In this our one-year anniversary episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors, we begin by letting the South off the hook and setting our sites somewhere else for a change: Florida (which is technically not the South, even though it’s farther south than the South, which just goes to show how stupid they all are). We then spend a few moments talking about drones, robots, and cartoons, after which we spend the remainder of the first half discussing fundamentalist pro-lifers, and how there’s just. No. Pleasing them. We then take a listener’s call about evangelicals and Catholics, which leads us to a debate about whether Catholics suck way worse or whether they both suck the exact same amount. Christian’s bieber involves traffic etiquette, while Jason is biebered by how logistically difficult murder can be sometimes.
Also, Jewish stuff and the Far East as a whole? Not a fan.
Links from this Episode:
Podcast #101: Ice Ice Baby
Podcast #132: Minimalism and Blackmail
Podcast #393: Israel, the Bible, and the Jesus Movement
Podcast #16: Real Time Questions, Monster Energy, and Delusions of Grandeur
Florida is a part of the south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_in_the_American_Civil_War
And Ron Swonson was a libertarian — for all practical purposes an interchangeable term with republicans.
We can’t believe anyone has been listening to it for a year, but we’re happy about it! Thanks for all your contributions to the discussions on here, Greg!
When I make my millions, I’ll sit down and watch all of The Simpsons. 🙂
“Henry & June” was the name of the movie I saw. Apparently it was the first NC-17 movie made. Ha! Of course I saw it.
Random thoughts:
• America is filled with violence. But remember, we’re a Christian nation. God bless America…
• Times when it is acceptable for a grown-ass man to watch cartoons:
o When he is a father and trying to make his children happy.
o When he is a father and is trying to shut his kids up so he can have 30 minutes of goddamned peace and quiet.
o When he is watching a Pixar movie. (It is also one of the few acceptable times for a grown-ass man to cry like a little girl who just lost her balloon.)
o If you feel like it, because you, son, are a grown-ass man and if you want to watch a cartoon, by God, go watch a cartoon.
• Yeah, my question was rhetorical, because being a former conservative, I know that when rubber meets the road, stopping abortion is less important to them than remaining true to their economic and political ideology. That and there can be no compromised with ‘evil’.
• I think the issue on the right is that many of them don’t believe in the idea of the common good. The governing ethos seems to be “I’ve got mine, fuck you.” Or “I don’t got mine, why should you get anything?” Thus contraception doesn’t have a public good like reducing unwanted pregnancies allowing kids or adults to pursue education and career goals and contribute more to society or reducing abortion or reducing health care costs related to treating STDs, it’s subsidizing immorality.
• Libertarians are almost as diverse a crowd as Christians. There are hawkish Libertarians.
• Where can I find the money? Give me 16 hours with the DoD budget and I can find about 50% savings to cut. Also raise the fucking taxes. Taxes on the rich used to be 95%. They can handle going from 34% to 40%.
• IIRC, there’s a lot of different laws on the books, so while the age of consent might be 16 in Indiana, there might also be age limits on how far apart in years the partners might be. So while it might be legal for a 19 year old to have sex with their 16 year old boyfriend/girlfriend, it would still be illegal for a 35 year old to have sex with a 16 year old. Or it could be that the sex was technically legal, but because one or more partners crossed state lines to engage in the act, so then Federal law becomes the governing law. So my advice as a non-lawyer would be: don’t be a fucking creepy pedophile and stick to having sex with women your own age.
• Cross Subway off the list of potential sponsors.
• Papists are the whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelation, that’s why Evangelicals don’t like them. I know this because when I used to work in a Christian bookstore, we had several books on hand explaining how Catholicism would be the one world religion of the Antichrist. (Because one day after the rapture, all of the Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists would wake up and say, “Hey that Pope guy makes great sense. Let’s all convert and get baptized!”)
Evangelicals tolerate Catholics these days because it means more Republicans get elected. You can tell because once the Pope started talking less about how gay people are evil abominations and more about how we should probably tax the wealthy, support the poor, and do something about Climate Change, they’re back to being the whore of Babylon.
Ha! I look forward to your “random thoughts” each week, Comrade.
Just to further show how absurd the whole prostitution thing is, the only difference between prostitution (illegal) and porn (legal) is that one is filmed.
It’s really about time we foot rid of some of these puritanical beliefs that’s holding us back.
Couldn’t you just claim the former is “rehearsal” for the latter?
There is also this thing in Texas called the Romeo and Juliet law that I learned about through the creepy dude from the last transformers movie.
There are also several states where the age of consent is 16 and I actually used to think that the age of consent in Georgia was 14.
Yeah, it just goes to show how absurd the whole thing is.
Someone help me out here. Explain how someone can hold these two ideals together…
1. God exists and christianity is the only true religion.
2. The government should pretend like this isn’t the case…. even if the government and population largely hold 1. to be true.
The idea that the government’s sole duty is to “protect its citizens rights” is balogna. What rights? Why do people have rights? You guys want the Christian bathwater, but not the baby that’s hanging out in the tub. If God exists we have an obligation to obey and live by His commands. If this is true for individuals, it is no less true for groups and governments. Obviously that doesn’t mean that a christian government has to execute people for adultery and hand out fines for using the Lord’s name in vein… but it does mean that the government should recognize the world’s true religion and strive to make policies that honor God and His word.
Jason seems to think that Catholics are free to promote the separation of Church and state…. but he is wrong about that. The Popes have condemned this idea as moronic and evil over and over and over again.
Gregory XVI: Encyclical: Mirari vos, Aug. 15, 1832. (PE 33; 20)
Pius IX: Allocution to the Consistory: Acerbissimum, Sept. 27, 1852.
Encyclical: Quanta cura, Dec. 8, 1864. (PE 63)
Syllabus, Dec. 8, 1864: prop 55.
Leo XIII: Encyclical: Cum multa, Dec. 8, 1882. (PE 88)
Encyclical: Humanum genus, April 20, 1884. (PE 91; 13 ff)
Encyclical: Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885. (PE 93; 27 ff)
Encyclical: Libertas, June 20, 1888. (PE 103; 18 ff)
Encyclical: Au milieu des sollicitudes, Feb. 16, 1892. (PE 119; 28 ff)
Letter Longinqua, Jan. 6, 1895. (PE 134; 3 ff)
Saint Pius X: Allocution to the Secret Consistory, Amplissimum coetum, March 27, 1905.
Encyclical: Vehementer Nos, Feb. 11, 1906. (PE 169; 1 ff)
Allocution to the Consistory: Gravissimum apostolici, Feb. 21, 1906.
Encyclical: Gravissimo officii, Aug. 10, 1906. (PE 172; 1 ff)
Letter: Le moment, May 17, 1908.
Encyclical: Jamdudum, May 24, 1911. (PE 177; 2 ff)
Pius XI: Encyclical Maximam Gravissimamque, Jan. 18, 1924. (PE 196; 2 ff)
Allocution: Jam annus, to the Secret Consistory, Dec. 14, 1925.
Encyclical: Iniquis afflictisque, Nov. 18, 1926. (PE 200; 8 ff)
Encyclical: Dilectissima Nobis, June 3, 1933. (PE 215; 6 ff)
Pius XII: Allocution to some Italian Catholic Jurists, Dec. 6, 1953.
Agree or disagree…. that’s fine. But to disagree is to break from the teachings of the church. 🙂
The reason why I don’t want the government out there promoting Christianity and using it as the basis of Law is because what Christianity means to me and how I interpret the bible is VERY different from what Christianity means to you and how you interpret the bible. So who’s version of Christianity becomes the official government version that gets promoted and used as the basis for secular law? Yours? Mine? The Anglicans’? The Lutherans’? Evangelicals’?
No matter whose version you choose, everyone else’s rights are now trampled upon.
And what happens to you and I when Christians are no longer the majority religion in a country? What happens if Buddhists or Muslims or Jews are the majority? Should the government reflect their version of God or the divine and incorporate their laws?
Why not? Because it disagrees with your sensibilities? If the state is to be the enforcer and promoter of what is right based on a specific religion, then why shouldn’t it enforce moral biblical laws with the force of the State?
Thankfully, the founders got this right and understood that the state cannot promote and defend one religion or sect over others or we’ll all be in danger of facing state oppression if our religious convictions differ from the approved ones.
Considering the amount of power the popes lost during the reformation, this is hardly surprising that they’d be all hacked off about it. 🙂
Also considering what happened to Catholics in England when the church was replaced by Anglicanism as the official religion, I’d consider Papal objections to the separation of church and state as moronic and evil.
Comrade,
I think you might be conflating “how we come to know” with “whether or not we should”.
For example, if I said ” I think that we should have a legislature that creates laws every citizen must follow” your equivalent response would be “but whose morality dictates these laws? Yours? Mine? Muslims? Russians? Consequentialists? Communists? Etc. Obviously there are things that need to be worked out before we can put down the law, but that doesn’t mean federal laws are a bad idea. It’s the same with the Church and State. *How we come to know* which religion the state should promote is a different question than *should the state promote the true religion*. Your response implicitly implies that this knowledge is unknowable, and I disagree with that unspoken assumption.
What human right becomes trampled on? A christian state does not entail forced conversion, execution of apostates, coercion, etc. It only entails that the government recognize and promote the one true religion. It is not a “human right” to have everyone’s ideas promoted and legislated equally. We allow people to have their own ideas, express them, and so forth, but the state does not equally promote each ideal. For example, you are perfectly free to be a member of the US communist party. But that doesn’t mean the state is going to pay any attention to your ideas. It would be the same in a christian state. Everyone would be free to practice whatever religion they fancied, but the state would not recognize or promote those ideas.
First of all, the idea is not “the state should be united with whatever religion the majority of its citizens believe in”. Rather, it is “the state should be united with the world’s one true religion”. Again, *how we come to know* which religion is a different question. Further, I fail to see how this is any different than the situation we are currently in? What happens to you if the majority of people in the US become muslim? You will live in a Muslim country. What happens to you if you become the minority and nazis take political power? Our laws will reflect their agenda. The constitution is nothing but a dead letter. Putty in the hands of the sovereign populous. It can be amended to suit the whims of whomever holds power.
It certainly could enforce moral biblical laws. I simply wanted to avoid ridiculous strawmen. For example “then adulterers would be thrown in prison” etc. We could intelligently and judiciously dictate these laws so that the civil penalty would fit the crime.
You cannot know which religion is the one true religion. You can only make a guess. If you could prove it, there would be no need for faith. You think you have the one true religion. So do many non-Catholic Christians who view you as the deviant and apostate. So do the Muslims, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Sikh, the pagan, the Mormon, the Jehovah’s Witness, etc. So how does this government decide which religion to promote? It would inevitably be majority rule.
And once the majority can decide which religion to promote, there is NO constraint on them to not force their religious assumption upon the country and begin to pass beneficial laws for themselves at the expense of others or suppressive laws designed to protect their children from infidels and heretics.
The right to practice or not practice my own religion free from the interference or discrimination of government.
The Jews and “heretics” would strongly disagree with you considering every Christian state of Europe has a lovely history of forced conversions, pogroms, blood libels, and burned corpses.
You might imagine this perfect innocuous Christian state that could exist, but history is rife with counter examples of what happens when you remove the protection of the separation of church and state. Including plenty of Islamist states which are killing the infidels and forcing conversions.
If all we have to rely on for protection are the promises of the cleric… well, that and two bucks will get you a coffee at Starbucks.
Says you. Already in this country, we have attempts to block Muslims from building their holy sites. We have examples of teachers telling atheist or non-Christian students that they’re bad people.
Which is another way of admitting there is ultimately NO protection for those who do not want to live according to your brand of religion. And which is why the well-meaning theocrat is more terrifying to me than a secular tyrant. To paraphrase Lewis, at least the latter tyrant is not convinced he is doing the perfect will of God in oppressing me.
One of my favorite scenes from 30 Rock:
Tracy Jordan: Hey, did you hear the good news, J.D.? I’m Irish Catholic now, like you, Regis, and the Pope.
Jack Donaghy: Oh, ho ho, no you’re not. The church already has enough lawsuits.
Tracy Jordan: See, I can screw up now, and then just go to confession. No longer do I have to throw my parties in international waters.
Jack Donaghy: That’s not how it works, Tracy. Even though there is the whole confession thing, that’s no free pass, because there is a crushing guilt that comes with being a Catholic. Whether things are good or bad or you’re simply… eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt.
Tracy Jordan: I don’t think I want that. I’m out.
[Jack turns to leave]
Jack Donaghy: [to himself] Somehow, I feel oddly guilty about that.
[Jack crosses himself]
Happy Anniversary!
I’ve only listened to the first half of the podcast so far (I’m behind this week). However I want to chime in on the comments on contraception. As far as I know, Catholics in this country aren’t pushing for contraception to be illegal, just that they aren’t forced to directly fund it, such as in the Little Sister’s case.
Would I like to see illegal? I’m not sure, it seems too hard to walk that genie back in. But definitely don’t want it actively promoted by the government. I also don’t like that contraception funding is being forced on people, especially people who have strong moral qualms with it. But it goes further than this, forcing contraception on people has become part of our foreign policy, typically as a condition for aid. But I believe this is more about population control of the “dirty masses”.
Ultimately, I see the embrace of contraception as leading to a social mindset that leads directly to the acceptance of abortion. As long a people think contraction as a right, we will always be fighting groups that think abortion is also right. The goals of the sexual revolution were to separate procreation from sex, and sex from marriage. Contraception was the first domino to fall.
As for a difference of paradigm between Protestants and Catholics on morality, I would like to add to what Jason said (maybe he mentioned this later…). Yes, Catholics use Tradition as an supplement to Scripture. However, Catholics also believe that morality is rational; every person has some access to it sans Bible. Catholics ground morality in Natural Law, informed by Divine Revelation. So the contraception prohibition isn’t taken solely from one verse, but also Tradition and Natural Law (rationality).
Catechism of the Catholic Church on Natural Law the:
So arguments about abortion, for example, don’t end with quotes of scriptures for Catholics.
Thanks for putting into words exactly how I feel about church right now: “The apostles listened to half the stuff that Jesus said, going, like, this Guy’s full of shit. But He’s Jesus, so fuckin-a, I’ll figure out how to bring my conscience into line with what He’s saying somehow, eventually. But even if I don’t, I’d rather swallow my pride and follow Jesus than find some sect that agrees with me.” (It felt ridiculous to capitalize all the pronouns, which seemed appropriate.)
I don’t think anyone is forced to pay for contraception. If I recall, the Little Sister’s case was about whether Little Sister’s could be required to fill out a form in order to claim the exemption from the contraception requirement for religious employers. Once the form is filled out and submitted to the insurer, the employer doesn’t have to pay a cent for contraceptives or insurance coverage for contraceptives.
As I understand it, they file for the exemption and then the 3rd party insurance company provides the coverage for “free” to the employees. So the insurance policies provided by the Little Sisters, paid into by them, provides contraception. It seems like a shell game where the costs still come from the Little Sisters. The main problem with their particular case is that they do not qualify for the religious exemption to the mandate, because they aren’t a house of worship.
No, it is the same thing as if an employee of theirs is taking the money the Sisters pay them for their labor and buying a box of condoms. The Sisters are paying for health care costs for their employees as a part of their employees’ compensation package. If their employees decide to take advantage of this benefit and use it to get contraception, it does not make the Sisters complicit in buying contraception.
Looks to me like the exemption prohibits the insurance company from imposing any cost sharing on the employer through the insurance premiums, but the insurance company can apply to the federal government for reimbursement of whatever costs they incur for insuring the contraceptives. It really looks like the employer doesn’t pay a penny and that the case really is about filling out the form.
I felt that Jason really nailed how I feel as a Catholic at times: “I’ll figure out how to bring my conscience into align with what He is saying somehow.”
The Christian life is a walk, and people are at different places along the walk. But the goal is the same, to become a Saint. Ultimately that is the only thing that matters. And the only true tragedy is a person failing to become a Saint (in this life or the next). I believe that the Catholic Church’s teachings on Faith and morals are correct, but are hard to follow perfectly. They are the ideal that we should be striving to meet. Any Christian that believes in the Fall shouldn’t be surprised that the ideal is hard to follow. However, there is Grace, there is Mercy for you when you fail. I think people who think that the Catholic Church is all about rules, hasn’t experienced the Mercy that the Church offers.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”
I grew up in a house with a medicine cabinet right in front of the sink. Not to mention, so does my current house. I think it is common in older style bathrooms without large mirrors on the wall.
On the topic of Catholic vs Evangelical really believing what they preach, I believe that Jason is right. I remember seeing stats that would say, “look Christians have the same divorce rate as the population.” The rebuttal would typically be that when you control for Evangelicals who attend church at least 3 times a month, the divorce rate was much lower – those are the “real” Christians.
I believe that Catholicism in a lot of places tend to be more of an ethnicity: “my family is catholic, I’m catholic; We go to Mass every Sunday, because we are catholic and that is what catholics do.” I think it is a lot easier to become a cultural/nominal Catholic than cultural/nominal Evangelical within the Protestant mindset. If you don’t buy in with what is being said at your Protestant church, you would just go somewhere else or no where at all.
There is a pressure on Catholics who are culturally Catholic to continue going to Catholic Churches, even if they don’t buy large parts of the teachings. I believe there is some advantage to the unconverted to continue going to Mass, participating, and being present with the spiritual even if they aren’t convinced of all of it yet. But on the other hand, the disadvantage (at least from a Protestant perspective) is that you don’t find a homogeneous group of like minded believers congregating together like you are more likely to find in Protestant churches. But maybe this isn’t truly a disadvantage.
Here is the 6th Planned Parenthood video. So much for idea that they are collecting “donations” with consent (also against federal regulations)
http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/blog/
Happy Anniversary, guys! I have some catching up to do with your episodes, as my computer was completely down for a few weeks (until recently), *and* I don’t have a smartphone to access the internet! Yes, I’m a dinosaur. 🙂 Maybe I’ll catch up by listening backwards to the shows, starting with this one. It should be interesting, especially given that I’m a Catholic convert/revert who spent some years, between the conversion and reversion, in a Reformed Baptist church which had some fundamentalistic tendencies. That seems so long ago now… I’m glad to be Catholic “again,” so to speak!
Welcome back! I missed your level headed thoughtful responses to the discussions.
Thanks, Lane! I missed reading your thoughtful contributions to the discussions here too!
Nice to have you back, Christopher! (Even if you are Catholic!) 😉
Thanks, Christian! You’re pretty fly for a white guy (and an agnostic)! 😉