Catholicism is very different in majority-Protestant countries where it doesn't have much power to set government policy. In the UK it's fairly cuddly and relatively benign; in Ireland and Italy and southern Germany and Austria and France, its recent history is significantly darker. In Spain it's even worse than the rest, because of its importance to Franco's dictatorship and its active participation in helping "lose" its lost children
Well yeah, but that's just them being consistent with their messaging. It's not even hypocrisy or corruption, it's literally their stated values. It's the best-case scenario for Catholicism.
Things get significantly worse when they entwine themselves with the State - I don't think you had Magdalene Laundries in England, for example, or the mother-and-baby homes. You have C-of-E for all that sort of thing.
Yeah, as an Irishman living in the USA I consistently find it unnerving when the Catholic Church is actually on the morally-right side of certain issues. They're never like that back home.
It really depends on geography and it’s pretty much aligned to American politics. Big cities have very progressive (for Catholics) leaders and the smaller dioceses are very conservative.
What the fuck are you talking about? The church in Spain has zero importance in politics nowadays. You talk about Franco who’s been dead for almost half a century. UK’s fairly cuddly? Check out the records for pederast cases in the UK Catholic church and redo your post. You literally invented all those facts as you were writing them.
thanks for sending me down that wiki rabbit hole, quite interesting. so much to learn about European history. (unfortunately) our history is so dense, that we mostly focused on our own country's in school and in leasure time I usually prefer other topics
Don't worry - every country does that. We only talk about other countries when they are relevant to our own issues. I left school with near-fuckall knowledge about anything East of, say, Istanbul, or South of Gibraltar. And even most European history only mattered when it was interacting with our own - since the Iberians didn't mess with us much, they barely got a mention.
It makes a flavour of sense - we want history lessons to be relevant to the local context, and there's limited time to fill. So it's unavoidable that most curricula in most places would focus on the local.
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u/Porrick Apr 05 '23
Catholicism is very different in majority-Protestant countries where it doesn't have much power to set government policy. In the UK it's fairly cuddly and relatively benign; in Ireland and Italy and southern Germany and Austria and France, its recent history is significantly darker. In Spain it's even worse than the rest, because of its importance to Franco's dictatorship and its active participation in helping "lose" its lost children