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Comment by ivanech | Hacker News Reader

Catholics are pretty different. The Catholic Church asks for less than the LDS (and most churches) at the local level, and it's quite a bit more hands-off. The higher levels of Catholic hierarchy looks like a medieval institution because it is a medieval institution. There is definitely set dogma, and the Church does not waver on it, but Catholics are generally quite comfortable being buffet Christians (choosing which bits to follow and which to disregard). I've met many more buffet Catholics than buffet Mormons.

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As far as I can tell, all Mormons are buffet Mormons. The ones that think they're not just usually aren't thinking about the rest of what's being served besides what they usually eat.

(Your point about relative comfort at this fact may remain true independent of this observation.)

I've been an active member my whole life (38) and I've never even heard of "space doctrine". I looked it up and as far as I can tell, there are some theories by members of the Church but nothing from any current or former members of the Quorum of the Twelve or First Presidency, which is required for something to really be considered canon.

Just because some member of the Church believes or says something doesn't make it doctrine.

Just because some member of the Church believes or says something doesn't make it doctrine.

This is a problem for most religions these days. Some random person says something is part of their religion, and everyone on the internet and the media believe it.

It's like whenever some Catholic priest in some backwater says something that is not in line with Catholic teaching, the news picks up on it as if it came out of the Pope's mouth. Then it gets repeated ad nauseam across the internet by people who don't know, or can't be bothered to find out, if it's true or not.

Islam has this same problem, I've seen countless articles over the years about some person or group issuing ridiculous fatwas that are taken seriously.

I'd imagine that if you spent any significant amount of time tracking what Mormon apostles have actually said about a lot of controversial ideas, that you'd no longer be an active Mormon. The exmormon subreddit is littered with people who did exactly that.

I'm curious what beliefs you have in mind that you notice are typically not thought about. (Not that I think they don't exist, I'm just curious what specifically you have in mind).

The LDS church has an interesting tiered conception of doctrine, wherein some things that have been taught by LDS prophets are not in fact official doctrine. People tend to ignore the "space doctrine" most of the time too.

That is only true in the states and perhaps parts of Europe. Catholics in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines are much less buffet.

Very true! I should have specified that this applies for Catholics in the United States.

> The higher levels of Catholic hierarchy looks like a medieval institution because it is a medieval institution.

Well, it's got pre-medieval, medieval, and post-medieval elements.

> There is definitely set dogma

Depending on who you believe (yes, there are actually doctrinal disputes over which doctrinal pronouncements are in fact dogmatic, though there are a handful of cases which are dogmatic and not in dispute as to that) there is between very little and extremely little definitively set dogma, though.

I think the fact that there is a distinction between doctrine and dogma, both of which exist, and with the boundary between them subject to serious scholarly debate, just shows how dogmatic/doctrinaire (which are synonyms in everyday non-Catholic English) the Catholic Church is.

There's not a boundary between them, one is a subset of the other. And what it really shows is how old and large the Church is (and, specifically how many questions it's been called in to address.)

How doctrinaire the Church is a pastoral question that (in terms of the central authority at least) changes considerably over time and especially with changes in Popes. Because, for all the accumulated history, tradition, and specialized language the Holy See had accumulated, it's still essentially an absolute monarchy, and the approach of the institutions reflects the personality of the person at the head of all of them.

what it really shows is how old and large the Church is

It's like trying to maintain a codebase for 1,700 years with only one major revision.

There've certainly been forks. Arguably even the occasional rewrite. :)

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