Well There‘s Your Problem - Bonus Episode 48 PREVIEW: Catholicism

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

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

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, Martin Luther, way too wordy. I could get this shit down to two and a half. Point one, the church is and has long been an instrument of misery, ignorance, reaction, hatred, and despair. We are gonna talk about all the ways how.

Maybe not all the ways, but a lot of them. Thesis number two. Kinda cool, though. Yeah, it does work. The pageantries just can't be beat. Thesis two A, let me in, you fuckers, we'll get there. Let her in. Alright, we- oh, 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, because I said it on the app. Oh, but then the Star Wars character. Done. Done. He compared you two to nuclear weapons or something, but he should still come on the

pod. Thanks. Yeah, those aren't mine. 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, we could get Pope Francis. I have ratioed the Pope on Twitter, so he is duty bound. That's a good point, you did do that.

It's true, yeah. Alright, that was it, next slide please. Alright, we gotta talk about Jesus on account of being kinda central to the whole church thing. So... He's his own kid, maybe? I don't... 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? ALICE 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, they're all independently God, but they're also collectively God, it's a mystery, we're getting- SEAN That's polytheism! Whaaaaaa. As 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 rifles through their pockets for loose celebratory events. Yeah, it's one of the reasons why it's so successful. Yeah, it's pretty good, you can have, like, Day of the Dead, like, in Mexico. And that's somehow not pagan. ALICE Exactly.

JUSTIN Exactly. And it's great, I love it. RILEY Like, 90% of Christmas is just yule. ALICE Yeah, pretty much. So, your Nicene Creed, right, is, there's God the Father, right, like Old Testament God from the Bible, who then... 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, uh, is free from sin, and lives as a human, while simultaneously being God, says a bunch

of weird, mystifying things, is a kind of fringe religious extremist in an unimportant place in the Roman Empire for which he is arrested, tortured to death, and then Christians believe is 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 Mary, and you got all the saints, and you got all the other stuff...

Yeah, what, can someone... So this is gonna be, y'know, because my wife explains this to me, and then I don't listen. Also, Philly's up 2-1 on the net, sure 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, and you're not God, you're just some guy, God is so beyond

your ability to comprehend that this is 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... The confusion is part of the whole point. If you feel confused, it means that it's proof, that it's beyond your understanding and therefore divine. I think that that logically sort of tracks.

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 I was raised to believe that we all had guardian angels. Each one of us had our individual guardian angel. No, it's it's it's like a zone defense.

So like my particular question is like, if I've 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? Guardian Angel involves shooting. Yeah, that's about it. Guardian Angel turning off their body cam. Yeah, you know, that's the real question, are they like, strapped for cash up there and they're assigning them to like 30 cases

How can they be strapped for a cash? Look at? My guardian angel was like loyal enough to defect with me Fuck yes, I've got home There's a book about that too. Well, it's a pile actually. Wow. Yeah Well that that's how I 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.

I'm gonna push back on that because, okay, so here. 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, why is this the bad guy? 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 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. It's a mystery. It's very, very confusing. He was emancipating the slaves to worship. Dunno. Like I was like, okay, so like this is actually the good guy now. Hail Satan, although Satanists are all dweebs. The thing, the thing about- All of ya, all of ya. You're fucking dweebs. I'm not a Satanist. I'm just saying like, from an outside perspective.

No, I'm not saying you are. I just, 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. Hey! Uh, uh, other thing that we oughta 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. He gets nod on in the Divine Comedy for like, a lot of it. 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, 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.

I shit you not, 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 renter-sunder. ALICE Who amongst us, right? JUSTIN This is the first really gnarly farm work accident, y'know? That just sounds like the night before SRS, honestly. Bowel prep. ALICE It is Act Chapter 1, Verse eighteen, if you wanna look this up.

But anyway, it- And lo and behold, he was entrapped by the grain in the elevator. And he cried out, but there was no one to save him, because he had betrayed God or whoever. Yeah, so 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 wafer or whatever, and some wine, what that is, is it's symbolic, it's evocative of that communion of being

with Jesus, right? None of that metaphor shit here. Transubstantiation 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. Right? Are you...? Yeah, that happened.

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. Not even the details. Are we the baddies? No. Okay. 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, uh, 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, who has powers, those powers include turning bread and wine into Jesus, like, forgiving your sins on behalf of Jesus, marrying you, burying you...

ZACH They're not allowed to marry you, they're allowed to marry you to someone else. To be clear. Yeah. Yeah. Marrying other people to each other. And also, like, if you're a bishop or whatever, like, ordaining more priests. So they reproduce ace, actually.

Yes. It's gotta have a hierarchy, you gotta have some structure here, I don't wanna have, like, a sort of righteous gemstones type situation in my church, yeah. ALICE No, seriously, like, 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? RILEY Yeah, exactly. Go to seminary and learn the rules. ZACH 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. There's no requirement to be Catholic to have a valid Eucharist, it comes from the descent through the line of bishops. ALICE Yeah. When we call it an apostolic church, it's because it's like, the apostles, Jesus's boys- LIAM Yeah, we're keeping Saint Peter's in the back, actually. ALICE Yeah, have a line of descent through to, like, your bishop who then ordains your

priest. LIAM Father Hanifah! Oh, I love Fatherdafey. He's bald and very tall. He's Jesuit. So I listen. I've made my peace with being whatever I am. Yeah. Ross, come to my confirmation. Oh, you can ask. Hell yeah. I will do so. I've been baptized. That was kind of cheating. Sorry about that.

Sorry. I lost my train of thought. There are versions of Catholicism that are LGBTQ inclusive. They have a valid Eucharist and valid sacraments. Um, it will 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, so I'm not loving that. When we get you on a third time, I'm just, I'm feeling the, the I directed

at me at that point. Oh yeah, there's a Tomahawk. So like, congratulations. 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 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. And 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. Welcome to Liamism, this is a new one. We're gonna do a schism the likes of which you've never seen before.

I will say that, like, contrition is a necessary part of repentance, like, you gotta at least feel bad for the people that you hurt, but yeah. ZACH I've been in confession enough times that contrition's a pretty low bar. ALICE Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that, but it's on the piece of paper, metaphorically. ZACH 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 or restorative. That breaks something in some people. I will say that sometimes though it is very annoying to do a, y'know, two Our Fathers and six Hail Marys. OOOH. We had to do them in Latin, uphill both ways.

That's... Nah, fuck. Fuck that. Pot her nos te cloison ce li sancti vi ce tu num in tuam. They sound cooler in Latin, I'm sorry. Yeah, but they sound cooler in Latin! They all sound cooler. Saying grace before meal sounds cooler in Latin.

Benedict doni no, sed hecto dona queditur, lagetate, simmusunturi pe Christum domini nostrum, amen. Like, that's a fantastic way to start an Italian dinner. That's, that's watched deep in there, huh buddy?