LogFAQs > #947297003

Like, I'll run Catholicism and Christianity into the ground, but I'll give a free pass to Judaism and Islam. Obviously there are shitheads in every religion, and there are bullshit sects and all that, but considering the history of persecution that Jewish and Muslim people have both faced in places where they aren't the dominant religion, I don't feel comfortable slagging off their faiths as a whole.

But I have no qualms referring to the Catholic church as a power structure dedicated to protecting child molesters, staffed with pedophiles who ruin the word of God with the evil of the human heart. And I think the difference is influence and structure.

Australia and America were built upon the foundations of Christianity. America had puritans. Australia had temperance. Even with our countries separating church and state, our nations are still entrenched in Christian values.

And Christian values have been wielded as a weapon during my lifetime. You had all those crazy fundies decrying Pokemon as satanic. You have American states where evolution is rejected in favour of creationism. You have groups like the Westboro Baptist Church who harass gay people with slurs and who picket the funerals of dead soldiers to tell their grieving families that they're going to hell, and they got away with that shit for years - while to this day, you have vast swaths of information on peaceful, faithful Muslims being sold to the government and used in "anti-terrorism related capacities", to the point where the personal information of millions of people from Muslim-oriented phone apps is being sold to the government.

In Australia and America, Christianity and Catholicism has been an institution since the day I was born. Muslims have their churches and customs off to the side, that's their business. Jewish people have their churches and customs, it doesn't affect me in the slightest and it doesn't affect day to day life. Christianity and Catholicism has been used as the norm for my entire life. They are an institution with power over my freedom, unlike Judaism or Islam. They can affect what I watch, they can affect popular opinion on media and politics. And they're so entrenched in Western culture that they can get away with protecting child molesters like George Pell, which I think is reprehensible.

Catholics aren't persecuted - where I live, they are persecutors. They're an entrenched power structure with unparalleled freedom and good press, even as they bestow honors and protections upon child molesters. Fuck them.

Saying that - different religions have different strangleholds over the zeitgeist in different regions of the world. Zionists support genocidal tactics, and the more conservative wave of Islam put people to death. But they don't have any power over where I live - Christians and Catholics do. And to go after them for their bullshit is to fight the power in my backyard, whereas going after Jewish or Muslim people is punching down. You want to work against Zionism in Israel, or conservative, unfair Islamic laws in the UAE? Then you're fighting the power. But holding Muslims or Jewish people to more scrutiny than Catholicism in a Christian nation, where Catholics actively get away with crimes like child rape to little/no consequence thanks to intervention from the Catholic church, is just fucking stupid.

Saying that, individual Christians and Catholics aren't inherently bad. Religious freedom is important, and an attack on the church isn't an attack on the individual followers or the faith. None of this is levelled against any individual followers of Catholicism or Christianity as a whole, and faith isn't inherently bad.

But in America and Australia, Christians aren't persecuted. They shaped policy for centuries according to their faith, and their values continue to shape policy to this day. I can't say that about Jewish or Muslim people, and I don't see the point of singling them out when they hold no real power in the zeitgeist. I'd rather learn about those faiths and the differences between different interpretations of those faiths than hear a fundie fuckwit justify paying thousands of dollars to a godless megachurch, or explaining how Christian values justify locking immigrants in subpar conditions, while they slag off other religions as violent, close-minded and greedy.

Faith isn't inherently bad. Christians and Catholics are entitled to their faith. There are bad faith actors in every religion. But frankly, I can't abide by this fearful hatemongering of religions with little to no impact on my culture. They've either done next to nothing to you, or you're painting the whole group by their worst members. I would rather level that amount of criticism against the dominant faith in my culture than kick a smaller religion in the nuts.

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