Sid

But I'm also a flaming left wing heretic, even among my own liberal, and I dare say, progressive Catholic Community.

Like it or not, religion is the foundation of many communities, which seems to be an appropriate thing to remember on Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. day.

to identify with a belief system that is explicitly regressive and call oneself progressive. And it denotes a certain privilege.

It requires a cognitive dissonance even greater than that to simply exist here in these United States.

Like it or not, the culture of my community and much of my family is Catholic. It's essentially a part of the family and community language.

I'm accepting of all other peaceful religious communities, be they Black Baptists (like MLK), Islamists, Jewish, Unitarians, Wiccans, etc. And atheism makes perfect sense to me.

Religious warfare within my own family, and in my wife's family, passed away with our grandparent's generation, although my mom was always at war with some church community or another when I was a kid.

I have no idea where my own kids, raised Catholic, will end up on the religious spectrum, but they are adults now, and will find their own spiritual paths. I wasn't smacking any of my kids in the head for blasphemy when they were small, or indoctrinating them to accept any authority. As a kid I was allowed to question anything, and the same was true with my own kids. For that reason alone, I think, having to "drag kids to church" was never a problem in our family. If grandma can say something snarky about a priest, so can a kid. (My mom's the sort who would happily argue with the Pope if she got a chance...)

I'm very critical of the sort of atheism that is just another sort of fundamentalism, one stripped of gods, but carrying all the same cultural baggage (misogyny, racism, blindness to racism, authoritarianism, nationalism...) of the religions it despises.

In progressive politics there's no point arguing with people who are motivated in positive ways by their religion.

I can't claim religion is my own motivation for "doing good." Mostly my motivation is just plain damned cussedness.

To identify, support and even raise (often a nice word for indoctrinate) your children in a regressive religion. Sure, I understand the benefits of why people do it, tradition and culture, and those are the trade offs of supporting a bigoted belief system.

Most people don't have to confront that they are supporting a bigoted belief system in order to have these benefits because religion gets a special pass in our society. In fact, they'll gonout of their way to come up with all sorts f weak rationalizations of what they are doing, and they will certainly avoid any part of their religion that reminds them of what they are supporting.

Let me use an extreme
example to show how crazy it seems to an outsider. It would be like a member of the KKK remaining a member because of the tradition and culture, while not actually agreeing with the main tenets, but also calling themselves progressive.

It's the ultimate privilege of having your cake and eating it too. It's normal because religion is privileged. To many outsiders it looks like total hypocrisy. And I think it is.

... acknowledging the huge roll religion has played in the civil rights movement seemed a reasonable thing to do.

The U.S.A., like it or not, is a very religious nation, and one often has to speak the general language of religion to accomplish anything progressive in politics.

Would I like to live in a more secular society? Yes I would. Would I like to live in a society that wasn't structured to favor a two-party system? Yes I would.

Living in a fairly liberal and Democratic community, who would you have me alienate first? The Black Baptist community? The Mexican and Filipino Catholic communities? The very liberal Methodist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian communities? The liberal Jewish and Islamic Communities? The Buddhist community?



I've lived most of my life in cosmopolitan communities where no single religion is dominant or oppressive. Maybe that shapes my perspective.

Then the problem isn't speaking against bigoted beliefs.

I don't think many progressives would feel alienated for criticism of their belief system, after all many already ignore the parts they don't like. It's the continued support for said belief systems that should be pointed out, and the harm it is causing.

The Legion's founder, Marcial Maciel, was a corrupt fucker and yet another darling of the moneyed fascist right, both here in the U.S.A. and in Mexico.

Rick Santorum and many of DU's other "favorite" right wing Catholics are supporters of Regnum Christi, the lay wing of the Legion of Christ.

I'm sure Francis was elected because the stench of these assholes was getting to be too much even for even the less corrupt conservatives and traditionalists of the church's leadership to bear.

like stink to shit? It's well beyond a casual correlation, whether it be the RCC or politics around the world.

Same old same old under a new marketing campaign.

Anti gay, anti choice people who are presented with aggressive and disrespectfully inaccurate language are usually just Republicans but this one's the Pope.

And Bill Clinton actually bragged about opposing gay marriage (signing DOMA) during his re-election campaign.

People evolve at different speeds.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]

but, and this is the best thing I can say about him, he does stink less than his predecessors.

did you say "fuck Obama"?

I also said it when he appointed Geithner and Summers. And his support for thrTPP.
You?

I would prefer that not be the case, but I work with what I've got.

You?

I'm guessing a clean hippie has more Libertarian leanings.

I'm guilty as charged.

Beside that's what the pope and his church stand for.

I oppose homophobia and misogyny, but I'd be offended if anyone ever called me a Libertarian.

YMMV

That is to say, what he says carries weight. Like, the closest a Catholic can get to the word of God on earth kinda weight.

There are many wealthy, greedy, envious & hate filled Catholics in this country. I hope the Pope is making them feel like a people without a faith. Because if they ignore what he is saying, they most certainly are.

Both literally and figuratively.

The Pope is leading them down the same path of ant-civil rights, ant-equality, and very similar regressive beliefs they have led with in the past.

People on the left need to get their heads out of their asses and realize the Pope is leading the way for the future of right wing ideology across the globe. The Pope goes beyond hate. He teaches hate to others. He is the future of right wing regressive policy. He is changing the rhetoric of the church in order to bring in new followers and to fill the coffers. It is political in every sense of the word.

One thing the current Pope has made clear to me is how a marketing campaign can fool anyone.

Empathy. That alone makes me think Francis has a chance to grow and to make important changes in the Catholic Church (which are badly needed - just behold SCOTUS!).