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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36183 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Surprised so few people talk about Brasil here. Their election (2nd round) is today. It looks like Lula is the slight favourite but even his supporters concede that Bolsonaro has a good shot. For those not in the know, Lula is the social democrat with Bolsonaro best described as "Trump of the Tropics".

Yet a complicating factor is that the new congress has already been elected and it was much more right-wing than expected. So Lula's room for maneuver will be significantly constrained if he happens to win.

There does seem to be a structural undercurrent at play here. A very fast-growing demographic in Brasil are the evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly favour Bolsonaro. Traditionally, Catholicism has been the bedrock of the nation's social fabric, inherited from the Iberians. So a very fervent form of Protestantism is unquestionably a break from the past where Catholicism was viewed as intertwined with national identity. Whoever wins this presidential election will have to grapple with this changed reality in Brasil.

Incidentally, this also suggests the lazy assumption that "as America gets more diverse it will invariably get more liberal" could potentially not come to pass.

A very fast-growing demographic in Brasil are the evangelical Christians

I'm surprised this isn't a more widespread phenomenon in Catholic countries (or maybe it is and I'm just uninformed). Pope Francis is a walking counterexample to the infallibility of the Church. The natural response is either to give up the faith entirely, or go full sola scriptura.

Funny, because I see Pope Francis' insights as refreshingly coherent with the teachings of Jesus. If you think the natural response to the pope making a decree you disagree with is to abandon faith, then i would suggest you aren't a catholic to begin with.

It has to be admitted, whether you agree with pope Francis’s theology or not, that almost none of it is either insightful nor in straightforward accordance with the most established teaching of the church on those topics. His leadership from an administrative perspective has also been astonishingly poor and unusually given to corruption, foot in mouth disease, and inconsistency.

That the current pontificate is causing a crisis of faith isn’t a mystery; you have a pope who is both a poor administrator and who commits a series of unforced theological errors that reach their pinnacle in literally worshipping a pagan idol, and there are no Catholics alive today who remember a pope worse than mediocre.

I think having the fertility statues present on the church grounds is odd but to suggest their presence is evidence that the pope worships them is a huge stretch to me. If the pope was saying "lets all pray to gaia" i would agree with your alarmist stance, but he didn't, and he wouldn't. Perhaps in a changing world, God is instructing Pope Francis differently than popes past.

I think having the fertility statues present on the church grounds is odd but to suggest their presence is evidence that the pope worships them is a huge stretch to me.

Ironically, you would think that Catholics would not lump these two together, given how often they get accused of idolatry towards saints and icons of saints. I mean maybe the pope is in fact worshipping some pagan gods, IDK his heart. But if anyone should be expected to have a nuanced distinction between "having a representation of a thing" and "worshipping the thing", it should be Catholics.

Ironically, you would think that Catholics would not lump these two together, given how often they get accused of idolatry towards saints and icons of saints.

Isn't how often they get accused of idolatry increasing the likelihood of other forms of idolatry in other forms?

Nah. That angle would make sense if it was Protestants criticizing the pope for this - a Protestant might say "he already practices idolatry towards the saints, it's hardly a surprise if he starts worshipping a pagan goddess too".

But we're talking criticism from Catholics. From their perspective, the accusations of idolatry are baseless, because they know that they aren't worshipping saints just because they have some icon representing a saint. So from that perspective, they should know damn well that if the pope has some pagan statue around, it doesn't therefore mean he's worshipping it.

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