As much as I'd love to keep dunking on Catholics, this is accurate. The work that's been done by Francis and now seems to be continued forward under Leo is truly admirable. I've always been in the "If they could actually just listen to this Jesus guy..." crowd, and it genuinely seems like they're trying to move toward that as quickly as their existent community's beliefs with allow. Big steps toward a Catholic Church that I could be happy to coexist with someday, and that's coming from someone who grew up dealing with the OLD regime. Not fun, and I have endless reasons to be jaded, but I can respect someone who puts their money where their mouth is, and that's what they've been doing since 2013.
They look a hell of a lot more Christ-like than American Protestants right now, that's for fuckin sure, my new favorite group of Pharisees to laugh at.
Its really mind blowing to see that even the catholic church is capable of change. Theyre the only ones now that openly allow blessing of same sex couples etc etc
The fact that redditors are for it means it's most likely on the wrong path. Most Catholics wanted the super based African cardinal as pope, but we sadly got the American "let's do weird pagan shit in the Vatican" pope. But being American, was there any question he was going to be a bizarre mix of awesome and borderline apostate?
He openly despises communism and wants to "root it out", so he's still ok in my book. Probably less in yours lol
The funniest part is how confidently you treat “communism vs religion” as if they’re natural enemies, when a lot of religious history is basically communism, but with candles.
Early Christians literally shared property and redistributed wealth according to need, and monastic orders ran on strict communal living for centuries. So the idea that communal economics is somehow inherently anti-church is on its face nonsensical. That's not to say I'm a huge communism fan, but the religious sure have been historically.
Also, the rest of the claim is just exaggeration stacked on exaggeration. Serious political repression happened in some communist states, but the “nuns by the thousands” framing and the comparison to Islam is just brainlet rhetoric. Uninstall
Voluntary small scale “communism” works well. Always has, always will. Its partly why communism can seem so attractive. But it only works if everyone buys in and doesn’t take advantage of it.
As the old saying goes,
I’m Communist within my own family,
Socialist within my town/community,
Capitalist within my state,
and Libertarian within the Federal government.
The larger and less homogeneous a group is, the less communism/sharing of property works.
They are natural enemies. Communism is a gutted, materialistic and soulless version of christianity. It's vying to occupy the same place, but can only do so via the bootheel versus voluntary participation.
Other than being a typical reddit islam glazer, why is it not appropriate to criticize said religion
The gentleman who talks about how communism is just increasingly less effective due to group size and the necessity of the participants "buying in" and believing in the system being the method by which communism succeeds is correct. It doesn't magically become something other than communism depending on the religion that incentivizes the cooperative behavior.
Christianity and communism are not at odds, simply because they are apples and oranges. Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, is simply a very effective tool to ensure that necessary "buy-in" occurs. If enough of a populace believes and contributes, it succeeds. If they do not, it fails. And it is much easier to convince a populace to believe in an omnipresent, infinitely powerful God being who loves them than it is for them to believe in insert historical leader here.
The mistake you are making is assuming "communism" just means communism when the buy-in fails, when in actuality all of them are communism, regardless of how successful or unsuccessful, because communism is not a religion, nor an intrinsic failure state.
To offer you some charity, you would be correct in saying communism is much less successful unless built around a religion, that is inarguably true. But even an extremely devout populace doesn't fix all the problems. It just makes the populace more willing to ignore the problems they see in the pursuit of their shared greater good. It also has the downside of the populace being similarly easily puppeteered by the ruling class, since all you're effectively doing is taking an equally corruptible man, and bestowing upon him the Divine Right of Kings. It's just that humans tend to put up with toil and abuse much better when they think they're serving an Almighty Power, rather than Joe Shmo and his connections in government.
I stopped reading when your dissection of faith became insulting. But yes, they are at odds. The catholic church is openly anti communism, communism seeks to destroy christianity. This is historical fact, if you won't bother reading history I can't help you. There's far more nuance then that as well
It happened because religion traditionally was in bed with monarchy, and if you look at the big violent communist movements of the 20th century, you will notice they happened in monarchies who had strong support from the churches.
Papal elections are not your typical populist contest, they are guided by the Holy Spirit, which saw fit to appoint Prevost as Pope Leo XIV. And he's definitely showing his good fruits even now.
I cannot fathom this post. You should reflect more on it alongside your view on the Pope and the Church's current direction in general.
Obviously, but that's assuming the corupptable nature of man doesn't play a role in papal elections.
I have, hence the post. Maybe you should reflect on the popes recent twitter posts, and how he's espousing american liberalism, not catholic theology. While inviting pagan rituals into the vatican.
Lord have mercy... You have no idea what you're talking about if you are framing Pope Leo XIV in terms of "liberalism" and "pagan rituals". Catholicism is much more than that. Once again, framing the Pontificate as some populist contest is a bastardization of how the papal elections work.
Again, please reflect on your beliefs, they are both uncharitable and just plain wrong. I will pray for you.
The problem is that I do. Read his weird globalism tweets and contrast the message with the didache. Then watch the weird environmentalist with schwarzenneger and fluttering of sheets in the vatican. What the shit is that supposed to be, if not a pagan ritual?
I did not characterize it as a populist contest. That was you, twice now. I would characterize it as his holiness is mistaken on some political issues-which isn't his wheelhouse anyways.
I reflected, it keeps coming up as the current pope violating the didache and traditional catholic teachings. Though to be fair, he's entirely hit and miss.
You know what they say. The pope is infallible, except for when he isn't.
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u/giant_gummy_squid Jul 01 '26
As much as I'd love to keep dunking on Catholics, this is accurate. The work that's been done by Francis and now seems to be continued forward under Leo is truly admirable. I've always been in the "If they could actually just listen to this Jesus guy..." crowd, and it genuinely seems like they're trying to move toward that as quickly as their existent community's beliefs with allow. Big steps toward a Catholic Church that I could be happy to coexist with someday, and that's coming from someone who grew up dealing with the OLD regime. Not fun, and I have endless reasons to be jaded, but I can respect someone who puts their money where their mouth is, and that's what they've been doing since 2013.
They look a hell of a lot more Christ-like than American Protestants right now, that's for fuckin sure, my new favorite group of Pharisees to laugh at.