I haven’t seen any hate specifically towards the Catholic Church (I was raised Catholic, I think I’d notice). Lemmy is majority atheist and we live in countries whose cultures are at the very least heavily influenced by religions so there’s no love for theists.

What you MAY be seeing is people reacting to the rampant child abuse done by Catholic clergy that is regularly reported on and never really addressed.

Is it? Not exactly aware of anything specifically anti-catholic compared to any other variations. I always thought they were one of the less mental variants compared to the American ones.

Ignoring the myriad of other reasons, merely the fact that the catholic church opposes women’s control over their own reproduction (which is the only measure that works to alleviate poverty) should be enough for anyone.

ETA: also, isn’t it weird to be lectured to about sex by a virgin who you call father?

Catholics tend to vote for republicans and other right-wing parties. This tells you everything you need to know about them. They have no morals and clearly struggle to understand the teachings of Jesus.

If you can commit to having an open and intellectually honest discussion about it, I promise you won’t have any logical reasons to support the catholic church afterward.

I can’t speak for all of Lemmy, but I am against the Catholic Church for a number of reasons. They hid child abuse for decades (centuries?) by shuffling around the offenders, essentially protecting them from any consequences. They accept donations with the explicit stated reason to perform charitable acts, but the percentage they actually spend on charity is so small it would be illegal in a lot of places if an actual non-profit did it. They hold back science. Though it’s not a requirement, many practice circumcision, which is essentially mutilating a child. I could probably keep going, but that’s enough.

After seeing your interactions on this thread, I can add one more logical reason I don’t like Catholics to the pile.

Okay, so we’ll break it down in incresingly narrow boxes :

1- Hatred of religion in general

Religion has been and continues to be a tool for legitimizing power structures. As such, they’re associated with the oppressive systems they’ve historically upheld. That goes from state structures like monarchy to modes of production like slavery, reaching whithin family dynamics, like patriarchy. Atheism was until recently broadly criminalized throughout the world. Atheism, or at least secularism, is a feature of many ideologies that arose since the late 18th century to uproot these systems, while religions are claimed by ideologies that arose in reaction tooto these. Politically, religion is therefore seen as conservative .

2- Hatred of Abrahamic religions

Some see these religions (Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Judaism) as inherently more oppressive than other, because they see it as a sin to worship gods other than their, and do not permit synchretism like other religions do. This is a big debate, and it doesn’t hold true to the same extent for all Abrahamic religions, but I’m not getting into details on this.

3- Hatred of Christianity

There are religious people who hate christianity for theological reasons, but I’m once again more interested in the political aspect. Many hate christianity for its role in colonization and association with western imperialism. It’s basically the first two points applied to specific circumstances of christianity : How it came to eradicate paganism in Europe and attempted (sometimes continues to attempt) to do the same globally, how, using colonial means it erases cultures. Same can be said of Islam to an extent, and you could say the main difference is that Christianity has been successful more recently and more globally. But then again, while they’ve had the same attitude towards paganism, Islam has historically tolerated more religious in their states, as long as these were “religions of the book”. Tho it’s true that the situation has come to be a bit reversed on that point…

4 a- Hatred of Catholicism for theological reasons :

Idk about the details, but part of a reason why the reform happens was that catholicism was seen as drifting to far from true belief and focusing on preserving and enriching itself as an institution. Other accusations include being too close to paganism due to the cult of saints and the continuity with Roman institutions (diocieses that predate the christianisation of the empire, nuns too similar to Vestal virgins…), and the fact that at the time, the mass was always in Latin although most people didn’t understand it.

4 b- Hatred of Catholicism : Post-colonial reasons

Point 3 applied to former colonies of France, Spain and Portugal, for which evangelisation was purely Catholic. the Catholic church continues to wield large power there, and some people consider its influence a remnant of colonialism. However, it is interesting to note that catholicism can be seen the opposite way by people from catholic countries for which a protestantprotestant country is seen as a greater or more recent oppressor (like Ireland or Puerto-Rico).

4 c- Hatred of Catholicism : Structural reasons

Catholiscism has a strict clergy hierarchy, moreso than Protestantism or Islam. Some see this as wrong in itself for philosophical or theological reasons, but even if that is not the case, this means the Catholic Church, more than others, can be perceived as an institution with agency and responsabilities. More than others, they’re expected to answer to their past positions and to solve their ongoing issues, something it struggles with as it doesn’t want to alienate the more concervative parts of its clergy. Also, this leads me to the next point :

4- d : The pedophilia thing. This is already very debated in the other comments, so I’m not gonna get in the details, but clearly not a good look.

4- e: Catholics in majority protestant country

Ecumenical debates pass over the heads of most christians, who just go with the form of christianity that is the “default” in their country/region. But what about those raised in families that hold on to their religions where it is a minority? This point seems important to me because a lot of the debates about Catholiscism I see online are really about catholicism in the USA, where it is a minority. In such countries, catholics will usually be seen as more pious and conservative than other christians, and quite often they’ll be, for several reasons :

• Principle of selection: A family that is just vaguely christian, upon immigrating, could’ve converted to better integrate. If they didn’t, it’s either because their specific belief was important to them personally, or because the community in which they integrated was mostly of other catholics, making it a solidarity factor which in turn increases its importance.

• Sense of responsability : If holding a belief is an active choice rather than going with the flow, believers will tend to give it more mind. They may feel they have more of a personal responsability to uphold it. This can culminate in what’s known as “siege mentality”: People who feel like an important part of their way of life or their belief system is threatened will react with fervor, oftem violence. This is why so many religious or political speech relies on tropes such as “They’re trying to steal/destroy/corrupt our thing!”

Nothing against the faith. But the followsrs tend to be dickheads that don’t accept logic. Plus I fucking hate big trucks, it’s unrelated, I just tought I’d mention it.

You might be surprised to find out that atheism is probably over-represented here on Lemmy and is probably the dominant “belief” as opposed to traditional religion.

One aspect of this is that you’ll see that religion in general is not exactly well respected among the userbase. You might just want to alter your expectations, because it’s not anti-catholicism as much as it is anti-religion in general.

Source: Am atheist. All religions are fucking stupid and holding humanity back. Sorry not sorry.

Because the big majority of users are from countries where the most followed religion is Christianity. If it was a social network mainly from Islamic countries the most hated religion would be Islam.

For no logical reason at all except for sanctioned mass child rapes, mass child murder, and all other horrors all other religions perform on a daily basis

All illogical reasons

Catholicism is a force for evil, just like Protestantism, just like Islam, just like Hinduism, just like… It’s the one thing where all religions are equals

Bad faith.

i dont just mean the church but your style of posting here.

For me; I suffered a Catholic school with undiagnosed Autism. That’ll turn anyone against it.