Catholicism – Jill Domschot

January News

The print of Delivering Hope is now available: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNT46R. If you would like a free copy of the ebook, please let me know. I only ask one thing: if you like the book, tell someone. Word of mouth is the best marketing.

I’ve started the sequel, and it’s moving at my normal pace of 1000 words a day. Its official title is Delivering the Goods & the Bads.

The Christmas tree came down on Epiphany Sunday, after I’d written on the front door with blessed chalk: 20+C+M+B+24. Because I’m feeling particularly lazy, here is the screenshot of the snippet I wrote for the weekly bulletin I create at my job:

I continue to make YouTube videos, in which I blather about nonsense. I even developed my own theme song. It’s called El Vuelo de Las Libélulas. I know; surprising, right? I’m trying to get over my awkwardness at playing the accordion on camera.

My dogs are brats. Did I just openly admit that? They are adorable brats. But they give me love, which is hard to find in the world. God loves purely. Nobody else does. Except dogs. I mean, they love you extra if you give them bacon, so maybe that’s not pure, but at least it’s predictably simple. They also openly display their love, not to mention their joy at loving. Humans instead display their misery in love.

Maybe I should stop listening to the song Qué Agonía five times a day. It’s such a good song, though. I will post below.

Christian Marriage

There is a Trad Wife trend going on social media. I didn’t know it was a trend, albeit, I did see video shorts labeled as such filtering through my YouTube feed. It’s difficult for me to parse YouTube algorithms. I get dating advice, too, but I’ve never actually searched for such channels because I’ve been married for almost thirty years. Maybe dating advice is also on trend? Or maybe my actual searches add up to Trad Wife and dating advice? I primarily listen to Catholic and Protestant apologetics videos. Secondarily, I watch accordion tutorials and music videos. Thirdly, I still watch food budgeting and recipe videos, even though I’m at a point in my life where I do little cooking. Occasionally, I click on a video because it sounds intriguing or like a trainwreck I can’t turn away from. The Trad Wife trend might fall into “trainwreck.”

I learned this hashtag was a trend when one of the Protestant apologetics creators, Allie Beth Stuckey, made a video on it. My take on what I had seen was that it was based off of a lot of naivety. In one or two cases, there seemed to be a cosplay, sexual kink aspect to it, in which the wife primps like Marilyn Monroe and pretends to be a traditional wife, something which Marilyn Monroe was not. A sex kitten Hollywood starlet is not what any normal person would call a trad wife leading a trad life, though there perhaps is a parallel to the way in which she was owned and controlled by immoral men and the way in which these trad females wish to be owned and controlled by, hopefully, moral men.

Hopefully. I tend to make no theological arguments regarding marriage dynamics. We have no intact traditional culture; therefore, traditional Christian marriage roles end up being acted out artificially in our times. The most successful marriages I have witnessed in my years in very conservative Christian circles (I was a homeschool parent for years) were egalitarian marriages. The least successful I have witnessed were philosophically patriarchal with much talk about female submission and male leadership. The results have been so catastrophic in some cases that the children have left the faith altogether for agnostic or even deviant lifestyles. As someone who is a lifelong observer who doesn’t prefer to join movements, what I have witnessed is a sign that we’re doing “trad marriage” wrong, or maybe putting all our eggs in a one- or two-verse Scriptural basket without much thought to the examples put forth in the rest of the Bible.

I will add a caveat in here that, although complementarianism was a term invented by Baptists, the concept is held by the Catholic church, as well. There is no doubt that men and women are different in nature and that society requires both to function. But I do not see the hard and fast rules in Scripture that moderns preach. I see women such as Rebecca and Abigail defying their husband’s authority and unwittingly siding with God’s position. I use the term “unwittingly,” but I don’t really know this; maybe Rebecca’s deception was based off a God-given conviction that Jacob was the son God had chosen. That brings me to another point: God defies human wisdom and hierarchies regularly by raising up second-born sons. Getting back to Abigail and her siding with David instead of her husband at a time when no one yet knew he would be king — that man she sided with was a youngest sibling with many brothers ahead of him in the hierarchy. He was not even the second son! It is obvious, no matter what words you want to use to convince me otherwise, that God doesn’t think much of human hierarchies, and that includes women being on a rung below men. Go read the Old Testament, and you will find other examples of this phenomenon.

Modern-day marriage is a mess. Traditionally, people were married when they were too young* to really consider the consequences of being stuck with someone who might very well become loathsome after twenty or forty or even sixty years of marriage. But, thankfully, there was rarely a way out of the prison they’d placed themselves in. Yes, of course, there are stories of men divorcing their wives (historically, it didn’t generally work the other way around) or of men having their wives committed to asylums when their wives became annoying and asylums were a thing. Otherwise, though, the best hope was that a married couple would end up loving each other more as the years passed. I don’t think this was ever common, though. Am I being cynical? Maybe a little. Nowadays, I’m not even certain I would recommend people marry young because of the ease at which divorce is available. It’s probably better to wait until you aren’t a fool and know yourself a little better, so that you can marry someone you enjoy being around instead of filing for divorce once you’ve realized what a fool you were. I see so many divorces and subsequent remarriages where the husbands and wives are much more mentally balanced with partners chosen at mature ages. I even see this in my job. The Catholic church does try to prevent them by restricting annulments and remarriages, but they still happen all the time. The drawback, of course, is people aren’t even bothering to get married nowadays due to the fact that it’s a sham. Consequently, our reproduction rates have plummeted. None of this is good, despite those who are happier in second marriages.

Are men and women supposed to be happy together and to fulfill each other? To love and cherish each other? I would say yes, if this were a perfect world. It’s not, and, sadly, fulfillment is unlikely to happen. For traditional marriage to work, therefore, divorce must be made more difficult. Misery and long-suffering must be taught as good for the soul. God as our true soul fulfillment must also be instilled in us as Christian people. We have largely walked away from God as a culture. For that reason, I should be cheering for a trend such as #tradwife or #tradmarriage. But I can’t. I can’t find it in me to cheer for a binary worldview in which it’s believed that women need only love and men only respect. Love without respect is pity. Respect without love is a business relationship. I can’t cheer for that, not after seeing this type of marriage come apart at the seams and the children destroyed through it. Without an intact traditional culture, in which men and women have resources to aid them through loveless marriages, such as the old folks giving loving advice and friends offering hugs, this trend is simply not going to work. When one or the other partner realizes the raw deal they were dealt, they will go file for that easy divorce.

Is true love possible? Sure, but it’s a lot of work. I tend to view my parents as soulmates who just happened to find each other. Whether that’s true or an ideal is not up to me to say. However, when I review all that they’ve gone through together, how much they’ve sacrificed for each other, and how much they’ve compromised, I believe it was their intention to love each other, and so they loved as a vocation. They are still loving each other. By the way, they are one of the most egalitarian couples I’ve ever known. Over fifty years and still going. My parents give me hope that people can if they try, no matter what label they slap on. Living requires action rather than philosophy.

*Yes, I’m aware that people didn’t always historically have the luxury of choosing a spouse. This was especially the case for upper crust and royals who wanted to keep wealth and land in small circles of influence. But generally, if an average boy and girl favored each other, they could be married upon approval from their families.

The Absurdity of Misanthropy

The concept that humans are worthless is very popular in both Catholic and Protestant circles. I’ve been in Protestant services where the extended worship time focused on repeating mantras of self-immolation in song. I’m glad my husband stopped attending that church. To be fair, I stopped attending Protestant services with him entirely because I’m burned out on all of them.

But self depreciation certainly isn’t confined to Protestantism. Catholics have a long history of self hatred, which they have demonstrated through absurd physical means such as flagellation and the wearing of hair shirts. I don’t have a problem with self denial at all; fasting is biblical and can take our focus off the emphasis of meeting our physical needs and onto crying out to God to meet our spiritual needs. But the intentional acts of self hatred and proving our worthlessness to the world is 100% lost on me and, in my opinion, not consistent with either God or other Christian beliefs. Thankfully, these are private rather than corporate Catholic practices. In other words, the Mass is the Mass; there will never be a “led by the spirit” lengthy worship service in which Christians chant about how they need to disappear so that God’s glory can shine.

There is a viral Catholic prayer, The Unity Prayer by Elizabeth Kindelmann, that has caught fire in Catholic circles. The prayer itself is lovely (I will post it below) and the testimonies about it binding Satan’s influence over us probably true. That is the power of praying to Jesus. Being that these types of viral movements, in which numerous miracles are attributed to a specific prayer, fascinate me, I decided to read Kindelmann’s autobiography for more context. What a mistake that was! It wasn’t entirely a mistake. However, it is a tale of human suffering that can be very depressing to dwell on for any length of time. On the other hand, trust in God in the midst of suffering can be inspirational. There is both in the text, but unfortunately too much of the former for my mental health.

I stopped reading not too long after the words spoken to her by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus turned the direction of “your priority is to remember that you are nothing.” Granted, this is a translation into English. In fact, it went from Hungarian to Spanish and then to English from the Spanish, so what I’m reading is twice removed from the original language. How difficult is that concept to translate from any language? I don’t know. I’m asking an honest question. Hungarian is a Uralic language and is therefore quite different from English or Spanish, but it still has a word that translates as “nothing.”

Why is this such a problem for me? On an emotional level, I struggle with nihilism. If there is no purpose to my or anyone else’s life on earth, I’d rather just off myself right now. Please don’t be alarmed by that, as I don’t believe my life is meaningless. I don’t buy that lie the evil one is selling. On a practical level, the pro-life movement, which is very important to the Catholic church, has as its core philosophy the value of all human life. Humans aren’t nothing. They matter. That’s why Catholic crusaders are willing to go to jail for protesting against abortion and euthanasia, as well as the maltreatment of humans. That’s why thousands of priests were killed by Nazis — they stood against the Nazi maltreatment of humans. How can they hold that philosophy while believing they themselves are nothing? Are they not as human and, therefore valuable, as the lives they’re fighting for? It’s a strange dichotomy you find all over the Christian world. I’m meaningless; I don’t have value, but I’m going to save the starving people in a refugee camp because somehow they have value despite being humans, too.

In a larger theological framework, there doesn’t seem much sense to God creating humans and sending his Son to die self-sacrificially for them if he regards them as nothing. What kind of capricious God would do that, and then advise these same humans when they are struggling through poverty and loneliness, as Kindelmann clearly was throughout her life, that their number one job was to remember that they are nothing? Her life as a poor woman and young widow had already taught her she didn’t have value. If she is writing that she is nothing, my guess is it’s coming from the worm in her brain implanted by maltreatment and not from God.

The Good Shepherd does not look pragmatically at his sheepfold and say, “Well, I have ninety-nine here. It would probably be better if I keep watch over these than go out and look for that one that left the fold. She left of her own free will. Her choice. She was warned about wolves. Besides, that’s one less mouth to feed, and who wants to give food to a poor female nobody loves? She’s nothing to us. Should we take a vote?” Those are not godly words. Jesus said he would leave the fold to find that one sheep that was lost. The sheep obviously being a metaphor for us, does the Good Shepherd strike you as a savior who would tell us we are nothing? That we don’t matter?

Humans want and need love. They want and need to know that they have value. They want to matter. It is no surprise to me that God built us chemically to produce pleasurable feelings when we do good for others. Doing good gives us a sense of purpose, a vocation. Yes, our chemical reactions can be tainted; there are sadists who instead feel pleasure when harming others. But we are appalled by that twisting of our God-given natures, condemning such people and their behavior, and rightfully so.

Maybe if I read the rest of her story, I would learn why it was important for her to remember she was nothing. I do not know because I’m not going to finish reading something that has already struck me as being false, closer to Zen Buddhism than Christianity. Instead, I’ll return to my fictional murder mysteries, where the sense of justice enacted in the end is predicated off human life mattering. If it didn’t, there would be little point to punishing murderers — which is, by the way, a biblical concept.

Have You Seen Any Christian Films Recently?

This was inspired by a YouTuber I like, Ready to Harvest, who frequently creates polls. I like him because he’s informational more than apologetic in nature. He describes Christian denominations and sects in a neutral tone. He rarely passes judgment. He’s an information and data collector, who then passes on what he’s collected for the benefit of his audience. I’m sure he has his own beliefs, but they aren’t the purpose of his channel. In a poll that just scrolled through my feed, he asked his audience if they had seen a Christian film in the last year, and there were various answering options.

The question gave me pause. Had I? Yes. And I had seen more than a few if it was a year from last May. For example, I watched Fr. Stu in the theater last spring. I also watched For Greater Glory at home. Those are movies with a clear intent of being Christian. Another that was Christian by default rather than intent was The Perfect Game. All were Catholic. All were based off of true stories. All left an impression on me, with The Perfect Game being my favorite. I’m pretty sure I wrote a blog post about that last one, as that kind of film is my personal crack. True. Inspirational. A story of the underdog prevailing. A sports theme. A dedicated priest, and kids with relentless faith in God. Yep. Make a film like that, and I will be there, and I will probably be wiping away the tears sliding down my cheeks.

I also watched some films that had a darker edge (For Greater Glory was heartbreaking and dark, but in a different way), such as Deliver Us From Evil, which is a horror movie based off the true story of a New York cop who becomes an exorcist. It didn’t get great reviews from horror fans because it was truly redemptive in its conclusion, the power of God overcoming evil. I’m not much for horror; I don’t like being terrified. I can’t stand jump scares, but this is a film worth seeing if you want to reinvigorate your belief in the spirit world. Of course, you have to believe that it’s a true story for that to happen. Belief is the sticky wicket, isn’t it?

Overall, I haven’t watched many movies this past year. I don’t have time for movies and shows, though I do admit sometimes I just want to recline on the couch on Saturday and do nothing but watch video entertainment. The problem is good films are difficult to find. There aren’t many stories like The Perfect Game out there. Most of the films I watched last year were Christian or inspirational in nature — true stories, though. There’s something about inspirational fiction that’s a bit too thick for me.

My original question stands: have you seen any Christian films recently? If yes, did you like them?

Being Wanted

The one argument coming from the pro-abortion crowd that repels me deeply is the one that says human life is valuable based on whether it’s wanted or not. When you grow up as the awkward, bullied reject, you understand deeply how much your presence is unwanted by the people around you. You can’t help but to exist, and on some level, you might believe that God wants you or you wouldn’t be here. But there is the sense that, given an amoral and lawless society, you would be deemed expendable and taken out.

I’ve heard it numerous times from the mouths of pro-abortion activists; when asked what the difference is between a human baby and a fetus that can be flushed or ripped violently from the womb, the answer is when the mother wants it, it’s a baby who needs protection. Otherwise, it’s a clump of cells with no personhood rights. These are virtually direct quotes from any number of abortion supporters.

I’ve discussed before that we humans are not logical creatures. This is, to be honest, the way God created us. He created us to be primarily emotional and instinctive; that is our first response to any given situation. Our instincts are intriguing, as they can be very basic, as in, I’m starving; I must have instant sugar, and they can conversely be very complex, instant decisions made based off years of inputs that work together in the background to aid us in this process. Logic is a secondary, learned skill, but it is solipsistic, processed through our filters. The conclusions are only as good as the premises, as well, so it’s possible to have flawless logic and still be completely wrong.

Most people have not learned logic and don’t understand cause and effect very deeply, especially when they want or don’t want something very badly. I don’t think I need to explain why the concept of only wanted people should be allowed personhood status will have a very bad logical outcome. But it’s going to be difficult to get around the initial instinct and emotional drive of a human that simply wants to escape consequences. They won’t understand the logic. They will turn it into a moralistic argument about the bad ethics of forcing a woman to go through an unwanted pregnancy. This is, of course, a false input, but most won’t perceive why. Even professors, who are supposed to be above-average, will refuse to accept that their conclusions are wrong.

You might recognize that I have an emotional response to the argument that only wanted people have value. Yes, it does make me emotional. Very emotional. My life experiences have taught me on an emotional level to be sensitive to the maltreatment of underdogs whom nobody likes. We know what happens when we devalue certain people; history has left humanity with those emotional wounds. And if you consider that a pre born child isn’t unwanted for any particular reason, it’s even more emotionally devastating. I was and am a scrawny, awkward person. It’s easy to dislike me. I’m obnoxious. But a mother who doesn’t have any personal grudges against a tiny being who has done nothing offensive because they haven’t had the chance to yet…just tears me up inside. It’s so cold. It’s so wrong, like the neighborhood boy who unaccountably pulls the wings off insects. He can; that’s the only reason. Well, she can, too, except those aren’t wings she’s ripping off a fly. They are the arms and legs of her own child.

This battle will never be won by pitting logic against emotions, anyway. What it really comes down is spiritual oppression. That is why you often find pro-abort protestors screaming obscenities and hail Satan. They do this ostensibly to rattle Christians, but it rather becomes an outpouring of their souls. These people are not emotional wrecks; they are spiritual wrecks.

Therefore, praying and preaching the gospel are the only answers. Too simple? I don’t care. My state’s a mess, with some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world. It is overwhelming to live here sometimes. What can I do? Sign a few petitions? Carry banners? Jesus is better. He is always the answer.

Being Punk Rock

I find the music almost intolerable, but I have to admit that my anti-authoritarian nature closely resembles those now old youths from the late seventies and early eighties. I never could manage to force my hair to stand on end. In high school, I asked a punk rock friend how I could shape my hair into a mohawk like he had. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and told me it would wreck my beautiful hair but gave me a recipe nonetheless.

My hatred for authority figures is not as shallow as spiky hair. It comes from a lifetime of observation, watching what petty tyrants are capable of because most people make no hue and cry over their overreaches. Being institutionalized from kindergarten up allows most to be right in line with injustice and overreach; it’s simply what they’re used to. A handful of us freaks never adapt, however. We might have very low or very high IQs–we might not fit in for whatever reason–but we never can fall into line. We are belligerent with every unconstitutional traffic stop, we don’t wear our masks, we just don’t. One year, I refused to acknowledge DST, completely confusing everyone who has been deluded by the government into thinking the sun is directly overhead at 11 AM. Guess what? It is not.

I am more punk rock than I wish to be at this time of year. What gets to me about DST is that it’s completely arbitrary. There’s no reason to do it. It never did save energy, and the evidence is conclusive that it’s bad for the health. It makes me excessively angry, only I never know who to take out my aggressions on. This week is, therefore, like every time change before it: running off no sleep and desperately wanting to hurt someone in the government, anyone will do. Use torture until the forces relent and go back to standard time. God’s time–when noon means the sun is directly overhead, and we are allowed the healthy properties of early morning sunlight.

Today my mentality is better. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m still punk rock about the issue. But I rose this morning and plodded through my exercise as exhausted as the other days, and felt less angry. The problem is it’s just as life-sucking to be constantly angry as it is to be forced into enacting ridiculous nonsense. The government and its nanny state doesn’t care two wits about me or you, and neither do I care for them. They can strip us naked, search our luggage and homes and cars, interrogate us for no reason, shut our churches down and force us to pay over twenty percent of our income to them in taxes so that they can continue being tyrants, but what they can’t do is steal my soul or my joy.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, and I will wear my green (green stands for being Catholic, btw, but my ethnicity is also Irish). In fact, I purchased a green shirt with a norteño style accordion on it, and I will wear it to work tomorrow. It says “Air Accordion” at the top, which is a bit ridiculous, as I would be playing my own ribcage. Just the thought of being that ridiculous brings me further joy. I think I might die laughing while I pretend to play the accordion at work.

I happen to work in an office that sits under the Vatican flag, and it makes me consider how young this nation is; it’s tyranny is childlike compared to older authority systems. And despite the mixed history Rome has as an authority figure, to me it’s quite a bit more valid than the US government. It has reformed itself throughout many centuries. I don’t see the US government reforming itself. I could be wrong, though. I’ve been known to be on at least three occasions.

I hope you enjoy your corned beef, if you do that on St. Patty’s Day. As for me, I will eat my American-Irish cuisine and pretend I’m a San Patricio, playing my Mexican songs on the accordion. My excuse is never learning Irish songs…because, why would I when I can learn perfectly good polkas and cumbias to sing along with? I’m a woman obsessed, a woman on a mission. Please do not get in my way, unless you are playing punk rock Irish rebel songs. Those are almost tolerable.

Lent Update

I gave up drinking alcohol two weeks ago. I often want to give up alcohol for Lent, but until this year, it hasn’t happened. It doesn’t help that people like me better when I drink because it helps me relax and get a few hours of sleep per night. I didn’t start immediately; it took me until the 26th to decide I no longer wanted to rely on an addictive substance to relax my central nervous system and block the negative thoughts that inevitably emerge when I lie awake most of each night. I’ve had chronic insomnia since childhood. I don’t know what causes it, but it isn’t simple. It doesn’t stem from anxiety or the spiral of negative thoughts themselves. I rarely feel the former, and the latter is a result of being awake for hours and not the cause of it.

The cause is probably related to an overstimulated nervous system, which is why ordinary fixes for insomnia don’t help, e.g., spending time in nature, exercising intensely, etc. Both are far too stimulating–although, the last time I spent several hours in Carlsbad Caverns, I slept an unprecedented nine hours straight. Walking slowly through a dark cave might actually be the nature and exercise level I need! That not being a regular option, however, means that alcohol is the most useful medicine I have at my disposal. But I’d still rather not be addicted to it.

There is a purpose to giving up our worldly addictions during Lent; for a start, we simply have too much of everything in our modern day. Suffering can bring us closer to God. That is the goal, anyway. We are preparing our hearts for Jesus and the suffering he endured for our sake. It’s supposed to bring about the renewal of our hearts as is promised in the Advent season, which starts off the church calendar. Did you know that the church calendar ends in November instead of December, as the solar calendar does? Advent brings joy because it’s a reminder that God sent his son to be savior of the world. But Lent brings sorrow because Jesus and his act on the cross remind us that we are desperate sinners in need of a savior. Lent is a time to prepare our hearts for Him.

Has depriving myself of alcohol helped to prepare my heart? In the ironic sense that I’ve suffered from depression and excruciatingly negative thoughts, sure. I know that underneath the veil of alcohol and my endless pursuits lies hopelessness. I can’t see my way out of that hopelessness, not on my own. I can only cover it up. Maybe I should have given up writing and music in this season, too. I gave up writing once–it was the longest Lent season I ever experienced. I prayed that God would show me whether I should continue pursuing that dream. I have a difficult time discerning God’s voice. I heard no clear answer, and so eventually carried on with it, albeit, certainly not as a priority, which explains why I have published only four books since 2013. Again, this Lent I’m asking God for answers. But I already know that unless he speaks in a loud voice, I won’t hear it. Meanwhile, I know what sin is. God makes that clear enough. And so I have a clear path forward regardless. We all do; we know what sin is. None of us has an excuse.