Pope Leo signals shift away from Catholic Church's focus on sex

"Pretty sure those last two are supposed to be God’s job anyway." amazing, I'm stealing this for future use

I'll gladly laud the new focus. But as an atheist I think I am allowed to exist thanks to the internicene warfare among Christians (and among other religions).

Everyone blames Paul. Like this is actually a fairly mainstream view in Doctrine and Theological Studies. This Jesus Guy? Chill dude, like, one of his most famous speeches is literally "hey, don't judge unless you are literally perfect. A point he reiterates several times. Like a literal thing he says to his disciples is "why do you care about the wood shavings in your neighbor's eye when you have a f****** splinter in your eye, you hypocrite." Has lunch with prostitutes and thieves. Rejects bribery and the like. One of the most famous stories about the guy is a bunch of rich assholes trying to court him favor and him deciding instead to go with a thief and sinner, and the rich guys are all offended like "did I not please you or honor you enough" and him going "dude the fact you care about being seen with me and your social standing is the issue". Like don't judge, sin is dealt by God. Like he literally has a speech that goes. "Imagine weeds get in your wheat. do you cut every plant then and there to get the weeds thus killing the wheat? Or do you let the wheat grow and then can identify the weeds" -. basically saying "it's not your job to judge others". Then Paul comes along. Have you ever met a newly converted? Especially one that used to judge and hate on the religion they converted to? They're fanatical as hell and super eager to cast judgement. Every single major thing wrong with catholicism can be traced to paul. The lines about homosexuality? Paul. Women not being able to hold priesthood and needing to be subservient? Paul. Morally policing others' behavior instead of minding your own? Paul. The "duty" that if you love someone you get all in their biz because the loving thing to do is to interfere to save them? Also Paul. We went from Jesus going "I'm going to have dinner with prostitutes and sinners, because the way to God is through compassion" to Paul going "if someone doesn't live a perfect, immaculate, moral christian life? Don't associate with them. Let them convert or cut them out". Like within the "allowance" of criticising gospel even more progressive parts of the Church agree Paul is out of line lol.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that Paul sucks. 

I would extend this to Christianity in general. For years, churches around the world had a "leaky pipeline" problem where young followers were leaving because of the contradictory messaging surrounding issues like premarital sex and gay relationships. Pastors would preach about acceptance and love for criminals and lepers, and then the next week preach about how teenagers who look at each other in lust are going to hell. The seriousness with which the church treated so called "sexual sins" was incredibly off putting, especially in the context of actual scripture. The bible has 2000 verses addressing poverty and the poor, and it has 3 that explicitly call out gay relationships. Yet there is a tremendous focus on the policing of sex acts from the modern church.

>and returning to the previous understanding that abortion is ok. Wait what? Where are you getting this from? Abortion is not and has never been considered “ok” within Catholicism

>and returning to the previous understanding that abortion is ok. There was never any such understanding in Catholicism.

Guy was actively ignoring pains in his chest and refusing medical help.

He had a long history of frail health and probably shouldn’t have been elected based on that in the first place. He was a compromise candidate when the conservatives and liberal wings of the church found their candidates blocked by each other. No conspiracy is necessary here.

Not at all. Firstly he had a history of low blood pressure and related cardiovascular issues; including having chest pains (!) that he ignored and didn’t seek any kind of medical attention for. Stress is known to increase the risk of heart attacks; and oh boy, he was in a lot of stress. And thought chest pains were okay when you already know to have low blood pressure and have fainted (!) before due to it. People love conspiracy theories but there’s nothing suspicious here.

It was protestants and their witch hunts that made midwives who performed abortions "witches" that made it an issue, then they pretty much dropped it until the 1960s.

That is completely false, the Catholic Church has never condoned abortion, never mind "for most of its history"!

The issue is much more muddled then you are making it out to be. It was absolutely not an emphasis of the early Church, and many prominent figures in the church had much softer views on and/or held the widespread Aristotelian view of it i.e. ensoulment occurs 40 days post conception. The Church's current position that abortion=homicide, dates to 1869. The 1588 standard on abortion you are likely referring to which said the same, was reversed after only 3 years in 1591 back to the basically Aristotelian standard of abortion i.e. only homicide when it was of a fully formed fetus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion

I wouldn't be shocked to see jd vance kick it up a notch and say, "That's not my pope".

Or the College of Cardinals had a bunch of cardinals voting without ID or maybe they used Smartmatic to tabulate the 133 votes.

>JD Vance will be along shortly ~~°to tell us the Pope ought to keep his thoughts about Catholicism to himself~~ to kill another Pope Ftfy

I kinda feel like most Catholics would take a shift in policy as a relief. They don't "believe" so much as follow. It's not like Church doctrine is something they *want* to follow. Catholics (speaking from former experience) tend to take the "it is what it is" approach: what the Pope says, you do, like it or not. I imagine a majority of them would appreciate certain changes.

I agree with you, but that's a thing happening in Christian western countries, not with "religion" in general. A lot of Muslim countries are getting more radicalized, and part of that is because, allegedly, the Quran was written directly by God. Also, there's no central figure in the Muslim world since the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate to "guide" everyone.

Looks like we got another Schism comin'!

>I don't know what I call myself religiously. I just live by the philosophy, "I don't have the answers, but anyone who claims they do is full of shit." Agnostic, I believe?

Because Francis make sure only a progressive Pope could be voted, he filled the Vatican with progressive elector cardinals.

>To be sorta fair the Bible doesn’t really mention abortion directly at all It does give instructions on how to induce a miscarriage as some form of trial.

Especially as one of the reasons for the ban on clerical marriage (entanglement with secular political structures and inheritance), is not relavent when the modern church is not a feudal landowner.

I have a little 1 inch button on my bag that just says "Abstinence makes the Church grow fondlers"

He is genuinely a once in a generation type of guy. Cause he's all that, but incredibly humble, reportedly very friendly.

With Hitchens and Fry, they could convince God himself that he doesn't exist

>You can say many things about the Catholic Church, but sometimes they really read the moment. Yeah, the Catholic Church has had centuries of experience playing these political games.

it didn't last this long by not playing politics

I told people (IRL) this when the pope was elected. They told me I was stupid. Who''s stupid now lol

There's a whole popular myth about "the eye of a needle" being the name for a gate in Jerusalem. There is basically no evidence for it though. It looks like a myth that may have sprung up in the late medieval period: literally royal medieval cope. As you say, clearly Christ meant for it to be impossible to accumulate great wealth and also enter the kingdom of heaven.

To be fair, most Catholics don’t understand that either lol