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The Los Angeles Dodgers, a baseball team are apparently hosting a "pride night" and have invited a group called "The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" to perform at it.
The "sisters" are of course not sisters at all, but in fact, an anti catholic group of men who dress as nuns and mock catholics.
Originally the Dodgers, a baseball team, after learning that this was essentially an anti-Catholic hate group, uninvited them. However, they recently re-invited them.
What is the fucking point of this? What possible reason does a baseball team have to indicate a sexual preference? And why does this include mocking Catholics?
God this stuff is demoralizing. Is that the point?
Where is your evidence that they are anti-Catholic? You linked to their website, but there is nothing there about Catholicism at all. That is in marked contrast to the websites of actually anti-Catholic groups.
...you don't think a panoply of wildly caricatured Catholic nuns is about Catholicism "at all?"
About? At all? Yes. But anti? No, not per se. There are a thousand reasons to dress in drag as a nun other than being anti-Catholic. To criticize certain Catholic doctrines re homosexuality. To push back on political efforts by organized religion (a big deal in 1979). Or just to be ironic, given that nuns are meant to be chaste.
And, btw, one can criticize the Catholic Church (an enormously powerful institution) without criticizing either Catholics or Catholicism.
So would you agree that blackface is not "anti-black" per se? Do you believe that caricatures of Jews are not "anti-Semitic" per se?
Er... maybe we have different ideas about what it means to be "anti-Catholic," but criticizing Catholic doctrines of homosexuality sounds paradigmatically "anti-Catholic" to me. Pushing back on political efforts by the Catholic church seems "anti-Catholic," especially given the Church's long political history.
Catholics, maybe, but Catholicism? This seems like splitting hairs incredibly fine, to the point of suggesting a motte and bailey doctrine at play. Mockery has long been a highly effective approach to criticism, and criticism is not pro-, it is anti-.
"You can keep your Catholicism, we're just going to level your Church, caricature your symbols, mock your practices--no, we're not anti-Catholic per se, don't be ridiculous!"
That seems implausible to me.
Yes. The traditional minstrel shows, as I understand it, depicted black people as stupid or foolish etc. But I don't know that that is true of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (though I have never seen the whole movie, so I might be mistaken). Nor it is true of 99% of people who dress in "blackface" nowadays, to play homage to Michael Jackson or whomever.
Then, you really do have an odd definition of "anti-Catholic." The Mormon Church used to teach that blacks were the cursed descendants of Cain and/or Ham; were those who criticized those doctrines therefore "anti-Mormon"? I don't see how.
Isn't that exactly what Martin Luther did? He criticized the Church, but not the religion.
I can see how one might assume that initially. But, if one looked at the website of the organization in question, and saw zero references to Catholicism there, I would think that one would update one's beliefs.
It seems like a pretty common belief in the history of Christianity generally, but yes--I have a hard time imagining someone discussing the racist history of Christianity in a way that is pro-Christianity. Perhaps it could be discussed neutrally, as a mere historical curiosity, but you yourself identify these transvestites as doing something to "clearly ridicule Catholicism," and ridicule is not a neutral act. So you're either being disingenuous now, or you are maintaining an untenable distinction between ridiculing something and being "anti-" that thing. And like, if that's really how you're splitting the hair, okay, but it seems a little absurd to me.
To the best of my understanding, his maintenance that there even is a difference was itself anti-Catholic, and history (specifically, the existence of Lutheranism as a competitor meme) seems to bear that out. But I'm not a theologian, so.
Except you yourself already allowed that there is not "zero references" to Catholicism at that website, owing to the caricatured Catholic nuns. This substantially increases my suspicion that you are, in fact, just trolling.
I think the interlocutor is disingenuous but extending charity one explanation could be that the interlocutor has the progressive belief that being anti-X means you hate X.
So for example Mormons teach a lot of things that are wrong. In that way, I’m anti-Mormon because I don’t think it is true. But that doesn’t mean I hate Mormons; it just means I think they are wrong.
But how I go about being anti-Mormon could suggest hatred. If I made a public display of mocking their sacred symbols with an intent to distress them then it is reasonable for me to be described as hateful towards them.
This group is clearly hateful toward Catholics.
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