Pope Francis condemned the “very strong, organised, reactionary attitude” in the US church and said Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the US Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
Francis’ comments were an acknowledgment of the divisions in the US Catholic Church, which has been split between progressives and conservatives who long found support in the doctrinaire papacies of St John Paul II and Benedict XVI, particularly on issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.
Has he met the Catholic Church?
Inquisitions? Witch burning? Who does he think did extremism biggest and best?
Sure, now they mostly just coverup for paedophiles and rampant baby murder at orphanages, but they were the OG extremists, let’s not kid ourselves.
The pope: “maintaining rigid and unchanging ideology is bad and room for change and growth must be allowed”
You: “um excuse me but hundreds of years ago the church killed people”
The church sucks ass but this is the absolute worst take regarding this specific post.
Not hundreds of years ago. Maybe my sarcasm didn’t come across through text, but their atrocities are still being uncovered from only a couple of decades ago, and they’re still committing atrocities on a slightly smaller scale today (though I’m sure their victims – still alive today – would argue they’re not lesser).
The Catholic Church doesn’t have a leg to stand on here, and it’s gross that they’re pretending they do.
e: didn’t close my brackets
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council
He’s telling people to have this same level of introspection. It’s really not complex or hypocritical.
This Pope has also tried a number of serious reforms within the Catholic Church so trying to paint him as hypocritical is pretty tough
They changed nothing. It was all sweet-talk and no changes. There is still no prosecution for child molesters, still no action for all atrocities. He’s just PR man they put in place to stop the dumpster fire previous one was.
Lmao.
Seriously imagine thinking the Catholic Church elected a PR man as pope.
That’s fucking adorable. Like just look at the comment right below mine
Religion is the biggest scourge against humans. Controlling behavior, brainwashing the young and stolen untold trillions of $$. Fuck religion. They all need to be labeled as cults and treated as harshly.
When this sorry undeserving species is all dead, alien archaeologists will learn how religion was the biggest, most successful device used by the powerful to sedate the poor and keep their interests driving everything (including destroying the habitability of the planet for short term luxury), from the early civilizations until the very end. Then they will find your comment on an HDD and fucking laugh at you, at all of our stupid asses.
------ian doomsday fantasy is one of the major drivers of climate change. They have always viewed the world as disposable, indeed, the sooner disposed the better.
What middle ground is there?
Calling religion the biggest scourge on humanity is a huge exageratrion. I’d probably say slavery is significantly worse, and human trafficking shows no signs of stopping. Capitalism is also clearly worse, and it’s the most impactful force today. A large reason religion, and specifically Christianity, has gotten worse in recent years is because of the influence of capitalism.
I’d elaborate a bit on my interpretation of what the fella said.
The religion in point - catholicism, and maybe we can generalize to all abrahamic religions, I’m not very familiar with other religions to speak of them, instill a way of thinking that doing wrong is all fine and well as long as you repent and ask for forgiveness. Sound sensible, right? Except we’re dealing with people here so they take it to mean that you can do all sorts of crap as long as you say you’re sorry. It got so bad at some point that the pope was selling indulgences. ‘Give me money and I’ll let you sin’.
They also instill a sort of moral superiority on the adherents to said religions versus the pagans.
So yeah, slavery is worse (and I’m counting human trafficking here as well - it’s the modern version), but is it not facilitated by the mindset instilled by religion? First - you see them as savages needing to be civilized - that’s the moral superiority talking - you enslave them, BUT you bring them to god as well, so there’s a load off your moral issues. Add to that the fact that even if you were wrong and did bad stuff, you didn’t ‘know’ any better, and it’s ok cause hellfire won’t get you because you repent, there’s your free ticket.
On the other hand, if you kidnap and force good christians into sexual slavery, you can be pretty sure that you most likely won’t get murdered / maimed while you’re raping because their moral teachings say to turn the other cheek instead of fighting back. And one of the 10 comandments is thou shalt not kill. Also a belief in sky-papa dishing out punishment in the afterlife makes people less inclined to seek vengeance (compounded with the previous point - thou shalt submit to being dehumanized by a fellow human without recourse).
This is an oversimplification to make a point, but sure, religion is seemingly not worse than other crap people are capable of but it sure sets the groundwork nicely. Sort of like you need to know a language before you can swear in it. A tool, but less like a hammer and more like a scythe. One good use, but so many other bad ones.
Religion, at its core, is basically rules that state “don’t be a dick.” Unfortunately, all of the dicks didn’t get the message.
It’s not "don’t be a dick’.
It’s “do as we want you to do”
Plenty of the rules are “be a dick, like this:”
Plenty of the rules are “don’t do this objectively harmless thing”
Plenty of the rulez are “do this ridiculously pointless thing”
Yes, modern religion has many rules made by the dicks once they took over. Before the dicks rules were things like don’t steal shit, don’t fuck your neighbor’s wife, don’t murder people, don’t lie about shit, etc. The dicks were so bad that some other guy had to come along and say “seriously guys, stop being dicks”. But the dicks didn’t like that so they killed him.
Plenty of the rules are “don’t do this objectively harmless thing”
Plenty of the rulez are “do this ridiculously pointless thing”
Most declarations of what religions do and don’t don’t do miss Discordianism pretty hard, but you got us on those.
Exhibits: A) Don’t eat hotdog buns. B) Go off alone on a Friday and eat a hotdog with a bun.
Good looking out for us religious minorities.
Ish.
Many religions are more “don’t be a dick to your fellow brothers in faith, but feel free to be a dick to others”. In-group out-group dynamics were historically quite important.
You know - “don’t murder”, but at the same time Deuteronomy says
10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.
Also
(19) “You are not to lend at interest to your brother, no matter whether the loan is of money, food or anything else that can earn interest. 21 (20) To an outsider you may lend at interest, but to your brother you are not to lend at interest, so that Adonai your God will prosper you in everything you set out to do in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it.
You know - “don’t murder”, but at the same time Deuteronomy says
If you take each verse at face value, this is a problem and what you imply is true.
But the thing you quoted from Deuteronomy were instructions to the Israelites. It’s recorded history, not instruction. You can’t just point to a verse in the Bible (like Acts 8:8 "Saul, for his part, approved of his murder") and say “see? The Bible says to do bad things!”
And going deeper shows that the Mosaic Law (the laws in the old testament, excluding the ten commandments), part of which is in your second block quote, was superceded by the Law Covenant when Jesus died. Again, it was a law directed specifically at Jews of the time.
You can kinda think of the first five Bible books (called the Torah in Judaism) as a speed run of history. So much happens in terms of time covered in those five books.
The problem is “don’t be a dick” meant different things in different points in time. Now, enough time has elapsed that there are a huge amount of different iterations of “don’t be a dick” rules and people just pick and choose which rules suits them.
If you’re talking about all religions, I can’t speak to that. But if we’re talking about “Christians”, then that’s not the case. “Love your neighbour” and “Continue to love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute you” are pretty hard to interpret “differently”. There’s no excuse.
When the rules are laws, lawyers argue in front of judges and define the grey areas. They change the grey areas from time to time. We as a society have agreed to have a single interpretation of those rules.
In religion, when people don’t agree on the rules or how they should be interpreted, they can break apart and form their own religion. There is no governing body with the power to enforce the single interpretation.
Thus, people who missed the dont be a dick memo just find each other and pretend their interpretation of the thousands of years old text is more valid than the don’t be a dick crowd.
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
We’re doing pretty good on the king front, lets work on the priests a bit
We’ve just changed the form of monarchal feudalism, it’s still very much alive. Just disguised as CEOs and Presidents in our present oligarchy. But they might as well be kings and queens. And an enormous amount of those people still manipulate religion as a means to holding on to power. We are a long way from strangling our last king or priest.
“Cult” is just something the big congregation calls the small congregation.
There’s a whole list of 8 points over what constitute a cult.
I don’t remember the whole thing, but it was something like : Cults don’t let you leave. If you do leave, your family and friends who are still in the cult will not speak to you. Cults control you in details. They make sure you are tired at the end of the day, too tired to think for yourself. Cults make you dependent financially. Once you are that deep in, leaving means starting over economically.
There’s more, but it is different from how most people experience mainstream religions (I mean there are pockets here and there that are very cultish, but really the religion as a whole is a different beast that just works differently than an actual cult).
If you allow taxing churches you open the door for Republicans to just tax every church they disagree with, and I’m pretty sure you can figure out how that will go.
Would definitely be a step in the right direction. I’d even be ok with exceptions for the tiny churches in small towns.
I agree but only because they tend to have budgets so small that they aren’t worth taxing.
I think a better option would be stripping the tax exempt status from the ones that politik from the pulpit. Actually enforce the law we have now instead of being afraid of looking like we’re persecuting them. Hell, they all have that complex already anyway.
Taxing them all would just open the floodgates.
Taxing them all would just open the floodgates.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
These assholes should deal with a real flood for once.
It’s very inline with the church’s teaching to pay taxes.
Mark 12:17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.” The men were amazed at what Jesus said.
There is no religious conflict at all with taxing churches.
Agreed.
I’ll gain an iota of respect for Frankie and Catholics when they unilaterally decide to stop donating money to this church until they purge all of the child rapists and reform their teachings on confessions so child rapists are no longer protected.
Modern day religion. In the past your faith was quite important and dictated morals. It’s unfortunate it’s been so twisted over the years. And by past I’m not just saying the 50s, but even back in the 1500s.
Religion has always been a cancer on humanity. We don’t need an imaginary sky daddy for morals. We would have got there (and likely much quicker and much better) without religion.
I’m not religious myself, but “God” played a role in at least trying to comprehend the world before science. Whatever we didn’t know was “God” until we did know. I don’t think modern society needs it, but our concept and understanding of the world and universe is so broad now that we don’t.
It’s dangerous now to label whatever we don’t know as “God” but earlier in humanity I think it’s part of the reason why some (not all) laws and morals were established in the first place.
Religion has sucked shit since it started & the first scam artist started stealing $ in the name of a fake “god”.
Everything has two sides to it. I think it was predominantly used more for good back in earlier civilizations, but I don’t think there’s a need for it today.
It’s much easier now in 2023 to be able to look back at how religion was used for thousands of years and criticize it. I’m an atheist myself and I think the necessity of religion was to learn from it and advanced society. Today I think we’re so advanced we no longer need it.
Religion can fuel some truly abhorrent things, but at the same time I know people who have used religion and faith to pull themselves out of a really bad spot in life.
There can be a middle ground between admonishing all religious practices and dogmatic bible thumpers, and that starts with religion being a understood as a personal choice and how people interpret the religion being a reflection on their self and not the every religious person ever.
I like the similar sentiment from a while back:
The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, ‘When will they come and take what belongs to them?’
- Jesus (but in a text buried in a jar for centuries after becoming punishable by death for just possessing it)
IDK, if we’re comparing scourges against humanity I’d say “the rich” in general are worse, be they kings, CEOs, religious icons, politicians, or whatever. Their pursuit of money and the power to keep that money corrupts everything. They ruin everything from companies to countries and even religions (makes them even worse).
Really though, the most evil thing is cancer. It kills indiscriminately and tortures its victims the whole way. Even if you win, you never get the peace of knowing it’s truly gone. True evil.
I’d have a hard time believing that Hitler was super cool with the people who worship a Jew as a god.
Hitler in his table talks: “The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science … Gradually the myths crumble. All that is left to prove that nature there is no frontier between the organic and inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light, but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.”
Good rule of thumb is to never underestimate Hitler’s ability to hate a group of people lol
The Catholic Church has actively ran the longest largest worldwide Pedophile ring in human history. For the past 1800 years the Catholic Church recruited, supported, obfuscated, defended, and excused pedophilia, which continues to this day. The fact the Catholic Church still allowed to operate, in any way shape or form, with youth of any kind, in any country, anywhere, means we’ve all purposefully lost the thread.
Beside the Catholic Church being outwardly obviously criminal, and only an extension of the Roman Senate two thousand years on, it’s only shown how very little adults care about the systematic raping of children. Like, at all.
Fuck The Catholic Church. Fuck The Pope.
You really have a point here, but I don’t think Catholic church is the only one in which these gross events happen, the thing is that being one of the largest religion along with Islam they get the most attention and media coverage around the world. It’s just common sense. So yes, there are serious problems in that church, but I bet my ass that they’re not the only ones doing that. Take the blindfold from your eyes, every religion has leaders that abuse the power they have upon its followers to commit deplorable acts.
Pot meet kettle
So I think that by-and-large, the Evangelicals have had a crisis of faith and are seeking the US Catholic Church as a bastion of stability. And the US Catholic Church has been happy to accept Evangelicals into our flock, because we’re all Christian here and spreading our religion is what we do.
This has become somewhat of a devil’s deal however, as the Evangelicals have pushed the Church extremely rightward politically. Historically, the Catholic Church has been very pro-Latino, because the Hispanic community / immigrants are overwhelmingly Catholic (not just “Christian”, but proper Catholics born and raised). But in the past 10 years or so I’m seeing more and more former-Evangelicals bring their politics into the Catholic tradition.
Nominally, this crap shouldn’t matter to the issues of Church. But it does. Politics infects all wakes of life one way or the other.
In any case, I think its a good thing that (former) Evangelicals have migrated over to the Catholic church in such large numbers that this problem is occurring. And I’m not necessarily saying that we need to ‘indoctrinate’ our (former) Evangelicals to the policies or politics of the Catholics… but… maybe a little bit? I dunno. But a lot of these far-right rhetoric / fire and brimstone style religion (with anti-immigration / anti-Hispanic slants) is distinctly non-Catholic and heretical IMO.
Case in point: we Catholics finally have a 2nd president of our Faith: Joe Biden. And yet, the Catholic community was THIS close to excommunicating him. Rather than celebrate our achievement to get our 2nd president into the office, he is seen as a heretic to (half) of the US Catholic Community.
Catholic concerts are the most evil people I’ve ever met.
edit: I meant converts but those suck too.
To paraphrase the eternal wisdom of Hank Hill: Christian rock music isn’t making Christianity better, it makes rock music worse
It’s not like evangelicals are all coming to Mass now: the priest wouldn’t give them communion anyway. Rather, what you describe is a political partnership, based on opposition to abortion, where the Evangelicals and Catholics started raising an assload of money together.
And this is what this is all about, money and political power and clout. And I think that’s what the Pope is objecting to. Catholic doctrine is clear that life begins at conception, and is worthy of protection. But there is so much more to protecting life, at all its stages: education, help for the poor and hungry, assistance for the immigrant, compassion for prisoners (and opposition to the Death Penalty). US Bishops are sacrificing the rest of it at the altar of political power.
The ironic thing is that Protestants outnumber Catholics here. If the US Bishops get the theocracy they are aiming for, it is pretty much guaranteed that these Protestant Evangelicals will be running it. And Catholics will end up marginalized again.
No no no.
I mean I’ve noticed an uptick in Evangelicals properly converting into Catholicism recently. And simultaneously, a sudden surge in people wanting “Latin Mass” and other such very old traditions. Definitely a yearning for “traditional” Religion, and (former) Evangelicals seeking Catholicism because of it.
This is absolutely a “Church” issue because it relates to the religious+political views of our relatively fresh converts (well, within the past couple of decades).
And simultaneously, a sudden surge in people wanting “Latin Mass” and other such very old traditions.
That’s an AstroTurf movement by conservative priests who want to be able to read the bible, no one understands what they said, then they go on a personal rant and telling them what to think and how to vote…
Mostly because they’re upset the Pope is (relatively) progressive for a pope
Well, I’ll have to look into this a bit more. I’m quite aware of the Traditionalists, but didn’t realize they were pulling Evangelicals in, somehow.
