This week, hundreds of delegates from around the world began a monthlong meeting as part of Pope Francis’ “Synod on Synodality”—a gathering to discuss the future of the Catholic Church. It could radically change the religion. The group is considering groundbreaking alterations to orthodoxy on same-sex unions and whether or not women can be ordained as priests. The process has changed, too. For the first time, delegates include women.

A synod is a conference for church leaders and lay people to engage in conversation about how to bolster the good of the church. Since the 1960s, delegates from the global church have come together to discuss evolving issues. The current synod is part one of a multi-year process that will culminate in 2024 with Francis’ decisions and includes particularly controversial topics, like celibacy and divorce.

The lead up has been punctuated by conservative concerns about just how liberal this meeting may get. The synod kicks off days after a letter became public in which the pope considered blessing the existence of queer couples and the allowance of female priests.

Pope Francis wrote that while marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children,” pastoral charity is also needed, and may be discretionary. Pastoral prudence, he wrote, “must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that don’t transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.” On female priesthood, the pope asserted that, whereas nobody can publicly contradict the church’s current rules prohibiting women’s ordination, they should study it.

For some, this rhetoric may seem like the bare minimum. But for others, like Americans on the right, it’s scary as hell.

Conservative Catholics across the U.S. have been some of the most vocal globally in pushing against reforms, and fear that the church is changing in a way that doesn’t match scripture or their ideology. One New York City priest, Reverend Gerald Murray, worried publicly that the pope “will authorize things that are not contained in Catholic doctrine or that will contradict it,” like women deacons or blessing gay unions. “We’re not Protestants,” he said.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of St. Louis, a vocal opponent to Pope Francis, was in the group that sent the pope a letter inquiring how he would be responding to these issues at the summit. “It’s unfortunately very clear,” Burke said on Tuesday, “that the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the part of some has as its aim to push forward an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesiastical and divine.” (Burke was not invited to the meeting at the Vatican.)

Pope Francis’ track record on queer and women’s rights is complicated. He formally allowed women to read from the Bible during Mass, but also came out against women becoming ordained. Speaking about queer people in 2013, the pope famously asked, “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” He has argued that homosexuality should not be treated as a crime in different countries but clarifies that he still thinks it’s a sin. Francis has framed many of these decisions as instances where localities should turn toward scripture and an evolving discernment as it befits their needs as part of his hope of growing the Catholic Church.

Because of this potential divide between local and global doctrine and application, it is possible that American Catholics may not even see these changes, should they be formally supported by the pope but not adopted by local priests.

As Mother Jones previously reported, American catholicism has splintered as some of the devout entrench themselves in wider conservative politics. Right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon notably have moved in Catholic circles saying Pope Francis should be curtailed. Yiannopoulos, who touts a traditionalist form of Catholicism, has been telling anyone who will listen to him, to “make the Vatican straight again” and “make America homophobic again.”

The pope himself seems unfazed by the ire of American Catholics. “They got mad,” he told reporters in late August after a squabble. “But move on, move on.”

  • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Hey Hitler killed Hitler, so call it even?

    Nah fuck those robed pedophiles till we strangle the last politician with the last ones entrails.

    • gregorum@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Wtf. I’m saying that the Catholic Church only makes major changes to dogma once a millennium or so, and I’m pretty interested in what they’re gonna do since it affects the lives of countless billions of people. You can quibble over the fact that you don’t get all you want, and I agree that they’re still a shitty theistic monolithic organization, but I was talking about what benefits a change in their dogma would bring, not fixating on the shortcomings.

      I’m not your enemy.

      • killeronthecorner@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Until the pope can stop his priests and congregation from fucking children, is there any reason to think there will be any positive change?

        Like most figures in religion and Catholicism, the pope is a fairweather friend for Catholics. When he’s singing their tune they’re happy to quote him and laud him for his god given thoughts. When he isn’t, well we get exactly the reaction he’s been given: his own people saying he is wrong even though they were claiming he is God’s earthly representative just moments earlier.

        I’m not outright saying nothing at all good can come of the effort to make change, as there will be some small minority that actually adhere to it, but I don’t see that happening for the vast majority of Catholics who will continue in their bigotry.

        Change over generations will occur moreso, but I think that was coming regardless of his stance. At least that’s what recent history has shown us.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Until the pope can stop his priests and congregation from fucking children

          Are you of the belief that the Pope has super powers?

    • ubermeisters@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Take a second to chill there satan.

      What the fuck are you going on about? Entrails and shit go get some fucking help, dude.

      The gross shit you’re talking about here isn’t any better than what the church does. So who takes care of your entrails after you’ve de-entrailed all the people you decided need to go?

      • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’s a fairly famous quote.

        Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
        -Denis Diderot

            • ubermeisters@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              And what are you going to do with your newfound decision that I’m illiterate? How are you justifying that against my apparent ability to read and write(type)? Thats rhetorical.

              Sorry I’m not part of your life experience, and have my own which hasn’t exposed me to all the same things as you. I’m 100% positive that a great deal of what I consider common knowledge is lacking from your experience as well. Welcome to life.


              Everybody better read up on this guy, or AlwaysNowNeverNotMe is gonna attack your basic human skillsets.

              Denis Diderot

              French Philosopher

                • dezmd@lemmy.worldM
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                  1 year ago

                  “Being illiterate is not a moral failing. Being an asshole though.” - You, two minutes after posting this.

                  Look in the mirror, asshole. Lol.

                  • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    I was called Satan and psychotic while still calmly explaining the source of the quote.

                    Then called psychotic again.

                    Idgaf if you can’t understand or what you think but I feel fine calling him an illiterate crybaby asshole.

            • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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              1 year ago

              Hey, not knowing something isn’t wrong. It isn’t illiteracy to not have read whatever that is related to, remember the xkcd comic on today’s 10,000. I also only read the quote on lemmy.

              Now their response is not the best of course.

                  • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    il·lit·er·ate
                    /i(l)ˈlidərət/
                    adjective
                    adjective: illiterate
                    unable to read or write.
                    “his parents were illiterate”
                    Similar:
                    unable to read or write
                    unlettered
                    analphabetic
                    functionally illiterate
                    Opposite:
                    literate
                    ignorant in a particular subject or activity.
                    “the extent to which voters are politically illiterate”
                    Similar:
                    ignorant
                    unknowledgeable
                    uneducated
                    untaught
                    unschooled
                    untutored
                    untrained
                    uninstructed
                    uninformed
                    unlearned
                    unread
                    unenlightened
                    benighted
                    backward
                    nescient
                    Opposite:
                    literate
                    knowledgeable
                    uncultured or poorly educated.
                    “the ignorant, illiterate Town Council”
                    (especially of a piece of writing) showing a lack of education, especially an inability to read or write well.
                    “as you can see, I have corrected your misspelled, illiterate letter”

                    It doesn’t simply mean unable to read or write.