It’s always puzzled me and reading a thread on reddit just how has reignited that puzzlement. Someone on reddit asked people opposed to universal healthcare to explain why and the conservatives in the thread have given reasons like they don’t want to wait their turn for treatment, and that people don’t have an intrinsic right to live, along with the usual “WHY shOUld i PAy fOR YouR HealTHcarE?”
Christians seem to lead the charge with objections such as these. And in my experience of asking for help accessing food, Christians were the cruellest and the least likely to help.
I just don’t understand how someone claims to follow Jesus but holds beliefs like this. When Jesus handed out the loaves and fishes, did he check everyone’s employment and tax status first, and only feed those who were working and paying tax? When he healed the sick and disabled, did he make sure they had health insurance first and refuse to treat those who couldn’t pay?
What makes these people such incredible hypocrites?
Americanized Christianity (and what is in Canada as well) was HEAVILY formed by the puritans and other offshoots from England, a hated cult of masochists that believed individual suffering was divine punishment wrought by one’s own moral failings and that a community should only be present to punish people that step out of line and not actually work together to survive. It is a religious belief set alien to catholic doctrine that usually leads to radicalized priests wanting material changes but instead is one that is perfectly suited to be nested alongside capitalism as a propaganda piece.
That’s an overly rosy view of Catholicism (we have plenty of situations where priests have sided with the rich and been generally shitty, the Spanish Civil War as just one example) but yeah, most of the time the greater theological unity holds back the worst impulses because a priest can’t rules lawyer his way into thinking god owes him a Learjet
Oh yeah it aint absolving Catholicism of siding with fascists or propping up governments that keep them in power, but it’s interesting how Christianity in America is so much worse and riddled with lots of brainworms.