After having gone to catholic school and church every week, I can only enthusiastically disagree about the former. Almost every nun I know was raised catholic and Jesus Christ, are 90% of them awful.
Do they use 9-seater vans because 90% refuse to get licenses?
Just kidding, they use public or contractual mass transport, and usually only one or two run errands.
I’d say this is part of the “zeal of the convert” phenomenon, where someone who converts to a belief tends to be more fanatical than someone raised in that belief.
There’s probably bias in this observation, as a couple of very loud people can drown out dozens of others and make a trend seem more prevalent than it actually is, but I also have personal experience here.
I almost converted to Judaism in my late teens, and the Rabbi I was working with shared with me a prayer he often prayed in times of struggle. “God grant me the faith of the convert, the strength of a bear, the wisdom of the aged, and the patience of a mother”
I always liked that
I unfortunately have the wisdom of the convert, the faith of a bear, the strength of the aged, and the patience of a very tired mother.
Plus, Catholicism isn’t a huge recruiter in historically Christian nations, so the effect would only be magnified
Also older American Catholics were raised under Vatican 2. It was much more about sacrifice and helping the poor than the church John Paul 2 created.
Except its not the same beliefs?
Like, okay, be extra zealous about giving food to people who don’t have any.
This (as described) isnt that.
You’re really gonna have to be more specific. There are like fifty of those, they just call themselves the same thing.
I think the big thing here is that Catholicism has a clear set and well defined dogma, but it’s not just that. Converts tend to have the dogma but they lack more or less everything else about Catholicism. That includes the community values (for better or for worse) and the folk traditions. Instead they tend to double down on the aesthetic and general cultural understandings.
In short, they believe monks should be Benedictine and not a smiling Franciscan sharing his meal with a homeless person or a Jesuit studying the stars to bear witness to their glory.
I have it on good authority that there are a lot of lifelong Christians who are absolutely heinous people.
Sheer numbers assures us that there are dastards among all walks.
But yes the Christian nationalist movement does seem to have high numbers glad to dispose of the rest of us and turn the US and its states into a one-party autocracy.
Curiously, Evangelist academics have warned this could really set back the acceptance of Christianity, who will be regarded for decades the way Nazis were in the late 20th century. (Shunned and sometimes hunted.)
My Catholic high school has a teacher who is an adult convert and he’s like “Don’t make a short circuit with the ammeter or you’ll die and YOU’LL GO STRAIGH TO HELL!!! jk there’s a fuse” and “Eh that’s good enough for Catholic school work” and he shows us videos about the connection between math and God
That’s funny because one of my Calc professors said to a student during a test “you can pray all you want, but no god is going to help you integrate. That’s what homework is for”
Integration is what ruined my comp-sci career. I couldn’t make the numbers go. My teacher called me Baroque.
Ive been taking my grandma to church on sundays for about half a year now. Sermons have usually been about not being a dick and, like, donating food and diapers.
Still waiting for someone to yell about the purity of manhood or something but I get the impression they have more important things to think about.
they have more important things to think about.
The child rape lawsuits?
To be fair, most religious leaders don’t preach hate - but they can’t normally speak out against it. Much like FOX News’ excuse for spreading the stolen election lies, if they speak out against what their followers believe, they lose followers. Shit excuse, shit people.
Yeah the guy who made my sandwich at Subway didn’t apologize for Jared Fogle being a pedophile so he’s a shit person too /s
Did Subway fund Jared’s legal defenses and shuffle him, still employed, from location to location to cover up rapes (without doing anything preventing him from finding new victims through their stores, of course)?
Subway’s got a lot more problems than the unsavory personal life of its past spokesperson, but the sandwitch guy at the local one is just a wretch who doesn’t get commissions (or, likely, tips) for his service. I’d take a look at John Oliver’s main LWT segment on Subway Sandwiches.
However, the child sexual assault scandals and cover-ups of religious ministries is not unique to the Roman Catholic Church and but is epidemic among major ones, conspicuously centered around youth ministries.
And it’s indicative of a system that doesn’t sufficiently vet people who work with kids (contrast faculty of public schools) and aims more to silence victims and preserve the (now false) reputation of the church rather than preserve justice and transparency and care for the victims.
It speaks ill of organizations that allegedly carry God’s favor that they feel compelled to keep secrets and allow sexual violence to fester within their own ranks.
I’m no longer religious, but I probably would not be the person I am were it not for Catholic teachings. It was probably in Catholic school which taught me that you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. This advice complements my maverick and individualistic personality but it isn’t to say that I haven’t had insecurities and not minded what others think. I was also taught to be compassionate and humble. However, the last two could only go so far as I learned growing up that it led me to being a figurative door mat for others.
Nevertheless, all of those doesn’t excuse the Catholic church’s corruption and sexual abuse scandals. The Catholic church also, up until recently, force left handed folks to be right handed. That is one of the weirdest superstitions and beliefs that the Catholic church has. Oh and the Catholic church is still impractically anti-divorce.
Some Catholics.
A friend of mine is deeply Catholic, teaches high school American history, has progressive values (is pro-civil-rights) and explains it that he has a spot in his brain for all the church stuff, wheras the rest of his brain adheres to science and the secular morality we’ve developed through trial and error and beating back the dominance-minded shenanigans of plutocrats. I’ve met many Catholics like him.
But then theres Brett Kavanaugh and all the rest of the Federalist Society, who believe in pre-constitutional feudalism (so long as they get to be aristocrats).
So I’m pretty sure Catholics can be kind and compassionate and merciful despite their faith. But doing so is quite common.
Yeah, but that’s anecdotal. I know a Catholic Guy who is a math doctor, and he doesn’t have to compartmentalize his faith with his rationality, he simply doesn’t see a contradiction between the sciences and his faith. He believes in a round Earth, he rejects and detests Trump worship, and is all around an amazing person, often BECAUSE of his faith rather against…
He sees Christians who do bad things in Christ’s name as shameful, and he often voices disapproval for “Trad Caths” and such barbaric ideas as Prosperity Gospel.
Catholics are more like my friend, not your friend, you just need to leave the New Atheist bubble these Reddit-style forums get into.
