Bonus Episode 48 PREVIEW: Catholicism

a great institution, if you're into institutionsfull episode on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dirty-papists-126230197help alea help trans people at https://www.sculptr.co/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00November Kelly?

  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 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 all the ways how, maybe not all the ways, but a lot of them. Thesis number two, kinda cool though.

• 0:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it does.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  The pageant trees just can't be beat.

• 0:40November Kelly?

  Thesis two A, let me in, you fuckers. We'll get there.

• 0:45Liam McAnderson?

  Let her in. All right, 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.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Aleah?

• 0:56Liam McAnderson?

  Aleah.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, oh, but then like Star Wars character.

• 0:59Liam McAnderson?

  Aleah. No, duh. He compared you two to nuclear weapons or something, but he should still come on the pod.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:06November Kelly?

  Yeah, I think, listen, every podcast has its dream guest, right? Like, Kill James Bond, we think we could get Corbin, maybe. I think, well, there's your problem, could get Pope Francis.

• 1:16Liam McAnderson?

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

• 1:21Justin Roczniak?

  That's a good point. You did do that.

• 1:22November Kelly?

  It's true, yeah.

• 1:25November Kelly?

  All right, that was, that was it. Next slide, please. All right, we have to talk about Jesus on account of being kind of central to the whole church thing. So.

• 1:36Liam McAnderson?

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

• 1:47November Kelly?

  Yeah, so it's a trinity, right? God, God is three parts, each of whom are separately all God. And they're not, they're not like a, 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.

• 2:04Liam McAnderson?

  That's polytheism.

• 2:05November Kelly?

  Well, there's one God that's just got three different aspects, right? Like, it's just, yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:21November Kelly?

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

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:23November Kelly?

  Like.

• 2:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty good. You can have like, uh, a day of the dead, like in Mexico.

• 2:29November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:30Justin Roczniak?

  That's somehow not pagan.

• 2:32November Kelly?

  Exactly.

• 2:32Justin Roczniak?

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

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Like 90% of Christmas is just Yule.

• 2:39November Kelly?

  Hmm. Yeah, pretty much. But so, um, your, your Nicene Creed, right, is, uh, there's, there's God, the Father, right? Like Old Testament God from the Bible, um, who then, uh, did, Jesus, the son part of God is born of the Virgin Mary. Is a virgin her whole life, is like free from sin. Um, and, uh, it is like, lives as a human, while simultaneously being God. Uh, is, uh, says a bunch of like weird mystifying things. Um, uh, 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.

• 3:24November Kelly?

  Um, and then Christians believe is, uh, like resurrected, right? And, uh, sort of like ascends into heaven. And then there's a third part, which is vibes. Um, that's the, uh, the, the Holy Spirit, which is, you know, God's vibes. Um, and, uh, that shows up and tells the apostles, Jesus's boys, what to do, which is go forth, spread the gospel, right?

• 3:50Justin Roczniak?

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

• 3:55Liam McAnderson?

  What? So, so this is gonna be, you know, cause my wife explains this to me and then I don't listen. Also Philly's up to one on the net. It's sure bomb.

• 4:02November Kelly?

  Uh, I, I, 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?

• 4:15Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 4:15November Kelly?

  Yeah. Uh, 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.

• 4:33Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, well, I'm on Catholic.org, so I

• 4:36Speaker 02

  The confusion is part of the whole point. If you feel confused-

• 4:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, so I actually kinda fuck with that.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  That it's proof, that it's beyond your understanding and therefore divine.

• 4:45Liam McAnderson?

  I think that that logic sort of tracks. Yeah, the universe is unknowable, Roz.

• 4:52Justin Roczniak?

  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.

• 5:07Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we do. You've read the Divine Comedy.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  I'm genuinely curious about that because I was raised to believe that we all had guardian angels. Each one of us had our individual guardian angel.

• 5:18Liam McAnderson?

  Nah, it's like a zone defense.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  My particular question is, if I've been excommunicated and I'm an apostate from the church, does my guardian angel go on paid administrative leave and just be on basically permanent vacation?

• 5:32Liam McAnderson?

  Guardian angel involved shooting.

• 5:36November Kelly?

  Guardian angel turning off their body cam?

• 5:39Justin Roczniak?

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

• 5:45Liam McAnderson?

  How can they be strapped for cash? Look at my house, bro!

• 5:49November Kelly?

  Who isn't these days?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  I was more impressed that my guardian angel was loyal enough to defect with me.

• 5:57Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck this, I'm going home.

• 6:00November Kelly?

  There's a book about that, too. Well, it's a poem, actually.

• 6:02Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah. Well, that's how Lucifer happened, right? You know, one day, they took his stapler and he was like, "I'm going to burn the building down." And that's how we got hell.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  I'm gonna push back on that because, okay, so here.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  My leaving the church was precipitated by a number of things, not least of which was actually working in a scientific career field. Yes, science does erode religion somewhat. Because 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. 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 of God's will when God just wanted to keep these little prayer batteries in a little garden somewhere? Like, that didn't make sense to me.

• 7:00Liam McAnderson?

  It's a mystery.

• 7:01Justin Roczniak?

  That's very breaking.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Emancipating the slaves to worship. Don't know. Like, I was like, okay, so like, this is actually the good guy now.

• 7:12Liam McAnderson?

  They all say, although Satanists are all dweebs.

• 7:14Justin Roczniak?

  The thing, the thing about.

• 7:16Liam McAnderson?

  All of you, all of you, you fucking dweebs.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I'm not a Satan, I'm just saying, like, from the outside perspective.

• 7:22Liam McAnderson?

  Satanists are dweebs.

• 7:24Justin Roczniak?

  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.

• 7:39November Kelly?

  Uh, 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.

• 7:54Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, he gets gnawed on in the Divine Comedy for like a lot of it.

• 7:58November Kelly?

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

• 8:21November Kelly?

  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 it has bowels a rent asunder.

• 8:33Liam McAnderson?

  Who amongst us, right?

• 8:34Justin Roczniak?

  This is the first really gnarly farm work accident, you know?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  That just sounds like the night before SRS, honestly, bowel prep.

• 8:43November Kelly?

  It is, it is Acts, chapter one, verse 18, if you want to look this up. But anyway.

• 8:49Justin Roczniak?

  And low he was entrapped by the grain in the elevator.

• 8:53Liam McAnderson?

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

• 8:58November Kelly?

  Yeah. So, so like before, before he 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? None of that metaphor shit here. Transubstantiation.

• 9:28Justin Roczniak?

  Actually happens.

• 9:28November Kelly?

  Requires a belief that the, the like 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, right?

• 9:45Liam McAnderson?

  Are you?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  It is actual believed ritual cannibalism for a religion whose symbol is a person who has been tortured to death on a medieval era execution device.

• 9:56November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Are we the baddies?

• 9:58November Kelly?

  No, it's cool.

• 9:59Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, can't argue with success.

• 10:03Liam McAnderson?

  Count, count the rings.

• 10:05November Kelly?

  Count the fisherman's rings.

• 10:09Justin Roczniak?

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

• 10:17November Kelly?

  Uh, oh yeah. Uh, now another Catholic thing, right? Is, uh, this priesthood of all believers shit that Protestants came up with? Absolutely not, right? Like a priest is a, is like a special guy, still has to be a guy, we're working on it. 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 you.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  They're not allowed to marry you. They're allowed to marry you to someone else, to be clear.

• 10:45November Kelly?

  Yeah. Yeah. Marrying other people to each other.

• 10:50November Kelly?

  And, uh, also like if you're a bishop or, um, or whatever, like ordaining more priests. So they reproduce asexually.

• 10:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. It's gotta have a, gotta have a hierarchy. You gotta have some structure here. I don't want to have like a sort of righteous gemstones type situation in my church.

• 11:06November Kelly?

  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 Learjet, you know?

• 11:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. Go to seminary and learn the rules.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Okay, interesting side note on the whole bishops can anoint priests thing. There are multiple sects, multiple churches that aren't the Catholic Church that have, according to the Catholic faith, valid Eucharist.

• 11:38November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  There's no requirement to be Catholic to have a valid Eucharist. It comes from the descent to the line of bishops.

• 11:45November Kelly?

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

• 11:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're keeping St. Peter's in the back, actually.

• 11:53November Kelly?

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

• 12:00Liam McAnderson?

  Father Henafe. Oh, Father Henafe. 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.

• 12:11November Kelly?

  Or you can ask.

• 12:13Justin Roczniak?

  I will do so.

• 12:14Liam McAnderson?

  I've been baptized. That was kind of cheating. Sorry about that.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Sorry, I lost my train 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.

• 12:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I was a little curious about that. So you said in the group chat.

• 12:36November Kelly?

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

• 12:41Liam McAnderson?

  Oh yeah, there's a total hawk.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  I'm going on a honeymoon here this fall, so like.

• 12:46Liam McAnderson?

  Congratulations.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 12:54November Kelly?

  Oh, we can go on a photo walk.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Well, you'll be going on a walk. I'll be going on a photo walk.

• 13:03November Kelly?

  This is fun. I like this. Um, next slide.

• 13:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, unless we want to talk about this text on the screen.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  That was from me. Um, I was talking with a friend about, I have a, a trans friend. She's like basically my little sister. And she, 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 the, 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.

• 13:50Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, no, God specifically actually punishes you for that.

• 13:53November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, welcome, welcome to Liamism. Uh, this is a new one. Uh, we're gonna do, we're gonna do a skiz of the likes of which you've never seen before.

• 14:00November Kelly?

  I, I, I will say that like contrition is a necessary part of repentance. Like you, you gotta at least feel bad for the people that you hurt. But yeah, you.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I've been to confession enough times that contrition's a pretty low bar.

• 14:15November Kelly?

  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.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  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 to 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.

• 14:44November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 14:44Justin Roczniak?

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

• 14:51Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 14:52Justin Roczniak?

  You know?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  We had to do them in Latin up till both ways.

• 14:56Liam McAnderson?

  That's nah, fuck, fuck that.

• 15:03November Kelly?

  They said, they sound cooler in Latin. I'm sorry.

• 15:05Liam McAnderson?

  Of course they sound cooler in Latin.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  They all sound cool. Saying grace before meal sounds cooler in Latin. Benedict dona nos, et hector dona, quidit tu agitatis, mussum tu repet Christum, domino nostrum, amen. Like that's fantastic way to start an Italian dinner.

• 15:19Liam McAnderson?

  That's, that's watch deep in there, hobbit.

• 15:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.