this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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The funny thing is, if you study the history of various religions throughout history, is that when religions have these dogmas they have them to their own detriment. People often have a place or even need for metaphysics and spirituality but reject religions because they have an "all or nothing" approach to them, at least officially.
That said, many people accept their religious texts to be metaphorical and not literal, so even though there's homophobia in Abraham's texts for example, they go "yeah, but that's the characters of the story expressing their homophobia, not the book telling me to be homophobic".
Sorry this was a bit rambling but I genuinely find it sad that religious institutions of the modern era are so thoroughly out of touch yet also seemingly impossible to dismantle, even though at one point many of these religions were subversive, persecuted, and radical and they dismantled previous religions.
And yet the Catholic Church only saw a serious decline in numbers after she became less dogmatic, after Vatican II Council.
Too little too late? Plus it's since reneged on that right with Pope Benedict at least? Pope Francis seems alright within reason?
I am not a Christian nor do I have a Catholic background, but I just want to push back against the idea that Churches shouldn't reform or try to be progressive, which I'm not even entirely sure you're trying to do by criticizing the Vatican II council.
The denominations that are most progressive are shrinking the fastest. It won't be long until there are essentially zero Anglicans or Episcopalians.
Shouldn't the ancient European pagan religions still have held on in that case? The Romans were willing to bend their religion in whatever direction to fit the cults of their neighbours and conquered people into their pantheon. They even tried to refit Jupiter into Abraham's God. I think it died out because it was too lax.
Same thing happened with Buddhism in India imo. Hinduism and Islam are significantly more "all or nothing", but that also made these religions more dominant than Buddhism and made the religion pretty disappear in India at least.