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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28028 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Is The Pope Catholic? No Really

Rumors are swirling that Pope Francis will demand the resignation of Joseph Strickland, the popular conservative bishop of Tyler, Texas. He is notable as the only bishop to personally attend the protest against the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Dodgers Stadium. Meanwhile, bishops in Germany are now openly blessing same-sex couples in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. A cursory search reveals no disciplinary action against any of these bishops in response. By their fruits you will know them. In rationalist terms, this is called revealed preference.

This would be less of a problem for religions like Mormonism that allow for continuing revelation. Contrary to popular belief, the Pope is not a prophet. He can not walk out onto the balcony of St. Peter's and say, "Sorry guys, just talked to Jesus. The second coming is canceled." He would be immediately recognized as a fraud. He is bound* both by the deposit of faith and the dogmatic pronouncements of the church.

This leads to an interesting Ship of Theseus problem. The Catholic Church has had it's parishioners, officials, and doctrine replaced. Is it still the Catholic Church? It's not even just the gender stuff. Here is Pope Francis participating in a literal pagan ritual. I have seen him apologize for the residential school system, but I have yet to see him apologize for violating the first commandment.

*in theory lol

Ah, Tyler. If there was any place I’d have expected to be in the news for this…no, I still wouldn’t expect Tyler.

Let’s see what Strickland actually said…

Among the bishop’s stances have been urging Pope Francis to deny Holy Communion to former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over her support of legal abortion, accusing the Pope of a “program of undermining the Deposit of Faith,” and condemning pro-homosexuality “blasphemy” from Jesuit Father James Martin.

That second one is what makes me a little skeptical. Let’s try a site that isn’t quite so obviously partisan:

The visitation included questions about the governance of a diocesan high school, considerable staff turnover in the diocesan curia, the bishop’s welcome of a controversial former religious sister as a high school employee, and the bishop’s support for “Veritatis Splendor” — a planned Catholic residential community in the diocese, which has struggled with controversy involving its leadership’s financial administration and personal conduct. …

In July, following the apostolic visitation, Strickland released a pastoral letter to his diocese in August in which he warned Catholics about “the evil and false message that has invaded the Church, Christ’s Bride.”

Now, I’m not an expert on Catholicism. It sounds like Strickland is making the kind of moves which would be untenable even in a secular workplace. If he’s so insistent that the Catholic Church has been invaded, undermined, and otherwise corrupted, perhaps he shouldn’t be calling himself a Catholic.

Pope Francis has a bit of a habit of replacing his critics as bishops of podunk.

Edit to add: The norm in the Roman Catholic Church is to almost never dismiss a bishop. Instead bishops are required by canon law to tender their resignations for retirement at 75 and the Vatican has ten years(not a typo) to accept it. How quickly they actually do so is a pretty good indicator of how badly the current pope wants the bishop in question to leave. Dismissing a bishop rather than accepting his retirement quickly is a rarest of rare scenario and doing it for criticism of a pope or his agenda was up until recently something unprecedented in living memory. Even archbishop Chaput and cardinal Sarah, prominent conservative critics of pope Francis who embarrassed him badly, were allowed to submit their resignation for retirement the normal way, albeit accepted extremely quickly.

The visitation included questions about the governance of a diocesan high school, considerable staff turnover in the diocesan curia, the bishop’s welcome of a controversial former religious sister as a high school employee, and the bishop’s support for “Veritatis Splendor”

While above I defended the Pope in disciplining Strickland for insubordination, it seems a bit cowardly to pretend that the real issue they care about is the investigation of his governance of his diocese. (Unless his governance really is substandard compared to other dioceses, but that claim seems suspect).

Strickland is one of the most popular bishops among the faithful in the USA(and his conservatism is probably an asset here- Tyler is one of if not the most conservative locale in the country big enough to host a diocese of its own, Greg Abbott holds the signing ceremonies for bills he expects to attract protestors there because of the atmosphere of social conservatism), but every bishop has pissed off someone enough to complain about it. These complaints might be ridiculous or wrong, but I have no doubt that someone went to the Vatican upset about something Strickland did.

In general Strickland seems to have done very well on the sorts of metrics a bishop would have been judged by under JPII. It’s a major tone shift under pope Francis that overseeing a growing diocese with a vocations boom and a collection plate that’s actually rising doesn’t buy a bishop goodwill to burn- certainly this had been the previous rule, and you can expect both unpopular but effective bishops like Olson(Ft Worth) and highly competent bishops of smaller dioceses like Lafayette or Wichita to take notice.

Contrary to popular belief, Catholics don't believe the Pope to be generally infallible, only when speaking Ex Cathedra, which hasn't happened since 1950. The hierarchy of the ordained also isn't quite military-like, there's quite a bit of independence even at the level of priests. Our archdiocese is going through a restructuring process over the next year and one administrative detail is that the archbishop has requested the resignation of every priest in advance to make moving them around easier. They could refuse to resign, at which point some kind of due process kicks in, the archbishop doesn't force their resignation unilaterally.

There's also the matter of quiet disobedience in a leftist direction going unaddressed, while the people who noisily point it out like Strickland wind up having their basic competence questioned. One of the most appalling cases of this happened just recently when an archibishop gave a prominent Muslim the Eucharist.

There is serious schism potential at the moment.

Right, but there’s a lot of space between “is infallible” and “should not be publicly contradicted.”

Strickland is catapulting his own career by criticizing his superiors. That’s political suicide even before the theological questions come in.

Political suicide, yes, but this kind of thing had happened before and it was generally understood what popes would do. Dismissing a bishop for criticism of a pope was not thought to be an option on the table.

It’s not?

A bishop directly challenging the pope—or claiming his office—is the kind of thing that led to excommunications.

The usual playbook for a bad/rogue bishop who is too young to just wait until retirement is to assign a coadjutor(bishop with equal rights). Removing a bishop from office is the sort of thing that under the previous two popes simply would not have happened without, like, being arrested for sex abuse or something. It wasn’t used for insubordination.

Strickland is being removed because he’s a popular American from podunk AND because the current pope is very much a norm violator with the use of the powers of office. Other more prominent bishops(Chaput, notably) who made harsh accusations against the pope were left in place until their mandatory retirement age.

A career in the priesthood where you stay silent about corruption in the Church isn't a career worth having.

He’s not a corruption whistleblower, he accused the pope of heresy.

Now the current pope has a lot of corruption scandals he could be accused of, but Strickland has not been a whistleblower in that regard(and is probably not much better informed in that matter than an interested layman; the Vatican leaks like a sieve but ordinary bishops of minor dioceses aren’t directly exposed to the majority of the shady stuff).

"Corruption in the church" is not a narrow legal term, and should not be interpreted that way. The church has a mission, and people intentionally compromising that mission for their own personal aggrandizement or satisfaction is a serious problem. The higher they are in the hierarchy, the worse the problem becomes.

The Pope promulgating heresy, if that is indeed what he is doing, is more than sufficiently shady to be worth denouncing.

Contrary to popular belief, Catholics don't believe the Pope to be generally infallible, only when speaking Ex Cathedra, which hasn't happened since 1950.

The Pope is only infallible when speaking Ex Cathedra. But in addition to that, a core Catholic doctrine is that the Pope is protected by from the Holy Spirit from teaching heresy, thus a Pope will not teach something that directly contradict holy scripture or established doctrines of faith. Michael Lofton has a good podcast on this issue.

Thus there is a big difference between accusing the Pope of "making imprudent statements that could be easily misinterpreted as heresy" and actually claiming the Pope taught heresy. The latter is a much worse charge for a Bishop to make, as it lays the groundwork for schism.

Pope Honorius was actually convicted of heresy and the Church kept going.

a Pope will not teach something that directly contradict holy scripture or established doctrines of faith.

This is a teaching of the church, but as far as I can tell it has never been infallibility defined. If a pope were to contradict a dogma, even in his magisterium, the dogma wins and the non-infallible teaching is falsified.

What I find particularly interesting is that until this happens, faithful Catholics are still bound to “adhere with religious submission of will and intellect” to the non-infallible teaching. Even if Michael Lofton secretly believes in his heart of hearts that it’s only a matter of time before Francis steps over the line, he’s not supposed to tell you that.

I just heard about this, I have no idea of the context, and I imagine there is a metric ton of insider politics going on.

But taking everything at surface level: the thing is, the pope is the boss of you - and that applies as much to the conservatives as the liberals. If the Germans are fucking around (sigh) they're in the wrong. But equally so is Bishop Strickland if he's saying the pope isn't the pope or something.

He can't walk off and set up his own alternate, traditional diocese. I don't know if that's what he is doing, or what is going on, but the pope - until the synod of bishops or somebody agrees that he's not - is the pope. The Lefebvrites are just as much in schism as the WomenPriests. And the thing with a lot of the 'we're the orthodox remnant' splinters is that they often go off the rails to be every bit as liberal, or even more so, than the original protest.

Look at the Dutch Old Catholics - split off over papal infallibility, over the centuries have moved to be functionally Protestant.

The Lefebvrites are just as much in schism as the WomenPriests.

Assuming you’re talking about the mainstream SSPX, this is not actually currently true although a minority opinion holds it to have been so from 1988-2009. Their excommunications have been explicitly revoked with no comment on initial validity(in other words, they got what they wanted), their priests have official permissions to operate, and their seminaries are inspected and accredited by the Vatican. ‘Not in full communion’ is Vatican bureaucrat-speak for ‘they’re mavericks but not currently causing a problem’, not an accusation of schism.

The SSPX were making moves towards a rapprochement in Benedict's time, but I thought that they got skittish and moved back again? I'd be very glad to hear that they came back into the fold, because I don't think the basic motivations are wrong - but it can't just be "we're doing it the old way because we like it like that", there has to be real reverence and understanding underpinning it.

I suppose I'm burned because I've seen too many of the liberal Protestant liturgical denominations quite happy to play 'dress-up' with traditional vestments and rubrics while the doctrine goes with the Zeitgeist every step of the way.

The SSPX are more reproached than they have been at any point since 1988. The rhetoric towards the person of the current pope does not actually change that.

He can't walk off and set up his own alternate, traditional diocese.

Why not? There have been multiple competing Popes at the same time before.

Antipope 2023.

Antibishops are just schismatics or indeed heretics. If he wants to be one more Protestant splinter, fine. But I don't get that impression of Strickland, and I hope this settles down. You can't just as good as call the pope a heretic and not expect to get a smack on the nose for it.

It should be noted that he is firing Bishop Strickland for insubordination -- Strickland accused Pope Francis of having a program to undermine the deposit of faith, Strickland signed on to a letter that called Pope Francis a heretic, and then when Strickland was initially subject to a disciplinary investigation he doubled-down rather than apologizing. Catholic bishops are not allowed to criticize the Pope that way, calling the Pope a heretic undermines people's faith. Any boss in the world would fire a subordinate for such a behavior.

It is true though, that the Pope does seem excessively lenient toward the German bishops. Part of this may be that German bishops have been a bit more subtle in not directly picking a fight with the Vatican.

Overall, Francis has not actually betrayed or revoked the deposit of faith or Church dogma. In his own writings, he has upheld Church teaching on the disordered nature of homosexual, the invalidity of "gay marriage", and the impossibility of changing one's sex/gender.

It is true that in more informal settings he has made ambiguous statements that seem to wink at a more progressive, or even heretical view on key issues. Also, I do agree that his choices of which disciplinary battles to fight do reveal a progressive bent. The most charitable explanation is that he is trying to put a spin on things that the progressive media will find palatable, and thus give the Church more cover. The least charitable explanation is that he wants to change the Church teaching, but doesn't want to boil the frog too quickly so he walks right up tot he line of heresy without crossing it. Or for believers, he walks up to the line but cannot cross it because the Holy Spirit is still protecting the office of the Pope.

he has made ambiguous statements that seem to wink at a more progressive

I was about to make a comment about the pope because of recent politics and statements, apparently he warned against the "little adolphs" of the world, referring to a politician running for president in Argentina. He's more than winking progressive, he's a left-wing politician.

Strickland signed on to a letter that called Pope Francis a heretic.

This one? The one that says the plain meaning of Francis’s statement in Desiderio Desideravi:

”The world still does not know it, but everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:9). To be admitted to the feast all that is required is the wedding garment of faith which comes from the hearing of his Word (cf. Ro 10:17).”

contradicts canon XI of session XIII of The Council of Trent:

”CANON XI.-lf any one saith, that faith alone is a sufficient preparation for receiving the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist; let him be anathema. And for fear lest so great a sacrament may be received unworthily, and so unto death and condemnation, this holy Synod ordains and declares, that sacramental confession, when a confessor may be had, is of necessity to be made beforehand, by those whose conscience is burthened with mortal sin, how contrite even soever they may think themselves. But if any one shall presume to teach, preach, or obstinately to assert, or even in public disputation to defend the contrary, he shall be thereupon excommunicated.”

because yeah, it does. Actually, forget “is the pope catholic?” Can the pope read? I’ve seen some bad interpretations of Revelation, but this one might take the cake. Here’s Revelation 19:9 in context:

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. 7 Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; 8 it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. 9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

It’s literally the opposite of what Pope Francis was saying. What the actual fuck?

”The world still does not know it, but everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:9). To be admitted to the feast all that is required is the wedding garment of faith which comes from the hearing of his Word (cf. Ro 10:17).”

The charitable interpretation of is that "wearing the wedding garment of faith" of course entails the things that faith in Christ and faith in the Catholic Church entails, that it entails righteous deeds, following Church discipline, purification, repentance, etc. It seems silly to require the Pope to explicitly say everything that faith entails every single time he talks of the importance of faith. Certainly Saint Paul did not so do. And yes, a bishop is required to interpret fellow Catholics charitably and only make accusations of heresy as a last recourse.

Now, in context, is this statement easy to misinterpret? Yes. Did Pope Francis purposely state things in an ambiguous way to try to nudge bishops into being less strict about denying communion? Perhaps. But as a bishop, Strickland needs to interpret the letter charitably and limit is criticism to warning about possible misinterpretations of the letter -- he should not straight accuse the Pope of teaching heresy. If you care, you can listen to a more thorough analysis of these letters from Michael Lofton.

The charitable interpretation of is that "wearing the wedding garment of faith" of course entails the things that faith in Christ and faith in the Catholic Church entails, that it entails righteous deeds, following Church discipline, purification, repentance, etc.

That's more charity than the Salvation Army provides in a year, though.

It is true though, that the Pope does seem excessively lenient toward the German bishops. Part of this may be that German bishops have been a bit more subtle in not directly picking a fight with the Vatican.

This is because the German bishops are unpopular among the faithful, and Strickland is very popular among the faithful. Pope Francis is a corrupt argentine with declining approval numbers and an increasing dependence on even more corrupt, incompetent, and unpopular figures, whose initiatives have largely failed and whose opponents have managed to convince the mid-rankers that putting fringe groups in charge would be a significant improvement.

It’s not a mystery why he lashes out at popular conservatives while ignoring elderly, out of touch liberals.

On 'the gay stuff', he's orthodox. The whole "who am I to judge?" line was cherrypicked out of a discussion with the press on board the papal plane about a specific case.

He's much more lenient when it comes to things like divorce and remarriage, because he has a very strong view of the pastoral role (to find and bring back the lost sheep rather than banging the rule-book on the table).

Benedict was 'my' pope rather than Francis, I think he's made some ill-judged comments and has moved in some ways that are not great. But he's the pope.

He's a South American Jesuit, yeah he's going to lean 'progressive'.

Per Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, Christians are allowed to eat meat that has been sacrificed as an offering to pagan idols, so I think there's more latitude than you would expect on engagement with pagans. The rationale being, "we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God" and so the pagan worship has no power, but it should not be indulged if it emboldens those with a "weak conscience."

Of course you can say that the Pope is emboldening those with a weak conscience, and of course that's a bigger deal than the actual pagan ceremony.

There are two contradictory interpretations of the pagan gods and animistic spirits in the Abrahamic religions. One interpretation sees them as inert wood and stone having no real existence. The other sees them as actual demons who have power in this world and have tricked men into worshipping them as gods.

I understand that official Catholic teaching is the former, rather than the latter. Demons can tempt people, but actual magic and witchcraft are just superstitions.

The Catholic Church teaches the existence of demons, of course. This includes the note that all demons were themselves created good, but by their own action became evil, and that it is outside the limits of doctrine to determine the number of demons or their power.

The relation of demons to so-called pagan gods is unclear. The idea that gods or spirits are all just demons (or potentially angels or other incorporeal beings created by God which may remain good, and if so are presumably greatly grieved by the folly of men worshipping them) is batted around sometimes.

There's that intriguing passage in Galatians 4 (see 4:3 and 4:9) where Paul describes the believers as having been previously enslaved by the 'elemental spirits of the universe' - the stoicheion tou kosmou - before being liberated by Christ. What are these? Demons? Spirits? Pagan gods? In Spe Salvi Benedict XVI spoke of them as if they're synonymous with 'the laws of matter and evolution', perhaps seeing them as a personification of physical law, or of what an atheistic cosmos would be like, but that seems a little tenuous for the original first century context.

At any rate, there are a range of plausible Christian views on demons or spirits. One traditional position, of course, has been that idols aren't real and don't do anything - that's in 1 Corinthians with food sacrificed to idols, that's the whole point of Bel and the Dragon, that's in Isaiah (41:29, 42:17, etc.). But of course the fact that an idol is just mute wood or metal does not rule out the possibility of other incorporeal beings, like demons.

Yes, but under Catholic teaching, can demons actually influence the physical world? Or do they just lead men astray?

Yes, within limits demons can influence the physical world within catholic teaching. Possession is taught to be real and demons can interact directly with physical objects just like unfallen angels.

To give a charitable interpretation to what Pope Francis is doing at that "pagan ritual" (better Catholics here please correct me).

The Catholics basically believe that other religions of the world might be somewhat directionally correct, but imperfect. This is what allowed The Church to integrate so many "pagan" practices (like traditions around Christmas) into the religion, and was a major contributor to its spread. So a Catholic encountering some pagans in the 5th century or whatever might say "well, yes, I can see that you are trying to approach and understand God, but you haven't gotten in quite right. God revealed something to you here, maybe, but we've discovered or had revealed to us a lot more; you are in fact worshipping the same God, and there might be something useful here, but we're a lot further along in our understanding. You should convert to Catholicism and we'll share what we've learned with you."

Basically Pope Francis is watching this ceremony the way I might watch my child explain an idea about how to make a racecar. I'm happy that he's trying to think through the problem, and I don't want to discourage him, so I'll entertain it; but my actual hope is that someday he grows up.

I don't know I have my gripes with Pope Francis (leave the latin mass alone); him watching some native american dance thing is pretty low on the list.

I'm happy that he's trying to think through the problem, and I don't want to discourage him, so I'll entertain it; but my actual hope is that someday he grows up.

Hell, he might grow up, earn a degree in mechanical engineering, and...build racecars.

Indeed! At least thats what the Irish did.

Here is Pope Francis participating in a literal pagan ritual.

Meh, he's practically falling asleep in his chair. I invite any readers to watch the video and decide if it really is participation in a pagan ritual.

Weren't there centuries of sexually active Machiavellian politician popes back in the day? It's pretty likely that the papacy is actually more pure in terms of living up to people's ideas of its purity nowadays than it has been on average during its overall history.

Sure, and then there was the Protestant Reformation and centuries of religious wars. Eventually 1/3rd of the population of Germany died in the Thirty Years War.

But it gets worse. The Protestant Reformation led to the Protestant work ethic and a large increase in surplus capital. That caused the Industrial Revolution which in turn triggered the unprecedented increase in material wealth we are enjoying now. With sufficient wealth, society was free to develop feminism and shortly afterwards came the demographic transition. Our species now awaits a barren childless heat death if AI doesn't kill us first. And all because some selfish Medieval popes didn't take their religion seriously.

So let's not have Francis head down the path of the Medieval popes. It saves us all lot of trouble in the long run.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the College Football realignment.

With sufficient wealth, society was free to develop feminism and shortly afterwards came the demographic transition. Our species now awaits a barren childless heat death if AI doesn't kill us first.

I'm not sure if "wealth" per se is the reason we developed feminism. I'm more of a fan of the idea that we whittled away at the traditional role of women with labor-saving technologies in the house, and separated sex from most of its consequences with birth control, contraception and antibiotics, and these two facts combined at a certain point in history to create a class of upper class women trying to fill the traditional role with almost nothing meaningful or challenging to do day after day (which was thus incredibly unsatisfying), and little friction to them experimenting with very different roles that might actually meaningfully contribute to society in the day-to-day.

Feminism wasn't inevitable after those technological and medical developments, but it does seem like the vast majority of cultures which come into contact with them end up having an expanded role for women in the public sphere and lower birth rates.

I'm curious about what makes your life a living hell these days. I went through a similar "fun believing period" (not as intense as yours) that was very rich and rewarding. And losing that life was painful. But I guess now I see it partly as withdrawl from a "spiritual superstimulus".

I'm sure you've heard the arguments that God is perfectly shaped to fill the hole in our hearts because the memes evolved to. Kind of like how porn is optimized, now that I think of it. In any case, after a while I re-equilibriated emotionally, and now moral non-realism is just priced in, and doesn't depress me any more than say, being mortal and fallible does. Plus, I don't have to hear terrible philosophical arguments from people I otherwise respect as often.

The current papacy has certainly been a scandal and stumbling block, just as Peter was described in Matthew 16:23. For what it's worth, the death penalty has not been declared intrinsically evil, which would be a break with tradition. The pope is making a binding (on Catholics) prudential judgement, which is not considered free from error. I could advise you to read Ed Feser's blog posts on the topic, or read An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by St. John Henry Newman, but it's the perception of internal inconsistencies that is the problem.

I try to maintain the same attitude towards the Pope as a medieval peasant. I mostly ignore his existence save to pray for him in the abstract. He may be the worst scoundrel or the most pious saint. As long as he doesn't issue any papal bulls that affect me I don't care. My local bishop matters more in my day to day life (and yes, bishops are often terrible too. May God preserve His Church.)

What is your relationship with God like? What was it like when you were Catholic? Did you read the Bible, pray, read the spiritual classics? Were you prepared for a desolation, or is this totally surprising to you?

help me

Sounds like the news of the death of god has finally reached you - I'd recommend giving Nietzsche a read if you're looking for a solution to that kind of problem.

I love Nietzsche, and maybe I missed the point, but on dealing with the death of god it seemed like he mostly said "Wouldn't it be awesome if someone came along and gave us new values?". Kind of like "my plan is to come up with a plan".

How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.

I'm not arrogant enough to claim a perfect understanding of Nietzsche, but my interpretation of his writing was that he was trying to encourage the creation of new values, not just waiting for God 2.0(with a new hat!) to show up.

Thanks for quoting, yes that's most of what I was referring to. But I maintain my characterization of what he said. I think it's pretty clear that he doesn't know how to create new values, and is just saying it would be great if we could.

The oldest institution was no match for the long march through the institutions. Of course, there's a millenium-old solution for those Catholics who care -- schism.

for those Catholics who care

So far I've resisted the urge to accuse people of being crypto-Protestants. But if some "Catholic" faction splits over this, I'm welcoming them to the Protestant brotherhood. Sedevacantists are Protestants in denial in my opinion.

It’s worth noting that the oldest institution in the world is probably the Zoroastrian priesthood or the clan of Confucius. Nitpick, I know.

The oldest institution in the world might be the one who built Stonehenge.

You'll find that they matter about as much as the Zoroastrian priesthood.

If we are to reach for institutions that are lost to history (at least continuity-wise), surely we can reach farther back for the Sumerian city-states? We even have written history from this.

There's just hopping to the other side of the old schism.

With the pope losing legitimacy in the eyes of the conservative catholics, presumably papal primacy is out the window, what's separating them still?

The teachings on original sin are a little bit different?

filioque? I would be surprised if the average catholic was aware of that particular controversy.

There's precedent for western-rite orthodoxy, albeit limited.

Edit: And how much are those disagreements worth against direct apostolic succession connecting you to your savior? You really only have two options for that, and if you've already ruled out catholicism, you're kinda down to one.

Uberconservative Catholics see Eastern Orthodox moral teaching as excessively lax, for one thing.

Is this about divorce (the relevant difference here is not actually moral but ontological; the official Catholic line being that divorce is impossible)? About economia in general? Something else? I don't think there are any major differences in moral teaching, so this has got to be about how the teaching is applied, but that comparison doesn't seem to come out with Catholicism-as-actually-practiced (as opposed to in theory) being notably stricter.

So I am kind of confused by this and would like you to elaborate.

The general view of economia, divorce, and contraception(yes the Eastern Orthodox Church is officially more squishy than in favor, but the squishyness is actually more loathsome to very conservative Catholics than outright support and in practice the vast majority of orthodox clergy will allow married couples to use contraception for any reason).

Moral teaching regarding what, if I may ask? I swear it's not a polemic question, I honestly know nothing about this matter.

The Orthodox are squishier than the Catholics about contraceptive use by married couples (although they are still basically against it). From an uberconservative Catholic perspective, married priests are evidence of lax sexual morality as well.

As opposed to what the current pope is pushing?

Yes.

The problem with that is that institutional strength is one of the things that lets you resist modernity. The Catholics have resisted much more effectively than smaller communions. The Church of England. The Evangelical Church in Germany. The various Lutheran churches in Scandinavia. The Presbyterians. The Methodists. I'm not denying that there are genuinely faithful people in all those churches, and those people are much to be honoured, but institutionally they have all put up measurably less of a fight than the Roman Catholic Church.

Of course, there are evangelical churches, and perhaps more importantly, churches in the Global South, but I think the former are more entrapped by a politics, and the latter... well, as time goes by the South becomes more and more like the North.

The advice I would give other Christians is to not put your faith in institutions or in politics. The institution won't save you, and schisming to found a new institution also won't save you. The logic of worldly power isn't going to help you here - on the contrary, that logic seems to be on the side of your enemies. But then, Christianity was always about believing in something hopeless and surprising, that amid all the failure and heresy and the domination of the Ruler of This World, God is doing something in secret, and he will draw impossible triumph out of the very moment of failure.

My advice to Christians is to pray more, and be right with God. Nothing else matters.

It’s not the large institution. It’s specifically the hierarchy and the ability to throw out heretics.

Hierarchy defines both Orthodox and Catholic Christian faith. You obey the person above you. A priest must follow the directions of his Bishop. The Bishop must obey the Archbishop. The Archbishop must obey the pope. The rank above chooses the ranks below more or less. This means that you’d have to obey your authorities for decades to get into a position to go rogue. A priest who teaches abortion is okay will be removed by the bishop and on up the line. So unless you’re willing to keep absolutely silent on a teaching for decades, you can’t rise up the ranks.

Most Protestants don’t really have this. If you want to be a Pastor in a denomination, go to the proper seminary and open a church. Then you can teach anything you please. And any doctrine that the church believes is voted on by pastors. Which offers no protection at all. If a woke pastor decided to vote for gay pastors, it’s only down to getting enough people to vote yes.

The other failsafe is excommunication and anathema. Which is to say that if you’re teaching or doing something bad enough, they’ll throw you out. You’re no longer a member until you repent, confess and then you must never do that again.

Protestantism lacks this. There’s no real procedure for dealing with open heresy. The only power that can be brought in force is the ordinary person leaving.

On the other side of things, the weakness of Catholicism is that if the hierarchy is captured, there is no recourse against that.

Protestantism doesn't have a massive organisation to crack down on dissidents, but this also means that Protestantism can't crack down on correct dissidents. It's hard to shut down open heresy, but it's also hard to shut down open orthodoxy, which is a very relevant concern if you expect institutions to be corrupted. That does not seem an unreasonable fear.

Yeah. Catholicism's failure mode is centralized hucksterism: selling indulgences. Protestantism's failure mode is distributed hucksterism: some dude opens up a Church of the Revered Huckster and starts fleecing the hell out of people.

The Bishop must obey the Archbishop.

That’s not strictly true; the archbishop has a few powers over suffragan bishops, but only a few- he maintains a local appeals court and resolves a small number of calendar issues(from a set list of options) and has the right to be an acting successor to a suffragan bishop until the pope appoints one. But they don’t have the power to command their juniors, hence why this is coming from the Vatican and not the archdiocese of San Antonio.

It is not like the church in Rome had any particular delay in their struggles with modernism compared with prots. While the prots in America were considering the super denomination, the Roman Catholics were dealing with liberation theology.

These two points directly contradict one another.

Ah, I should have made the distinction more clear. I think they only contradict each other if you conflate sociological and theological concerns. Sociologically speaking, strong institutions are necessary to resist the pressure of modernity. Theologically speaking, the point I'm making is that the churches might all succumb to modernity - much as the prophets succumbed and were killed and persecuted - but that God might still draw victory out of it, much as he drew victory out of the death of his Son.

You need strong institutions in order to win a political or social battle, as it were. But I'd content that Christianity ought to recast the importance of winning such battles. The purpose of Christian life, as it were, is to be crucified with Christ. It is to share in his death so that we may share in his life. Romans 6:5-11. It is, in a way, to choose to be defeated along with Christ.

But one of the things that come along with being a sacramental Christian is that you kind of need the institution of the Church, because that's the way you get the sacraments. You can't baptize yourself, much as John Smyth tried.

Certainly, the sacraments are essential. But - and perhaps this is somewhere I depart from Catholicism - I'm not convinced that you need the entire institutional hierarchy to have the sacraments. Even for the most high church Catholic, all you need is a priest, and even then, laypeople can perform sacraments in extremis, most notably baptism. Sacraments may imply some minimal level of organisation, but they don't take you all the way to the pope handing down decrees from the Vatican, and neither do they imply that should a heretic (God forbid) sit on Peter's throne, everything is doomed.

Just look at the United Methodist Church.

I was thinking more the Great Schism.

Hence "millennium-old solution." I was just pointing out the United Methodist Church recently has had their own schism (Global Methodist Church) over similar issues the Catholic church currently has. Same-sex relationships is a common faultline in religion or even politics today.

Springs to mind because I'm confirmed in both churches (due to my parents).

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