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Catholocism?


Seaworth'sShipmate

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From the outside looking in, I find it really interesting how other Christians treat it like it's a weird minority cult when it is and always has been by far the biggest. That's mostly a result of the British Empire, but it's been co-opted by the US in a strange fashion, like making fun of French military history without the HYW rationale. 

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I saw a Catholic church flying the rainbow flag so apparently there are some LGBT affirming churches.  Honestly, once you get past the nasty history and the fact that they encourage talking to imaginary people and worshiping a zombie, the ritualistic nature of Catholicism seems pretty cool.  

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I'm a Catholic, and so far I haven't seen anything really offensive here. What I have seen is the assertion that the Catholics have the best robes and architecture. These are known facts, and I guess it is kinda offensive that they still have to be pointed out. And I will fight anyone who disagrees. 

ETA: And hats! We totally got the best hats. The Orthodox got cool hats too, but they're not as cool as ours.

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7 hours ago, James Arryn said:

From the outside looking in, I find it really interesting how other Christians treat it like it's a weird minority cult when it is and always has been by far the biggest. That's mostly a result of the British Empire, but it's been co-opted by the US in a strange fashion, like making fun of French military history without the HYW rationale. 

I do not think that this is the result of the British Empire, it's just another case of American parochialism. If protestant sectarians too extreme/weird for 17th century mainstream protestantism are among one's founding heroes and quite a bit of social life has been dominated by "Great Awakenings" and ever more kinds of protestant weirdoes (or heretic weirdoes like mormons) for 300 years it is very easy to get a somewhat skewed perspective.

In Europe, even in countries roughly evenly divided like Germany, Catholicism will usually be taken as the paradigmatic church/religion and I am pretty sure that it is the same in the predominantly catholic countries (including overall very secular ones like France).

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Catholicism is a good first basis to talk about christianity, since it covers a majority of believers.

Furthermore it is interesting that despite a top-down structure in practice the believers pick and match and still consider themselves Catholic. It is almost a culture rather than a religion at times.

And of course sadly the top-down hierarchy means that there has been, and likely still is, a horrible amount of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church structure.

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18 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

In Europe, even in countries roughly evenly divided like Germany, Catholicism will usually be taken as the paradigmatic church/religion and I am pretty sure that it is the same in the predominantly catholic countries (including overall very secular ones like France).

I can affirm that. 

I do not think there are many really practicing Catholics here in Flanders although more than majority of the children does their communions and are being baptized, many have still a marriage in the Church, ... The Christian-Democrats have been traditionally strong in Flanders, and with Christian they mean Catholic. The biggest education organization in Flanders is the Catholic one, the biggest university is the Catholic one, ...

And then Flanders is now less religious than Ireland, Poland, Austria, ... 

And the Catholic Church is very important factor of European cultural history:  1° Protestant groups started to exist (out of criticism) of the CC; 2° The Pope/Vatican had amazingly power during the ME and is still a country on itself; 3° The first universities were built by the Church in order to study theology and canon law; 4° Canon law is one of the main foundations of the current law systems in Germany, France, ... 5° How many art wasn't made by the commission of the Catholic Church? 

Personally I am not really fan of the Catholic Church as an institution (coverup of sexual abuse, long history of oppression, ...) Certainly not now but the current Pope. I was actually quite happy he was chosen at first because they described him as a progressive and he was also from South-America instead from Europe. But the more information I get from his policies the more annoyed I get. He said this week priests should the aid of exorcists when they cannot help people????? :wacko::angry2: And he also is apparently completely ignoring the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church: .:ack:

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I grew up catholic and went to a Catholic Church. I'm irish, so most of my family are catholic.

like most religions it's pretty silly , but apart from the cooler churches, the ton of gold and the kiddy fiddling priests it's not really very different to any other form of Cristianity ( pretty sure it's by far the most popular form too, which is confusing for me)

If it's a bit less progressive than other forms then that's because of the countries it's most popular in on the whole. Maybe some of its core beliefs mean you are less likely to question the ideas behind it as well 

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47 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

If it's a bit less progressive than other forms then that's because of the countries it's most popular in on the whole.

This could be a hen-egg-problem. (And I am not even sure if it is true; France and Belgium are nominally catholic but I'd say they are at least as "progressive" or rather more so than the US, Britain or Germany, all of which are either mostly protestant or split)

But the reason could also be that the Catholic (and similar ones like the Greek Orthodox and probably some of the oriental churches, I don't know much about the latter) is probably is the oldest institution in the world with an unbroken tradition and fairly stable framework. It has survived a lot of things in the last ca. 1800 years (if one takes the first ca. 200 years as too much "underground" to count, although the church of course counts since Jesus and St. Peter...), so they had plenty of time to develop skills for survival, stability and self-perpetuation. It is not completely unique in that respect, I guess Imperial China had some structures and traditions also for around 2000 years, despite mongols, mandju and other "foreign" dynasties who nevertheless kept the structures and traditions in place and maybe old Egypt as well but it is still quite impressive.

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2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I do not think that this is the result of the British Empire, it's just another case of American parochialism. If protestant sectarians too extreme/weird for 17th century mainstream protestantism are among one's founding heroes and quite a bit of social life has been dominated by "Great Awakenings" and ever more kinds of protestant weirdoes (or heretic weirdoes like mormons) for 300 years it is very easy to get a somewhat skewed perspective.

I think it's primarily because religion (like race) was a key tool used by the US's White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Establishment to divide and conquer (most US Catholics were traditionally of Irish extraction. Hostility to Irish immigration in nineteenth century America was truly vicious in certain quarters). 

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1 hour ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

If it's a bit less progressive than other forms then that's because of the countries it's most popular in on the whole. Maybe some of its core beliefs mean you are less likely to question the ideas behind it as well 

At its core, the Catholic Church is history's most enduring force for conservatism: Throne and Altar reactionaries like de Maistre saw Monarchy and the Church as the twin pillars of civilisation. Pre-Vatican II Catholicism had little time for democracy generally, and made little distinction between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution (i.e. the notion republicanism will inevitably lead to Red Tyranny).

That said, it's really hard to generalise about individual Catholics, who fall all over the spectrum. Catholics have traditionally tended to be more left-leaning in the English speaking world, on account of not being part of the political Establishment (c.f. voting patterns in 1950s Scotland, where Protestants voted Tory and Catholics voted Labour).

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2 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I believe the comment about insults being hurled at Catholics referred to this:

I'm not really a religious person, but the phrasing in bold is pretty clearly meant to belittle the religion. I don't know if it qualifies as "hurling insults" but it is a little obnoxious, and hardly something that's going to be conducive to any meaningful discussion.

"Worshipping a zombie" is an accusation that can be flung at Christianity generally, not just Catholics.

The funny thing is, "a cult of vampirism" would actually be closer to the mark, due to the doctrine of transubstantiation. 

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48 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

This could be a hen-egg-problem. (And I am not even sure if it is true; France and Belgium are nominally catholic but I'd say they are at least as "progressive" or rather more so than the US, Britain or Germany, all of which are either mostly protestant or split)

 

I dunno it hasn't tended to adapt to progressive trends especially quickly and holds onto a number of traditions regarding homosexuality and women and abortion in a way that many protestant strains of Christianity are willing to allow. 

Part of it I think is simply the level of power it tends to have over people. Firstly I'd suppose that Protestantism was born out of challenging the centralised power base of the church and so from that perspective it makes more sense that new idea would be embraced by a protestant religion than a catholic one. Catholicism is all about giving over power to someone else, be it a priest or the pope, and trusting that they are telling you the truth. I tend to think of being a Catholic as being an infant and the church is your parent. 

It could also be, in the case of something like the Church of England here, that its hold over people is pretty weak, so it can't afford to not adapt in case it loses more people. The irony being that its the more archaic religions that tend to do better, maybe because people like to throw away responsibility and put their trust in someone else who has all the answers. 

 

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