Christianity won't survive wokeness

[aweigh]

[aweigh]

[rusty_shackleford]

episcopal church has been one of the leading pozz pushing churches for decades one every issue, and due to it have lost almost all their members and are a few decades away from dying out
for reference, episcopal church claims about 1 million members now, most of them are probably elderly

In 1965, there were 880,000 children in Episcopal Sunday School programs. By 2001, the number had declined to 297,000

[Vergil]

Christianity has survived far worse. The worst excesses are all far out prot churches as well.

[Vergil]

Also I'm not a catholic so there's no love lost when it comes to the pope but the media is a massive fan of putting words in his mouth and he even says homosexuality is a sin in that very clip.
A very bizarre clip to include with a clip of a totally different denomination with clearly different views.

[aweigh]

[aweigh]

[aweigh]

[Acrux]

Also I'm not a catholic so there's no love lost when it comes to the pope but the media is a massive fan of putting words in his mouth and he even says homosexuality is a sin in that very clip.
A very bizarre clip to include with a clip of a totally different denomination with clearly different views.

Brian Neimeier calls out this very thing all the time. I won't say I'm a huge fan of Francis, but nearly any time you hear something that sounds really outrageous for him to say, it's been taken out of context.
https://brianniemeier.com/2022/08/franc ... f-context/

[Acrux]

@aweigh - do you think the media tells us the truth most of the time? If not, why do you seem to jump on anything they say about Francis like they don't lie with every breath.

[maidenhaver]

Christianity has survived far worse. The worst excesses are all far out prot churches as well.

Protestants survived far worse, too. It was called catholicism. What's going on is the decay of a dead religion.

[Vergil]

Also I'm not a catholic so there's no love lost when it comes to the pope but the media is a massive fan of putting words in his mouth and he even says homosexuality is a sin in that very clip.
A very bizarre clip to include with a clip of a totally different denomination with clearly different views.

Brian Neimeier calls out this very thing all the time. I won't say I'm a huge fan of Francis, but nearly any time you hear something that sounds really outrageous for him to say, it's been taken out of context.
https://brianniemeier.com/2022/08/franc ... f-context/

Yea like personally for me the stuff he's said and done registers at like a 5-6 on the "this is really bad and heretical" scale but the headlines you see posted are like a 8-9 on the scale.

Christianity has survived far worse. The worst excesses are all far out prot churches as well.

Protestants survived far worse, too. It was called catholicism. What's going on is the decay of a dead religion.

What a bizarre thing to say. If anything it was Catholicism that had to survive Protestantism.

Edit: Also if you're getting upset because I said something about protestantism I specifically stated it's the far out deranged ones like non-denominational and anglicans unless you're going to defend the entire spectrum of protestantism.

[Decline]

Christianity has survived far worse. The worst excesses are all far out prot churches as well.

It is a general problem that current year is always seen as ITZ by the the people living in current year, 'now it's going down for real', 'the end times are now', 'this is it' etc, whereas in reality current year is rather boring compared to e.g. what must've happened 7000 years ago.

[rusty_shackleford]

Also I'm not a catholic so there's no love lost when it comes to the pope but the media is a massive fan of putting words in his mouth and he even says homosexuality is a sin in that very clip.
A very bizarre clip to include with a clip of a totally different denomination with clearly different views.

Brian Neimeier calls out this very thing all the time. I won't say I'm a huge fan of Francis, but nearly any time you hear something that sounds really outrageous for him to say, it's been taken out of context.
https://brianniemeier.com/2022/08/franc ... f-context/

The director whose smear piece is being cited by online Russian Orthodox accounts also made this 2015 film lionizing the US-backed color revolution that installed the current government of the Ukraine.

@WhiteShark on suicide watch

[Vergil]

Christianity has survived far worse. The worst excesses are all far out prot churches as well.

It is a general problem that current year is always seen as ITZ by the the people living in current year, 'now it's going down for real', 'the end times are now', 'this is it' etc, whereas in reality current year is rather boring compared to e.g. what must've happened 7000 years ago.

I think the main issue is that these people come from a very atheistic position and assume Christianity is a wholly man made invention that can be done away with and are very dismissive of the idea that maybe these are universal truths that are sturdier than the man made attempts to do away with them.

[Acrux]

Also I'm not a catholic so there's no love lost when it comes to the pope but the media is a massive fan of putting words in his mouth and he even says homosexuality is a sin in that very clip.
A very bizarre clip to include with a clip of a totally different denomination with clearly different views.

Brian Neimeier calls out this very thing all the time. I won't say I'm a huge fan of Francis, but nearly any time you hear something that sounds really outrageous for him to say, it's been taken out of context.
https://brianniemeier.com/2022/08/franc ... f-context/

The director whose smear piece is being cited by online Russian Orthodox accounts also made this 2015 film lionizing the US-backed color revolution that installed the current government of the Ukraine.

@WhiteShark on suicide watch

To be fair, there's a difference between being traditionally Orthodox and the terminally online Orthobros. More like @KnightoftheWind on suicide watch.

[somerandomdude]

Yea like personally for me the stuff he's said and done registers at like a 5-6 on the "this is really bad and heretical" scale but the headlines you see posted are like a 8-9 on the scale.

If the Pope is suggesting anything other than homosexuals are sinners, and that they should repent at once and ask God for forgiveness, then he's a full blown 10/10 heretic. "Welcoming" better be only under the condition that they repent and are seeking forgiveness.

[Vergil]

Yea like personally for me the stuff he's said and done registers at like a 5-6 on the "this is really bad and heretical" scale but the headlines you see posted are like a 8-9 on the scale.

If the Pope is suggesting anything other than homosexuals are sinners, and that they should repent at once and ask God for forgiveness, then he's a full blown 10/10 heretic. "Welcoming" better be only under the condition that they repent and are seeking forgiveness.

I'm guessing you missed the post slightly above the one you're quoting where it's been established that he still said it was a sin?

[maidenhaver]

I don't think any catholic should be allowed in America.

[somerandomdude]

I'm guessing you missed the post slightly above the one you're quoting where it's been established that he still said it was a sin?

Are you referring to the link posted by Acrux that suggests that the Pope is frequently taken out of context? I just gave that a look, and I agree that's true many cases, however:

Francis’ decade-old compromise concerned his role as Archbishop of Buenos Aires amid the state’s push to legalize butt marriage. His “belief that gay couples should enjoy legal protections” does not extend to recognizing same-sex marriages or state-sanctioned child grooming.

As the Holy Father of the Catholic Church, he's suggesting that man's law shouldn't follow God's law, which is extremely heretical. Man's law better damn well follow God's law, or we got what we are right now.

[maidenhaver]

I'm convinced the internet is full of priests.

[Segata]

Christianity won't survive because Christians can't never get along with each other. Proof: this thread.

[Lutte]

Christianity has survived far worse.

No, it has not. It has ceded North Africa to the arab rape invasion and now you look at Egypt and there's just 10% of them left and Egypt was the least worst case among them. Jerusalem was lost. The Eastern Roman Empire's capital got punked by the turks. It's still turk. Throughout history, Christianity kept losing ground after the advent of Islam, only regaining some of its own during the Reconquista era. Mind you, the people during the times of the Reconquista were made of something else than what has become of the west in 2023.

Unless you mean that Christianity will survive as an extreme minor faith that people will start to hide?

Nevermind the fact that the west as a whole has become more and more faithless, there's also the fact that... Demography is destiny. The west has stopped reproducing and started importing brown masses. There will be no going back.

[Acrux]

Ok doomers

[Atlantico]

Christianity won't survive because Christians can't never get along with each other. Proof: this thread.

Christians have never been able to agree on anything, which led to the Holy Inquisition.

Which we need now more than ever to return in its full form.

[Vergil]

No, it has not. It has ceded North Africa to the arab rape invasion and now you look at Egypt and there's just 10% of them left and Egypt was the least worst case among them. Jerusalem was lost. The Eastern Roman Empire's capital got punked by the turks. It's still turk. Throughout history, Christianity kept losing ground after the advent of Islam, only regaining some of its own during the Reconquista era. Mind you, the people during the times of the Reconquista were made of something else than what has become of the west in 2023.

Thank you starting the list of things that Christianity has survived I appreciate it when others pitch in to strengthen my point.
I would have also mentioned the murder of Christ, the persecution of the Apostles, the on and off proscriptions against Christians in the Empire, the invasion of germanic tribes, the French Revolution pre-Napoleon, and the Soviet Union as well though.

Christianity won't survive because Christians can't never get along with each other. Proof: this thread.

To be fair this is probably the era of highest ecumenism and this thread has mostly been anti-Christian vs Christian with only one person seeming to get tangled into posting one sentence non-sequiturs out of rage.

[rusty_shackleford]

Christianity won't survive because Christians can't never get along with each other. Proof: this thread.

Christians have never been this tolerant with differing denominations before. There is much more than ever a sense that accepting the basic tenets of Christianity is significantly more important than the finer details.

[Humbaba]

Meanwhile in Darülislam:

https://www.reuters.com/world/colors-pr ... 023-09-21/

Colors promoting UN goals or LGBTQ rights? Turkey's Erdogan complains

"One of the issues that bothers me the most ... is that when entering the United Nations General Assembly, you see the LGBT colors on steps and other places," Erdogan was quoted as saying by broadcaster Haberturk and others.

"How many LGBT are there in the world right now? However much right they have on these steps, those against LGBT have as much right as well," said Erdogan, who has frequently labeled members of the LGBTQ community as "deviants" and particularly toughened his rhetoric during his election campaign this year.

Daily reminder that nothing but yourselves is keeping you guys from converting any time you want.



-Humbaba

[aweigh]

https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatic ... d-catholic

Frank Pavone, a right-wing provocateur who for years defied requests from the Vatican and multiple U.S. bishops to stop engaging in partisan political advocacy inconsistent with his role as a member of the Catholic clergy, has been dismissed from the priesthood.

In a Dec. 13 letter to the U.S. bishops, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican's representative to the United States, said that Pavone — national director of the anti-abortion organization Priests for Life and former advisory board member of the group "Catholics for Trump" — had been found guilty in canonical proceedings of "blasphemous communications on social media" and of "persistent disobedience" of his bishop.

According to Pierre's letter, obtained by NCR, the Vatican's Dicastery for the Clergy informed Pavone of the decision on Nov. 9, noting that his dismissal from the Catholic priesthood cannot be appealed.

Pavone's removal from the clerical state was first reported on Dec. 17 by the Catholic News Agency, which is owned by the Eternal World Television Network (more commonly known as "EWTN") and confirmed by NCR.

The 63-year-old former priest sparked fierce backlash in 2016 when he released a video in which he placed the body of an aborted fetus on an altar and urged Catholics not to vote for the Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

More recently, he has denied the 2020 U.S. presidential results and spread lies that Joe Biden did not lawfully win the presidential election.

Pavone was first ordained to the priesthood in the New York Archdiocese in 1988, and, in 1993, became director of the pro-life organization Priests for Life. In 2005, he transferred to the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, with plans to launch an order of priests with the stated purpose of promoting the end of abortion.

Those plans were soon nixed and over the last two decades, Priests for Life, which boasts of being the "largest ministry in the Catholic Church focused on ending abortion," has been engulfed in management and financial scandals.

In 2014, New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who had been tapped by the Vatican to help reform the organization, washed his hands of the group, saying he wanted " nothing further to do with the organization."

Despite claiming to be a non-partisan organization, Pavone has regularly collaborated with the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

One day after news of his dismissal from the clerical state was announced, Pavone's social media accounts still contained photos of him with the former president and a photo of him wearing a clerical collar and one of Trump's "Make America Great Again" baseball caps.

In 2022, Pavone marked the 35th anniversary of his regular television show, "Defending Life," on EWTN, a U.S. Catholic media conglomerate that has become known for its regular antagonistic coverage of Francis and partisan political focus, often supportive of Trump.

According to its most recent publicly available tax documents, in 2018, Priests for Life, which is now headquartered in Florida, had brought in over $10 million that year. Recent communications from Pavone celebrated the forthcoming Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and said that looking ahead, the organization's focus would be on the 2023 and 2024 elections.

Neither Pavone nor Priests for Life immediately responded to NCR's request for comment about the Vatican's decision.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, however, Pavone received support from one controversial U.S. Catholic bishop who is known for his own vocal opposition to both abortion and Pope Francis.

"The blasphemy is that this holy priest is canceled while an evil president promotes the denial of truth and the murder of the unborn at every turn," wrote Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who in 2020 endorsed a video that claimed "You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat."

According to Priests for Life's website, five active ministry U.S. Catholic bishops are listed as serving as bishop advisors to the organization: Peter Jugis of Charlotte, North Carolina; Robert McManus of Worcester, Massachusetts; Ralph Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, Clarence Silva, Bishop of Honolulu, Hawaii; and Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee.

As for Pavone's future, the official statement from the Vatican's U.S. nunciature noted that Priests for Life is not a Catholic organization and it would have to decide the nature of Pavone's relationship to it, given that he is no longer a Catholic priest.

[aweigh]

https://uscatholic.org/articles/202104/ ... rge-floyd/

The passion of George Floyd
What the unjust crucifixion of Jesus teaches us about how Black bodies are treated today.
PEACE & JUSTICE PATRICK SAINT-JEAN, S.J.Published April 6, 2021
While the celebration of Easter Sunday—the resurrection of Jesus Christ—is still fresh in our minds, many of us are reflecting on the trials that our savior faced in his short lifetime. At the same time, we can’t ignore another important trial that is currently taking place in Minneapolis: the judgment of Officer Derek Chauvin, who squeezed the life out of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, nearly one year ago.

During the holiest week of the Christian calendar, I did my best to catch up on Chauvin’s trial. I, like many others around the nation, heard several testimonies, listened to different narratives, and considered countless interpretations from the media and other “experts.” I was reminded that justice for the Black community lies in the hands of white men who have had their knees on the necks of Black people for more than 400 years.

As I watched the trial, I was struck by the comfort of the white police to apply force on a Black body without thinking of any retribution, let alone the demands of simple humanity. I found myself making parallels between Floyd’s death and the other story that was playing out in my head during Holy Week—the passion of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The facts of Floyd’s death are well-known. At 8:09 p.m. on May 25, 2020, police stopped Floyd on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis after a store cashier reported him for using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes. Officer Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground with his knee, causing him to suffocate. Onlookers heard him shout “I can’t breathe”—a phrase that soon took root in the Black Lives Matter movement.

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We know that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for at least eight minutes; during this time someone called for emergency medical assistance, which arrived at 8:20 p.m. An ambulance followed at 8:27, and an hour later Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital. This was the passion of George Floyd.

Although the word passion has taken on additional meanings in common parlance, in biblical terms the passion relates to the mistreatment and suffering of Jesus Christ. That story concludes with Christ’s unjust crucifixion.

In a similar way, Floyd’s story ends in death by suffocation, for a presumed $20 crime. Across the United States, we are witnessing in real time a wider story we could call the passion of Black Americans unfolding on city streets, in prisons, and in court rooms.

We also know what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 ago. We have eyewitness accounts, thanks to the gospels, that tell us that during the Jewish celebration of Passover, Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane (John 18:1–12), then sent to a trial overseen by Pontius Pilate, the governor of the province. We read that Pilate ordered Jesus’ crucifixion for treason, claiming he had paraded himself as the “King of the Jews” (John 18:28). We know from the historian Josephus that Pilate had been working in agreement with the religious authorities to plan Jesus’ execution, simply for his teachings. At the time, no one challenged the sentence—and as today, silence equals death.

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Jesus was arrested for having the audacity to speak out in spaces the authorities of the day wanted to control. Floyd’s primary crime was being a Black body in a white space. The consequence of that trespass is something that every member of the Black community fears every single day. As a frequent victim of police profiling, I too can empathize with the threat that people who look like Floyd—who have similar skin tones—have experienced for hundreds of years.

Across the United States, we are witnessing in real time a wider story we could call the passion of Black Americans unfolding on city streets, in prisons, and in court rooms.

Jesus was powerless on the cross, yet the soldier still pierced his side with a spear and “immediately, there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). As Floyd lay under the knee of Chauvin, handcuffed and unresponsive, he was still seen as a threat to the police.

Like Jesus on the cross, Floyd’s Black body was subdued and dying, yet the police officers, like the soldier who thrust his sword into Jesus’ body, still needed to demonstrate their control, power, and dominance. As Chauvin continued to press on Floyd, when the paramedic arrived, almost immediately, according to the newspaper accounts, “his breath was gone.” It is a different time, a different land, with different authorities, but the story is the same.

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Jesus was condemned because of the jealousy of both the government and the religious authorities: They saw him as a threat to their power. As I thought about this, I found myself wondering: Are white males jealous of Black bodies? Do they see them as threats to their own sense of power and authority? I remembered that Chauvin said, “We had to control this guy because he’s a sizable guy.” Once again, I could see the parallels to Jesus’ death.

As I watch Chauvin’s trial, which by association is also Floyd’s, once again, I experience a sense of powerlessness. I watch again that tragic video, shot by a quick-thinking young girl, just 17 when she filmed the scene, who had stopped at the store for a single purchase. I see the brutal violence toward a man who reminds me of my Black father, of my Black brother, of my Black cousins and friends, and of myself. I see my brother gasp for air and beg for breath, while the tormented bystanders are forced to watch, incapable of interceding—just as John and Mary standing at the foot of the cross were unable to save their friend and son.

The teenager who filmed the video of Floyd’s death testified at the trial, saying, “It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life.” She feels guilt for not physically intervening, despite the armed officers at the scene. Did Simon of Cyrene, the African man who helped Jesus carry the cross, feel a similar guilt and shame whenever he remembered the day Jesus died?

Easter Sunday does not erase the violence and injustice of Good Friday.

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And yet like the witnesses who recorded Christ’s death, this teenage girl has had an essential role in the passion of George Floyd; her videotape has the potential to help bring Floyd’s assailant to justice. The video proves that, in broad daylight, America showed her disrespect for Black bodies. Thanks to the account the teenage girl’s camera captured, we know that Officer Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

American Catholics, the resurrection of Jesus does not mean we have a free pass to stop fighting for Jesus. Easter Sunday does not erase the violence and injustice of Good Friday. That same violence and injustice is all too alive today; we can see it in the passion of George Floyd that continues to unfold in the trial of Officer Chauvin. In the words of Pope Francis in his Easter Sunday Urbi et Orbi message this year, “The Easter message does not offer us a mirage or reveal a magic formula. It does not point to an escape from [racism], the difficult situation we are experiencing. . . . That is today’s scandal.”

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The church calendar grants us the liturgical Easter season that we have celebrated for more than 2,000 years. If you are American, Christian, and Catholic, this is the time to share your Easter wishes with your loved ones. I beg you to also send blessings and prayers to the Hennepin County District Court, where the time has come for Officer Chauvin to face his accusers. We all await justice for Floyd and the countless other Black people who have died at the hands of police officers.

I pray for America’s conversion, reconciliation, and healing; I pray that one day we will live in an America that no longer commits crimes on Black bodies.

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We cannot sit around waiting for justice. The passion of Christ—and the passion of George Floyd—demand that as Christians we stand up, speak out, and act.

This is an adapted chapter from Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J.’s forthcoming book The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice: A Month of Meditation with Ignatius of Loyola (Anamchara Books).

Image: Vasanth Rajkumar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons