Gavin the Blue

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

I struggle immensely with the recent Popes' teaching on immigration. I look around at my own country and see my own people being outnumbered by strangers who give no regard to our customs and our cultural heritage, who show greater love for the nation they left behind than for the nation that has taken them in, and it deeply upsets me.

But then I remember the time I saw a pregnant woman, a foreigner, begging for money. I did not help her then, but now I wish I had. Statements from the holy Father, although they have often angered me, have caused me to consider the defects in my own heart.

Yes, the injustice against my people is real. Yes, it would be so easy to just hit the "fix everything button", and it would work. But it would work by denying those who truly do need help alongside the ungrateful and the insurgent. It would deny the poor and the needy and the fatherless. Rejecting them would be no different from rejecting Christ, as he has said that they are his brothers and sisters.

And so a different solution is required. A more careful, complicated, and difficult solution. One that the pope himself does not provide. That he would leave it up to us to figure out the solution that balances justice and mercy angers also.

But he is right and I am wrong, and so I must submit to his will. It is better to united to the body of Christ that it is to be right in my own eyes. It is better to be truly traditional in sumbiting to the chair of Peter, than it is to possess the accidents of tradition and rebel from him.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@scouter333 This, simply this. Catholicism is about submission to spiritual and temporal authorities, that is how it differs from other branches of Christianity. That includes submitting to the authority of the vicar of Christ.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

You're right, I should probably get off Twitter. I joined because I was and am obsessed with Malfoy and all the art and short stories being made about her. It's caused me to spend way more time on the platform than is appropriate, time I could be spending making art, reading, writing, and actually contributing to the trend rather than just passively engaging. You're also right in that this is not pornographic. It's still very lewd, and I'm still upset about it. I don't like to see or imagine the characters I love doing things I believe are gross and indecent, but I shouldn't be spending my time trying to police other people's posts and comments. For that I'm sorry. Once again, this post still upsets me, in the same way that seeing an ntr post would, but it's better for me to just ignore it and spend my time doing more wholesome things. I'm sorry, and thank you.

[Rock Solid @ShitpostRock]

I am so happy i was the first one to find and post about the mention of Yuri in the Epstein files

Absolutely generational slander material from this one discovery

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

I am not disagreeing that the natural end of Malfoy and Harry's relationship is sex (preferably in the context of marriage), or that that sex is somehow evil.

I am saying that porn and masterbation are evil, and that making pornography of their relationship (for example, pictures of them having sex) is wrong.

Sex in romantic fiction should not be shown or graphicly described. It should be implied.

Samwise Gamgee marries Rosie Cotton at the end of the Lord of the Rings, and they end up having 13 children. They had sex, a lot of sex, and that is a good and beautiful thing. However that sex is not shown in the movies and Tolkien does not describe it directly.

Pornography is evil. Masturbation is evil. I do not want to see pornography of my beloved character masturbating, and men should not masturbate to it.

That is all.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

Okay, twitter funnies aside, I'm going to pray for you tonight. I know what addiction to pornography feels like. I know how it feels to have strong urges that you don't know what to do with, that you are oftentimes helpless to fight against. I know how it feels like to give up on being better, to give up on being free, to give up on being sorry.

My addiction started when I was 8. I know it's the same for a lot of men and women. Porn isn't always something we choose, sometimes it is something we are attacked with.

But even if you did choose it, you don't have to stay with it, things can get better.

Pornography is not the greatest evil in the world, but it is evil, and it does cooperate with evils worse than it. There are the obvious examples of rape and human trafficking that happen because of the porn industry, yet there are many other ways porn attacks and degrades the dignity human person.

Addiction to porn is slavery, but freedom is possible. You can look at people again without objectifying them, or undressing them with your eyes. You can have platonic relationships with people you are sexually attracted to that are healthy and edifying. You can be intimate with someone you truly love, without countless images and scene popping into your head.

Maybe porn didn't hurt you as bad as it hurt me, but it's still evil and it damages everything it touches.

So I'll pray for you, because I care about your freedom and well-being, random stranger on the Internet. And you're free to mock this post, or to ignore it, or to say I'm a stupid religious zealot or a prude that hates sex, or any other evil or untrue thing. That will not stop me from praying for you. So I hope you do read this, and I hope you do consider it.

Thank you, have a nice day.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@LocusWoman @xaiuEROu Thank you for helping me police the Malfoy space.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@xaiuEROu It's not porn, but it's way to close to it for my liking. The Malfoy trend is about romance and yearning, not lust. Depictions of Malfoy that are pornographic or borderline are contrary to what she represents. No thank you.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@cremasane Wrong, Harry wouldn't have pre marital sex. And even if he did, there's no doubt he would take responsibility.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@jux2lia This one isn't good. Violence during sex is abominable, even if both parties consent to it. Nope.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@buttercupxcos

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

"If I truly love God, and if I truly love Truth and Goodness, I should be open to having my beliefs tested. If what I believe is true, then it will prevail. If what I believe is not true or rife with contradictions, it will fall apart, and if I love God I will have a change of heart."

That is the thought process that led me from being the most devout Oneness Pentecostal in my family into being a Catechumen in the Catholic Church. I have given up a tremendous amount over these past four years in crossing the Tiber. I have become a heretic and an idolator to my own family. Yet I know that I have done right by God in choosing what I have discovered to be true. I've had a lot of help from Mary along the way too.

I do not observe this love of Truth in conversions from Catholicism. I just don't, and I've seen many. The most common reasons for leaving that I've observed are moral indifference, issues with Church Teaching on marriage and sexuality, and issues of scandal within the Church. I have never seen someone who left simply because they studied the teachings of the church and other denominations and came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was wrong. It's always "my marriage is failing and the church won't let me get a divorce", or "I just kinda stopped going on Sunday", or "all priests are pedophiles", and so on.

Very rarely do you ever see an intellectual conversion from Catholicism, in which a formerly devout Catholic considers the facts, and becomes a devout protestant. In stark contrast, nearly all the conversions to Catholicism I've seen take place at some point on the intellectual level and require great devotion to carry through.

After all, protestant Christianity was born out of a spirit of rebellion. Being protestant does not require the total submission of will and intellect to spiritual and temporal authorities that being Catholic does, remember protestants "protested" from precisely that. If a protestant finds issue with any particular teaching of his denomination, he can just get up and find another denomination, or just make up a new one. In rejecting the authority of roman pontiff, every protestant becomes his own pope, bound by no one but Christ and himself.

But Catholicism is different. Being Catholic requires one submit their will and intellect not only to Christ, but to the teaching office of his bride the Church, and to the flawed humans who are his earthly representatives in the pope and his bishops. By definition, a Catholic gives himself to the authority of a church with the power to bind and loose, he does not have authority over his own soul.

So yes becoming Catholic is a lot harder than becoming Protestant, and it certainly requires much more faith. Faith not just that God is real and good, but faith that he made a church that hell would never prevail against. Faith that God would preserve his church throughoutbthe ages, despite using flawed men like you or I to do it.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@sysinacgi

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@halenhargreevs

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@AestheticBmbder Literally the reason I went to the gym today.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

Nerdy Harry Potter Theology Tangent

The condemnation of Harry Potter among Christians (particularly Protestants, although some individual Catholics do as well) emerges from the conflation of the preternatural powers/talents with the occult/what Christians mean by "witchcraft".

To elaborate, preternatural powers/talents are forms and abilities that are natural/native to a higher order of nature (such as those found in fantasy), while not being native to our own, lower order of nature.

By contrast, occultism and "witchcraft" are always attempts to seize control over nature and reality by means outside of the natural order (most often through conspiring with malicious excarnate spiritualities, ie. demons).

In this way, the preternatural talents are actually a cooperation with the creative powers of God (in the same way the creating a sculpture, or planting a field of flowers is), while the occult is rebellion from it.

For this reason the Church does not condemn magical systems in works of fantasy, such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Frieren, and Narnia. (Although admittedly Tolkien and Lewis are more reserved in their application of magic in their storytelling).

Furthermore, there is Christian symbolism in Harry Potter, whether intentional or accidental. Voldemort is an Antichrist figure. Harry Potter "the boy who lived" is symbolic of Christ.

With the creation of Dracaena Malfoy, there is now an additional layer of symbolism. She becomes an image of Christ's bride, the Church, who with Christ defeats the Antichrist and Satan operating through him.

[Gavin the Blue @gavin_blue8664]

@ana_hyyy I know what I must do now. I need to paint this in acrylics.