This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Congratulations United States, you are Pope!
Edit: Sorry if that is too short but I am currently watching the livestream from Europe and am totally baffled.
Joel Berry, the managing editor of the Babylon Bee, wants you to know that "America has always been a protestant nation, and it must stay that way."
https://x.com/JoelWBerry/status/1920537379170877885
(Back in reality, America is down to 39% Protestant, not counting Mormons as Protestant: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/)
He also "jokes" that "We know the world is healing when Catholics and Protestants are fighting again." Ah, let's go back to the good old days when 1/3rd of the German population were killed in a horrific religiously-motivated war.
https://x.com/JoelWBerry/status/1920658687347089517
Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.
Maybe conservative Catholics should start asking themselves whether "separation of church and state" might be a good idea after all. But I can't get my hopes up - even many "based" seculars would rather die in the mud than admit that the "libs" might have been right about something.
This is level of feigned obliviousness I haven't seen since the last time Snopes beclowned itself.
You do know this guy is editor of a satirical magazine/website? That makes jokes and pokes fun in the religious context?
If I'm gonna have steam pouring out my ears about a humour site dissing the Church, there's bigger targets I'd go after right this minute.
You seriously think "America has always been a protestant nation, and it must stay that way" was meant as a joke?
By now? Yeah. There may be some extremist fringe set which hold that, but they tend to be more about the white supremacy rather than caring about the doctrinal content of the faith (and really want an American Civic Religion rather than Christianity).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Given Parolin's pre-conclave behavior, that doesn't really seem very beyond the pale.
Guy might well have been ambitious, and I'm more "this is dumb" than truly outraged, but comparing "guy only pretended to be devout in order to get top job, now is pissed he was passed over and thinks he might as well have been a sinner because he never genuinely believed at all in the first place" to "guy makes joke that is obviously meant to be a joke about the Wars of Religion", is not comparing similar levels.
I took the opposite interpretation of that Onion article. It's obviously absurd that he would make all those efforts if his true goal were the papacy itself. Exploring how absurd it looks all spelled out like that is supposed to have the effect of humor.
Yeah, it's stupid more than offensive, and I'm not going to get outraged over it, but were I looking for "dumb jokes to get hot under the collar about" then the Onion would be first before the Bee.
More options
Context Copy link
He knew he had a shot at one day being pope a long time ago. He may have known this before entering seminary.
I’m kinda surprised the onion hadn’t been making fun of Pizzaballa(because of his name) or Tagle(because of his general tackiness and unpredictability giving them fodder).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is that a bar to be tripped over? Walked under? An insinuation of jewish nefariousness with a lastname like that? Some white nationalist thing? An epitaph of the National Review's fall from influence within the Republican party?
The latter. I was also making it clear that I wasn't "nutpicking" by highlighting Berry.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In this comment, you
Pretend to be ignorant of the monumental role Protestant Christianity had in the history of America
Express that you think religious wars are bad
Engage in a crazy drive-by about “church and state” in which you drop many implications that I suspect you know would get a lot of pushback if you actually bothered to articulate them.
Am I un-separating the church from the state when I simply engage in wholly secular governing mechanisms to reflect morals I hold? You know, the way literally every voter in a democracy does it? Am I agitating for theocracy when my morals are informed by the Bible, while yours are informed by NYT headlines? I can’t know, because I’ve already thought about this harder than your comment merits.
Why should Catholics suddenly be more interested in your personal, potentially ahistorical, interpretation of separation of church and state due to the Babylon Bee guy’s words? What do “based” seculars have to do with it? Do you think they might prefer religious hostilities to the race riots we’ve seen recently? If they hypothetically do, would you be able to understand why?
Again, I can’t know. Good job pasting three different links, though, and nice flair I guess. It’s excusable as long as it’s self-aware, right? Except this kind of humor is falling out of style in favor of sincerity, as the discussion about the Minecraft Movie notes.
Nice job rebutting that strawman argument I didn't make.
I really have to spell it out for you people, I guess. Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity. Like communists, you guys are always assuring us that this time it will be different from all those previous times.
The good old days when whites were slaughtering each other over religion and burning witches, but at least everyone was white.
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-third-worlding-of-the-american-mind/
(You might get the witch burnings but won't get the whiteness. The populist coalition is growing increasingly non-white itself - which should hardly surprise anyone - who do you think conspiracism and superstition appeals to?)
There was nothing non-sincere in my comment.
The dominant strain of Protestantism in the USA does not care about non-moral theological differences within nicene Christianity and is also unable to do much of anything without assistance from conservative Catholics. This is a reasonable worry from a Mormon perspective; and Mormons know this. It is not a reasonable worry from a Catholic perspective.
Catholics, BTW, were mostly not burning witches. Witch burnings by country is basically a Protestant heat map.
More options
Context Copy link
I, for one, appreciate having this spelled out. I might have anticipated that objection during the George W. Bush administration, but I don’t anticipate it now.
I think you are writing in good faith, but I don’t think you understand how Protestant social dynamics have evolved. When Berry says “a Protestant nation,” he has a different idea what that means than a turn-of-the-twentieth-century counterpart might have had. While on a theological level Catholic vs. Protestant theological differences mean as much as they ever did, on a social level differences between theological liberalism and theological conservatism are much more salient. (This is strongly related to social progressivism vs. social conservatism and weakly related to economic leftism vs. economic rightism.)
If Berry got his dream, would he shutter Roman Catholic schools? No, I don’t think so. Would he shutter Jesuit schools? Maybe. But not because of Jesuits’ oaths of loyalty to the pope – because they are, in fact, liberal as heck.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This seems like a reasonable statement.
Why? I get your general thrust here: Reasonably-influential Protestant reminds us all of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. You appear to be basing this on the idea that inter-tribal conflict is a problem that is or should be taken seriously, and appear to be suggesting that the Catholic/Protestant split is one that deserves attention, and particularly that this fault and its consequences are significant enough that based whoevers should admit that the "libs" might have been right about something. Your framing of his statement about protestant and catholic conflict in terms of the worst possible example of that conflict seems notably disingenuous to me, but let's leave it be.
What sort of response are you hoping for here? As someone who disagrees with most of this, would you be interested my presenting some examples of what actual serious tribal splits with serious real-world consequences look like in our present context? If not that, then what's the proper way to continue this conversation, in your view?
Don't think it would have been seen as disingenuous had I illustrated communism by its worst possible example. But I can give a less terrible one. In the Based Protestant Netherlands, Catholics, after initial persecution, were grudgingly tolerated. They were allowed churches, so long as they were built to look like ordinary apartment buildings, anything more was an unbearable provocation. And of course it was unthinkable that anyone from the Catholic community, 35% of the Dutch population, could serve in high levels of the Dutch government, the way the Catholic ~20% does in America today.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link