I don’t understand a lot about religions since my parents are atheist and never talked with me about religion, but frequently I see some American comment about specially catholic being retrograde.

33 comments

  1. I don’t believe there’s a general opinion on one of the largest religious groups in the country. They range from devotees to fierce critics and everything in between.

  2. I can only share mine. Don’t really have an opinion on the religion but I liked(pre-covid) to go to catholic churches during non-mass and sit there and think.

    they’re…peaceful.

  3. Honestly, I’d say protestants in America are more often regressive than Catholics. Catholics tend to be more LGBT tolerant in my experience. There is the odd opposition to birth control though.

  4. I was raised Catholic but am not religious today. My opinion is that religion is not for me.

  6. I don’t give a shit what imaginary friends somebody has, as long as they don’t think the government should make policy decisions based on the alleged feelings of those imaginary friends.

    The catholic church has a lot of problems…which is no different than any other organized religion.

  7. Sedevacantism = best vacantism.

    Pachamama belongs in the Tiber river and the only valid response to “The Lord be with you” is “and also with you.”

  8. I’d say most are indifferent. You’ll find some who are anti catholic and critical of the church on birth control for example (it’s opposed to it). But if I remember correctly, around 21% of Catholics in the USA. So it’s not as if they’re an oddity.

    https://www.livescience.com/52236-who-are-american-catholics.html

    I’d say the peak of anti Catholicism was in 1960 when JFK ran for president. There were actual concerns he might violate the separation of church and state and be a puppet of the pope. He actually had to deliver a speech on his views on religion and the state.

    Now in 2020, Biden’s Catholicism was a non issue for the most part. Most of the justices on the court are catholic. We have a catholic speaker of the house.

    It’s really become a non issue.

  10. Well I’m a catholic and went to catholic school my whole life. So it’s just my faith

  11. As a baptized Catholic I feel qualified to say that the Church needs to get with the times and start paying taxes and treating women better.

  12. Hahaha,

    Let me make a short quote.

    > extra ecclesiam nulla salus

    But in all seriousness we have walked back from this idea. Still the Catholic faith is the surest path to salvation even though we cannot know the gift of God’s grace.

    Though I suspect you are asking about Catholic culture, not faith. We are the funnest religious culture by far. Anyone that says otherwise hasn’t been to a Dia De Los Muertos celebration or listened to the Dies Irae.

    We are so retrograde that we follow a carpenter from the Middle East from over two millennia ago. That’s the kind of retrograde I like. Religious hipsters, so old school it is cool again.

    The only people that beat us in religious hipsterism is the Jews. We have to admit that.

  13. Not for me but as long as you aren’t hurting yourself or others then whatever.

  14. I disagree with Catholic doctrines. They add books to the Bible, worship Mary, and I don’t trust a pope. I believe that we can have a more personal relationship with Christ and I don’t need a middleman.

  15. Catholics in the US are far more progressive than protestant groups.

    They believe in evolution, and fine with homosexuality.

  16. American Catholics are often much more liberal than the Catholic Church. Just look at President Joe Biden.

    That said, there certainly are many conservative American Catholics as well, like Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Neil Gorsuch was also raised Catholic although he married in the Anglican Church. But if you include Gorsuch that’s all six of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

    Yet liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor is also Catholic.

  17. In my region they’re the most authotlritarian sect with a strong following, coming in with a long history of *being* the government and having a hard time giving up on it. Seeing other comments has reminded me that there are more aggressive an regressive options out there though.

    I have a lot of mistrust for the Catholic faith because of its history and prominence in the pedo priest thing. The catholicism of an individual means very little to me, but the church itself is hard not to view as a problem.

  19. It’s just another religion in a sea of many. I don’t really feel strongly either way about it. It’s not for me.

  20. Full disclosure – I am a practicing Catholic.

    According to current Catholic teaching, the Old and New Testaments are to be interpreted by clergy rather than taken as literal truth. I appreciate that. I do not believe the earth and everything on it were created in six days, nor do any Catholic clergy I’ve ever worshipped with.

    I believe that everyone has intrinsic worth. This includes killers on Death Row and those with disabilities. We as apex predators have the ultimate responsibility for stewardship of the planet. All this is in line with Catholic teaching.

    Where I depart from Catholic teaching is in two main areas: I do not believe that social justice requires an open border. I do believe that we all have the right to actively regulate our family size and makeup. I support same-sex marriage. Frankly, given the Church’s stance on extramarital sex of any kind, I would think it would support marriages of any kind as a stabilizing influence on society.

  21. The wedding ceremonies are bloody long and so are the funerals. Some guy is always lighting a purse on fire and swinging it around at some point.

  22. I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I’m a former Roman Catholic and my views of them are icy at best. The horrific crimes against children and the LGBTQIA+ populations are enough to condemn them and their views. Not to mention the book they derive their religion from being a poorly translated big book of bad ideas written by men for men.

    I also live in the evangelical/Baptist Bible Belt region of the country which is its own unique brand of hateful nonsense.

  24. So I’m Jewish but growing up in the northeast pretty much all of my friends were Catholic. I spent a good chunk of my life assuming all Christians were Catholic. I remember my friends not being able to hang out cuz they were at ccd. I also think the rosary bead thing is really cool.

    I remember seeing an image on tv of a bunch of Catholics praying in St Peter’s square and it’s always stuck with me.

  25. I have a positive opinion of Catholicism. Although it is my religion. But to try and be objective, I’d say Catholicism is generally acceptable in society, even if many hold criticisms about the church itself (for its child sexual abuse cases, primarily). I think we’re going to see adherents of the church grow rapidly as the Hispanic population grows as well. I would say, on average, Catholics are probably a little more progressive than your average Protestant denomination, but not all. The episcopal church absolutely takes the crown for being most accepting imo

  26. My wife and her family are Catholic (although her family are more devout practitioners than her), as are quite a few of my friends, and I have not problem whatsoever with any other following it. Like for any other religions, I think there are good aspects about Catholicism, and some bad aspects, but overall I am pretty indifferent about it.

    As for the general opinion, I can’t say for sure, but I think it is neutral to positive for the most part.

  28. If you look back on the campaign of John F Kennedy, there were much talks about how he’d hand the country over to the Vatican and the Pope. Neither happened, obviously.

  29. A Catholic and a Leftist once said that that Catholic Church is a pre-modern institution in a the Modern world and she was 100% accurate in that assessment. To be clear on that, I’m not saying that to pass judgment on the RCC for being pre-modern. It can be what it wants to be.

    Jesuits, at least, have an intellectual seriousness about their moral and political ideals (I went to a Jesuit university) and they aren’t shy from intellectual challenges. They should be no means considered fundamentalists (another Theologian defined fundamentalism as “a stubborn refusal to think.”) The Pope’s first encyclical letter about the environment, how it relates to governments, economies and poverty and so forth is probably one of the most relevant and important examples of Jesuit thinking.

    In the past, there used to be a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment. People forgot that in addition to being anti-semites and white supremicists, the KKK hated Catholics. JFK, irrc, was the first Catholic president and it was a bit of scandal at the time (Joe Biden is a practicing Catholic, as was House Speaker Boehner back in the tea-party days).

    In comparison to Evangelical Protestants (the other big group in America), I don’t find most Catholics as retrograde or overwhelmingly GOP devotees (I’m holding back here). While I think the average Catholic in the United States probably leans to the political right, there’s also a long tradition of leftist activism with the Catholic church. It’s also not as indigenous to the United States culture as Evangelical Protestantism or the LDS church are if that makes any sense.

  30. I grew up Catholic and went to a private Catholic girls school dedicated to the aggressive education of girls for most of my life. I don’t know if I’m religious or what I’ll end up doing spiritually but I’m glad I got the education. We were taught about LGBTQ people, had good sex ed classes, learned about evolution and natural science, and were expected to go to college and likely graduate school. So it was pretty normal.

  31. Catholicism and being catholic: you do you. I think a lot of it is strange, and being a former christian I am skeptical, but if you keep it to yourself and it helps you be a good person, then thats great.

    But the catholic church has done horrific things. I am scared of any centralized religion with that much money and power. Especially one led by sexually repressed creeps who fuck kids.

  32. Most American non-Catholics are fairly prejudiced against Catholicism in multiple ways, but it’s not dangerous or virulent the way it used to be

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