Heck, most of the nu-atheist movement already willingly jumped in bed with right wing Christians in the 2010s.
American Catholics are learning that American Evangelicals do not consider Catholics to be Christians, or allies.
The people who today refuse to serve LGBT people are the children and grandchildren of those who openly discriminated against Catholics 60 years ago.
It’s really fun when a Mormon is telling a (atheist but raised) Orthodox Baptist that they’re on the “same side”. No buddy you would be slain with the rest of the non baptists.
The craziest part of this to me is that evangelicals haven’t even tried to hide their position for at least the past 40 years. They’ve always been very open about their opinion of Catholics.
They made nice for a while when they needed allies on team “make abortion illegal,” but now they don’t feel like they have to ally with anyone who doesn’t match their narrow definition of Christianity.
We need a species-wide divorce from religion, and address why so many people are mentally ill.
I talk mad shit about burning heretics to my xian friends.
Not really
All the crazy US government shit going on right now can be traced back to religious organizations and the mega wealthy
If anything, the US today is what happens when the walk between government and church finally falls. Welcome fraud, abuse, and corruption
If you want an example of church and state merging, look at Utah.
Trump and his ilk are the yankee predilection for frauds and hucksters. It’s always been a mainstay of US life and politics, they’re just not always in the driver’s seat. Andrew Jackson springs to mind.
Teenage, black metal, card-carrying Satanist me would be very confused by how much middle-aged me agrees with the current pope.
I don’t know why or when but at some point, I tagged you as “sane” on my Lemmy client. Idk why and idk why I’m telling you this, but just letting you know lol
tbf, teenage me would be pretty puzzled by a sassy pope from Chicago that keeps getting involved in American politics. also by how much middle-aged me agrees with that pope.
a sassy pope from Chicago that keeps getting involved in American politics
Sounds like the premise for a pretty okay two-season ABC sitcom c. 1987. (Edit: Maybe even a Perfect Strangers sequel where Larry accidentally ends up as Pope.) Where do I sign?
Hm, best I can do is a Jesus and Buddha anime where they’re roommates in Tokyo
Can we get a remake of this that’s also a mashup with Heil Honey I’m Home!? 😂
I was thinking more like a movie. A buddy flick circa 2010, like Harold and Kumar go to The Vatican or Dude, Where’s My Pope Mobile?
I can see someone receiving penance in a confessional “And then…” “No and then!”
Like the part in Eurotrip where Scotty accidentally gets wrapped up in curtains that look like papal vestments and stumbles out onto the balcony, but a full length movie
“Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Middle East”
They somehow solve the Israel–Palestine conflict by uniting both sides in hatred.
South Park did it.
Balky: “Don’t be sanctimonus”
The last few popes have been relatively progressive, especially compared to most of the Protestant offshoots of the Martin Luther/John Calvin types. I’d recommend checking out the papal enclyclicals. There’s a bunch of them that read borderline Marxist, like Rerum Novarum.
Now that ive said something nice about them, still, the Catholic Church is an organization that does protect its own pedos from punishment, which isn’t unique to the Catholic Church, still fuck the Catholic church for that.
Because helping the poor and discriminated was already in Jesus’ philosophy, way before Marx. Too bad some Christians seemingly don’t know about it.
Yup, which is exactly why I called out the distinction between the Catholic church and the denominations born out of the Protestant Reformation.
Religion tends to trail civil society about 25 years in terms of ethics and morality.
These days they even realize condoms are less bad than AIDS. And some realize that LGTBQ people are … actual human people.
They all still value faith over reason and have invisible friends in the sky. Not serious adults.
Policy wise Catholicism is all pretty over the place, Rerum Novarum, which is calling for Capital to be responsible stewards to labor was from the late 1800s, they had an encyclical in like the 1500s about how enslaving new world natives was bad. But yeah I agree they’re consistently woefully behind on social issues.
And also still pedo protectors.
I’d say this one and the last. Red shoe guy was asshole prime.
Satanic Temple or Church of Satan?
Church of Satan, unfortunately. It was the mid-90’s. LaVey and the Order of Nine Angles was all you could really find until you were already into it and knew publishers to look for.
Yeah, I should’ve thought before asking. TST didn’t exist when you were a teenager, unless you consider 30 to be middle-aged lol
it won’t happen but if the us military were to invade the vatican that would be the funniest thing
I think the funniest thing would be to have one of those two pope situations straight out of the middle ages, like maybe Vance could be an antipope.
Similarly, the United States goes to war against the fundamentalist theocracy in Iran. And who do I find myself kinda sorta rooting for?
My belief that we shouldn’t meddle in other country’s affairs is stronger than my distaste for theocracies.
Not by a lot, mind you, but it is stronger.
The fact that the United States is openly threatening genocide is widening the gap a bit more.
That too. I hate it here, someone help me escape 😥
Oblig. Darkmatter2525
While I appreciate how he helped me understand atheist perspectives as a newly deconverted ex-cultist, the dude’s also an asshole.
Yes but have you seen Dawkins
You won’t catch me calling that white-robed, rich motherfucker ‘Your Holiness’.
At least until he purges his church of all the child rapists.
I guess he’s “rich”, but does he really get to do anything you would want to do if you were rich? Like maybe casinos and hookers and yachts and nice cars? Or just general gluttonous stuff. And he still has to walk around in those stupid robes all the time, so it’s not helping his drip any. Italy would be the place to buy some nice suits too. His car fuckin sucks.
He’s rich in my context because he never ever will have to wonder whether or not tomorrow involves food and shelter.
but does he really get to do anything you would want to do if you were rich
How familiar are you with the history of popes and their lifestyles? He gets to do things you and I couldn’t even imagine.
Because we’re not evil enough.
I would guess popes from a long time ago could get away with a lot of shit. With the advent of mass media I’d assume he has to avoid scandal. So maybe he gets to do some fun shit behind closed doors. But he still has to wear those stupid robes and ride around in that hoopty ass car in public.
Agreed.
i’ve never tried to annihilate anything though. i’d really like to try to annihilate a pope. does that make me an antipope?
No. But nothing’s stopping you from getting a robe an a pope hat, publicly declaring yourself the true legitimate pope, and trying to move the thrown of St. Peter to Minneapolis.
we’ve already had an emperor of these united states and i’d just be an imitation. i’m more creative than that.
Fine. Try to filibuster the Vatican.
i was going to see what happened when we had blue smoke (that’s what you bbq with) come out the chimney, but that sounds more fun.
except for this explanatory bullshit i don’t say “oh my god” i say “oh me” because it’s the only thing i can think to say that’s appropriately egotistical. and until the vatican texts me this dog
which i will take as acceptance of their worship, i’ma hold a grudge.I like Oh my Higgs, because some people called it God’s particle.
This dude was their PR guy until 2018 and is from FOX News. Pope Francis kept him until 2018 and then hired the new guy. That’s a long time to have a Fox News guy in charge of your PR. New pope hasn’t replaced Francis’ picked guy.
Burke was formerly a correspondent for the Fox News and for Time magazine, while based in Rome. In June 2012 it was announced he would be taking up the position of senior communications advisor for the Section for General Affairs of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.[2][3][4]
He was appointed vice director of the Holy See Press Office in December 2015, and was promoted to director August 1, 2016, succeeding Frederico Lombardi.[5]
On December 31, 2018, he announced his intention to resign his appointment at the Holy See, being succeeded by Matteo Bruni.[6][7] In September 2019, he became director of communications at IESE Business School.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Burke_(journalist)
Matteo Bruni (born 23 November 1976) is an Italian-British media professional who serves as director of the Holy See Press Office of the Roman Curia. He was appointed on 18 July 2019 by Pope Francis, succeeding Greg Burke.[1] He is the first non-journalist to hold the office.[2]
Cleric is still an evil class, just lawful evil vs the chaotic evil alignment of US’s govt
Cleric is an evil class?? What setting are you playing in where all the gods hate mortals?
Ours
Homebrew, huh? Neat! Our setting, a Cataclysm happened 6,000 years ago. The moon blew up, magic became accessible to the population at large, the gods disappeared, and no one has any idea why clerics can still cast magic. No one can even prove if they’re still alive, if they died, or if they’ve just gone radio silent.
That sounds cool! I don’t think this setting is homebrew, it seems to come standard.
Unforunately in my setting, while people claim to be able to do magic, every practitioner of magic seems to disagree about how magic works and no one has ever done anything unambiguously magical that couldn’t be explained by luck. It’s kind of disapponting, really.
Also, all of the teachings of all of the gods are conveniently favorable to whoever rules the region where that god’s faith is practiced. There are thousands of gods, though most are no longer worshipped, yet somehow none of them seem unambiguously positive or beneficial to mortal flourishing. Their followers all claim to be good-aligned, but no one can agree on what “good” means.
Also, similar to the magic situation, no one really has any proof that their god is real. Followers of different gods claim to do miracles on their god’s behalf, but none of these miracles are so miraculous that they couldn’t be explained by coincidence or clever slight of hand.
The tech is really cool though! I’m pretty fond of that aspect of it. I just wish the character creation was a little more customizable. Most everything about my character was randomly generated for me, even their name, and custimizing my character at all takes a lot of in-game currency. In fact, even though i’ve given them a nickname that my party members all use, I haven’t been able to change my character’s name yet! My character sheet still has the original name, and it won’t get updated until I collect enough currency and complete a special name-change sidequest.
Still, as frustrating as this game can be, it sure beats not playing at all.
