I joined Kinja after years of lurking just to star this comment.

I can’t believe that I’m saying this because NFP is ridiculous, but modern NFP isn’t just the rhythm method (i.e. it usually works slightly better than the NFP of your grandparents generation). Modern NFP* is actually based on relatively sound science, BUT (and this is a huge BUT) you have to have an extremely regular…

So we can stop talking about this now?

Both sets of my grandparents did that whole Natural Family Planning Malarkey.

... or a funeral. Church steps in and does it all for you. I had an atheist friend lose her dad recently, and planning the funeral was hard, man.

I know that there is one priest out there who “approved” an abortion for one of his parishioners about 30 years ago. This woman was a devout Catholic - church every Sunday, confession weekly, the whole gamut. She already had existing kids, and her doctor told her this latest pregnancy could kill her and that she…

A friend did the marriage training course including the part of the rhythm method. The couple who ran it were really chipper and went on about how effective it was, after all they only had four kids.

Yeah, I was much more of a ceremony under a willow tree kind of gal, but it meant a lot to GhostofGPaMazur that we get married in a Catholic church, and I just didn’t care that much.

The sneaky subtext is to get your annulments, minions. Surprise, surprise, the cost of an annulment can run anywhere from $200 to $1,000. Annulments are a hassle (and an expensive one at that) that many Catholics forego. The actual process of getting an annulment is often a rubber stamp after you’ve got the paperwork…

Why do they all have names like Dragonball Z supervillains?

That’s what penance is for. You can’t build a system where I get to absolve myself whenever I want and still receive God’s light, but also expect me to follow your strict and confusing rules. Between not having premarital sex and ten Hail Marys, I’ll take the ten Hail Marys.

We’re really really REALLY good at ignoring that particular rule.

I’m a former Catholic turned agnostic. My breaking point (not that I was ever particularly devout, except for a freak incident in late high school where I wound up Confirmed) came when my mom told me that she’d looked into getting out of her abusive marriage to my father when I was a young child, except her priest…

Sometimes, like when I need to plan a wedding, or baby shower, I think “it would be nice to be part of a church for these kind of things.” Then the other 99.99% of the time I’m like

as Long as They Promise Not to Fuck

So I only skimmed this but what I’m hearing is that we need to waterboard Trump?

I understand the thin blue line. I understand that cops think, “That coulda been me. Mistake made. Gotta support my brother.” But I’m a public school teacher. If I found out that a teacher was fucking a student, there’d be no way that my knee-jerk response would be, “Well...you have to understand that...” Give me a…

That’s a very measured response to a person who probably believes that all it takes to be rich/successful is bootstraps! Bootstraps and the sense you were born with!

That’s a huge generalization and oversimplification in the first place, but there’s a great book that addresses your point. It’s a really eye-opening read: Scarcity: why having too little means so much. It discusses decision-making (and other behaviors) when you have limited resources (both time and money). Side note:…

I didn’t know Georgia O’Keefe made wallets now.