Although the IRS recently allowed religious organizations to address their faithful about electoral politics, the Church will not speak on specific candidates.
They don’t need to. There’s always a core of alt-right loud mouths in every parish who try to force their political opinions down everyone else’s throats.
Sometimes it’s the parish priest and their hard-right lackeys. Sometimes it’s leaders in the Knights of Columbus council for the parish. Sometimes it’s just regular church-goers. But there always seems to be a little group of them regardless.
Most parishioners just nod and smile and then disregard those guys. But my point is that even when the church officially forbids political endorsements in a higher level, others do it on a local level.
There’s also quite a few people in the US who are catholic in name only, and are actually against the pope/vatican. It’s so bad that last year the vatican ended up excommunicating an Italian archbishop and former diplomat to the US, because over the years he’d gone full blown conspiracy theorist maga. To the point where he was ranting about the new world order and called pope Francis a servant of Satan.
Yes, at first it’s weird to think that people join an authoritarian organization like the Catholic Church, ostensibly believe that if they don’t follow its teachings that they will suffer an eternity of punishment, and then switch to follow a billionaire grifter.
But if you consider that churches teach you to obey without thinking for yourself, it makes a lot more sense that people get confused and start obeying the louder person, instead.
There is a significant group of conservative Catholics who view any change as a departure from the One True Faith™. You can still find churches that do not follow the modernizations from the Second Vatican Council, which happened back in the 1950s. Pope Francis was seen as a radical by many of these people.
They don’t need to. There’s always a core of alt-right loud mouths in every parish who try to force their political opinions down everyone else’s throats.
Sometimes it’s the parish priest and their hard-right lackeys. Sometimes it’s leaders in the Knights of Columbus council for the parish. Sometimes it’s just regular church-goers. But there always seems to be a little group of them regardless.
Most parishioners just nod and smile and then disregard those guys. But my point is that even when the church officially forbids political endorsements in a higher level, others do it on a local level.
There’s also quite a few people in the US who are catholic in name only, and are actually against the pope/vatican. It’s so bad that last year the vatican ended up excommunicating an Italian archbishop and former diplomat to the US, because over the years he’d gone full blown conspiracy theorist maga. To the point where he was ranting about the new world order and called pope Francis a servant of Satan.
Yes, at first it’s weird to think that people join an authoritarian organization like the Catholic Church, ostensibly believe that if they don’t follow its teachings that they will suffer an eternity of punishment, and then switch to follow a billionaire grifter.
But if you consider that churches teach you to obey without thinking for yourself, it makes a lot more sense that people get confused and start obeying the louder person, instead.
I saw a car with these two bumper stickers:
That was a very confusing day for me.
There is a significant group of conservative Catholics who view any change as a departure from the One True Faith™. You can still find churches that do not follow the modernizations from the Second Vatican Council, which happened back in the 1950s. Pope Francis was seen as a radical by many of these people.
Very true, but still pleasantly surprised by this small RCC w. A small move, but one in the right direction at least.
Like Frank Pavone