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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   29045 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Secular Media Reporting on Poor RCC Governance by Pope Francis

https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-rome-vatican-city-germany-catholics-liberal-revolution/

So, having access to sources of information not available to the general public, none of this really comes as a revelation, and there's a bunch of biased narration and low level mistakes, but the reporting is broadly accurate. Or rather, delivers big picture accuracy while distorting the true stories of lots of specific incidents to reflect the author's liberal biases. Like here:

Last year, for example, a landmark declaration allowing clerical blessings for same-sex couples was diluted after a fiasco involving religious musings on the nature of orgasms.

What they're referring to is Pope Francis' #2 being revealed to have authored erotic poetry(and a book on kissing entitled "Heal me with your Mouth") and trying to defend himself by calling it theology. It was a scandal but didn't have much to do with the backlash to gay blessings, which was the global south against progressives. African bishops declared their opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, in partnership with the eastern rites, as a group and got concessions.

What the article gets right, I think, is doing a pretty good job of summarizing the pope's inability to hold his own coalition together, and accurately noting that this occurs in an environment where most senior churchmen are laser-focused on the possibility of a conclave very soon. It also begins to convey his immense personal unpopularity with Vatican insiders; even cardinal Parolin is campaigning for the conclave by emphasizing their dissimilarities. I like this anecdote:

“Read the document[Fiducia Supplicans],” said a Vatican official who was granted anonymity to speak openly about a pope he described as vindictive toward critics. “It says: well, obviously you cannot bless a homosexual relationship, because from a Catholic point of view, it’s sinful. However, we will invent a new form of blessing. It’s not a sacramental blessing, it’s a ‘fracramental flessing.’ It looks almost like a blessing, and if you run sideways, and do it in under ten seconds, and keep it totally spontaneous…”

The chief problem, the official added, is that the pontiff has an overriding need to do everything his way, often at the expense of ideological coherence. “Most of his energy goes into hiding what he thinks, hiding who he is, and hiding what he’s going to do, in an almost neurotic way,” the official complained. “He keeps what he wants to do even from himself as long as possible, in order to be totally unexpected in what he does.”

This is not the way to win friends and influence people in an oligarchy of elderly true-believing academics.

It doesn’t help that, in all likelihood, the Pope is not long for this world. At 87 and with only one intact lung, he struggles to breathe, suffers bouts of pneumonia, and is perennially in and out of hospital. Every public cough generates macabre headlines. Meanwhile, he has largely failed to appoint enough allies to the College of Cardinals to guarantee a like-minded successor, and liberals wonder whether he will leave any progressive legacy at all.

This is perhaps understating things; many of the cardinals appointed as Francis allies turned on him over something or other, often personal falling outs or mismanagement driven by the tendency referenced above. Factually one of the top papabile in the next conclave, cardinal Pizzaballa, is a recent Francis appointee now campaigning among the conservatives, and the largest initial powerblock in the next conclave is likely to be backers of cardinal Erdo's promise to reign as Benedict XVII. It also understates the mood in the Vatican that pope Francis is going to die any day now.

The current synod has invariably stoked the fears of conservatives who see it as a Trojan horse for an insidious woke agenda. As if in confirmation, the synod’s own leaders have cast it as the last great hope for introducing real structural reform: “If we miss this experience, we will not be effective in our mission,” Cardinal Mario Grech, the Synod on Synodality’s secretary general, told POLITICO in his Vatican office, a portrait of the pontiff smiling down from the wall behind him. “And then the future will be bleak.”

Cardinal Hollerich, the Synod’s relator general, acknowledged that the goal of the synod is rather more aspirational — to seed a culture of inclusivity and dialogue that could, perhaps, lead to doctrinal reform, somewhere down the line. Holy See spokesperson Matteo Bruni said its core aim was to foster “greater involvement of the people of God” in pastoral and administrative Church matters, pointing to early successes in the Eastern Church. But he emphasized that it wouldn’t delve into the other big questions — the Synod on Synodality, as its name suggests, would be entirely self-referential.

I wanted to highlight these two paragraphs- the progressive faction(of which cardinal Hollerich is more or less the leader and one of the more extreme examples thereof) is dispirited, weighed down by outsized responsibility for the sex abuse scandal(s), extremely high average age, and ties to an unpopular and more moderate than commonly perceived pope. All the way up and down the totem pole, progressive Catholics are cynical, expect to lose, and increasingly too depressed to even grasp at straws.

My impression is that the Catholic Church is going through a similar pattern to Mainline Protestant churches:

(1) Declining membership in the West (immigrants aside) but still strong in the Third World.

(2) A hesistant pivot to liberalism, which alienates the conservatives in the West and alienates almost all of the Third World, without actually increasing membership in the West. More radical churches pick up the Western conservatives$ and gain strength in the Third World.

(3) Doubling down by pivoting more (but still hesitantly) towards liberalism.

Catholicism seems to be less far down this road that Mainline Protestantism, but it seems stuck. And as the experience of Evangelical Protestants has shown in the past 20 years (AFAIK) conservative Christianity is struggling in the West too, just in different ways (higher apostacy among the young).

$ This does not seem to be happening with the conservative Catholics, but from those I know, they are disengaged and fed up, and this may result in greater apostacy among their children.

Is that accurate? It would confirm my expectations of Pope Francis's papacy, but I have limited info on the Catholic Church these days, so I am worried about confirmation bias.

I'm not too sure, I think Catholicism is doing pretty well in the United States and the Church is holding to her teaching.

One chart I saw recently was at here, pulling together data from The Nones have Hit a Ceiling. It looks as though Catholics are either A) getting lots of converts, B) Better able to retain young people than Protestants, or C) Immigration of more young people than old people from Catholic countries. It might very well be C, but I don't think Catholicism is going to disappear from the US anytime soon.

One thing that helps keep Catholicism on the straight and narrow is that the Church's authority derives from its Conservatism. If it actually tried to change teaching, in such a way that it clearly contradicted past dogmatic teachings, it loses its authority instantly. It's whole shtick is that "We have the Truth, the Truth can't change, we have perfect Divine Authority to tell you the Truth and no one else has this Authority."

Now Europe, Europe is going secular fast. US Catholics joke that we will need to evangelize Pagan Europe all over again.

There's been dozens of articles in the Finnish medias about the recent trend of young men coming to religion and gen-Z young men being more likely to say they believe in Christian God than Millennials (note that we're still not talking about majority numbers in these age classes). This is balanced generally by young women continuing to stream out to more inchoate forms of spirituality, but it's still a clear trend. A number of previously new-atheist or irreligious right-of-center influencers have also recently found their way (back) to religion or are signalling the potential to do the same, though it's unclear to what degree this is following the trend of their most potential fans and to what degree genuine.

recent trend of young men coming to religion and gen-Z young men being more likely to say they believe in Christian God than Millennials (note that we're still not talking about majority numbers in these age classes). This is balanced generally by young women continuing to stream out to more inchoate forms of spirituality

It will be a genuinely hilarious day if at some point Christianity, the religion of widows and orphans, becomes a male religion, while paganism, the religion of ancient warrior cults and French sex freaks, becomes a female one. Perhaps we do live in a clown world.

It will be a genuinely hilarious day if at some point Christianity, the religion of widows and orphans

It is also the religion of Charles the Hammer and Arnaud Amalric. The religion of Crusaders and Conquistadors. The religion of King Olaf II of Norway, whose warring, conquest, and being 'inclined to violence and brutality" didn't prevent Pope Alexander III from officially recognizing his (earlier) local canonization as Saint Olaf.

Half-serious take: Christianity continues to be the religion of slaves and downtrodden, paganism of pleasure and empowerment (will to power).

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