the head of my religion just said that you are actually a devil and it's okay to bully you. when I'm not doing that I'm just a normal person who lives life. peace and love. except for you, specifically, invalid existence. I wish everyone could just understand that.
I'm not justifying catholicism just fyi, just explaining that this isn't really hyper significant, catholics have been reactionary and progressive in Europe and elsewhere, depending on time and place, the catholic church is an evil and reactionary institution that should be destroyed
For individual adult devout Catholics? You’re right ofc. However the Church as an institution is not just that. When its doctrine is realized in teaching children, when people question their faith, when political leaders use it? The contradictions and variation matter a lot.
like millions of catholics aren't gonna suddenly wake up like autobots and be like "yes master, I now believe gay people are evil even tho I didn't before", they're just gonna be in a spectrum of "yeah I agreed with that already god bless" and "oh nooo why the pope not woke :("
If my religion disagreed with my values I would simply discard it
most people aren't like that, bc they have an attachment to their religion, this is because most people grew up in their religion, i.e. were indoctrinated into it. So they'll just pretend, and keep their religion, and rationalize it, or shrug it off, or despair about it trying to make sense of it
and in the middle there will be some people like "oh ok if that's what god says, *shrug*". The catholic church may pretend papal infalibility is a thing, as do all catholics, but in material actual reality ppl do whatever they want, religions are inconsistent and stupid across the board
I picked up on what you were saying btw just wanted to let you know
yay!
papal infallibility is a very narrow use case, 99% of the things a pope says are not covered under it, and most modern popes have not even had occasion to use it.
(Pius 9 and 10 were the last and perhaps only to use it, iirc)
Last time I checked the wiki on this, there was something about Benedict XVI and ordinance of women, which is partly the reason why Francis never really bothered with it
fuckin crazy i used to be the kind of person who would hang on every word of a religious leader like that. (not catholic, but still.) i still consider myself religious to a degree, but at least i don't pretend there's infallibility anywhere in there.
religion can be nice when it's personal. i was raised christian one way, but now although i still call myself christian it's not out of zealotry for a doctrine but rather- the stability and comfort of traditions like prayer are nice, and i actually still like a lot of the whole Jesus part.
i think the real difference between a religious person and a cult-following potential bigot tends to boil down to whether you actually accept that a lot of fundamental aspects of religion are inconsistent and stupid and inherently human or not.
easier to accept when you're totally atheist or agnostic, but there's a neat little trick a lot of people don't know about where you actually can be "religious" and still accept it too.
I agree about the church needing to be destroyed. but catholics actually do fangirl over the pope's words.
Tbf, I've never actually seen a Catholic be obsessed over the Pope to that degree, only non-Catholic Christians. The Catholics I've known were a lot closer to normal people.
they definitely choose what words of the pope they fangirl over, they're biased as fuck and influenced by other factors. Your average hyper fascist catholic isn't gonna fangirl over the pope if tomorrow he says "trans rights are human rights and all trans ppl will go to heaven"
these people are PEOPLE, not robots, and people rationalize the structures they say they believe in to fit their biases and feelings, none of them actually LIVE their life as IF the pope is infallible, it would be impossible, popes contradict EACH other AND EVEN THEMSELVES
like I promise u there isn't a single fucking catholic on earth who studies every single statement by every pope ever and tries to decipher the message that god is sending them through all of them and trying to make it consistent
they just go like "eh, times change, popes change" u ask them "does god change?" and they're like "no" without an OUNCE of self awareness, people are stupid, incredibly so, like actually so fucking stupid it's infuriating, but it is what it is :/