Thank you for the reminder of how the church indoctrination works. While I sort of knew all that at the back of my mind, I thought it would be obvious by now that the church heirarchy has been extremely compromised / corrupt, and any self-aware person would choose not to follow unethical/wrong orders again. I've actually spent days mulling over this after your comment, with the huge mess of internal contradictions that my friend seems to represent...
He likes to remind that only priests have the power to do certain stuff - aka as you said they HAVE to be in church to receive the Eucharist. So I said, if they had continued to mandate the covid shots in order for you to enter a church, are you going to obey? How long are you going to hold out since it's a 'sin'?
He has also bombarded me with worries that the police and other enforcers may come to get people to be vexed up... sending me links with the stories about SG signing up to new WHO treaties and what not. I keep telling him, I have zero worries or concern - since they'll literally have to put a gun to my head to force me to do it, and even then I'll probably still be resisting. The decision not to comply with coercion and stupidity has been made, it's that simple and clearcut to me at least. He then tells me that his daughter has to do a course of study where they require her to take fresh chickenpox jabs. I told him, it's another example of you choosing whether you want to comply, or actively find workarounds if you don't want to. It's pretty obvious that once people are even half-inclined to follow diktats, they won't look too hard for alternatives. I gave him example of how the various restrictions imposed on the unvexed during the height of controls here meant we would be blocked from many services. Heck, I could tell that at some point they would even restrict our access to the public libraries (it happened at the tailend), but we set up online accounts so that the family could borrow ebooks and keep on reading etc. No checking of vex status there! There were often ways to zig zag around the various restrictions, and you don't post it online, just spread it quietly through small trusted circles...
Since he actually acknowledges that the pope has been extremely compromised morally, that popes are not infallible... then logically the church doctrine that the same pope has been formulating may not really be meant to meet people's spiritual needs. Instead of taking the time to study the actual church history, understand why the reformation happened (Martin Luthor / indulgences etc), he has fallen back on old habits in a sense. Just like the normies he mocks for quickly embracing the old normal as soon as restrictions are lifted. It's so obvious, yet he can't see the parallels.
Re: St. Malachy’s Prophecy
He likes to remind that only priests have the power to do certain stuff - aka as you said they HAVE to be in church to receive the Eucharist. So I said, if they had continued to mandate the covid shots in order for you to enter a church, are you going to obey? How long are you going to hold out since it's a 'sin'?
He has also bombarded me with worries that the police and other enforcers may come to get people to be vexed up... sending me links with the stories about SG signing up to new WHO treaties and what not. I keep telling him, I have zero worries or concern - since they'll literally have to put a gun to my head to force me to do it, and even then I'll probably still be resisting. The decision not to comply with coercion and stupidity has been made, it's that simple and clearcut to me at least. He then tells me that his daughter has to do a course of study where they require her to take fresh chickenpox jabs. I told him, it's another example of you choosing whether you want to comply, or actively find workarounds if you don't want to. It's pretty obvious that once people are even half-inclined to follow diktats, they won't look too hard for alternatives. I gave him example of how the various restrictions imposed on the unvexed during the height of controls here meant we would be blocked from many services. Heck, I could tell that at some point they would even restrict our access to the public libraries (it happened at the tailend), but we set up online accounts so that the family could borrow ebooks and keep on reading etc. No checking of vex status there! There were often ways to zig zag around the various restrictions, and you don't post it online, just spread it quietly through small trusted circles...
Since he actually acknowledges that the pope has been extremely compromised morally, that popes are not infallible... then logically the church doctrine that the same pope has been formulating may not really be meant to meet people's spiritual needs. Instead of taking the time to study the actual church history, understand why the reformation happened (Martin Luthor / indulgences etc), he has fallen back on old habits in a sense. Just like the normies he mocks for quickly embracing the old normal as soon as restrictions are lifted. It's so obvious, yet he can't see the parallels.