transuperherophobia
idk if it can or can't, I've been kind of dismissive of ivermectin from the beginning because it seems there are plenty of other "natural" health remedies available, like with "covid" apparently a lot of "bad" cases correlated with vitamin D deficiency (so vitamin D can be supplemented or more sunshine can be had)
removing environmental causes of cancer can be helpful
moderate exercise probably good for prevention
and so on
no scriptural basis
well there are Scripture passages that are pointed to as being related to some of these beliefs and practices, but some protestants reject these interpretations of Scripture.
This brings up the question of who decides which interpretation is correct. Catholics believe Scripture and Tradition to be authoritative. A critique of the approach of the "Scripture alone" view is that it has led to the fragmented creation of many groups that have broken away from each other, since without an authority to decide on which interpretation is authoritative, then multiple people might disagree on the correct interpretation, and then schisms result.
So Catholics might say that there is a Biblical basis for certain things, protestants might argue there isn't, and then Catholics might additionally argue there is a continuous authoritative support for such beliefs and practices.
This is slightly more complicated today with the current Vatican, which has said things which seem to contradict past Catholic teaching, leading some to conclude that such Vatican is not Catholic currently.
USCCB
So a handful of us don't consider the USCCB or "Catechism of the Catholic Church" to be Catholic currently, but I see where you read the bit that Catholics weren't as interested in laymen reading Scripture up to the 1940s. That doesn't sound totally accurate, but it's probably true that Catholics (and orthodox?) weren't as concerned with laymen reading Scripture.
Well, the protestant view is often that "faith alone" saves, which wouldn't require reading Scripture anyway. For Catholics, the belief is in the necessity of "faith and good works". So reading Scripture is not necessary to salvation in the belief of either group. Probably instead catechism (which included Scripture) and being a good person were emphasized instead?
almost the equivalent of our government discouraging us from reading
I understand what you're saying, although probably you still make use of experts like lawyers or doctors for things? Catholicism is an "authority" based (or "authoritarian") view. While the American culture tends towards "anti-authoritarianism" and "anarchism", there was still always the design of there being an authority of a president (kind of like the pope) and a hierarchy of government.
Even in the modern right-wing anarchism (like of "anarcho-capitalism"), they have acknowledged hierarchy often naturally emerges as a way to organize businesses and institutions. "Experts" as kinds of "natural authorities" emerge; I suppose the Catholic religion simply takes the view of such authorities being supernaturally imposed instead.
I don't view it as being simply a method of control. In Romans 13 St. Paul talks about obeying government authorities - does this acknowledge that to some extent government authorities might exist? So too, wouldn't it seem reasonable to think that Church authorities might exist, with one leader like a pope? If having authority is thought to be "too controlling", might there being no authority be "too out of control"?
confession to a priest
well there is James 5:16, "Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved."
Burning these books is an act of evil
Converts had burned their books in Acts 19:19 to destroy what was bad: "And many of them who had followed curious arts, brought together their books, and burnt them before all". So book burning is Biblical, Catholic / Christian. It's not good to steal books from others to burn necessarily (since stealing is wrong).
It's been debated if it is good or ok for censorship of books to take place and under what conditions (like the current attempt to remove objectionable materials from public school libraries). Catholics have the Index of Forbidden Books.
prayers to these saints
I think it's supposed to be like passing a message along. Think about the idea of people "pulling some strings" in the world. Maybe you want permission to do something, so someone has connections to a leader and can "put in a good word". That kind of thing.
pray to Mary
Again it's an ancient practice and tradition.
prayer to Anna Maria
Ok, this site looks confusing: this is a prayer by Anna Maria to the Blessed Virgin Mary, so when it says "Queen of Heaven", that is being addressed to Mary. It's a prayer to Mary.
disguised polytheism
I can see how someone might view it that way. The lives of saints are read and thought about as good examples to imitate. I guess they are believed to be saved, and able to pray for us, and are part of a heavenly family of sorts. They are not thought to be gods, so it is not polytheism. They are individuals with varied stories though.
Did the original churches and congregations formed by the many disciples of Jesus not count?
The early Church was just a united entity, which eventually had splits to orthodox and Catholic, and from Catholic the protestants. So Catholics and orthodox trace back to the beginning basically, with protestants seeming to break off from Catholics more clearly.
Peter being the first pope
I think most are with this claim? It's just the orthodox believe the title of pope to be more honorary?
Vatican is tied in with the Cabal
I think Catholics, orthodox, and protestants have all been affected by this kind of thing. So I don't see this as specifically something that stands out against Catholicism.
Catholics have a more centralized institution, so some of us think they tried to elect a non-Catholic "pope" to take it over.
Orthodox have multiple patriarchs, I've seen one kind of compromising "agreement" I wouldn't expect either side to agree with:
https://infogalactic.com/info/Balamand_declaration
Protestants seem to lack hierarchy a bit, so there's all kinds of freedoms for "megachurches" or leftwing "churches" to be created and make protestantism look "non-Christian".
encouraged to read scripture for themselves until the 1940's
I'm not aware of what you're referring to, although the Scripture was originally passed by oral tradition and literacy wasn't universal so it took some time for there to be a codified Scripture and for the common person to be able to read it, and there were concerns the Scripture would be misread or mistranslated so reading Scripture may not have been encouraged for the common person.
idea of having a Pope and them acting as the Vicar of Christ is already pure blasphemy alone
Typically even secular entities like companies or governments have a singular leader, whether it is a CEO or the POTUS. So it would make sense for the Church to have a singular leader, with Christ as the founder. Such entities also have hierarchies, like with government having local, state, and federal levels of hierarchy.
Purgatory, the practice of confession to a priest, even the practice of priesthood itself. All lacking biblical roots.
To the contrary, I find protestantism's practice to be ahistorical. Both Catholic and orthodox observe to some extent what is mentioned, of having clergy and confession to a priest. A sinner is however encouraged to pray acts of contrition and to obtain perfect contrition for sin before God outside the confessional (but with the intent of confessing when possible).
mandatory act of forbidding marriage
For a millennium, I think people were allowed to marry and then become clergy. St. Paul is the example in the Bible that remained celibate for his whole life and wrote that such a state is good because it allows a person to focus entirely on God rather than have to attend to worldly issues. It's simple to follow this line of reasoning. The person who is married is typically working a secular job to provide for a family. The unmarried priest might be able to instead devote more time to prayer that would be otherwise devoted to work, or to devote time to religious works that might not generate necessary income for a family. So there is a practical and Biblical basis for this practice, as well as there being other benefits. Celibates are also able to perhaps observe more rigorous penitential fasts.
abuse in Catholicism
There are a few things to be said here, the first of which is that I don't think the numbers are statistically significant compared to other groups, who also have a certain percentage of abusers. Another point is that abusers decided to become clergy to make Christianity look bad. Some of us do think the would-be hierarchy has been taken over though and that the "shuffling around" of "clergy", rather than to send them to the government for secular punishment, has been another attack on Christianity.
hoarding historical artifacts
Perhaps wasn't a good practice, I don't know about this one, but probably we're in agreement this isn't an issue necessary to resolve for people to be good Christians.
book burning
Would a comparable situation today be that of certain books that promote witchcraft or transgenderism to children? Such books were judged to be of no value back then, since they promoted things harmful to souls, and so were destroyed. Do you think they should have archived the books instead? They didn't want to promote the false ideas, which they thought might harm souls.
praying to the many different Saints
https://infogalactic.com/info/Intercession_of_saints
deliberately done to make the transition from the Roman polytheistic religion to Christianity more palatable
There was this concept of "baptizing" pagan practices, or removing sufficiently objectionable content and of doing something similar but in a "Christian" way. For example consider this about the feast of "Candlemas":
Pope Innocent XII believed Candlemas was created as an alternative to Roman Paganism, as stated in a sermon on the subject:
Why do we in this feast carry candles? Because the Gentiles dedicated the month of February to the infernal gods, and as at the beginning of it Pluto stole Proserpine, and her mother Ceres sought her in the night with lighted candles, so they, at the beginning of the month, walked about the city with lighted candles. Because the holy fathers could not extirpate the custom, they ordained that Christians should carry about candles in honor of the Blessed Virgin; and thus what was done before in the honor of Ceres is now done in honor of the Blessed Virgin.[18]
https://infogalactic.com/info/Presentation_of_Jesus_at_the_Temple
This has been done multiple times with a bunch of things, so it's not that they were trying to trick Christians in to observing pagan practices, but to transform pagan practices into Christian ones.
I guess feel free to continue to ask questions about Catholicism if there's some continued questions you have. (Crusades? Inquisition? Indulgences?)
I disagree, however also think this is kind of a weird place to try to bring this argument up as some attempt at exorcism has been attempted presumably also by orthodox or protestants, I was just mentioning how certain people have tried to possibly tamper with the Catholic rite or such salts in the OP
possibly related: they changed the exorcism rite after Vatican 2, potentially making it inefffective
still surprised (or maybe not) musk still has that pfp
probably popular opinion among the young that the boomers struggle to comprehend
there's a longer prayer to st michael that exists
related: https://infogalactic.com/info/Prayer_to_Saint_Michael
the catholic exorcism rite also seems like an even longer version in a way (I believe even laymen can say in privately, although I'm not sure about the specifics)
banning tiktok wasn't even good bait, as half the population likes it and the other half (while acknowledging security issues) is amazed at how many redpills circulate on there
real
this is why "antiwork" is a thing or talks of work reform
4 day weeks will probably become more popular as well as remote work which may help a bit
kind of but they can only get away with things they can hide, too much open evidence at least convicts them in the court of public opinion
maybe to distract from Holy things, "J6" was the Epiphany for example
yeah it's ironically overflowing with redpills which is one reason why they want the ban, the other is just to squash non-US social media competition
I think there are probably security issues but if that's the problem couldn't they open source it and fix the code? not like the other social media don't have security issues
> Pareidolia
edit: Apophenia rather
I mean "the visible government" is the people who work in it, they are publicly known, but maybe not other people who tell them what to do
it's not really good for adults either but a lot of people were willing to tolerate it
and not straight
"!remindme 2 weeks"
"press x to doubt"
etc.
but true if big
I mean yeah it was likely deliberate for that reason but the lab leak theory is adjacent to that theory, it's only a degree of being deliberately or accidentally leaked out
glad to see you like it, good luck
That's wild
as I commented, someone I know of found a paycheck they hadn't picked up (dunno how that was miscommunicated)
someone else I know of has some stock dividends listed that looks like half a grand (also dunno how this happens)
I've posted on this before elsewhere and then seen people post about it independently, I was just reminded of it again to alert people about because it seems to apparently be a legit thing and I'm sure recovering $20-$100+ would be appreciated
it happens to the best of us
maybe look up friends and family too?
for you or people you know?
Someone I know said they recovered an unclaimed paycheck
someone I looked up recently, their parent and they had a few over $100s
based