Bonus Episode 48 PREVIEW: Catholicism

Okay, I wrote most of the slides.

I took that privilege as an excuse to give myself two introduction slides.

I'm coming from a place here where I have a two and a bit theses about the church.

Thesis number one is way, way Martin Luther, way too wordy.

Like, I could get this shit down to two and a half, right?

Point one: the church is and has long been an instrument of misery, ignorance, reaction, hatred, and despair.

We are going to talk about about all the ways, how maybe not all the ways, but a lot of them.

Thesis number two, kind of cool though.

Yeah, it does.

The pageantries just can't be beaten.

Thesis 2A, let me in, you fuckers.

We'll get there.

Let her in.

All right.

That's it.

One more.

Pope Francis, if you're feeling better, I know that you referred to Nova.

And sorry, remind me how to say your name again because I butchered it once.

Alea?

Alea.

Yeah, I said Aleia.

But then the Star Wars character.

Alea.

Done.

No, done.

He compared you two to nuclear weapons or something, but he should still come on the pod.

Thanks.

Yeah,

I think.

Listen, every podcast has its dream guest, right?

Like,

kill James Wand.

We think we could get Corbyn, maybe.

I think, well, there's your problem could get Pope Francis.

Maybe I have ratio the Pope on Twitter, so he is duty bound.

That's a good point.

He did do that.

That's true.

Yeah.

All right.

That was that was it.

Next slide, please.

All right.

We got to talk about Jesus on account of being kind of central to the whole church thing.

So Jesus is his own kid, maybe?

I don't, you're going to, someone's going to have to run me through this because my dad's central objection to Catholicism was in its entirety, what do you mean God is his own kid and also original sin bad?

Yeah, so it's a trinity, right?

God is three parts, each of whom are separately all God.

And they're not like a transformer or anything.

Like it's, it's, they're all independently God, but they're also collectively God.

It's a mystery.

We're getting that's polytheism.

Well,

there's one God, it's just got three different aspects, right?

Like, it's

yeah, I'm gonna argue that Catholicism, more than any other religion, goes to local cultures and like rifles through their pockets for loose celebratory events.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons why it's so successful.

Like, like, yeah, it's pretty good.

You can have like a Day of the Dead, like in Mexico.

Yeah.

That's somehow not pagan.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I think it's, you know, it's, and it's great.

I love it.

Like 90% of Christmas is just Yule.

Yeah, pretty much.

But so

your Nicene Creed, right, is

there's God the Father, right?

Like Old Testament God from the Bible.

who then

did

Jesus, the Son part of God, is born of the Virgin Mary, who's a virgin her whole life, is like free from sin,

and

is like

lives as a human while simultaneously being God,

is says a bunch of like weird, mystifying things.

Is a kind of like fringe religious extremist in a like, you know, unimportant place in the Roman Empire for which he is arrested, tortured to death,

and then

Christians believe is like resurrected, right?

And sort of like ascends into heaven.

And then there's a third part, which is vibes.

That's

the Holy Spirit, which is God's vibes.

And

that shows up and tells the apostles, Jesus' boys, what to do, which is go forth, spread the gospel, right?

Yeah, and then you got you got Mary and you got all the saints and you got all the other stuff.

So this is going to be, you know, because my wife explains this to me and then I don't listen.

Also, Philly's up to one on the net.

Shore bomb.

I feel like we have to introduce the first and earliest dodge of Christianity logically, right?

Which is mystery, right?

All of this stuff,

if this is God, right?

And you're not God, you're just some guy,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

God is so beyond your ability to comprehend that this is like...

symbolic, but you can never really fully grasp it.

So you feeling confused by this is not a sign that it's bullshit.

It's a sign that like it's actually extra true okay well I'm on catholic.org so I'm sure I'll confusion is part of the whole point if you feel confused

that it's proof that it's beyond your understanding and therefore divine I think that that that's logically sort of track yeah I think

the universe is unknowable Roz this seems a relatively simple thing to me though which is that okay god's church on earth manifests as a huge, sprawling bureaucracy.

There's clearly one up in heaven, too, that we also don't really know how it works.

Yeah, we do.

You've read the divine comedy.

I'm genuinely curious about that because, like, I was raised to believe that we all had guardian angels.

Each one of us had our individual guardian angel.

Nah,

it's like a zone defense.

My particular question is:

if I've been excommunicated and I'm an apostate from the church, does my

guardian angel go like on paid administrative leave and just be on basically permanent vacation?

Guardian angel involves shooting.

Yeah,

Guardian Angel turning off that body cam.

Yeah, you know, that's that's the real question: is are they like strapped for cash up there and they're assigning them to like 30 cases at once?

How can they be strapped for a cash?

Look at

my house.

I would be more impressed if my guardian angel was like loyal enough to defect with me.

No, fuck this, I'm going home.

about that too well it's a poem actually well yeah

well that that's how that's how Lucifer happened right you know it's one day

one day they they took his stapler and he was like I'm going I'm going to burn the building down

and and that's how we got hell

back on that because okay so here

My leaving the church was precipitated by a number of things, not least of which was like actually working in a scientific career field.

Yes, science does erode religion somewhat.

Because like I was looking at the church canon, not quite from the outside yet, but I was like, okay, so Lucifer, the bringer of light and knowledge, the person who taught mankind good from evil, like why is this the bad guy?

Like, why was Lucifer telling Adam and Eve about God and instructing them like how to know good from bad?

How is that a violation of God's will when God just wanted to keep his little prayer batteries in a little garden somewhere?

Like that didn't make sense to me.

It's a mystery.

Like,

very confusing.

Emancipating the slaves to worship.

Dunno.

Like, I was like, okay, so, like, this is actually the good guy now.

Hell Satan, although Satanists are all dweebs.

The thing,

the thing about all I am.

All I am.

You're fucking dweebs.

I'm not a Satanist.

I'm just saying, like, from the outside of the world.

Satanists are dweebs.

The thing about Satan bringing, you know, knowledge and that being evil is that it does feel good to be dumb.

I mean, I don't know if you've ever been to a NASCAR race, but

the other thing that we ought to talk about here, since I front-loaded the theology, is transubstantiation, right?

So, like in the Bible, Jesus' final dinner with his boys before all-time bitch Judas betrays him.

Yeah, he's gnawed on in the divine comedy for like a lot of it.

Judas, what happens to Judas in the Bible is really funny to me because after he betrays Jesus, one of two things happen to him, depending on which gospel you believe.

Either he gets real sad, tries to return the money and hangs himself, or, and this is my preferred one, he takes that money, uses it to buy a farm, goes out into the field and explodes.

I shit you not, that is, that is in the gospels.

He buys a field called the Field of Blood.

I think they named it that afterwards, goes out in the field, and then his bowels are rent asunder.

Who amongst us, right?

This is the first really gnarly farm work accident.

That just sounds like the night before SRS, honestly.

Bowel press.

It is Acts chapter 1, verse 18, if you want to look this up.

But anyway,

he was entrapped by the grain in the elevator.

He cried out, but there was no one to save him because he had betrayed God or whoever.

Yeah, so like before he gets gets betrayed, Jesus takes some bread and he takes some wine and he says, This is my body, this is my blood, right?

Protestants think this is a metaphor.

And so, if a priest like it gives you some bread or a little like wafer or whatever, and some wine, what that is, is it's symbolic, it's evocative of that communion of like being with Jesus, right?

Um, none of that metaphor shit here, transubstantiation actually happens requires a belief that the little communion wafer and the wine, when they get blessed by a priest, magically transform in a way that is imperceptible to you or science into the actual body and blood of Christ.

Are you

believed ritual cannibalism?

For a religion whose symbol is a person who has been tortured to death on a medieval era execution device.

No, that's cool.

No, that's cool.

Look, can't argue with success.

Count the rings.

Count the fisherman's rings.

Now, if we could just figure out how to multiply the lobes, we could, you know, solve world hunger.

Oh, yeah.

Another Catholic thing, right, is this priesthood of all believers shit that Protestants came up with.

Absolutely not, right?

Like, a priest is like a special guy.

Still has to be a guy.

We're working on it um who has powers those powers include turning bread and wine into jesus uh like forgiving your sins on behalf of jesus marrying you uh burying they're not allowed to marry you they're about to marry you to someone else to be clear yeah yeah marrying other people to each other

um and uh also like if you're a bishop or um or whatever like ordaining more priests so they reproduce asexually yes it's got to have a hierarchy.

You got to have some structure here.

I don't want to have like a sort of righteous gemstones type situation in my church.

No, seriously.

Like I would see, I would every time rather have a bad cardinal or whatever that's just like office holder than I have a personal relationship with a guy with a leer jet.

Yeah, exactly.

Go to seminary and learn the rules.

Okay, interesting side note on the whole bishops can anoint priests thing.

There are

multiple churches that aren't the Catholic church that have, according to the Catholic faith, valid Eucharist.

Yes.

There's no requirement to be Catholic to have a valid Eucharist.

It comes from the descent to the line of bishops.

Yeah, when we call it an apostolic church, it's because it's like the apostles, Jesus' boys.

Yeah, we're having St.

Peter's in the back, actually.

Yeah, have a line of descent through to like your bishop who then ordains your priest.

Father Hannafe.

Oh, I want Father Hanafe.

He's bald and very tall.

He's Jesuit.

So I listen, I've made my peace with being whatever I am.

Ross, come to my confirmation.

Or you can ask Hallie and I'll be able to do that.

I will do so.

I've been baptized.

That was kind of cheating.

Sorry about that.

Sorry, I lost my share of thought.

There are versions of Catholicism that are LGBTQ inclusive.

They have a valid Eucharist and valid sacraments.

We'll have a slide about one that's 30 minutes from Liam's house.

I didn't dox him, so I'm sorry.

Yeah, I was a little curious about that.

So

I'm not loving

chat.

When we get you on a third time, I'm just feeling the eye directed at me at that point.

Oh, yeah, there's a total hawk.

I'm from going on a honeymoon to Europe this fall, so like

I might be stopping by.

Thank you.

I might be stopping by England, and you know, I'll bring my camera and I'll say hi a few months later.

Oh, we can go on a photo walk.

Well, you'll be going on a walk.

I'll be going on a photo walk.

This is fun.

I like this.

Next slide.

Yeah.

Unless we want to talk about this text on the screen.

That was from me.

I was talking with a friend about,

I have a trans friend.

She's like basically my little sister.

And she

finds a lot of comfort in religion.

And she finds a lot of people who are queer push back on her for being Christian because they see what like

what the evil Christians do to queer people um

and what this came through my head i was like thinking about it and i was like okay the problem here isn't the belief it's this effect where people can harm other people and rather than feel the harm that they've done and feel guilty for that they can go ahead and just stop feeling guilty without ever making it right yeah no god specifically actually punishes you for that yeah Yeah, welcome to Liamism.

This is a new one.

We're going to do a schism the likes of which I've i've never seen before i i will say that like contrition is a necessary part of repentance like you got to at least feel bad for the people that you hurt but yeah you i've been to confession enough times that contrition is a pretty low bar yeah

i mean i'm not going to argue with that but it's it's it's it's on the piece of paper metaphorically right but feeling bad and doing something about that feeling bad if you get trained to never have to do anything about it and you can just get the feeling of feeling bad, then stop feeling bad because you felt bad.

And you've been trained that you don't actually have to complete the cycle of feel bad, do something about it, like something positive, restorative.

That breaks something in some people.

I will say that sometimes, though, it is very annoying to do, you know, two Our Fathers and six Hail Marys.

Oh, you know,

we had to do them in Latin, uphill both ways.

That's

and chele sanctivichetu nomen tuum.

They sound cooler in Latin.

I'm sorry.

They all sound cooler.

Saying grace before meals sounds cooler in Latin.

Benedict dono sed hecto dono quititur logitate sumus unturi pec cristum domino nostro mamen.

Like that's a fantastic way to start an Italian dinner.

That's that's washed deep in there, hot buddy.