this is a variant of the core delusion of the catholic convert, which is that they have discovered something uniquely beautiful that other foolish people have supposedly rushed to abandon
The thing is that Elizabeth Bruenig, for all that she styled herself as “on the left,” she has always viewed Democrats as irredeemably evil and Trump fans as good, decent folk who were tragically misled (but only a little bit).
I think evangelicalism of the DFW suburb megachurch type is generally seen as pretty tacky, whereas Catholicism can attract people who want to be a part of something they see as historical and intellectually rigorous.
STOP doing converts
Want to experience catholicism anyways? We had a term for that its called WARHAMMER 40K
Hi i would like one american antipope to return latin mass -phrases dreamed up by the utterly deranged
*posts photo of pope feeding trans women* this is REAL catholicism done by REAL CATHOL
I mean you say that, but let's be real here, Frank's own wild swinging between reactionary and comparably progressive stances is still not an acceptable standard for most normal, well-adjusted people.
I'm really tired of him because the fig leaf of his occasional not treating the gays as bad as JP2 has become an excuse for people to underexamine how he is /the leftest Pope we will ever ever ever get/ and that's bad actually
I honestly think Christianity in general is hurtling towards a cliff edge of long-term continuity among the non-insane because none of its denominations have convincingly answered "why should I believe this" without saying "because infidels go to hell"
Modern, liberal thinkers in the Christianity today for obvious reasons don't want to say the latter but at core the driving founding impulse of Christianity was fear of death and the promise of eternal life /for those who follow Jesus and no one else/
If that motivation to be Christian is gone, people will ask "well why should I be Christian," and if the answer is "shrug," then only the ones who do believe that infidels will go to hell will remain
It works for specific cultural communities ("I go to this church because my family do") but not really as an underlying logic for a Universal, Catholic and Orthodox church
I mean, the demographic numbers don't lie — churches are bleeding massively, people stopping regular church attendance is way more significant a change than say immigration
The most compelling answer to this question I've seen some of the mainline churches do is "you don't have to literally BELIEVE believe in this" and then also provide something more or less substantial to fulfill the spiritual and social needs some people have not been able to satisfy
I think if a progressive mainline church did that but also did some of the ecstatic ritual stuff the freakiest evangelical denominations do, they'd have the winning formula for drawing standoffish people like me through the doors
Well, not even that. He's not moved a single jot or tittle on doctrine, he's merely said he does not think the Church has, y'know, the powers of the state to *enforce* laws against sinfulness
I mean idk if you want ot call it doctrine but i think the power restructuring and empowering congregations to have more say in church politics is a big shift hes overseeing
I don't think you have to agree with Catholicism in the slightest to see that, compared to American evangelicalism, it includes tomes of theology and philosophy going back centuries. That attracts a certain bookish type.
The Vatican has one of the largest (in terms of volume) libraries in the world (and apparently, the world's largest collection of pornographic literature as part of it) and a number of scholarly positions. Purely as a repository of knowledge, Catholicism has a lot going for it.
I like the conflation of lots of porn and lots of scholarly positions as though the Catholic Church is hiding a bunch wild sex positions that great for studying.
They might be??? Though by “scholarly positions” I meant that there are professorial doctorate-holding clergy there who serve as official Vatican Astronomer, Physicist, etc.
I am however quite tickled to know that the Vatican likely has several big binders or file folders or whatever filled with decades’ worth of “Tijuana Bibles.”
Okay so I can explain a bit of this as a cradle Catholic. The converts are drawn to Catholic neo-scholasticism. (especially the trad caths) To them it feels like the truest approach to faith and philosophy. Because it rejects modernism. These clowns are suspicious of Vatican II.
