Pope says 'backward' US conservatives replaced faith with ideology

I had a Catholic coworker who said some of her Catholic relatives were becoming “Christians”, which turned out to mean Evangelicals.

Baptist coworker who thinks Catholicism isn't real Christianity...

I've seen a lot of that and not just recently.

I think all religions are just fake copycats of the one true god.

Praise be Flying Spaghetti Monster

I mean, most protestant Christians dislike Catholicism, that's why they are called protestants after all.

The new part is American evangelicals and other extremists thinking that catholicism not being conservative enough...

Conservative Protestants have been saying that for a very long time though. The attitude is so pervasive that my wife, who grew up Catholic (but has not been one for decades), has to be reminded that Catholics are Christians.

Not for nothing but that claim is hardly new. Goes back to the Reformation.

To be fair, it isnt; but then neither is Evangelicism or Mormonism or any of these other wackadoo cults within which these assholes conflate their hatred and fear with faith.

To be fair, even the super conservative Catholics aren’t into this pope. Benedict was their jam.

There a whole YouTube channel by some ex fox host called church militant... It's all about hating gays and lesser religions. They talk shit about the Pope all the time.

It's like everything in America is just power struggles, selfishness, greed, and crime. There's no God or respect for life here. The "good guys" don't even go after the "bad guys" because the bad guys are ahead now. People are so naive here they think heartless crimes are not happening when it's right under their nose. Sometimes the good guys even get used in the plot. Just look at all the old politicians and Americans that got roped in Rogers stones mob puppeting of Trump. America had a mob affiliate for president. I think that puts in stone... Americas bullshit. It's going to take decades to get trust and genuine patriotism back.

I wonder where do they think it all comes from?

Even when I was one I had zero interest in that game.

American Catholics have largely voted Democrat for much of the last century. This flip-flop to voting Republican is relatively recent.

It seems to me to be a bit of a religio-coup. Bishops have some autonomy, and Priests some as well. It's become increasingly common that both are in opposition to Rome on certain behaviors related to politics, and exactly how strongly they should be pushing people to vote and for what reasons. The dehumanization of Biden (publicly refusing him Eucharist) for his nuanced pro-choice views is in direct contradiction of papal behavior going back at least to the turn of the 20th century. Telling people that in voting, any sin is forgivable except being pro-choice... well, there's no basis in Canon Law for that attitude.

I live in a very Catholic area, and have a lot of Catholic family. Talking to them, they mention their priests say "you can vote for either party, as long as they're pro-life". The Abortion issue is not the only or greatest issue to Rome. It is AN issue, but disagreeing with the Church is generally not going to earn their full enmity unless you are preaching your disagreement. Biden (the target of that local church smear campaign) is absolutely not preaching pro-choice to anyone.

Pope Francis is right to be saying that because American Catholic Leadership has gone WAY astray from what Catholicism allows or mandates of them.

Happy to share!

The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic church, it's always been the case that only Catholics really care about what he says.

For reasons I can't explain, many of those denominations don't even recognize the catholic church as being Christian.

Absolutely agree. I am certain ifwe're real and appeared in person and spouted half the stuff attributed to him in the gospel they would call him "woke" too.

They already have. Been reports of congregations who have complained the the words of Jesus are too woke and weak...

1979: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

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"

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.

And yet the golden rule usually doesn't get written down until multiple generations after the religion is formed. Took almost a century for Christianity to bother.

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.

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.

Some dicks created religion.

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.

Would definitely be a step in the right direction. I'd even be ok with exceptions for the tiny churches in small towns.

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.

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).

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.

Really though, the most evil thing is cancer

Another reason why, if God exists at all, they're not worth a penny of my income or a moment of my time.

Hitler bent the knee to the Roman Catholics. Nuff said.

You think the Pope donates money to the church?

No. Religion is a scam. Lies to all it's members. Steals from anyone that tithes or donates anything, including their time.

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.

No. I'm correct.

Same hydra, different heads.

Religion has sucked shit since it started & the first scam artist started stealing $ in the name of a fake "god".

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.

Have you ever been to a Catholic Church?

I never heard of that so had to look it up. A bunch of Muslim fundamentalists in France got angry and killed people at a satirical magazine. Not sure how that’s the Pope’s fault.

You're wrong. Pope Francis is the most liberal pope who's ever existed and has pushed for human rights and decriminalization of the LGBTQ community.

He basically said Charlie Hebdo “had it coming”. Fuck him.

Oh mah gawd King, the the pope has a steel chair! A steel chair!

I doubt Trump is the leader. There's bigger people pulling strings. Trump's a pawn with a debt.

I never understood this argument. If God is all powerful how come he leaves his messages to interpretation. Shouldn't we all just be born knowing the exact wording and understanding? Also why does he need people to write his books and teach his lessons when again he supposedly is all powerful and could make it so we were born with this knowledge instead of leaving it to idiots who can't "comprehend God's great plan".

Doctrinally god can remain infallible while altering his message to be what humans of a given time and place are ready to hear and act upon. Are your parents hypocrites for letting you drive a car at 16 but not at 4?

That is a solid response. Thank you.

Good car? What the fuck are you talking about?

Lots of things like this.

The Levitical Law condemning Homosexuality was originally one condemning Pedophilia, but King James changed it in his translation in order to throw off suspicions that he was gay, which he totally was.

You're flat out wrong when it comes to the Roman Catholic Church - I don't know enough about Islam to say whether you're right about that.

In church doctrine, Matthew 16:18 and 16:19, and again in Matthew 18:18, give ultimate authority to St Peter (the first Pope) and all the Popes that followed him.

Essentially the Pope can decide whatever, and it just is. Tomorrow the Pope could decide that gay marriage and abortion are a-okay, and they would be a-okay as far as heaven is concerned.

He might get lynched and the next Pope reverses it, but that mechanism for change exists, and has been used many times in the past - one notable recent one was when the Pope decided dogs go to heaven, so now dogs go to heaven.

Source: ex-Christian who was very involved within the Church institution.

There is no hostile takeover of Islam because there is no centralized figure in Islam. The Muslims saw how politicized the early Roman Church became and intentionally took steps to prevent that. There is no pope. There are no bishops, archbishops, or any of that. Islam is intentionally fractured more so than Christianity.

Anyone can become an Imam (priest) and set up shop and start preaching. Clergy in a nation like Saudi Arabia maintain their religious authority through the government and social attitudes, not through a divine mandate (like the pope).

My conservative Catholic family thinks the current Pope is a plant by the liberals, so he must be doing something right in my book.

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.

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