His Facebook page is easily found. Appears he is not a preacher. Pleasantly surprised to not find he’s worth tens of millions.
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I’ll have to assume that “in theory” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Otherwise give me your position on original sin, transsubstantiation and the worship of wizards and witches (aka saints).
it’s all silly but the nice thing about catholicism is i’m not required to take it that seriously as long as I do all their little rituals and spells. eg if I married a religious person that was into it, very little would be required of me
catholics also generally are much more liberal and much less dogmatic than their protestant evangelical counterparts
By the luck of the draw, there are very few Catholics in the Deep South and high Catholic populations in some liberal areas. I don’t think there’s anything inherent in Catholicism that makes it any better than Evangelism, if you reversed the areas where both are practiced then I believe Catholics would be seen as the nutty ones that pick and choose the craziest stuff from the Bible
That being said, I do think the teachings of Jesus as presented in the New Testament are a great model for living, but there are very few Catholics who strictly follow that and leaves behind the bigoted BS. I went to Catholic school for 12 years in Nebraska and basically all my relatives are Catholic. I have only 1 aunt out of 15 aunts/uncles that is fairly liberal and who I would classify as a good person (along with her kids), the rest are mostly pieces of crap (i.e. Trump voters).
We grew up in this culture, so stuff like circumcision seems normal, but for an outsider it has to seem batshit insane that you would mutilate the genitals of a newborn baby boy. Along with a host of other insane rituals and spells.
Vicarious redemption is nonsense.
jesus doesn’t teach that though does he? you can agree with the teachings of jesus without even touching that
It’s basically the central tenet of Christianity
As well as:
Taoism (/ˈtaʊɪzəm/, /ˈdaʊɪzəm/) or Daoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/) refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; daojia ) or to a religion (道教; daojiao ); both share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào ; lit. ‘Way’, ‘Thoroughfare’). The Tao Te Ching , a book containing teachings attributed to Laozi (老子), together with the later writings of Zhuangzi, are both widely considered the keystone works of Taoism.
In Taoism, the Tao is the source of everything and the ultimate principle underlying reality.[2][3] Taoism teaches about the various disciplines for achieving perfection through self-cultivation. This can be done through the use of Taoist techniques and by becoming one with the unplanned rhythms of the all, called “the way” or “Tao”.[2][4] Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasize wu wei (action without intention), naturalness, simplicity, spontaneity and the Three Treasures: 慈, compassion, 儉, frugality and 不敢爲天下先, humility.
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Tao is the Force and Jesus was basically Luke Skywalker but went out Obi Wan style. If you believe in the story anyway.
Cosmic consciousness is getting hit with the Holy Spirit/becoming enlightened and you too can be a Jedi, up to you if you stay light or dark. Most go dark, at least the ones who make themselves known.
They’re all just stories to try to get close to and approximate the divine. Carl Jung and perennial philosophy stuff.
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Meh, enough violent, hateful buddhist extremists around, see myanmar, thailand, sri lanka, I don’t think the religion matters that much. Also meh at catholics being the more reasonable christian school - not true in europe imo.
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my old church used to steer hard away from political topics for fear of losing tax exempt status - although I’d wager the number of churches that has ever lost this i could count on one hand.
if the church wants to go hard on influencing public policy we need to remove tax exemption ASAP.
Churches get their federal tax exemption as 501(c)(3) organizations. They should have the same ability to influence public policy as similar organizations that are non-religious in nature.
501c3’s can’t lobby
they also can’t participate in campaigns
A 501(c)(3) can lobby, it just can’t have lobbying as a “substantial” part of its activity. It can do non-lobbying advocacy without limitation. The IRS also only seems to consider attempting to influence the legislative process as lobbying, so it looks like organizations have more freedom to influence executive branch actions.
This is reductionist bullshit
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i dont know about all the legal bullshit but I know the church throws heavy amounts of money at stuff that influences public policy. they should pay taxes. i know there’s probably some way they get away with it, but it shouldn’t be that way.
the amount of untaxed income the church takes in is staggering.
I do know a bit about the legal bullshit. The IRS considers things like how much time and manpower and what percentage of expenditures are used on lobbying to determine whether churches are crossing the line into substantial lobbying. What may seem like a large amount on a absolute scale is not substantial for a large organization where it’s a small fraction of the money flowing through a religious organization.
Anyways, if you push on this, what happens is that the tax-exempt non-profit will spin off its lobbying efforts into a lobbying organization separate from its activities that are classified as religious, charitable, and educational. The Center for American Progress Action Fund is the lobbying arm of the Center for American Progress Think Tank. Heritage Action for America is the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation. Something like that.
I have found this to be empirically true but it seems that it is not due to Catholicism, but rather in spite of it.