Growing up I discovered that there are two types of catholics. My church once had a temporary priest (our previous priest had just been sent on sabbatical and they didn’t have a replacement lined up) reassigned because he gave back to back anti-abortion and homophobic homilies in two weeks and we weren’t okay with that. The aforementioned previous priest routinely spoke in support of the queer community (usually just gay folks, but occasionally trans & beyond), talked about how we should be doing more to support the poor and underprivileged, and generally preacher a doctrine of love and tolerance.
But there are also Catholic groups who preach against all of that, believing that the word of the pope/gospel supersedes interpretation of it. My old roommate once genuinely said that “being gay is fine, it’s just a sin to act on it”. He went to a different church only about an hour from mine, yet they were being preached the near opposite of what I was. And as other users have mentioned, that rift can grow depending on exactly where you go in the church.
Chill? They’re the more rigorous side for certain but chill feels like an exaggeration. That said, I’m ex catholic and have complicated feelings about them.
Catholic dogma may be relatively strict, I’m not sure, I haven’t extensively studied other sects of Christianity. But Catholic people are, in my experience, pretty chill. If anything they’re a much more “love the sinner, hate the sin” kind of bunch. It’s the evangelicals you gotta watch out for.
That’s generally true, except for the overwhelming violence sometimes. Also there’s the thing with fascists converting to catholicism in America.
In a different form of Catholics having no fucking chill, is the aesthetics and relationship to suffering. Catholicism has a religious fetishization of suffering, which can produce really cool art from The Locked Tomb books (some of the major plot points include specifically catholic dogma) to the gilded human remains, as well as producing some weirder stuff like the play Sancta Susana, religious autoflagelation, and just so very many billable hours for therapists relating to guilt.
I’m no longer religious, but Catholics are on the chiller side of the Christian spectrum.
Growing up I discovered that there are two types of catholics. My church once had a temporary priest (our previous priest had just been sent on sabbatical and they didn’t have a replacement lined up) reassigned because he gave back to back anti-abortion and homophobic homilies in two weeks and we weren’t okay with that. The aforementioned previous priest routinely spoke in support of the queer community (usually just gay folks, but occasionally trans & beyond), talked about how we should be doing more to support the poor and underprivileged, and generally preacher a doctrine of love and tolerance.
But there are also Catholic groups who preach against all of that, believing that the word of the pope/gospel supersedes interpretation of it. My old roommate once genuinely said that “being gay is fine, it’s just a sin to act on it”. He went to a different church only about an hour from mine, yet they were being preached the near opposite of what I was. And as other users have mentioned, that rift can grow depending on exactly where you go in the church.
Chill? They’re the more rigorous side for certain but chill feels like an exaggeration. That said, I’m ex catholic and have complicated feelings about them.
Catholic dogma may be relatively strict, I’m not sure, I haven’t extensively studied other sects of Christianity. But Catholic people are, in my experience, pretty chill. If anything they’re a much more “love the sinner, hate the sin” kind of bunch. It’s the evangelicals you gotta watch out for.
Not if you go to a church where they still do the Latin Mass.
Episcopalians, which is basically Catholicism-lite, are even more chill. They were the first to allow gay people to be reverends.
That’s generally true, except for the overwhelming violence sometimes. Also there’s the thing with fascists converting to catholicism in America.
In a different form of Catholics having no fucking chill, is the aesthetics and relationship to suffering. Catholicism has a religious fetishization of suffering, which can produce really cool art from The Locked Tomb books (some of the major plot points include specifically catholic dogma) to the gilded human remains, as well as producing some weirder stuff like the play Sancta Susana, religious autoflagelation, and just so very many billable hours for therapists relating to guilt.