Zach Lambert on the strange notion that straight white men have long had that the bible's meaning is self-evident — to them above all — and that their reading of the bible in no way reflects their social situation, power, prejudice, and unacknowledged biases, since only those others (people of color, women, LGBTQ people) have biases:
#bible #men #heterosexism #homophobia #misogyny #privilege #entitlement #race
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https://andrewwhitehead.substack.com/p/author-interview-better-ways-to-read
"For most of my life, I rarely thought about being white or male or heterosexual or cisgender or able-bodied or American or middle class. I was conditioned to believe that all those characteristics were normal and anything else was abnormal. Because of this, I also believed I didn’t have any lenses when I interpreted the Bible."
#bible #men #heterosexism #homophobia #misogyny #privilege #entitlement #race
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A new study by two scholars is attracting attention because it says that 9 in 10 cradle Catholics are leaving the church in the U.S.
Right-wing Catholic publications (which is synonymous with Trump-leaning publications) have latched onto this study as a way to pressure Pope Leo to toe the right-wing Catholic line in various ways.
#Catholics #PopeLeo #churches #LeavingChurch
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https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-solution-to-the-churchs-biggest-problem/
Right-wing Catholics want Leo to beef up the Latin Mass, give a high profile to "traditional" Catholic moral teachings — always, always about abortion and pelvic morality, and never, never about social justice, God's preferential option for the poor, etc.
It really is not a new finding that Catholics in the U.S. are leaving in record numbers. This has been known for some time now. Younger Catholics, in particular, are walking away.
There is a mass exodus of Americans in general from churches, with younger people until very recently at the forefront of that development. But disaffiliation has been occurring at higher rates in the Catholic church than any other church.
What's very interesting as I read commentary about these findings in right-wing (i.e., Trump-leaning) Catholic journals is that this set of Catholics want to blame parents for what's going on.
Catholic parents haven't accentuated Catholic identity, found strong markers of Catholic identity (hint: Latin Mass, "pro-life" politics, "traditional" sexual morality) to keep their children Catholic, these folks want to say.
But it has been known for some time now exactly WHY younger Catholics say they are leaving the church in record numbers. They report this to pollsters
That why has absolutely nothing to do with not being able to attend a Latin Mass or with lack of access to "traditional" markers of Catholic identity.
The primary reason younger Catholics are leaving the Catholic church, it has been reported in several well-conducted studies, is that they cannot stomach the cruelty of the Catholic institution's treatment of their LGBTQ friends and family members.
They're sick of the cruelty, and they recognize that it's grounded in a cruel and frankly erroneous teaching dating from John Paul II and his doctrinal watchdog Ratzinger, who followed JPII as pope, which holds that LGBTQ human beings are intrinsically disordered.
The other overweening reason Catholics including younger ones report they are leaving: the abuse crisis in the Catholic church and its cover-up by the hierarchy.
Ultimately, if we want to find someone at whose feet to lay blame for the huge disaffiliation of U.S. Catholics, we havee to look at the bishops and their failed pastoral leadership. For years now, the U.S. Catholic bishops as a body, almost all of them appointed by JPII and BXVI until Francis began changing the balance, have done everything short of standing on their heads to identify the church they lead with the Republican party.
They have given their flock the impression that to be Catholic is to vote Republican.
This has led to the shocking result that three times now, some 6 in 10 white Catholics have voted for Trump.
It's hard to find a better illustration of the abysmally failed pastoral and moral leadership of the U.S. Catholic bishops.
If anyone within the institution, those choosing to remain in it, wants to staunch the flow from the church, then there need to be loud, persistent calls from the faithful for the bishops to take a good hard look at themselves, their failed moral and pastoral leadership, and publicly apologize and repent.
Only then will lots of people consider walking back through the doors of Catholic churches.
"If the purpose of law school is to teach students to think, the purpose of seminary is to teach students to read."
~ Rodney Kennedy
Kennedy thinks that seminarians and those who preach in churches need especially to read novels, to educate their imaginations, expand their sense of what's possible, cultivate empathy for those different from themselves — and in that way, preach better and be better pastors.
#seminaries #education #literacy #reading
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https://wordandway.org/2025/08/13/attention-preachers-read-more/
@wdlindsy this is also exactly why Europe (especially its white population) has become increasingly secular even in my own lifetime (I'm in early 50s and when I was a pre-teen and teen the Church was a bigger thing in many peoples lives)
There's a resurgence in church attendance in my region, but this is mostly driven by immigration (particularly folk arriving from African nations who tend to be Christian) although there may be a few more younger white folk in rural areas going back to church as a consequence of fear and uncertainty (at least all our Christian denominations (both Catholic and Protestant) tend to be "woke" by USA standards)
@vfrmedia @wdlindsy in Scotland there is a minor resurgence in attendances at Roman Catholic churches due to Polish immigrants, who associate the church with freedom from communism.
But the general trajectory is downwards and recently the decline accelerated especially in both Spain and Ireland following ongoing revelations of chronic child abuse.
Education and affluence are the enemies of the church; they work best with poverty and ignorance.
Just like Trump.
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