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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Besides Nick Fuentism, which is mostly defined by its fairly low sophisticated anti-semitism given it seems to have no other guiding principles, what other broad political movements in modern day America are Jews under-represented in?

Tradcath integralism? But I suppose Fuentism is a sub branch of that.

While there's probably no religious Jews in tradcath integralism, nobody with familiarity with IRL tradcaths would think ashkenazim are underrepresented there.

Are there really that many Ashkenazi converts to tradcath? There have always been a trickle (for centuries now) but I didn’t think it was particularly common. Actually since the 80s converting to megachurch Evangelical Christianity has been more common, I remember reading that a number of movie directors and producers of Evangelical Christian movies were Jewish converts some years ago.

Apparently in 2005 around 20% of Americans who identified themselves as having been raised Jewish now identified as Christians.

Yes. Ashkenazi converts to Catholicism are disproportionately tradcath. How much of that is tail effects converging, and how much of that is some special appeal, I'm not sure.

I would expect that white converts in general are largely tradcath.

I would highly doubt both. The modal convert, especially a Jewish one, married a Catholic and is converting to make their future mother in law happy. They'll be exactly as Catholic, maybe a little less or a little more, than their spouse.

Trad Cath converts are a tiny minority that you'll have to explain to most people you try to talk to about it.

That’s fair, I mean converts by personal choice rather than to be able to marry in a church (?). I don’t think many whites convert to happy clappy guitar liberal Catholicism, which tends to have an audience of ethnic Catholics who are socially liberal (and of course Episcopalians and Reform Jews are the same way). White centrists looking for some motivational, life-affirming, vaguely Christian spirituality tend to join mainstream evangelical megachurches or other charismatic movements like Hillsong; they’re unlikely to become Catholics.

If a single Jew told me they had converted to Catholicism out of sincere belief I would assume that they were pretty devout / trad.

Yes, if a single Jew did. It may not be technically in accord with Catholic theology to think Jews have no need to convert, but in practice non-trad western Catholics will mostly tell Jews that anyways. If a single gentile did this I would think there's a pretty good chance they were a former evangelical who goes to charismatic mass and was convinced in college to believe in the real presence in the Eucharist. In fact one of the vanishingly few American Catholic bishops(David Konderla) to have been appointed without getting on the future bishops shortlist before his ordination to the priesthood managed to become a bishop by being really good at this.

Ashkenazim and Cajuns are probably the most overrepresented ethnicities among tradcaths(hilariously, that makes Shia Labeouf a stereotype), but that doesn't mean a majority of either are. It's probably tail effects from small population sizes on both ends magnifying specific local factors in both cases.

But seriously, there are a lot of not-trad but conservative religious Catholics, ranging from former mainliners who converted over gay marriage to charismatics who are basically evangelicals with the real presence to opus dei to culture wars-y ethnics. And FYI no one converts to happy clappy guitar liberal Catholicism, white or otherwise; it's probably whiter than tradcaths or charismatics for similar 'just so incredibly old' reasons to, say, ELCA Lutherans.

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