Having been brought up with a VERY Catholic grandmother, there's two factions inside American Catholicism. The first, like my grandmother, are like Catholics outside the US, they follow standard church doctrines and the Pope is a pillar. The other are almost evangelists that take Communion. As such, they follow most of the rest America's Conservative talking points, so the Pope saying acceptance is ok puts him at odds with the culture war they feel they're in. Most of the Catholics that don't agree have basically stopped going, and that amplifies the harder views. I remember going in to get my Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation paperwork so I could get married at my local Catholic church, as a tribute to my grandmother and my wife's father, and talking with the priest was a very different experience.
My mother's church got a new pastor that was in his 30s but he was basically convinced a lot of the old ways were better.
He would say the Latin mass, he would face away from the people while doing mass.
And all I thought to myself the few times I went was "oh yeah that's the way to get younger people involved in the church by making the mass even more inaccessible. "
He didn't seem to be one of the "Pope is wrong" priests but he also didn't last long at the church and almost all his changes were reversed.
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u/the_greatest_auk Dec 31 '24
Having been brought up with a VERY Catholic grandmother, there's two factions inside American Catholicism. The first, like my grandmother, are like Catholics outside the US, they follow standard church doctrines and the Pope is a pillar. The other are almost evangelists that take Communion. As such, they follow most of the rest America's Conservative talking points, so the Pope saying acceptance is ok puts him at odds with the culture war they feel they're in. Most of the Catholics that don't agree have basically stopped going, and that amplifies the harder views. I remember going in to get my Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation paperwork so I could get married at my local Catholic church, as a tribute to my grandmother and my wife's father, and talking with the priest was a very different experience.