Israeli settlers illegally occupy Christian village near Bethlehem, 
force residents out at gunpoint Historian William Dalrymple writes: "The Israelis are eliminating one of the last Christian Palestinians strongholds in the West Bank and the place I chose to stay when I was researching the Palestinian Christians in From the Holy Mountain. It is a place with an incredibly ancient history, a cradle of Christianity, and its people have some of the closest DNA matches to the people of the time of Christ. Why is no one reporting this?"
On X (Twitter ) he writes: "Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich officially announces building a new settlement in Jabal al-Makhrur in the town of Beit Jala near Bethlehem. The settlers and the army have begun expelling the citizens and declaring it a closed military zone. Many of its residents are holding a sit-in in a tent and refuse to leave despite all the attacks. This is one of the last Christian Palestinian villages."
And this is also in the same week that Christian prayer services have been banned on Mount Tabor:
Within the last year attacks on Israeli Christians have also increased:
The findings are part of a report by the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center, called Attacks on Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem, which examined the increase in hostilities towards Churches and their members in 2023.
This included "a worrying increase in severe property and physical assaults" affecting communities in Jerusalem's Old City.
Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Hana Bendcowsky from the Rossing Center divided up the problems faced by Christians in the region into 'smash' and 'squeeze', terms used by human rights observers.
"The 'smash' describes incidents such as the attack on the Church of the Flagellation, where a statue was smashed with a hammer", she explained.
These violent attacks are mostly carried out by marginalised young ultra-Orthodox Jewish men with hardline-nationalist views, she added, stressing however that "even among the ultra-Orthodox such behaviour is not normative, the majority would not go into a church and smash a statue of Jesus."
"And the 'squeeze' pushes members of the community away, it is incidents like priests being spat at or a nun being told to take off her cross when she goes to the hospital.
Figured I'd provide a counterweight to @911roofer.
I support neither side. 
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https://melkite.org/faith/faith-worship/introduction
I'm reading this right now and it is a good refutation of most internet Trad conspiracies regarding what took place specifically, or at least from what direction it came (not a bunch of Prots/a rogue archbishop like they say). It's also worth keeping in mind that Vatican I got cut short due to war and was intended to encompass much of what was discussed at V2.
The general counterargument to the framing you provide is that with the rise of Liberalism and the limited success of the Counterreformation the Church suffered loss after loss in terms of influence and reach and instead of engaging with the new world at scale it shuttered its doors and doubled down on a rigid Thomistic theology paired to the moral views of St. Liguori as holding supremacy when the entire Eastern Tradition and the early Church Fathers held only parts of this and the broader world outside the Church rejected all of it. The hierarchy then happily paired itself to Franco and Mussolini and moved further away from an authentic expression of Christianity and towards an authoritarian reaction against the very people it ostensibly wanted to save.
These ideas and social formations known to the Church all lost, and aren't going to come back in the near future. We developed weapons capable of obliterating entire populations, airplanes, mass communication, etc etc etc. Something had to change. Where we are now isn't desirable but building Christendom took centuries the first go-round, too.
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Funnily enough, I don't actually
buy into the conspiracies 
about v2. I believe 
that they were well intentioned but misguided. I also understand why they felt change was necessary, but I think 
they overreacted and ended up going 
about it the wrong 
way. Obviously the church 
has to change with the times and tell people whether watching 
a Mass Livestream counts or whatever, but nuclear 
bombs and telephones don't mean that you have to completely change the way Mass is held.
Honestly I'm most likely to become the stereotypical terminally online
Orthodox 
schizo, twitching 
and muttering to anyone who makes the mistake 
of getting too close 
to the containment zone. They're all screwed up too but it's been hundreds of years since they've held an ecumenical council to formalize their frick ups...
We're all doomed
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Ok well, ironically, the Melkite Byzantine Catholics (Orthodox in practice, Catholic in being in communion with Rome) were one of the most influential voices at the Council advocating for changing the Mass to the vernacular etc which is what the book I linked is about. It's worth checking out. As far as the implementation of V2 yeah it was initially quite messy and we're still working out the kinks.
Orthodoxy is tied to nationalism in a way that I understand appeals to Americans but it has completely neutered any authenticity of their communion. They're dogs to the Russian Orthodox Church out of necessity and have been for a very long time.
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THIS IS THE MAIN THING THAT'S KEPT ME FROM JOINING THEM
This is a major
problem 
too. What I idealize most about religion 
is how it stands (should stand) separate from the material world, especially politics 
and all the bullshit 
surrounding it but I'm worried 
that the fricking 
commies did irreparable damage to the Orthodox 
Church 
in Russia. They also keep involving themselves in politics 
and excommunicating each other over Ukraine 
and various other varieties of bullshit 
I also like that married
men can become Eastern 
Orthodox 
priests, I feel like it's probably a major 
help with the p-do issue and with recruiting priests. I don't get why Catholics haven't gone back to allowing it yet. If there's anything 
V2 should 
have included, it's that. 
Fricking marsify
@H i hope you step on a heckin Lego 
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Vocations within Orthodoxy and Protestantism have fallen off a cliff as well, so it wouldn't fix the problem by itself. You can look at the stats within Protestant congregations like the Southern Baptists and what you find is
at roughly equal rates but with more girls targeted rather than teenage boys. The issue has gotten drastically less severe in the last few decades, in any case.
Clerical celibacy was first championed by St. Jerome and to a lesser extent St. Augustine who have been massively influential in the Western Tradition and became fully enforced later on to try to prevent the Church becoming a hereditary fiefdom and enabling the property to pass down within the Church (mixed success as the Borgias etc show). It also helps to show that we're not simply homophobic to have a consistent set of sexual ethics, and I think part of the reason Catholics get attacked so much more than Evangelicals/Orthodox/woke Prots is that we try to prove it's possible to live that out.
I think the largest barriers at present, coming from someone fairly neutral on the matter, are that A) it wouldn't fix the problem as I said even if it would help a bit and B) getting a bunch of Cardinals and Bishops who sacrificed the opportunity to have a family and s*x to follow the example of Jesus are probably not gonna vote to change it
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I know why they did it, and it made a lot more sense in the past, but imo it's time to move on. No one is going
to be making hereditary fiefdoms nowadays and if there's still some remote 
possibility just require that the churches are actually 
owned 
by the Vatican or something.
at least when it comes to the orthodox, I think
this is just more of a fargroup thing than an actual difference 
in attitude. Most people have barely even heard 
of the orthodox, so gay rights 
activists aren't going 
to be freaking out about them. I'm sure the story 
is different 
in Greece/Serbia/etc. Woke prot churches are flying 
rainbow 
flags 
so there's no reason to oppose 
them, and the ones that do stick 
to their guns get shit on all the time, like the LCMS
IIRC the orthodox
do require celibacy if you want to be anything 
above a priest, so if the catholics went that route I don't see the cardinals and bishops being too salty about it.
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Actually yeah you're right, Catholics take the brunt because it's a historically Protestant country so everyone's parents hated Catholics already before gay rights was a thing and it just passed down. Probably also because the Orthodox lack a cohesive hierarchy to present a political threat while the USCCB openly advocates for people to vote in defense of marriage etc.
I think picking monks to be bishops is a small t-tradition rather than a matter of ecclesiastical law but I'm not curious enough to double check, another good point on your part regardless.
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I don't care, sorry boo
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Didnt read
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