So, which side is catholic, and which side protestant ?

[SerendipityJane]

Just browsing a couple of podcasts about the reformation, and I was suddenly struck by the parallels in language and commitment to a world view between the early reformation (crispy catholics etc) and the current spat with TRAs and science.

To the extent that either I am alone in my own little universe (which I am quite happy with, thank you) or someone else must have noticed.

Anyway it does provide for a brief distraction if you want to not only examine the parallels, but suggests which side equates to which.

I guess someone, somewhere is working on a PhD around the western christian manifestation of the current transgender discussions. If not they have have that one on me 😎

Can’t see reference to him being a news reporter? I presume you mean the news reported someone saying it was punishment. Which is different from mainstream news reporting it was.

The news reported a Bishop saying it.

(If you take Reform are really UKIP with some extra letters...)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358

Graham Dow was a bishop until his retirement, and also briefly at the end of his career a member of the House of Lords (2007-09). All the while expressing the view that storms causing flooding in Carlisle, where he was bishop, were punishment for the gays getting it on.

So not just a religious leader but also a legislator, briefly.

I suppose it’s not a lot weirder, when you really think about it, than Ruth Hunt being put in the Lords a few years later. At least Graham Dow got there by virtue of being a CofE bishop and hanging around long enough until it was his turn, while Ruth got there supposedly on merit

The belief in an immaterial, eternal gender-soul is something all the TRAs assume, and woe betide us if we disagree. Some of them say the gender-soul is permanently one thing or the other (or the other or the other... etc.), while the rest say it's in flux, yet still somehow incapsulates a person's true self. People have privileged access to their gender-soul and that's the law.

And that's the problem too: the rest of us have to accept that everyone has such a soul, even the agender people (not sure how that works: credo quia impossibile est, I suppose), even ourselves when we swear blind we don't, and even though no-one else can see this soul, touch it, or become aware of it directly. We have to disown our lived experience of human dimorphism in favour of an ideology that compels belief in something of which we have no direct knowledge. The consequences of this compelled belief play out in our shared public life—in health care, education, academia, politics, the military, actual religion, and so on.

The only parallel I see with the Catholics vs the Protestants specidically is between those who think they can literally change sex (Catholic transubstantiation) and those who don't (the Protestant interpretation of the Last Supper). The Catholics also believe in Purgatory, only it's in this life—the purifiying pain and suffering of medical transition. Which more often than not lands you in Hell.

There’s something metaphysical about naming, too. In Christian baptism the child is given a name, and this is understood to be its identity (its Christian name). There’s stuff in the Bible about God calling us each by name, and our names being written in the book of life, and so on. There’s Jewish lore about needing to find and hear our true names which only God knows. And then there’s all the Rumpelstiltskin stuff and other folklore/magic about the power of naming.

I think this is relevant background to the choose a new name bit of trans culture, as well as the sin of “deadnaming”.

There’s also the good old revivalist Christian narrative: “i was living an inauthentic and sinful life until I saw the light, found God and became my true self. I was blind but now I see…”

There are a lot of people still with strange beliefs. And we also have a national broadcaster claiming people can change sex. But there is a lot less excuse for this now than five hundred years ago.

Ironically the Bishop should know the rainbow was a symbol of God’s convenient to never again destroy all life with a flood.

If you take Reform are really UKIP with some extra letters...

Reform’s biggest issue is they do not have an underlying belief system. They are doing well because of despair at the other parties. But without an underlying belief in a broader political idea they will struggle to come up with cohesive policies. At the moment it doesn’t matter much to them, they are like other parties in opposition, including Labour when they were; making pronouncements with little concern about their implementation. Their biggest difficulty should they gain access to power would be getting all their MPs or MSPs behind any particular policy, particularly those of Farage who seems to sway with the wind even on what could be considered core Reform ideas.

Ooh yes, we did that too! Including the sniggering at the name. I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

The TRAs seem to have a pick and mix approach , borrowing bits from Catholics and Protestants so to speak. Thus transubstantiation for the RCC plus justification by faith from Protestants. With some ' born again' from the US Evangelicals. From my recollection of catechism purgatory isn't a way station to hell but to heaven. Its where we are meant to purge ourselves of sin. Admittedly my study of catechism was a lifetime ago.The Latin Mass was still there. There's something the TRAs lack , come to think of it. A spooky ancient language of their own. Go for it lads. Maybe Sanskrit or Old Norse. But , for pity's sake leave Irish and Welsh out of it. I swear every looney tune in America thinks they are a Celtic Goddess or a Druid. A gender fluid druid 😱 😂

Totally agree. Just as an example I can’t see too many reform ultras getting behind removing the two-child benefit cap.

I remember Mary Harrington a few years ago writing about the idea that we were in a 'new reformation'. It was an idea being kicked around in a few corners of the internet which were trying to understand 'woke' ideas as a godless neo-religion and spawned some interesting ideas and articles.

Unherd has an archive of articles tagged 'reformation' which may lead to some interesting/eccentric rabbit holes: unherd.com/tag/reformation/

If I'm getting it right I think the idea is that back then the invention of a new technology (the printing press) led to huge political, social and religious upheaval including the reformation which played out over decades. The parallel with now is that our new technology is the internet, and it is causing a similar time of upheaval which will change our lives and society so much it will be decades before we can look back and understand it.

I find the idea makes more sense if you take a step back from the idea that gender identity ideology is at the centre, and instead see it as one of many manias which are symptoms of what the new technology has enabled.
Relatedly Lionel Shriver talked about this interestingly on Triggernometry recently - she talks about GI as one of many manias that have managed to jump into the mainstream over the last 15 years, she cites transgenderism, BLM, covid, Metoo, climate change/net zero as examples of our "collective capacity to lose our minds'. Here's the interview -

If I'm getting it right I think the idea is that back then the invention of a new technology (the printing press) led to huge political, social and religious upheaval including the reformation which played out over decades. The parallel with now is that our new technology is the internet, and it is causing a similar time of upheaval which will change our lives and society so much it will be decades before we can look back and understand it.

But would the Reformation have happened without printing ? Not all religious shifts are prompted by technology. The Christianisation of the Roman Empire for example. Or the development of Islam.

But would the Reformation have happened without printing ? Not all religious shifts are prompted by technology. The Christianisation of the Roman Empire for example. Or the development of Islam.

Ooft, I'm way out of my limited historical and religious depth! I certainly find the parallel with the reformation useful in trying to understand some human behaviours from the present day. I rely on people with much deeper historical knowledge to join the right dots though!

Thinking about this!

Terfs are Protestants, they don't protest against Trans, they are pro-women protesters.

In a similar way to Protestants, aren't anti RC they are pro-protestants.

My masters was in the role of women in the English reformation and I’ve idly thought about this too OP. Particularly that a persons view on transubstantiation (whether one thing can literally become something else via the uttering of words) being the test of whether they would be burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Not sure if this works. During the reformation Protestants were definitely anti RC.

Yes, zealotry is the issue.

Agree - the entire foundational dynamic of the Reformation centered around opposition to Catholicism, both its organizational structure and specific beliefs.

Printing may have speeded it up.

Wycliffe and Hus both predated the invention of the printing press.

I don't think your analogy works.

I think it should be the other way round. The Reformation was a movement seeking to re(?) establish the pure Chriatian religion, and all the more exclusive offshoots of original Reformation movements have claimed to be the one and only essence of Christianity, with all the rest condemned to hell.

Check out some of Ian Paisley's thoughts on Catholics and Catholicism for evidence. The university that gave him his doctorate was renowned for its view that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon.

To be fair, the pre-reformation Catholic Church was very corrupt, especially under the likes of the Medici family.

True - but the reforming/Protestant propaganda spread the message. I’m not sure it more corrupt than it had been in the past - although possibly it depends what you mean by corrupt. Popes in the past had been dreadful in lots of different ways! And done many things to retain power personally and for the Church. The Medici benefited from their own massive success in banking, enabling them to attain the Papacy and lots of other powerful positions. Many Italian papal families did the same. Surely the printing press, as well as advances in banking and trade - technological innovations - were crucial in the spread of Reformed ideas - it’s not that the Church suddenly became corrupt, but that that message could suddenly be widely spread and gain traction.