spartan, than your Bavarian ones seem to be!
 
It's nice to read "A Time to Keep Silence" by Paddy Leigh Fermor: "While still a teenager, Patrick Leigh Fermor made his way across Europe, as recounted in his classic memoirs, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. During World War II, he fought with local partisans against the Nazi occupiers of Crete. But in A Time to Keep Silence, Leigh Fermor writes about a more inward journey, describing his several sojourns in some of Europe’s oldest and most venerable monasteries. He stays at the Abbey of St. Wandrille, a great repository of art and learning; at Solesmes, famous for its revival of Gregorian chant; and at the deeply ascetic Trappist monastery of La Grande Trappe, where monks take a vow of silence. Finally, he visits the rock monasteries of Cappadocia, hewn from the stony spires of a moonlike landscape, where he seeks some trace of the life of the earliest Christian anchorites.

More than a history or travel journal, however, this beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life. Leigh Fermor writes, “In the seclusion of a cell—an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods—the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.”
 
Yes, I admire his writing, and that quote expresses just what meditative silence and solitude mean to me.

oh PK and Eul, yes, in our world it is so hard to grasp the value, the pleasure, of an extended time of contemplative silence, both alone and in community.
To have the opportunity to turn inwards without distraction, find peace and stability and then turn outwards again and see the world with fresh eyes.
 
Sadoman, "apostate"is what this former pious altar boy is, by canon law. I've mailed my resignation to the Vatican, I've rejected my my faith with a good deal of contempt. Much to my family's distress.

We don't talk religion any more. Nor politics for that matter.
 
That looks a lovely place! I've stayed in the womens' guest house of a monastery in Britain - interesting, indeed quite a powerful experience, especially attending the Night Office - but again, more simple, indeed spartan, than your Bavarian ones seem to be!
Very good that you did what you thought, I never made the step for a retraîte. You have splendid capacities and willpower!
 
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