This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Catholicism functioned, for a long time, as an effective spreader of Romance languages, which - insofar as I've heard - often differ from each other approximately similarly to Arabic dialects differing from each other.
Catholicism spread knowledge of Latin among the elite, but didn’t really spread non-Iberian Romance languages.
Of course late Medieval Latin national dialects weren’t necessarily mutually intelligible, but that’s strictly an elite thing.
My understanding is that adoption of Catholicism and Spanish went pretty much hand in hand during the Latin American colonization, and the Jesuit missions spread both.
Hence I said non-Iberian(so not Spanish and Portuguese)- and even for Spanish the situation is complicated; full-bloodedly indigenous Catholics mostly spoke indigenous languages up until independence, but mixed people and whites spoke the colonial language. Actually Latin America has plenty of mostly-indigenous speaking areas still to this day in a way the US doesn't, and that's after nominally-secular post independence governments tried their best to get Quechua and Maya speakers to switch to Spanish exclusively.
I'm less familiar with Brazilian history, but at least in the Spanish colonies- speaking mostly Spanish was a sign of having at least some Spanish ancestry and turned into a national identity marker that would be expected of everyone regardless of their place in the racial hierarchy in the 19th century. Catholicism often resulted in learning Spanish but during the colonial period the church wasn't particularly interested in replacing indigenous dialects, and sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.
What sort of services are you thinking of? It can’t be the mass, surely, since that wasn’t permitted to be celebrated in the vernacular until post-Vatican II. Or were exceptions made for Latin America?
Preaching and catechism in Quechua was obligatory for priests in Peru immediately after the counter-reformation- in fact, the modern dialect of southern Quechua descends from the form standardized to be taught to missionaries. Nahuatl was the standard vernacular in Spanish missions from Mexico until the very late 17th century, even when the sacraments were performed in Latin.
And, it should be noted- Catholic missionaries to animist peoples, both today in Africa and New Guinea and in the renaissance to Indians, typically try to push mass attendance but emphasize confession as a draw to new converts. Providing priests fluent in indigenous languages is obviously important to this endeavor, and early missionary accounts note Indians walking for hundreds of miles to go to confession and returning to their home villages.
It’s rather fascinating to me that confession is seen as a draw to converts, given the strong resistance to it among many members of my own church body. When the denomination was organized, congregations were initially required to introduce private confession wherever possible, but that provision was dropped within a decade or so due to massive pushback from the laity. I wonder if the difference is just that private confession seems “too Catholic” to many Protestants, while pagans have no such hang-ups, or if there are other factors at play.
Animist pagans typically live in superstitious terror of having offended powerful and invisible beings through misconduct. Confession is quite a draw to them, therefore- missionaries to places with lots of animists will still tell stories about poor villagers walking several hundred miles through hostile territory because they’ve heard their sins can be forgiven by a more powerful God than the ones they’re so afraid of.
Third world villagers who’ve never seen a Bible are not the same thing as wiccans who do drugs and dance around naked- the latter don’t like the idea of confession any more than Protestants usually do.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link