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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
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.
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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.
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