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Help[Opinions] Re: Pope Leo XIV
in reply to a message by Fiammetta
I follow a lot of religion-related social media accounts for two reasons: (1) my faith is important to me, and that also includes a genuine academic-ish fascination with different religious traditions; moreover, within the loose confederation that might called the "religious left," robust interfaith dialogue is exceedingly important, so it's interesting to see where communities will find common ground to fight for common causes (ex: LGBTQIA+ inclusion in religious spaces; immigration; abortion access; etc.); (2) I find some of the more extreme subsects of religious groups to be incredibly interesting even if I find their views revolting. To that last part, I follow a lot of traditionalist-minded Catholic pages, including some young arch-traditional priests. Based on their (surprisingly robust) social media activity, a lot of that group had coalesced around Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea. I know the broader narrative was that traditionalist groups had coalesced around Erdő, but that wasn't what I saw in my corner of the internet.
So I did some digging into Robert Sarah.
Robert Sarah's activities as cardinal include:
- Being something akin to a condom truther: it seems to have been removed from his Wikipedia page (perhaps understandably) but at one point he talked about how condoms don't actually do anything and it would make more sense to spend money treating people diagnosed with HIV than to try and prevent transmission through contraception.
- Comparing transgender people to ISIS, calling them essentially two sides of the same coin.
- Opposing immigration.
- Intense Islamophobia (Erdő looks like a happy-go-lucky fella by comparison).
- ...and his primary theological activity seems to revolve around the physical position of a priest while saying mass. (Actual theology is one area where, social positions aside, I think Francis made a demonstrably positive impact; specifically, his writings and speeches actually seemed to encompass climate activism/preservation of the world as something of a sacrament. The transition from that kind of thinking about the world and faith and such, to something that seems so trivial to me....)
I know that others are just, if not more, concerning, but seeing that particular group coalesce around Sarah was something I found really alarming, and so there's a definite sense of relief that that side of Catholicism was not empowered today.
I will take that as a small victory.
I'm not sure there exists a cardinal that I actually could fully get behind. I've got a few priests - and actually a number of nuns (hey, I can dream) - that I could get behind pretty much fully, but my views are probably never going to be acceptable to the powers that be to see folks that I back actually ascend the Catholic hierarchy.
Andrew
put a smile on your face - make the world a better place (:
So I did some digging into Robert Sarah.
Robert Sarah's activities as cardinal include:
- Being something akin to a condom truther: it seems to have been removed from his Wikipedia page (perhaps understandably) but at one point he talked about how condoms don't actually do anything and it would make more sense to spend money treating people diagnosed with HIV than to try and prevent transmission through contraception.
- Comparing transgender people to ISIS, calling them essentially two sides of the same coin.
- Opposing immigration.
- Intense Islamophobia (Erdő looks like a happy-go-lucky fella by comparison).
- ...and his primary theological activity seems to revolve around the physical position of a priest while saying mass. (Actual theology is one area where, social positions aside, I think Francis made a demonstrably positive impact; specifically, his writings and speeches actually seemed to encompass climate activism/preservation of the world as something of a sacrament. The transition from that kind of thinking about the world and faith and such, to something that seems so trivial to me....)
I know that others are just, if not more, concerning, but seeing that particular group coalesce around Sarah was something I found really alarming, and so there's a definite sense of relief that that side of Catholicism was not empowered today.
I will take that as a small victory.
I'm not sure there exists a cardinal that I actually could fully get behind. I've got a few priests - and actually a number of nuns (hey, I can dream) - that I could get behind pretty much fully, but my views are probably never going to be acceptable to the powers that be to see folks that I back actually ascend the Catholic hierarchy.
put a smile on your face - make the world a better place (:
