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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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You are correct that I did not see the gap. But, is the video actually about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? I think I see one "nun" in the background watching but I don't see any participating in the performance. And 2) what exactly is anti-Catholic about sexualizing Jesus? If I said, "I want to fuck Jesus," I am sure that some Catholics would be offended. But how is that statement anti-Catholic? As opposed to expressing an idea that disagrees with Catholic doctrine?

  • -22

You really think that statement is a simple theological disagreement? It doesn't just disagree with Catholic doctrine, it mocks it. This is obvious.

if so, so what? How does "mocking" an idea somehow become more "anti-Catholic" than criticizing it? And, tell me, what exactly does "anti-Catholic" mean? Surely, if it is objectionable, then it must mean something more than mocking ideas; it must mean saying something negative about people. That is what anti-Semitism is, right? It is not simply a statement that certain doctrines of Judaism are wrong; it is a statement that something is wrong with Jewish people. Ditto re racist statements, and homophobic statements, and sexist statements, etc.

  • -17

Is smearing bacon on a Quran islamophobic?

How does "mocking" an idea somehow become more "anti-Catholic" than criticizing it? And, tell me, what exactly does "anti-Catholic" mean? Surely, if it is objectionable, then it must mean something more than mocking ideas; it must mean saying something negative about people.

By your reasoning here, an outright racial slur is not anti-(a race).

I don't understand. Isn't a racial slur saying something negative about people? That is certainly my understanding.

A racial slur is negative in the same way that mocking is saying something negative. I don't know a coherent standard for "saying something negative" that would let you count one and not the other.

You are forgetting the issue of saying something negative about an idea versus saying something negative about people.

I'm going down the list of slurs in my head, and can't think of a single one that says a specific negative thing about anybody. They're just another way if saying someone is black/Jewish/gay/etc.

Clearly. But he's the one making the argumetnt that you have to say something explicitly negative about a group for it to be considered offensive, so by his logic it should not be offensive.

? If they aren't negative, then what makes them slurs?

Since you demand that others point to a specific negative thing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are saying about Catholics/Catholicism, the burden should be on you to point how these slurs say anything negative about each group.

The only thing that seems to make something a slur, is whether or not a particular group chooses to take offense. Black people constantly refer to each other with the word that is supposedly a slur, so it's clearly nothing inherent to the word itself.

No, "nigger" and "nigga" are not the same words. And if you think that terms like nigger, or kike, or mick, or wop, were not intended as slurs, we apparently live in different universes.

More comments

Surely, if it is objectionable, then it must mean something more than mocking ideas; it must mean saying something negative about people. That is what anti-Semitism is, right? It is not simply a statement that certain doctrines of Judaism are wrong; it is a statement that something is wrong with Jewish people.

There are certain beliefs and practices so strongly tied to a group's identity that to mock the belief/practice and to mock the group of people is one and the same.

And is this one of those cases? Because, again, all they seem to do is dress as nuns.

The original usage of "anti catholic" in this thread referred simply to a group created solely to mock a group of Catholics. This is hardly pro-Catholic, is it? I think you are attempting to make the phrase "anti Catholic" both stronger and more specific than it really is in order to say that that usage of the phrase was incorrect.

But surely the original claim was that the group's "anti-Catholicism" was extreme enough that there is something improper about the Dodgers honoring them for their charitable work.* If the claim is merely that they make fun of nuns, then who cares?

*You refer to them as "a group created solely to mock a group of Catholics." That might have been the original intent 44 years ago, but it is pretty clearly not what the organization is about now, judging by the evidence on their website. And of course they are being honored for their current work, not for whatever they were doing more than four decades ago.

Surely if the point was to honor them for their charitable work, there are much more deserving recipients of that honor. In essence a large, nominally red-tribe organization is going out of its way to honor an unambiguously deep blue tribe, and arguably quite toxic and political, organization. Given that other organizations are better at charity work etc., the toxicity of their choice seems to be rather the point.

  1. This is the 10th or so Pride Night that the Dodgers have held, so I am sure they are running a bit low on potential recipients.

  2. I sincerely doubt that the team views the world in terms of tribes.

  3. How do you know that other organizations are better at charity work in the LGBTQ community?

  4. As noted several times, there seems to be no evidence that they take any political stands at all. So how are they arguably a political organization?

But being "worse" is a claim about degree, not about kind.

Because it's an idea that disagrees with Catholic doctrine and not only is it expressed in a very rude and aggressive way, but that aspect is tied to why you'd want to say it in the first place. There's a reason why it would be nothing more than a weak joke to say "I find Jesus sexually attractive", and why nobody would actually say that.

I don't for one moment buy that a man pole dancing on a crucifix is just a disagreement with doctrine. The whole reason for doing it is that Catholics don't like them doing it. I'm not even sure what doctrine they're purportedly expressing.

I'm not even sure what doctrine they're purportedly expressing.

  1. If you don't know what they are trying to say, then how are you so sure it is anti-Catholic

  2. Why anti-Catholic, as opposed to anti-Protestant or anti-Eastern Orthodox?

  3. Most importantly, let's not forget that there is no reason to think that the performance is actually by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The evidence therefor seems to be zero.

  • -10

If you don't know what they are trying to say, then how are you so sure it is anti-Catholic

I know what they are trying to say, but what they are trying to say doesn't include nontrivial objections to doctrine.

Why anti-Catholic, as opposed to anti-Protestant or anti-Eastern Orthodox?

Assuming the "nuns" are involved, nuns are associated in the popular consciousness with Catholics. It doesn't matter for these purposes that some other groups also have nuns.

what they are trying to say doesn't include nontrivial objections to doctrine.

Can you link to the group commenting on any doctrine, trivial or otherwise?

Assuming the "nuns" are involved

I was referring to the linked video of the pole dancing, which does not include nuns.

Can you link to the group commenting on any doctrine, trivial or otherwise?

To be fair, they are trivially commenting on doctrine, so I shouldn't have said that they're not commenting on doctrine at all. "Catholics think it's bad to show nuns and Jesus in a sexual context" is, technically a doctrine, and by deliberately doing that anyway, they are trivially commenting that they disagree with it. I wouldn't count that, of course, as nontrivially commenting on it.

what they are trying to say doesn't include nontrivial objections to doctrine.

Can you link to the group commenting on any doctrine, trivial or otherwise?

I don't believe they are commenting on doctrine, so of course I can't link to examples of them doing what I just said they aren't doing.

You can mock X and be anti-X without commenting on X's doctrine at all.

If you don't know what they are trying to say, then how are you so sure it is anti-Catholic

Jiro does know what they're trying to say; they're trying to mock Catholics. The point was not "the meaning to this behavior is unclear" but rather "the meaning to this behavior would be unclear were your point correct".

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It is one of the many small differences between Protestants and Catholics. Raised Protestant, I was told those evil Catholics were wrong to have a crucifix (instead of just a cross) because Jesus was no longer on the cross.

deleted

As a Calvinist, I can confirm that's probably more accurate.

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