They'll try to canonize prosperity gospel and make Trump their savior stand in.

💯

Catholics are not real "Christians". So they dont believe in the Pope's position or respect the Pope.

I cannot fathom telling a guy who has dedicated his life to the church though that he doesn't understand the bible. Then again that is the republican MO, if you think you know better than an expert clearly you do.

Why does this matter? - because it shows that Hannity doesn’t matter

While I understand what you're saying, Hannity absolutely matters because millions of people listen to his bullshit. His past doesn't matter as he is a powerful propagandist now.

Ex-cultist here. Specifically, fundamentalist Christian in the US.

So what we're seeing here is a division between in-groups and out-groups, and drawing that circle closer as a means of guarding against valid criticism. Consider; the standard response of most cults when they are under attack is to double down on its assertions that it is telling the truth. Most cults are built with a persecution complex as key part of exploiting their believers.

This tactic triggers their emotional response to rally to the defense of their cause, because "We're under attack! We're being hunted! The Worst Thing Possible is going to happen, and it is THIS PERSECUTOR'S fault!" This also forces a false choice in members who are doubting the leadership, forcing them to either cut all social ties and side with the enemy (they are trained to see this as a fate worse than death) or rehearse their dogma and rally without question.

^My basic understanding of whats going on.

Actually, for a fascist it's very easy. When words dont really mean anything and your ideology demands no consistency you can say what you want and defend the indefensible. If you think that rational people would see through all that you're right, but their followers arent. They've been trained for over forty years to be led by the nose by their media peer group. Be it conservative news or Facebook posts or green text or their local evangelical demigogue, whatever it is they will be told what they want to hear. Trump is right, and by extention they are right too. And to question it is to put at risk all the relationships they've built up over their lifetime. To be wrong is too risky, so they simply arent. And people like Sean Hannity can say whatever they want without question.

Where I'm at the Christians have mostly completely lost the plot. There's this complete perversion of the faith called Prosperity Gospel that basically believes money is proof of divine blessing. So being rich is proof you're in Gods favor.

Also where I am there's is non-0 number of Christians who legitimately believe we/someone needs to rebuild ancient buildings in the middle east so Jesus can return.

It's a death cult that believes money is proof that God approves of you. While simultaneously believing unending war/genocide in the middle east is a necessary evil. So they can just shrug their shoulders while people are slaughtered and say "God works in mysterious ways!"

Send help.

What gets me is that the Pope is just saying pretty basic Christian teachings. Simply the kinds of stuff Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. And the media is like "LOOK HE'S ATTACKING TRUMP!" The fact that he doesn't really specify the USA or anything says a lot about the state of things, where the basic Gospel of Jesus Christ is seen as inherently confrontational to the MAGA agenda.

Doesn't matter. Magats hear, believe and obey.

You wanna hear something that’ll absolutely destroy whatever little faith in humanity you may have left?

I once knew a guy who knew for a fact that Southern Baptist was the only true Christian religion. His reasoning? And he was absolutely dead serious when he said this and for him is was 100% a mic drop moment:

“Because his name was John the Baptist, not John the Catholic!”

This was something his aunt had said to him years ago, which I guess underscored its infallibility. He was by far the dumbest person I had ever met, and I’ve met a lot of dumb people.

When I was a teenager in the '90s, my mom's church did a six-week series of lessons on Wednesday nights about how the Catholic church only pretends to be Christian, followed by another series of lessons about how the Pope meets all of the criteria to be the Antichrist.

As Jesus said, "Love your neighbor, but only if he believes in me in exactly the same way you do."

A friend of mine studied theology and said (when I remarked something similar) that that's a very Protestant perspective.

Catholicism has had a long history of people disagreeing with the pope. There have been antipopes, wars between Catholics and the Papal State, theological factions where the Pope is just one participant, etc. . Papal infallibility is a very recent doctrine, and it only applies when he is speaking ex cathedra, which is rarely. Many Catholics don't adhere to it, and many only consider it a matter of worldly convenience against schisms.

That said, there are no AI generated images of Trump wearing Papal vestments or overseeing the holy mass. Trump is not presented as an anti-Pope, but as an anti-Christ.

Is cult mentality. They would rather cling to even the most ridiculous ideas than admit to themselves that they were duped by an obvious conman

The Bible has been used to argue both sides of issues for centuries.

There are passages that both condemn violence and that call for violence.

There are verses that support slavery and that condemn it.