Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) celebrated following the death of Pope Francis on Monday.
"Today there were major shifts in global leaderships," Greene wrote on X just hours after the pontiff died. "Evil is being defeated by the hand of God."
Greene's remarks came after Rep. Nancy Mace's (R...
Yeah, American Protestants have hated Catholics for generations, and it’s only made worse by the fact that Catholics tend, in general, to be more left-leaning than Protestants so they’re now on opposite sides of the political aisle too. The fireworks when they finally start going at each other full-tilt for a change (instead of going at everyone around them) are going to be sweet indeed.
American Catholicism right now is a mixed bag. On certain social issues, they are quite Conservative. We know their stance on Abortion, and even though Pope Francis said some encouraging things about same-sex relationships, nothing substantial has changed.
Where Catholics worldwide are much more liberal is in their relationship with migrants and other marginalized people. Where this administration sees “shithole countries”, the Church sees places where they can go and actively work to improve the lives of people there. They see their future strength in administering to the spiritual needs of the poor in those countries, and will always aim to help migrants. And in fact, this Pope spent a lot of his final days on earth reminding American bishops (and JD Vance) to show mercy to migrants and treat them with basic human dignity.
Yeah, their stance on abortion, contraceptive, same-sex marriages, etc haven’t substantively changed for as long as I’ve been paying attention, despite this pope nudging things in the right direction. As for marginalized people I know they’ve done good work, but I’m not sure ‘Hey we could convert these poor people and have even more people giving us money’ is for the benefit of the poor so much as it is for the benefit of the church. People like Mother Theresa had some pretty abominable attitudes toward suffering, for example, suggesting that it’s good for people and shit.
So, the whole thing is a mixed bag from where I sit.
In my experience, Catholics tend to be pretty moderate, since the Catholic Church is strictly hierarchical and all dogma originates from the Vatican. The size of the Church, it seems, has a moderating effect on its dogma since they have to appeal to such a large group of followers, and the views of its members tend to average out with a bias towards conservatism (because the Church is so unbelievably old that the inertia of 15th or 10th century doctrine still holds sway).
Protestants, meanwhile, span the whole political spectrum since the label is pretty broad in general. There are plenty of Protestant churches in my area that espouse very liberal and accepting social views, and probably at least a dozen will even marry same-sex couples, something notoriously disapproved of by the Catholic Church and many other denominations. But there are also many, much louder, Protestant churches that are basically full MAGA.
This is one of the biggest issues I take with people pronouncing themselves “protestant”. Yah, you’re not Catholic, but that tells me as much as saying you aren’t from Romania- effectively nothing.
Sure, there definitely are conservative Catholics and liberal Protestants, I was just speaking in broad generalizations and tendencies (hence the use of the phrase ‘tend, in general, to be’.)
Careful, the Catholics are by no means a homogenous group either. There’s the whole “Trad Cath” thing going on.
Small mention in Folding Ideas’ Geocentrists video
Which is why I used words like ‘tend to be’ and ‘in general’. The only way I know to qualify my statement more explicitly as a generalization involves the use of big flashing neon signs, but that seems impractical in a text forum. :P
Also <3 Dan’s videos, been watching them for years.
Yeah you’re fine :)