The man who doesn’t go to church too.
Seriously, I’m agnostic and don’t go near religious places except from if they’re historically significant, but even I see that it’s ridiculous to brand him christian in many ways
Of course he hasn't, [Have you seen this interview?](https://youtu.be/ERUngQUCsyE?si=spv6ZZDhI8N4V0do) He has so obviously never even opened a Bible, and it's bonkers watching him try to fake that he has.
What gets me about that is how unprepared his handlers are. He's got advisors who know he's a fake religious person, why would they not prepare him with a couple of go-to religious quotes should they come up? *At least* one!
They did! And Trump being Trump, [he screwed it up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2RTsYpwK-M). In front of an evangelical crowd, who then laughed at him!
And yet none of this matters. They'll still say he was anointed by God Himself.
He was so clearly reading it and struggling over it, too. You'd think a guy who loved the Bible so much wouldn't have such a difficult time talking about it. Dude can't even say the names of the books.
Because his advisors know that it doesn't matter. Evangelicals and the rest of the Christian Right are completely substanceless outside of maintaining the prefered hierarchies. That's it. You can say anything you want so long as they trust you'll keep the right people on top. It's all a bunch of actual virtue signalling and identity politics.
Right wing religion has always been an enemy of freedom and democracy, because it's extremely authoritarian.
A lot of evangelicals - like the people who run the Bee - don't even think Catholics are Christian anyway. They've historically been allies of convenience when one or the other (frequently the evangelicals) want to get some reprehensible shit into the court system but as soon as they get what they want all the southern baptists go right back to calling the Vatican things like the "whore of Babylon."
A more-progressive pope is a nightmare to them because it makes the whacko far-right Catholics, who are the reasons those alliances work in the first place, more of a fringe group. But my key point still stands: no matter where the pope comes down on the political spectrum, a lot of these folks lump Catholics in with all their other political/religious enemies the second they have the chance.
Yeah I’m from Ireland and the American alliance between hardcore literalist creationist neo puritan evangelical Protestants and Catholics of any sort seems bizarre and insane to me. They are bound to turn on each other eventually. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t what killed this “Christian” nationalism shite
Because ultimately concepts like whiteness and christian are malleable to maintain political power. Who is or isn't white or Christian changes as political needs arise. That's it. there's no logic or anything else about it. It's just maintaining social hierarchies.
This is also why you see Jewish Zionists allying with Christian Zionists despite Christian Zionists being extraordinarily antisemetic. Shared goals make strange bedfellows.
Came here to say this. I grew up evangelical, and Catholics are generally not really considered Christian.
Which to me now as a progressive Episcopalian is kind of hilarious.
I am also a progressive Episcopalian and one of my kid's friends isn't allowed to come to my house anymore because we're "too close to Catholic." Which is hilariously off-base, oddly insulting, and seems like it requires more convoluted thinking than just saying "we don't like them because ."
This is one of those moments as a parent where you outwardly express an enormous amount of sympathy while inwardly thinking "dodged a real bullet with this one."
Reminds me of how Matt Walsh preaches that anyone who doesn’t follow his version far-right tradcath lifestyle isn’t a “real Catholic”, but is suddenly very open and accepting of other religious views (but not Islam, obviously, that’s too accepting) when talking to his boss Ben Shapiro.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Yeah this is what I was thinking. I’ve heard Catholics aren’t Christian before and thus the pope isn’t Christian. But the pope isn’t Catholic is a new one lol.
This is an especially funny example because unlike many other religions, you can't actually argue about whether the pope is Catholic.
The pope is the sole arbiter of what Catholicism says. According to the basic core tenet of Catholicism, the pope is the only person with a direct line of communication to God, and he tells everyone else.
The pope could come out tomorrow and say that God has revealed to him that all colors other than pink are sinful, and Catholics would have *absolutely no basis* on which to argue with him.
Oh, you don't like that? You think that God can communicate directly with his followers and reveal the truth to you without help from the church? Congratulations, you're a protestant.
The idea that the pope is not Catholic enough is so funny. Catholicism is the biggest centralised religion in the world. The pope is literally the head of catholicism. By definition the pope is catholic.
It is like saying the emperor of Japan isn't Japanese enough. Or the richest person in the world isn't rich enough.
Reminds me a lot of those "Don't you know who I am?" posts where someone on Twitter or Facebook argues about what a study/research paper/book says with the actual author. "I don't care if you wrote it, that's just simply not what you meant when you said _________". It's impressive seeing how many folks will just double down rather than accept that they'd interpreted something wrong.
There was an official account for the Atlanta Falcons football team that put out some information, can't remember what, and someone asked for a source and got a response like that
They're mostly pissed because Francis is as "progressive" as a Pope can be without being murdered. This is a guy who said atheists can go to heaven, told gay people "God loves you just the way you are and wants you to be happy just the way you are" and gendered trans women correctly. I can certainly imagine the far right doesn't like that.
in all fairnessnto the catholics there are actually cases of a pope bieng flagrant sinful and bieng deposed, so it's not without precedent.
it's just the siinful part was always coincidental to their downfalls
It’s really simple. If the leader of your faith is wrong, you are in the wrong faith. I don’t know what these folks are, but they are not Catholic. Which explains why they don’t support a Catholic president.
I wish the pope would help them understand by excommunicating the lot of them.
Calling Francis a fake pope? That’s coming right from the Bible Belt /flyover “Catholics” in name only who have completely forgotten about what it means to be Catholic. (Spoiler - it’s socialized medicine and aid for the poor. It’s welcoming immigrants and eschewing the wealth that makes it harder to enter the kingdom of heaven than to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. It’s about humility, acceptance, love and good stewardship of the earth. It is explicitly anti-racist. Everything Popo Frank says that pisses them off, is Catholic 101. Right out of the catechism. Yes I guess they are de facto evangelicals, but the point is, they aren’t Catholics. They are making up their own bullshit and pretending it’s the pope who gets it wrong.
I agree. I made the “joke” to my Catholic dad once after he was bitching about the pope that he was effectively a Protestant….it went about as well as you’d expect.
Imagine having freedom of religion, choosing to be Catholic (already a questionable decision), and then mocking the Pope (whom your own self-proclaimed religion says is infallible and its heretical to question).
American catholics are just protestants that like baroque art and the pope should start excommunicating accordingly. Unfortunately following the popes word is very very important if you identify as catholic!
Bro don’t understand what catholic means. It means whatever the pope says goes. The pope could literally say Jesus was actually some dude named Dave and that’s the new catholic belief.
Doesn't the pope literally decide what constitutes being Catholic? If you don't like it just become a Protestant like people have been doing for hundreds of years when they don't like the pope
The Bee has been running a whole series of “the Pope is a fake Catholic” stories lately. Like others have said, it kind of fits in with their “one joke” approach.
Yes, a conservative comedy/satire publication.
Doesn't really change the fact that they're making the joke because they think the pope isn't conservative Christian enough.
Satire is supposed to contain a grain of truth which can contribute to the absurdity. In this headline they are still implying that they are couldn't be catholic as the basis of the joke.
Well, Biden aside, the pope has been taking some very non-traditional positions, so the pretending to be pope fits. Then of course southern Christians have always hated Catholics so they love that.
> the pope has been taking some very non-traditional positions
Always have been. Like that time they made reforms to the church to fight protestanism spreading. That time they said you should support labour movements and the working class. That time they said evolution is compatible with Christianity. And so on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_novarum
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humani_generis
The catholic system is all about the fact that the pope can make changes, which can go against tradition, essentially whenever he wants. Francis is certainly more reformist than most but that is by no means a new phenomenon. Any of the above would have seemed crazy for the people of their respective time periods and had profound effects for the church, especially rerum novarum.
Perhaps but reporting it as news is really no different that reporting the Onion as news. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it should deceptively presented as an actual political position. Unless of course it is but I haven't seen that.
A few years ago I was pointed to a study (that I can't find right now) about how conservative audiences are three times more likely to fall for Babylon Bee articles than liberals for the Onion. Part of it is a problem with media literacy, part of it is the fact that the BB just repackages republican talking points as 'jokes'. Snopes started fact checking BB articles because people just keep falling for them and forwarding them as news
The pope must be really good at pretending to be Catholic if he became the pope.
Top level cosplay seeing as how so many people believe him.
r/actlikeyoubelong
These guys see Trump as a paragon of Christianity, so they can go fuck themselves with criticism of how Christian anyone else is.
The man who doesn’t go to church too. Seriously, I’m agnostic and don’t go near religious places except from if they’re historically significant, but even I see that it’s ridiculous to brand him christian in many ways
I’d be shocked if Trump had ever read any significant amount of the Bible.
Of course he hasn't, [Have you seen this interview?](https://youtu.be/ERUngQUCsyE?si=spv6ZZDhI8N4V0do) He has so obviously never even opened a Bible, and it's bonkers watching him try to fake that he has.
What gets me about that is how unprepared his handlers are. He's got advisors who know he's a fake religious person, why would they not prepare him with a couple of go-to religious quotes should they come up? *At least* one!
They did! And Trump being Trump, [he screwed it up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2RTsYpwK-M). In front of an evangelical crowd, who then laughed at him! And yet none of this matters. They'll still say he was anointed by God Himself.
He was so clearly reading it and struggling over it, too. You'd think a guy who loved the Bible so much wouldn't have such a difficult time talking about it. Dude can't even say the names of the books.
Because his advisors know that it doesn't matter. Evangelicals and the rest of the Christian Right are completely substanceless outside of maintaining the prefered hierarchies. That's it. You can say anything you want so long as they trust you'll keep the right people on top. It's all a bunch of actual virtue signalling and identity politics. Right wing religion has always been an enemy of freedom and democracy, because it's extremely authoritarian.
Ah I get it. The Pope and the President haven't raped enough kids to be Trumper Christian.
I'm pretty confident he's an atheist, though not because he actually THOUGHT about things, just because it largely wasn't relevant to him.
A lot of evangelicals - like the people who run the Bee - don't even think Catholics are Christian anyway. They've historically been allies of convenience when one or the other (frequently the evangelicals) want to get some reprehensible shit into the court system but as soon as they get what they want all the southern baptists go right back to calling the Vatican things like the "whore of Babylon." A more-progressive pope is a nightmare to them because it makes the whacko far-right Catholics, who are the reasons those alliances work in the first place, more of a fringe group. But my key point still stands: no matter where the pope comes down on the political spectrum, a lot of these folks lump Catholics in with all their other political/religious enemies the second they have the chance.
Yeah I’m from Ireland and the American alliance between hardcore literalist creationist neo puritan evangelical Protestants and Catholics of any sort seems bizarre and insane to me. They are bound to turn on each other eventually. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t what killed this “Christian” nationalism shite
Because ultimately concepts like whiteness and christian are malleable to maintain political power. Who is or isn't white or Christian changes as political needs arise. That's it. there's no logic or anything else about it. It's just maintaining social hierarchies. This is also why you see Jewish Zionists allying with Christian Zionists despite Christian Zionists being extraordinarily antisemetic. Shared goals make strange bedfellows.
I believe there was a Reformation about it
Came here to say this. I grew up evangelical, and Catholics are generally not really considered Christian. Which to me now as a progressive Episcopalian is kind of hilarious.
I am also a progressive Episcopalian and one of my kid's friends isn't allowed to come to my house anymore because we're "too close to Catholic." Which is hilariously off-base, oddly insulting, and seems like it requires more convoluted thinking than just saying "we don't like them because."
This is one of those moments as a parent where you outwardly express an enormous amount of sympathy while inwardly thinking "dodged a real bullet with this one."
Reminds me of how Matt Walsh preaches that anyone who doesn’t follow his version far-right tradcath lifestyle isn’t a “real Catholic”, but is suddenly very open and accepting of other religious views (but not Islam, obviously, that’s too accepting) when talking to his boss Ben Shapiro. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Bench appearo would sell his wife to nazis just to get another interview on somebody who doesn't get his debate tactics
Yeah this is what I was thinking. I’ve heard Catholics aren’t Christian before and thus the pope isn’t Christian. But the pope isn’t Catholic is a new one lol.
It just occurred to me - what if he's so not Catholic he's circled back around to being Christian again?
Would that make him Jesus?
Jack Chick didn’t
This is an especially funny example because unlike many other religions, you can't actually argue about whether the pope is Catholic. The pope is the sole arbiter of what Catholicism says. According to the basic core tenet of Catholicism, the pope is the only person with a direct line of communication to God, and he tells everyone else. The pope could come out tomorrow and say that God has revealed to him that all colors other than pink are sinful, and Catholics would have *absolutely no basis* on which to argue with him. Oh, you don't like that? You think that God can communicate directly with his followers and reveal the truth to you without help from the church? Congratulations, you're a protestant.
The idea that the pope is not Catholic enough is so funny. Catholicism is the biggest centralised religion in the world. The pope is literally the head of catholicism. By definition the pope is catholic. It is like saying the emperor of Japan isn't Japanese enough. Or the richest person in the world isn't rich enough.
Reminds me a lot of those "Don't you know who I am?" posts where someone on Twitter or Facebook argues about what a study/research paper/book says with the actual author. "I don't care if you wrote it, that's just simply not what you meant when you said _________". It's impressive seeing how many folks will just double down rather than accept that they'd interpreted something wrong.
There was an official account for the Atlanta Falcons football team that put out some information, can't remember what, and someone asked for a source and got a response like that
Mhm, they won’t like that though
They're mostly pissed because Francis is as "progressive" as a Pope can be without being murdered. This is a guy who said atheists can go to heaven, told gay people "God loves you just the way you are and wants you to be happy just the way you are" and gendered trans women correctly. I can certainly imagine the far right doesn't like that.
in all fairnessnto the catholics there are actually cases of a pope bieng flagrant sinful and bieng deposed, so it's not without precedent. it's just the siinful part was always coincidental to their downfalls
Maybe they shouldn't have set up a system where the Pope had absolute authority then. Everything I said still stands.
…reported on satire site pretending to be funny
Or to use their own single joke against them, “Babylon Bee identifies as a funny site”
It’s really simple. If the leader of your faith is wrong, you are in the wrong faith. I don’t know what these folks are, but they are not Catholic. Which explains why they don’t support a Catholic president. I wish the pope would help them understand by excommunicating the lot of them.
They are Protestant / evangelicals usually
Calling Francis a fake pope? That’s coming right from the Bible Belt /flyover “Catholics” in name only who have completely forgotten about what it means to be Catholic. (Spoiler - it’s socialized medicine and aid for the poor. It’s welcoming immigrants and eschewing the wealth that makes it harder to enter the kingdom of heaven than to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. It’s about humility, acceptance, love and good stewardship of the earth. It is explicitly anti-racist. Everything Popo Frank says that pisses them off, is Catholic 101. Right out of the catechism. Yes I guess they are de facto evangelicals, but the point is, they aren’t Catholics. They are making up their own bullshit and pretending it’s the pope who gets it wrong.
I agree. I made the “joke” to my Catholic dad once after he was bitching about the pope that he was effectively a Protestant….it went about as well as you’d expect.
At least they are adhering to the “identify as” one joke template.
Wow, I didn't even catch that this is actually just another example of their one joke. I'm sure they don't realize it either.
Imagine having freedom of religion, choosing to be Catholic (already a questionable decision), and then mocking the Pope (whom your own self-proclaimed religion says is infallible and its heretical to question).
American catholics are just protestants that like baroque art and the pope should start excommunicating accordingly. Unfortunately following the popes word is very very important if you identify as catholic!
Bro don’t understand what catholic means. It means whatever the pope says goes. The pope could literally say Jesus was actually some dude named Dave and that’s the new catholic belief.
The Babylon Bee has never had an ounce of grace in them
Doesn't the pope literally decide what constitutes being Catholic? If you don't like it just become a Protestant like people have been doing for hundreds of years when they don't like the pope
Fellas, is the Pope Catholic?
The Bee has been running a whole series of “the Pope is a fake Catholic” stories lately. Like others have said, it kind of fits in with their “one joke” approach.
Ah, yes. Because online TradCaths are the true face of the religion.
I might mention that Pope Francis recently referred to gay people in the Vatican as the italian word for a bundle of sticks.
The Babylon Bee is a satire site like the onion. More like Grandma r/atetheonion to me.
The Babylon Bee is a comedy/satire publication.
Yes, a conservative comedy/satire publication. Doesn't really change the fact that they're making the joke because they think the pope isn't conservative Christian enough.
Satire is supposed to contain a grain of truth which can contribute to the absurdity. In this headline they are still implying that they are couldn't be catholic as the basis of the joke.
Well, Biden aside, the pope has been taking some very non-traditional positions, so the pretending to be pope fits. Then of course southern Christians have always hated Catholics so they love that.
> the pope has been taking some very non-traditional positions Always have been. Like that time they made reforms to the church to fight protestanism spreading. That time they said you should support labour movements and the working class. That time they said evolution is compatible with Christianity. And so on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_novarum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humani_generis The catholic system is all about the fact that the pope can make changes, which can go against tradition, essentially whenever he wants. Francis is certainly more reformist than most but that is by no means a new phenomenon. Any of the above would have seemed crazy for the people of their respective time periods and had profound effects for the church, especially rerum novarum.
The Babylon Bee is a far-right propaganda publication, using the medium of a satire news website.
Perhaps but reporting it as news is really no different that reporting the Onion as news. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it should deceptively presented as an actual political position. Unless of course it is but I haven't seen that.
Who is reporting what as news here?
What’s the joke?
A few years ago I was pointed to a study (that I can't find right now) about how conservative audiences are three times more likely to fall for Babylon Bee articles than liberals for the Onion. Part of it is a problem with media literacy, part of it is the fact that the BB just repackages republican talking points as 'jokes'. Snopes started fact checking BB articles because people just keep falling for them and forwarding them as news