Siderea

Discordianism, but only if you require them to spend the money you donated on hot dogs, with buns, for a Friday meeting on the Humor and the Church.

Possibly, but that doesn't seem to be either vicious enough or funny enough to make a good joke. Most of my friends are wittier than that, I think.

Do you subscribe to any liberal/progressive publications?

Not in print. The only magazine I get is a trade rag for therapists. (ETA: Oh, and the quarterly academic journal and monthly newsletters of a prof. org. for mental health counselors.)

Go to any conferences?

Horribly, the only conference I've made it to in, er, years, has been SDBestPractices. I mean, aside from things like SF conventions. I don't think Arisia would be the sort of mailing list they'd want.

Shop from mailorder catalogues?

A few. Does Coldwater Creek have anything to do Catholicism?

The only thing I can think of is charitable and political giving. But... I don't think that the ACLU, EFF or HRC would be the sort of organizations an internal Catholic political movement would be inclined to buy addresses from. *shrug* Maybe the Cambridge Firefighters' widows and orphans fund?


Edited at 2007-12-21 10:32 pm (UTC)

I think I'd go for Tikkun Olam and Discordianism.

Same here. I can't really see it as Tzedakah, as that seems to be of the more demanding/obligatory nature, and I just cannot see this as being obligatory. (-:

However, it *definitely* falls into the categories of making the world a better place, and random senseless acts.

So how are these guys going to democratize and liberalize the Catholic Church? Do they have a plan to rig the next papal election?

I wasn't able to tell. It reminds me of a fabulous sentence in an article I once read which I so regret not capturing to my quote file; it went something to the effect of, "So and so sees a place in the Catholic Church for democracy, liberalization, and similar reforms, and that place is Protestantism."

Probably should have phrased that as an opinion: "If you claim to be Catholic, it ought to be because you believe." Participating in all those proscriptions, rituals, culture, whatever, is an implicit declaration that you believe them to be valid, and to do so without actually believing them to be valid (because, for example, you've discarded their nominal justifications) seems to be... extremely dishonest, to say the least. (And, yes, I'm going to take on a moral system long enough to declare falsehood a major crime. I did mention this was my opinion. :) )

And while an entire religion cannot be defined merely as its beliefs, official/declared membership can be, and in the case of Catholicism (where major heresies get you automatic excommunication), often is. Admittedly this is primarily an instance of social aspects being used to enforce belief, but this sort of directed application seems to just underline that the entire thing is centered around "belief". As opposed to Judaism, where it's much more explicitly tribal.

To some extent it's also personal semantics. If you declare yourself to be a particular brand of Christian or Buddhist or Alien Cultist or what-have-you, and that group has a public official doctrine, set of practices, and culture (along with the centralized document or organization that makes the first two possible), then I expect you to subscribe to all of it, and if you really mean that you participate in some but not all, then you had better use an adjective to that effect. In this light, my comment on your entry is my latest foray into pushing my dictionary out on the rest of the world. :)

I did forget about the personal investment aspect. Probably this was caused by thinking the ability of any popular movement to change Catholic doctrine to be nil, so the only way to get different doctrine is to leave--weighing effort didn't even come into it.

[Edited several times. Due to the hour I'm not sure if this comment passes coherency checking, but hopefully you will interpret it correctly. If not, my prophets will be available next week to decry your heresy.]

I assume that if the Pope converted to Islam and declared ex cathedra that everyone else should do the same,

It would only take one. Pretty sure converting to Islam is another one of those auotmatic excommunications--it's staying as Pope that would require the army of lawyers and theologians. Essentially this is what the sedevacantists are arguing has already happened, no? The Pope disqualified himself by committing heresy, and they don't buy the justifications.

Catholicism being defined by the curia seems more like saying that English is defined by Webster and Strunk & White. Also not quite true, but the process and relation between the two seems more similar. (Excepting in that it takes a lot less time for a new word to make it into those books than it takes for a new doctrine to make it into Catholicism canon. Hence my other comment about just bailing for Protestantism being easier.)

Another major difference is that fans came before worldcon, but theoretically, the hierarchy (in the form of a certain guy from Nazareth) came before Catholicism. If the worldcon committee got together (breaking off from some other con) and said, "Hey, we should have this new variant of a genre, and we should be fans of it", and then they coined a new term, Worldconite, which meant a fan of their new genre like they were. Then later on a bunch of people declared that they were Worldconites too but totally disagreed with the committee on some major issue. Are they actually worldconites? I dunno, it's one of those wars of semantics to figure it out--the new guys have to publically redefine the word to include them. My current position on the matter is originalist, that Roman Catholics are those in communion with the Holy See. (They publish a three inch book detailing exactly what that means, which I don't recommend attempting to read without a translation dictionary.)

Well, do you know where he was third shift?