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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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my local Unitarian church

Can I be annoying Catholic for a second? Here's the general timeline of Christianity.

  • Christ upon death, entrusts Saint Peter with the formation of a church.

  • This church exists for about 400 years, doing philosophical work, being murdered by romans, and assembling the gospels

  • 400 years into it, they start calling some councils so that they can assemble a book which encompasses and explains their theology.

  • They assemble the bible

  • One thousand years later, and one thousand and five hundred years after Christ establishes a Church on Earth, a retarded autist named Martin Luther decides that he doesn't like the Church that Christ founded, and wants to start his own, with his own [stupid] philosophical beliefs at the center. Marty creates a lie about bible translations so that he can insert his own idea by "translating" the bible into German.

  • This effects of this are...negative. 500 years after this, we have the things you experienced.

tl;dr - you didn't go to a Church. You went to a weird narcissism cult that is wearing Church as a costume.

If you want to go to a Church, then go to a Church.

While you are certainly welcome to be annoying Catholic, you’re still supposed to follow the rules. This comment is combative enough to fall in the “more heat than light” category.

This is a very Catholic reading of history. Plenty of secular and most Protestant scholars would dispute the first part. Most secular and a few Protestants would dispute the second. And virtually all Protestants would dispute the fifth. It's a very disputed Catholic timeline. If everyone agreed on this everyone would be Catholic. Which I get you are, but it's kind of like outlining a timeline of history and saying and then God revealed the Holy Quran to his prophet Muhammed. It's not at all agreed upon outside of your faith tradition.

Of course, from the Orthodox perspective, the whole process starts with the Patriarchs of Rome starting to get big false ideas about their status as primus inter pares a number of centuries after Christ, schisming away from the Orthodox church, and Protestantism being a logical conclusion of the various theological issues spawning from that affair. "The Pope was the first Protestant".

This is of course disputed, both excommunicated each other at the same time and both claim apostolic tradition. If anything, the Catholic church is more stable and has more logical standing when it comes to apostolic tradition, since as of now it is even hard to say who exactly "ortobros" are. There are at least four permanent schisms within orthodoxy including two parallel patriarchates in both Antioch and Alexandria - which are not in communion with each other and thus their adherents are banned to receive sacraments between the churches. In fact it is quite messy to follow when which branch of orthodoxy separated itself from the others and for what reasons, it is almost like minoprotestantism in that sense.

The successive loss of the second and third Romes defaulted leadership back to Rome.

Saint Peter, the Protestant!

I obviously like my orthobros, but this is a major cope. Why did none of the bishops oppose the gospel of Mathew during the councils assembling the Bible? Why did they ask the pope for his blessing (in the colloquial sense) over their work?

By the 4th century, it was already established that the Pope had a leadership role different than the other bishops. It makes sense that at some point (1000 years after the church was founded and after it had become a major global power) that there would be people who would claim leadership of it, but for geopolitical reasons.

Again, I like the orthodox bros. They are cool, and I pray almost daily for reunification, but this claim is pretty ridiculous on its face. Was Jesus a Protestant too?

As a Protestant - obviously St. Peter was not a Protestant, but he was not Roman Catholic or Orthodox in any meaningful way either. Those distinctions did not exist in his day. He was a follower of Christ.

Now as it happens I think it's ahistorical nonsense to say that he was a pope or a bishop either, offices that did not exist in his day and which have been applied to him retroactively, but at any rate, St. Peter certainly did not think of himself in confessional terms that far postdate him. I would say that St. Peter was, in the proper sense, small-letter catholic, orthodox, and yes, protestant (that is, witnessing to the gospel), and that these denominational slapfights only embarrass those determined to engage in them.

You're assuming that the Bishop of Rome is actually Peter's successor is an established fact. Even though Linus and Clement are both mentioned in the Bible, they are never explicitly mentioned as Peter's successors, and no one identifies them as such until ~180 AD, 81 years after Clement's death.

a retarded autist named Martin Luther decides that he doesn't like the Church that Christ founded

That's not how it happened though. Luther didn't have a plan to destroy the Church or even leave it. He just had some issues with some stuff that representatives of the Church were doing (come on, selling indulgences? wtf is that?). And he voiced his objections. The Church refused to consider them and demanded he immediately declare himself complete idiot and prostrate himself before the Church, or be kicked out. Luther did not, and had been kicked out. Unlike many other people who crawled back on their knees or somehow dealt with it (or, if they could, installed their own Pope who overruled the last one, that happened once or twice) he did not just take it, but founded his own movement instead. Of course, the fact that there were a lot of powerful people around which weren't that happy with existing Church and its powers also helped a lot. Definitely however not what he planned from the start.

Many such cases btw - a person wants to improve the system from within, the system reacts harshly against him and pushes him out, he founds an alternative system which supplants the old one.

Stellula is, I would say, clearly not attempting any sort of good-faith or accurate account of history. It's just a generic boo light.

Frankly, as someone raised Protestant who has come right to the brink of becoming Catholic multiple times, it is the kind of graceless, vicious rhetoric that repels me from that tradition. The church is a community of grace, which should be marked by charity, gentleness, and peace. The best Catholics I have known model that, including every man or woman in holy orders I have met. I think Stellula does the Catholic Church a tremendous disservice, and ought to repent - for the Catholic Church's own sake!

My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church. I don't entirely blame you, since the church requires you to believe these things it's only natural to reason backwards from the dogmas to the evidence, but it's so frustrating to see here. Anyway:

  • Christ, after he returned from the grave, entrusted all of the apostles with spreading the gospel to all the nations. Peter had no unique status, indeed he was overruled by Paul, and in Acts James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements. The raising up of Peter comes from much later in history when the bishop of Rome (the capital of the world at the time) sought to justify taking greater authority to himself.
  • The writings of the church fathers make it abundantly clear that the books that would be assembled into the new testament were generally accepted by the mid second century. Framing the council of Nicea as assembling the Bible is a false framing designed to push back against the authority of scripture, by pretending that its authority comes from the council rather than from scripture's nature as the word of God.
  • As to the reformation, I don't know if your nonsense even deserves the dignity of a response, but... The purpose of the reformation was to fix the errors that has risen in the church, primarily indulgences, only providing the eucharist once a year, and refusing to translate the bible so people could read it. Following from this, a whole mess of theologians identified areas of theology where the church had arguably erred. And so, the Roman church, being even then truly arrogant, decided to kick anyone out of the church who questioned them. Funny enough, in the 'counter reformation' the Catholics did in fact fix indulgences, start giving regular eucharist, and eventually supported bible translations too! Weird huh? Rome refuses to budge on the other theological issues because (and this is not a charicature) they think the church is perfect and can never have made a mistake. Of course the Orthodox (who also left because of the arrogance of the Pope) say the same about their church. It's only Protestants who believe that all these different churches can have true Christians within them - Catholics at the time of the reformation thought the Orthodox were all damned for not following the Pope.

Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying. Still love you guys though! I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace.

My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church.

For what it's worth, this is... not wholly consistently, but I would say overwhelmingly my experience of extremely-online-Catholics.

It is, blessed be God, not even remotely my experience of Catholics in the flesh and blood.

Same. If /r/catholicism was representative of what the average person in the Catholic Church was like, I would have walked away a long time ago. Thankfully, that is not the case and people I interact with in person in the church are kind, gracious people who are a pleasure to know.

Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying.

Interesting to note that miracles which can withstand scientific scrutiny are exclusively associated with Roman Catholicism.

This is backwards reasoning though. The only miracles that are investigated with scientific scrutiny are ones associated with the Catholic church, because a full investigation is required if a miracle is to be used as grounds for beatification. This is because Catholicism has a deep history of scholasticism and the supremacy of reason, where the other traditions tend to lean more towards mysticism. Not exclusively, but that's my understanding of the general trend.

Protestants don't scientifically investigate miracles to that level, period, although there are plenty reported. I would instinctively consider it almost sacrilegious to do so. Likewise with the Orthodox, and some of theirs have a similar level of attestation (look up e.g. Our Lady of Zeitoun). Could it be that... all Christians who pray to God can receive miracles?

It may be that poor orthodox organization leads to their miracles going uninvestigated, but there are also some high profile orthodox miracles which are confirmed fakes(eg thé Easter fire. Now thé odd pious fraud is not proof against, but there is AFAIK no counterbalancing from well-investigated phenomena.

Protestant miracles seem like a general mish mash, and in fact using the term ‘Protestant’ in such a way seems like a sin against proper argumentation. Y’all are a varied bunch- is there a branch/denomination/movement within Protestantism that has repeated verifiable miracles? Any equivalent to the blood of st Januarius or thé spring at Lourdes or the series of Eucharistic miracles?

Mormonism’s supernatural claims have been investigated and falsified. The golden tablets are, per their own internal investigation, gobbledygook.

I can only speak to my experience. I grew up Catholic and was part of the RCC until I was about 33, at which point I left for essentially non-denominational Protestantism. Not for a specific doctrinal reason, but because it's where God was drawing me. That's where I met my wife. Now we attend a Calvary Chapel, which is nominally non-denom but with its own specific distinctives.

In my entire time in the RCC, I never encountered anyone who had experienced a miracle (as far as I know, they may have just kept quiet about it). In contrast, in the evangelical world I hear quite often about miracles taking place in people's lives, healings, financial provision, frankly I consider my marriage a miracle but I won't go into the details that convince me of this. But if I were to suggest to someone at my church that we should bring in some scientists to prove these were miracles, they would (I think rightly) consider that ridiculous and sacrilegious. In the same way that doing a double-blind study to determine if prayer works at improving health outcomes is both ridiculous and sacrilegious. To quote Jesus quoting the OT: you shall not test the Lord your God.

Catholics just have a different mindset about these things. They want to understand everything. That's what leads to thinks like trans-substantiation (we have to know exactly how the Eucharist works, it can't be a mystery).

What you're referring to is what Catholics would probably call 'guardian angel stories', which nobody's going to investigate. 'My guardian angel got me this job interview or stopped a car accident or whatever'. Do evangelicals point out miracles that didn't happen to them, more than on the level of FOAF tales, like Catholics or Orthodox do?

That 'didn't happen to them'? Of course. I'm not sure what level of attestation you're looking for specifically.

Here's an interesting question. Do you consider gifts of the spirit to be miracles? Most Evangelicals believe that gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues are still extant among the church, and I've heard pretty credible anecdotes of these gifts - for instance, a pastor at a conference spoke in tongues, but there was no interpreter so they all moved on, only for the Iranian bartender to come up afterwards and reveal the man had been praising God in Farsi (he ended up converting). That's the kind of miracles I hear about, multiply attested but still personal, and oriented towards people's salvation and faith. Maybe Catholic miracles are the same? I'm not entirely sure. Seeing a ghost, to me, wouldn't be something that reinforced my faith or built my relationship with God. I wonder if Hispanic populations are more likely to be moved by things like apparitions which is why they all seem to happen in Hispanic countries?

What miracles can withstand scientific scrutiny?

An incomplete list would start with the tilma of Juan Diego, thé healings associated with Lourdes, and the consistently similar Eucharistic miracles. There are lots and lots of others, these are just unusually well studied(and in some cases repeated) miracles.

The existence of the universe?

Exclusively associated with Catholicism?

Serves me right for replying from the raw comment feed.

Creation myths have a pretty terrible track record for scientific scrutiny.

If you’re suggesting that being unverifiable counts as “withstanding scrutiny,” then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm saying the exietence of the universe will never be answerable by science. You can't get an answers for "why is there something rather than nothing" by looking at it from within the something.

It's not even a particularly controversial observation from what I understand.

Okay, sure. I still can’t see what that’s got to do with @2rafa’s request.

If I try to sell you a bridge, and I don’t allow you to see it, if I insist that it cannot be seen at all, I’m not withstanding your scrutiny. I’m avoiding it.

still can’t see what that’s got to do with @2rafa’s request.

I do have a bad habit of replying directly from the comment feed.

To my layman understanding of miracles there has to be an established understanding of a secular mechanism which is then defied by the alleged miracle. The existence of the universe does not match this because we have no established understanding of a secular mechanism according to which the universe couldn't (or could) exist.

Can that which encompasses all ever be extraordinary?

I don't think that this is the definition of "miracle" used by the Bible, or any other religious text, written before the scientific method was established.

Can that which encompasses all ever be extraordinary?

Isn't that literally what secular humanism was trying to sell as an alternative to religion?

Isn't that literally what secular humanism was trying to sell as an alternative to religion?

I do not think "you can't explain what is literally beyond known existence" is a criticism that destroys secular humanism.

I'm saying that "existence is amazingly extraordinary" (backed by hours of hypnotic monologues by Sagan, Dawkins, or Tyson) has been literally what secular humanists were saying in order to generate a sense of awe similar to that of religious epiphanies.

Your particular argument destroys any such attempt. Even if secular humanism remains ubdeboonked, it's left barren of any higher goal.

More comments

And God said, "Let there be a Big Bang."

"Let there be several Big Bang."

according with recent Webb observations

James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements

I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace

Catholics don't believe that grace is earned (and neither do Mormons), but that doesn't negate the need for works. James would heartily disagree with you as well, but I'm already quite familiar with the tortured exegesis Protestants use to disregard the blatantly explicit condemnation of sola fide provided by James:

14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

If good works are a natural result of having faith, then why don't the devils, whom James explicitly states believe, perform good works as a result?

Bonus question on an unrelated topic, the "priesthood of all believers" that many Protestants believe in: If Simon the magician in the book of Acts believed (as it explicitly said he did) then why didn't he automatically have the same power and authority as Peter and the rest of the apostles? Ditto for women who believe (I assume you're part of a denomination that does not have female clergy).

The devils don't have 'faith' my man. Faith is not 'belief in the mere fact of God's existence'. Which is James' whole point! His letter was to a specific congregation warning them against claiming to have faith but not actually following Jesus' commands. Your comment about the devils is actually pretty revealing, it indicates that you're working under or at least influenced by this false conception of faith == propositional belief.

I'm actually pretty well convinced that the Protestant 'sola fide' and the Catholic 'works + faith' are actually the same when properly understood - Catholics will be quick to clarify that although you 'need works' you also don't strictly need works for grace/salvation (as you yourself admitted), and Protestants obviously don't deny the letter of James. If James actually clearly refuted a proper understanding of sola fide I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed. Rather, I think the two conceptions are two sides of the same coin, which just have biases that cause them to fail in opposite directions. A Protestant could take sola fide to the extreme by saying 'I'm saved so I don't need to worry about my actions' which I guess you sort of see from certain casual Christian types (although I think it's pretty rare for a Protestant to think they don't need to do good deeds). Meanwhile many Catholics take works to the extreme by saying 'I'm a good person and I go to church so I'm going to heaven' while completely missing having any relationship with God. Protestants arrived at sola fide as a reaction to ritualism and legalism in the medieval church, i.e. the failure mode of the Catholic conception, but nowadays sola fide also has some pretty blatant failure modes. The gate is narrow that leads to eternal life.

On your last question I have no idea what you're asking. The apostles have more authority because Jesus gave them more authority. Not sure what that has to do with the priesthood of all believers, whatever you meant by that.

Anyway, God Bless and I hope you find this explanation useful!

This seems to misunderstand the concept of faith. Having faith in the Protestant conception isn’t merely believing that Jesus is lord but accepting and recognizing his lordship. The devils may understand that Jesus is lord but what makes them devils is that they reject his lordship. Indeed, the story of man’s fall is about lordship. God told man do not eat from the tree of good and evil. The tree stands for the ability to determine what is in fact good and what is evil. God keeps that for himself. The devil tempts eve to instead determine for herself what is good or evil (ie a rejection of god’s lordship).

Works is a natural outcome of following the kingship of Christ.

You do know that the average protestant megachurch might be bad, but it isn't this bad, right? Both white and black megachurches might de-emphasize literal belief in Christianity but they theoretically hold to it.

I feel im missing something with your links, could you help me understand the lie, and what his own idea was in your view?

Not OP but a common story told in Protestant circles is that the Catholic Church did not want the Bible translated into the common languages of the people so that they couldn't decide for themselves what to believe (or something along those lines). Reality is a bit more complicated (as per usual) and the simplified version of this story told by Protestants these days isn't accurate, and the existence of translations of the Bible into common languages long before Luther is clear evidence of this. Even the name of Saint Jerome's 4th century translation of the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate, is evidence of this (same etymology as vulgar, i.e. in the language of the commoners). Also widespread illiteracy and the high cost of books would have kept most people from reading the Bible even if there were translations available in their language.

That said, there is a certain kernel of truth to the story that Protestants tell. Certain translators (most notably William Tyndale and his English translation) were persecuted by the church because their choices in translation undermined certain doctrines of the church, etc. So the church definitely wanted to exert control over who was allowed to translate the Bible and how they were allowed to translate it.

Martin Luther claimed that the church was intentionally making the bible difficult for local people to read in their own language. The purpose of this lie was so that he could create his own "interpretation".

Luther did not believe in free will. One "fix" he added to the bible was in Romans 3:28.

“So we hold that a man is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone.”

The previously accepted translation was:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law.”

Oh boy I love a good debate about bible translations.

Even taking what you said as true, could you point to a place where luthers translation was actually meaningfully wrong? Preferably in the direction you claim he wanted to push.

Here's a bunch of nerds discussing it in depth:

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/5593/is-it-true-that-luther-intentionally-mistranslated-romans-328

The one caveat I'll give is that most of the answers seem to be from Protestants who seem to mostly agree with Luther's decision. That said, one of the answers directly quotes Luther himself talking about the controversy over his translation, so that was quite interesting to read.

Edit: For what it's worth, members of my faith (Mormon) largely agree with the Catholic interpretation of the verse, and with Catholics about the need for works in addition to faith.

So would Bonhoeffer who famously was not Catholic.

I'm sure anybody with time can run circles around me going toe to toe about Bible translations.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

That all said, I think the broad strokes of the reformation and the early church are pretty obvious. Ironically, it's access to information (the internet) which will likely end Luther's work.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

This is pretty much what Protestants say about Catholics in reverse, though the charge is not that Catholics "worship a book" but rather they "worship a Church/the Pope" while Protestants worship Christ.

Fwiw I don't think either criticism is particularly made in good faith, but seeing Catholics and Protestants going at each other about who's really Christian is always bemusing to us nonbelievers.

Well yes Catholics would say that we have access to more, we have the Bible, but also we have the Church which was founded by Christ himself.

The claim that Protestants worship the Bible is based on the idea that they seem to hold the words in the book at a higher relevance than what they actually say, or what Jesus actually did or said.

(Snark snark)

I'm starting to develop some sympathy for this view of the Reformation. But what do you make of the Schism?

The schism maintained the concept of a Church.

The reformation basically threw out 1500 years of philosophy in favor of "vibes" and "sola scriptura" (which is the idea that all of Christian philosophy can be derived from The Bible itself and idea which is on it's face stupid due to the fact that it was only assembled 400 years after the Church was founded).

EOs and Catholics are bros. There's a reason why you see the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pope together so frequently.

...have you read any of the Reformers? I have no idea how you read Luther or Calvin and conclude that they "basically threw out 1500 years of philosophy" when they so enthusiastically read and cited the Church Fathers.

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