This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Pope Francis has announced that priests are now allowed to bless same sex couples as long as it is not done in a way that implies that it's a ceremony or equivalent to a marriage. I haven't read the full document and the Vatican press release is confusing (like a lot of what this Pope does) but it seems to be trying to thread the needle of blessing gay couples but not their "union".
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2023-12/fiducia-supplicans-doctrine-faith-blessing-irregular-couples.html
Of course that distinction is subtle and the mainstream media mostly appears to be either misunderstanding it or intentionally misrepresenting it as allowing the blessing of the union itself. ABC went with the headline:
While he inserted a lot of caveats so that people will not interpret this as accepting gay couples and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, my prediction is that lay people will just walk away with the headline that the Church has got with the times and is finally ok with gay marriage. A lot of the more liberal clergy will probably spread that view as well, even if they use language that could kind of technically be considered orthodox if you squint.
It reminds me of what CS Lewis wrote about how in each age we warn people the most about the errors they are least likely to commit. So in a time when most Catholics are already essentially apostates the Pope is doing his best to guard against zealotry and intolerance. It's hard for me to believe that this will lead to anything good for the Church. The future is clearly in the more conservative faction with large, churchgoing families. A move like this will discourage them but do nothing to bring in more liberals who will applaud from a distance but aren't going to start attending Mass.
As a disinterested atheist, it seems pretty clear to me that the Vatican is just trying to slow-walk gay marriage. I'm sure they'll do it bit by bit, with just enough continuation between each change to avoid getting called out too heavily, but the end result will be rainbow flags in St Peter's Basilica.
I wonder at what point all those young, high-TFR, head-covering, Latin Mass-enjoying traditionalist Catholics I hear so much about just straight up break away from the church? Would they just be another protestant denomination at that point? Can they appoint their own Pope? Or get one of their own elected to the Papacy?
This Reddit thread is hilarious. A handful of posters acknowledging what this is, another handful criticising the Vatican for ambiguity (as if this wasn't part of the plan) and another group saying that it doesn't technically involve blessing gay unions so there's nothing to see here.
My prediction would be that Sedevacantism and similar movements continue to grow. As far as what the long term future of such movements is, I don't know.
My impression is that Eastern Orthodoxy is becoming a home for such people more than sedevacantism. Sedes are rare but noisy, similar to the dissident right.
The closest numbers I've seen is that the SSPX has about ten times as many worshippers on an average Sunday as every sedevacantist group combined- but in the anglosphere the numbers might be close to even between the two, and the SSPX is a decent plurality but still a minority of global traditionalists.
Roughly speaking, there's three big homegrown groups of traditional Catholics(what IRL tradcaths call themselves)- France, the USA, and Brazil, in roughly that order of size. Germany, the Phillippines, Ukraine, Mexico, etc have smaller groups that still exist and can periodically be notable, but those, and their suburbs like Canada and Belgium, are the big three. Sedevacantists are mostly a US thing, and the IRL ones are significantly likelier to tend towards the holocaust denying geocentrist end of traditional Catholicism than your regular SSPX or FSSP attendee(and there is a lot of overlap between the two). That trads are growing both demographically and from conversion doesn't mean that the sedevacantists are specifically benefiting much, they're probably a single digit percentage which doesn't cross pollinate with other traditional groups and some percentage of which are enclosed cults anyways.
In terms of what actual IRL tradcaths- the mainstream ones, that is- are going to do, well, there's a widely repeated conspiracy theory in our circles that the long term goal is to push every tradcath priest into the SSPX(which is not in schism right now but may or may not have been in the 90's) and then excommunicate everyone eventually. I don't personally think the current admin in the Vatican thinks that far ahead, but stuff like this is likely to confirm that theory and convince the IRL trads to dig in harder where we're at, on the theory that orthodox conservative but not particularly traditionalist leaders will throw their weight behind us when the culture wars, for lack of a better term, are hotter. There's some evidence behind this theory; certainly if stuff like this results in a schism, that schism will be lead by Robert Cardinal Muller, who had not been friendly to the Latin mass before Amoris Laetitia but certainly is now(and the very popular but less formally influential bishop Barron is also much more sympathetic to the Latin mass than he had been). Trads on our own getting pushed out will just lead to a bigger SSPX.
By the way, while traditional Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy compete for converts, there's not very much in the way of traditional Catholics leaving to become Orthodox; traditional Catholics mostly view Eastern Orthodoxy as having surrendered to the world in the way the current Vatican administration would like to do but hasn't been able to... over a thousand years ago. My impression is that former trads who leave either become more liberal(sometimes nonpracticing but usually not formally apostate) Catholics or join some kind of confessional Lutheran group with extremely conservative social views.
The SSPX was definitely in schism in the 90s and is probably still in schism right now. Per canon 751, "schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him." "Recognize and resist" is not submission.
It's messy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How is that? It seems to me that's what the Orthodox think about Catholics.
It goes both ways, man, and core membership tends not to switch back and forth much. Traditional Catholics in particular tend to see Humanae vitae as the clearest evidence of the church not having defected and look at Eastern Orthodox attitudes towards birth control as the opposite of that.
Presumably the stance on contraception is not a thousand years old.
Catholic doctrines on contraception can be traced back to ~100 AD. Whether or not Roman contraceptives worked(and iirc, it’s not a fringe position among academics to think they did), early church officials seemed to believe they did and needed condemnation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link