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.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    The pope ain’t perfect. But goddamn do I love him stripping corrupt officials of their position, being much more chill towards my queer brothers and sisters worldwide, and telling the US arm to remove the giant sticks from their ass over abortion and divorce.

    I hope he lives till 130 and keeps being a stabilizing force for good. It’s a rarity to see religious officials who are not only reasonable, but actively trying to make the world a slightly better place.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re already doing that, have been for a long time. I have a Baptist coworker who thinks Catholicism isn’t real Christianity…

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

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

  • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    These christians will drop their Pope before they drop their politics

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      They already have. Only Roman Catholics really care what the Pope has to say. There are far more Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Presbyterian in the US than Catholics.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      That ship has already sailed - I was just with my conservative uncle this last weekend when he complained that the current pope is “woke”

      To these people, their political ideology is their religion

  • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • JoYo@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Catholic concerts are the most evil people I’ve ever met.

      edit: I meant converts but those suck too.

  • 😈MedicPig🐷BabySaver😈@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ApexHunter@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Religion, at its core, is basically rules that state “don’t be a dick.” Unfortunately, all of the dicks didn’t get the message.

      • Comment105@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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”

      • SolarMech@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        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).