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Sunday, August 25, 2024

Not funny

In The New York Times today ... How JD Vance Found His Way to the Catholic Church.

You may think Vance's religious choice is incidental to his and other Republicans' politics, but that is so not true. All those repressive and extreme policies Trump wants to implement? You can find most of them in basic Catholic teaching, especially those that have to do with women and with LGBTQ people.

Abortion, contraception, IVF ... the Catholic church spends millions of dollars lobbying against women's ability to access these things ... The Catholic Church Is Bankrolling a Nationwide Assault on Women’s Rights ... Vatican reaffirms ‘no’ to birth control, IVF in new family compact

Marriage for gay people, gay people adopting babies, gender identuty? "Liberal" Pope Francis is against them all, as is traditional church teaching ... Pope Francis Called Gay Adoption A Form Of Discrimination Against Children ... Pope Francis: Gender ideology is the ugliest danger of our time ... Pope Francis says priests can bless same-sex couples but marriage is between a man and a woman

While we may giggle at the description of Republican policies as "weird", we should realize that these same policies are the official and actual stance of the largest and most powerful (and probably wealthiest) Christian denomination in the world. That's not funny.

4 Comments:

Blogger Katherine Nielsen said...

Catholicism is a pretty big tent. JD Vance and Joe Biden inhabit different parts of it. JD seems to have bought into radical traditionalism. He is what I would call a Christian integralist. Even the pope is not a Christian integralist.

6:59 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

Yeah, but it's a weird situation. A majority of Catholics. including Biden and Pelosi, just ignore the teachings on stuff like contraception, abortion, divorce, IVF, sex before marriage, who can take communion, marriage for gay people, etc. They ignore the way the church hasn't really addressed the child sex abuse problem. They ignore the discrepancy between the wealth of the church and the relatively small amount the church spends helping the poor. They ignore how the church won't let women be priests or even deacons. They don't try to change things or call out the hierarchy. They just get what they personally need and pretend the rest isn't happening. Seems dishonest.

9:07 AM  
Blogger Katherine Nielsen said...

Is it dishonest, or just following your conscience? In the end the church does teach the primacy of conscience https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/11/11/pope-francis-reaffirms-primacy-conscience-amid-criticism-amoris-laetitia
Plenty of Catholics do call out the hierarchy when they say and do insane things. Archbishop Vigano got excommunicated (which pro-choice Catholics like Biden have not been). Bishop Strickland was removed from leadership of his diocese for his extreme views that he was putting out there.

9:36 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

Something seems to be wrong with Blogger - my comments aren't getting published. Yes, the primacy of conscience is good. Also a lot of the stuff from Vatican 2. But at the end of the day, gay people are still harmed by church policy, women still can't be priests, etc. It makes me mad because the leadership of the church is despotic and there's no way to make them change things.

9:52 AM  

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