With a man like Francis leading one of the wealthiest, oldest, most conservative institutions and Trump being a blue-collar billionaire leading the wealthiest country on the planet, things are finally starting to look up for the poor.
Because they figure the "rurals’ are more susceptible to their religious fuckwittery than those “oh so clever godless sophisticated urbanites”?
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Mostly because the people in rural areas are a captive market. When you break your leg you don’t shop around for the best emergency room, you go for the one that’s quickest to get to. And with insurance networks restricting everyone further …
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Yes. Of course. The catholic church has never liked competition.
(And I was being sarcastic.)
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ya, he could sell all that priceless art to private collectors so most of humanity can never see it again…
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Not sure it’s a strawman I’m swinging at. You seem to have issues with religious-based charities, I’m asking, well why aren’t there more secular groups with boots-on-the-ground services then. Seems a germane question.
Have you been to a Catholic soup kitchen? I have. No one is proselytizing, you aren’t required to do anything to receive services.
I mean, many Catholics do, I guess. Does that count.
I mean the ones he’s talking about, generally.
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He doesn’t personally own the wealth of the church.
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I generally agree that the church has been providing coverage for people. But their refusal to include reproductive health care isn’t just a “yeah whatever.” Women have died because of their refusal to do so. I still think they provide an important service to the poor, but women aren’t a “yeah whatever.”
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I should also note that this especially impacts women who are working class, who have less health coverage and less access to alternatives like Planned Parenthood for reproductive health. I’m glad that the church sees fit to provide health services to the poor. I would like to see them include reproductive health, despite their doctrine, since they probably aren’t just serving catholics.
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Whats really baffled me with this kind of thing is how the major religions are not expelling notable rightwing politicians from their ranks…
Example: take the Jesus figure and Trump. If you asked an athiest to imagine a perfect opposite person to Jesus as described in the bible, you’d get someone close to Trump… It just boggles the mind that anyone proclaiming to be christian could support the hate-filled tyre-fire of Trump…
Goodness grief, have they ever even read the bible they claim to idolise as the word of god?
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No. Not really.
They’ve read bits and pieces. They’ve rote memorised without comprehension. Or they listen to what their local “expert” (aka the pastor they listen to every Sunday at the very least) tells them. And he tells them what his pastor told him. On up the chain, each assuming that what their superior told them was true, and not a misunderstanding of a mistranslation of a small piece of text divorced from it’s cultural context.
Actually read it and it becomes clear that the god described therein is every nightmare combination of gaslighting bully and abusive parent. Recognise that, and a whole lot of the reasons so many Christians do what they do become clear. Some know how to separate the good from the bad, just like how some children from abusive families don’t perpetuate the cycle. Others don’t. Others take it even further, and make sure that the “sins of the father” are multiplied as they move along.
The ones we hear about most are the latter. Probably because we’ve also learned (as a species) to send out warning calls when there is danger in the area, but ignore those things that are benign.
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And when was the last time you were able to tour the Vatican private collection？
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I understand why it’s hard to have a conversation about the Pope without having a conversation about the Catholic church which in turn is a conversation about 1.2 billion people and everyone they live near.
I like the pope sticking it to the rich. I like the pope prioritizing the agenda of helping the poor over the agenda of oppressing people based on what reproductive organs they have and/or what they do with them. I think that probably empowers Catholics who align with this better-than-bad agenda.
The problems with the church probably seem less important to those of us who live in places where the church has very limited influence. But in Ireland just had a national referendum to end the ban on abortion this past May. South American and African nations have repressive laws based on church philosophy. In the US too many people need to rely on charity for healthcare, so the church’s anti-women’s-rights standpoint impacts people who don’t share their religious beliefs; and elite catholic schools form an important part of the misogynist-to-Supreme-Court pipeline.
I think the more the pope emphasizes helping the poor and the less he emphasizes obsession with genitals, the more likely we are to see some of these situations take a turn for the better.
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