If the Vatican could get away with running the order like they did in the 1950s where masses were in Latin and women were seen not heard they would. Changes by the Vatican aren’t due to an enlightenment; they are an act of self preservation. The young are less interested in religion and active members and tithes continue to freefall. Most American Catholics are only Catholic because they were born that way not because they give a rat’s ass about eating meat on a Friday. It’s the evangelical nutters that have broken away long ago when they realized that the wedding-and-funeral Catholics couldn’t be arsed to hate the right people.

Isn't protestantism the wider belief in the US?

Maybe St. Malachy was onto something about the idea that this would be the last pope before the Catholic Church ends. I always figured that was just the whiskey talking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes

There is a lot of division in the Catholic Church right now, because of the strict traditionalists that are now in it. So it's not out of the realm of possibility for someone to get a more accepting congregation across town.

I see progress here, though, because now they are acknowledging that the issue with accepting transgender people is with the "disorientation" among the congregation, not with anything disqualifying about the Trans person themselves. Prior popes would have called them "disordered" and "unnatural" and excluded them with vigor.

Seems to me like an attempt to placate the conservatives while allowing room for progressives.

Won't be very successful.

I think that's part of why he is being so careful with language, it's in line with him coming out to say homosexuality is not a crime earlier this year.

Hopefully this is just paving the way for further change but when the Church holds a lot of power in countries where lgbtq+ people are outlawed and heavily oppressed I can see why he's slowly introducing ideas like it's not against the law and being permissible to baptise.

I'm no fan of the RCC but if the pope quickly does a full 180 on these issues the church will likely fracture and the countries where things are pretty extreme will break away and, double down on the persecution and allow it to become an identity marker.

I’m a strong atheist, vehemently ex-Catholic, and a member of Team Rainbow, just so that no one thinks I’m defending indefensible things. And I agree that this is going to make little change in the behavior of most parishes, especially in heavily Catholic countries. I don’t think that’ll be due to the pope, though.

The Catholic Church has always taken an openly violent stance against LGBT people. They still do. I consider even the position of more liberal Catholics who take the position that it’s just like any other sin and can send you to hell but still reject all the social war stuff as wishing violence, although they’re not really problematic.

But Francis has gone out of his way more than any pope I can remember to be a progressive reformer. I’m not comparing it to Vatican II or anything, but it’s significant progress on issues like women and LGBT. He’s resisted by a lot of the politics of the church, but as the chief god-person he has some flexibility. So I think it’s less about him speaking one thing in public and another in private, and more about a conservative institution that will not implement his orders (such as they are).

Maybe that will speed up the process of religion dying off

You are not forced to. If one is a believer, they are free to practice it. This is all about choice, like many modern and going to be modern things.

It would have not been better if they kept shunning it. They know the practice of the religion needs to be adapted (as in fact, its a belief), as it always did in modern history. An example of this is also the transmission of the services in television, despite it not being considered an "holy" way of transmission.

Bandwagoners. Lutherans have been calling the Pope the antichrist since 1520.