Just out of curiosity what is the most conservative country in the E.U.
As a clueless American let me guess. Hmm probably an eastern European country or maybe Italy since they have a lot of Catholics. Am i right?
Nah, you can't assume Catholics are analogous to fire-and-brimstone Baptists or Evangelicals in America.
Predominantly Catholic Spain, Belgium and Portugal have legalised gay marriage (as . Spain in particular, in many ways, has become something of a "Sweden on the Mediterranean" in terms of social policy.
In Australia, incidentally, historically the centre-left Labor Party was more Catholic whilst the centre-right Liberals were the Protestant party. This is largely rooted in class (traditionally the Australian working class was disproportionately Irish and Catholicism).
Further, in a poll a few years ago in Australia found that
Australian Catholics are the most tolerant of homosexuality of any religious group. Speaking from personal experience, my Nanna is a devout Catholic, as lefty as they come (votes for the Greens). She doesn't have an issue with homoseuxality and is only still grappling with gay marriage because it's a new concept. Even then, her natural decency and open-mindedness is winning out.
The thing to remember about Catholicism is it's different to protestantism. It doesn't have splits and that there is often a huge gulf between the hierarchy and ordinary Catholics. Protestants who disagree tend to form new denominations (don't like the Baptists? Go be an Anglican. etc). Lay Catholics who disagree tend to just ignore the Pope and keep doing their thing. The "Catholic guilt" thing may also play a role - I mean if we're all filthy disgusting sinners who should be ashamed of ourselves, who the hell are we to get all upset and angry and try to restrict what
other people do?
Finally, I think there's a higher tendency for people to see themselves as Catholic in "cultural" terms even if they don't, you know, go to church, believe in god, etc. It's a bit like Judaism that way. Hell, Catholic doctrine supports the view - once you're baptised, that's it, as far as it's concerned... you're Catholic 4 Life. Hell, I nearly wrote "we" at a couple of points here and I'm a friggin atheist.
So yes, for multiple reasons, Catholic != conservative authoritarians.
and don't worry about editing out the "creationist junk".
