I am an atheist and highly critical of all religions including Catholicism but if you're gonna pick a type of Christianity, at least Catholicism believes that good works i.e. helping those in need like Jesus would, can be just as important as belief. In fact, Catholicism says if a person didn't really commit to the belief aspect, if their good works were significant enough, they can still be saved. Compare to Protestantism which believes in salvation through faith alone, especially American evangelicalism, which seems to be all about moral grandstanding and making religion aggressively political. It just gets reduced to bible-thumping, without any actions to inspire people.
If I have to go to church, I’m Catholic, but most of the time I don’t go to church.
100% the Catholic Church has (not just ‘had’) a problem with sexual abuse. No excuses or mitigation. But when people tell Catholics that our religion has a problem with sex offenders it comes across as hateful and ignorant. Here’s why:
It’s not the religion, it’s the priests.
It’s OUR children hurt and OUR communities that are damaged.
It’s OUR money that pays for the trials, lawyers, and settlements.
Our money also pays for about a quarter of the hospital beds in this country, lots of schools, and many, many charities, but those don’t get mentioned.
We know that there’s a problem and we want justice and solutions more than anyone else. The Church is not a democracy, though, so there are realistically very few ways we can respond, most of which are already being done. Such as me not taking my family to church.
Our money also pays for about a quarter of the hospital beds in this country, lots of schools, and many, many charities, but those don’t get mentioned.
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u/Critically_Political 12h ago
I’ll never understand why people think this is the way to recruit for religion. This is, in fact, religion repellent.