Catholicism scholar: ‘Religion has done more harm than good’

Quote:“This is not to deny that religions have done and continue to do good things,” he wrote. “But that I even have to utter such a correction — and that we scholars of religion feel compelled to do so, always, right after we speak what we all agree is a simple truth — shows the power of the idea that, in the end, religions are essentially good. It is so powerful and deeply embedded that rarely do we — who ought to know better — pause to stare into the depths of the truth that religions have, over time, done more harm than good before we scramble up toward the warm sunlight of good religion.”

Also

Quote:“What I understand now is that the dark and troubled landscape of modern Catholic sexuality, and therefore of modern Catholicism itself, has been the normal, everyday life of modern Catholicism. This is not a crisis. It is the modern Catholic normal, finally disclosed for all to see clearly.

Do you think this is easy for me?” he asked rhetorically of his condemnation of Catholicism. “I needed to tell you what brought me to this horrible place. It is a defamation of the demand for justice by victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse and of its cover-up by Catholic authorities to attribute it to some passing reflex of modern anti-Catholic prejudice. It is also a defamation of my disgust.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godzooks/2...olar-orsi/

They're just now noticing this?

No, they're (well, some) just finally admitting it. Probably some mea culpa chest-beating apologetics that will revert as soon as a little clean up is made and people come back to the church. I hope I'm wrong about that going back to the church business.

The RCC's business model doesn't depend on people coming back. In a fit of terrible irony...they've put all their eggs in the kid basket. So what if an adult sees what they've done and leaves? There's always the next run of cabbages.

(January 7, 2020 at 7:17 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The RCC's business model doesn't depend on people coming back.  In a fit of terrible irony...they've put all their eggs in the kid basket.  So what if an adult sees what they've done and leaves?  There's always the next run of cabbages.

'You don't have to be a six-footer,
You don't have to have a great brain,
You don't have to have any clothes on -
You're a Catholic the moment Dad came!' - Monty Python

Boru

Zactly, lol. To put an even finer point on it, while people with a sense of human decency believe that the RCC has damaged itself with this and will lose ground because of it....

...it's actually protestantism taking the big hit no matter how we interpret the data. At least in the US.

-4.8 to -3.1

Whatever's bothering the protestants is bothering them more than anything bothering the catholics. Let that sink in.

Then, among millennials, there are more self described catholics than mainline protestants, a blip for evangelical protestantism here - but understanding their teen outreach program back in the 00's and our propensity to return to the faith of our birth even after an early or midlife conversion....this is likely to be temporary.

This data is skewed by demographic influx (contextualizing the fears of white genocide that waspish maggats are always preening on about) - and perhaps those immigrants will assume the majority religion of their new culture within a few generations - but the likelihood of that then-majority view being protestant rather than catholic or the newly surging nones is slim to nil.

Catholicism is poised to be the last man standing in the christian war for souls here in the US. This, as dominionists (increasingly catholic dominionists) take hold of the gains their protestant competitors made in eroding the wall between religious faith and good governance.

Christians want to hold a Trump rally inside of a Megachurch "King Jesus" and worship Trump as God, so atheists are stepping in to save the day and the Constitution

It will be represented as a "rental for a meeting".