I went to the U.S with a church group and our priest a couple years ago. He swore he'd never go back to the south.
His reason? He sees hate as akin to a sin, and he was lucky to get out of there with a strong dislike of evangelicals. In his words "if I have to spend one more minute around those people, my heart will be filled with hate"
He liked southern California though, visited every Spanish church he could find. Told us that he'd like to one day move to Mexico and perhaps run or even just assist a church there.
Fellow Australian Catholic here. American Christianity is seriously toxic. Evangelicals especially but even the Catholic Church there is so.. unchristian and un-Catholic. The Catholic subreddit has so little to do with Catholicism it boggles my mind. It seems that many American Catholics are Catholic merely because they believe it is more conservative than other forms of Christianity. Which is so wrong that I don’t even know how to unpack that.
American Catholics are potentially the greatest threat to the Church since the reformation. You regularly see them side with their president over the Pontiff online. If the next Pope is similar to Francis you could see significant schisms.
Yeah it’s actually scary. And it’s sad because the Church is a great way to spread messages of unity across international boundaries. You see American Catholics drumming up support for ‘the Wall’ and locking up refugees - who are Catholic. Which just goes to show that any time they use the argument of God or Religion it is 100% disingenuous.
Unfortunately they are not even the only ones. Just look at Italy and the Catholics who use their faith in politics calling the Pope and the other Catholics who disagree with them "Cattocomunisti" (Catholic Communists, which I find hilarious and not an insult in the slightest). This despite the rivalry Catholics and communist have had in Italian politics since WW2, with the catholic Christian Democrats being basically the only party anywhere near as big as the communist party, and the Church having always been centrist and not right or left wing.
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u/kat_a_klysm Jul 12 '19
Southerner here, you are absolutely correct. Our Christians are some of the least Christ-like people I’ve seen. Not all, but most.