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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?
I've believed for some time that Christianity is dead. There are Christian ideas that are floating around and are very strong. But where are the zealots for Christianity itself? Hardmode: where are the zealots outside Sub-Saharan Africa (where the church is not so LGBT-friendly).
If they tried this sort of thing with Islam, they'd be dealt with pretty quickly. The followers of Allah do not tolerate open insults.
If Christians typically went out and executed people for mocking Christ, that would indicate that Christianity is dead.
Christianity was pretty strong in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, when enormous numbers of people were being killed or tortured in religious wars (between Christians or with other faiths). What would happen if the Sisters showed up in pre-18th century Europe? They'd be lucky to reach prison alive.
The more people care about something, the stronger it is.
Well it's an interesting question -- is there any sort of intrinsic character to Christianity, or is 'Christianity' whatever people do while declaring themselves 'Christian'?
Can a group like Antifa call themselves "The Anti-Bad Guy Squad" and thereby make all their actions good?
There are so many ways you can interpret the Bible that any action can be defended as Christian. You'd think idolatry and polytheism would be off-limits but my former Catholic church decided to celebrate the Indian festival of Divali, for no comprehensible reason other than that there were a fair few Indians around. Christians can go all the way from pacifism to holy war, tolerance or destruction of evil (however it's defined).
Or, Christianity is defined by the Orthodox Church, which also limits how the Bible is to be interpreted, and all else is Christian heresy.
We are coming at this from different perspectives and common ground seems unlikely.
Thanks for the conversation.
The Orthodox Church (Roman or Eastern?) also took active part in quite a lot of that killing and torturing that RandomRanger mentioned above, though. If His Holiness the Bishop of Rome is the one who decides who does and does not count as a Christian, for example, I don't think you then get to claim that Innocent III o Julius II does not qualify as one.
Eastern.
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