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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Catholics have to maintain loyalty with Rome on certain matters.

Not to look at U.S. catholic opinion surveys, which routinely show significant support for changing major aspects of church doctrine regarding sexuality and gender, among other things.

Then those people aren’t in communion with Rome either. Being Catholic shouldn’t be easy. Going to the gym isn’t easy.

This is like saying a 500 lb man is attractive because he thinks he’s attractive.

I mean, yes. But they're still generally recognized as "Catholic" by the broader American populace, which doesn't really pay attention to internal doctrinal niceties. Nancy Pelosi still counts as "catholic" for general U.S. purposes, despite having views on abortion and gender wildly out of step with official church doctrine (though I'm not so sure the German catholics would disagree with her...)

Nancy Pelosi is, quite literally, under church discipline for her stance on abortion.

By one archbishop, but given Communion by another. Part of the Catholic Church counts her as Catholic at the very least.

Archbishop Cordileone is the figure in the Catholic Church with the authority to impose discipline on Nancy Pelosi; unless and until he’s overruled by the Vatican, other bishops who give her communion are breaking the rules even if they’re probably not going to get in trouble for it.

And what percentage of the populace knows that, or cares? If she were elected President she'd be counted as a "Catholic" just as a non-practicing Jew would be counted as "Jewish."

I think it's more like Jews that don't keep the sabbath or eat kosher, it's part of your ancestral identity rather than representing any belief in divine revelation.

Even Sunday mass itself is obligatory, along with a smattering of holy days of obligation. So if you're not giving any weight to that rule, you're unlikely to give any weight to the others. The non-weekly attenders that happen to align with the church are doing so on accident, the church isn't the source of their opinion.

They might go to church for Christmas and Easter. Very few priests would use those as a platform to catechize the cultural Catholics. The most I've seen is gentle nudging, like "Look how hard it was to find parking today, people had to park in the neighhborhood. A lot of you must not be coming every week, and you really should!"