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 -
To understand the RCC scandals and their handling fully, you need to understand that the "environment of the late twentieth century RCC" was environment of severe priest shortage.
In developed world, class of dirt poor pious peasantry, where becoming badly paid celibate priest was major win for the whole family, died out. All people how had much better options, and the church was unable/unwilling to make priest career more attractive.
The alternative to bad priest was often no priest at all, and since in Catholicism priests are indispensable for sacraments, tough choices had to be made.
The abuse scandal peaked before the priest shortage was manifested and began to improve when the priest shortage was getting rapidly worse.
The church also doesn’t rely on dirt poor peasants becoming priests, including in places where there’s large populations of impoverished Catholic peasants(latin America, parts of Africa and SE Asia). The priesthood is, overwhelmingly, a later son career for middle class-ish families in towns or suburbs. The US church hit peak seminarian, anywhere ever, in the long fifties, and there were no Catholic peasants to recruit from(well, there were a few Cajuns and tejanos. But the US peasant population was overwhelmingly Protestant and Catholic peasant populations didn’t punch above their weight). What the US church had to recruit from in the long fifties was very large families of urban wage laborers and declining seminarians was mostly due to declining fertility and Vatican II.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link