#frankly if you think the church is just “being judgemental” you're wrong

[reacquaintedwith-air]

this though. I don't tend to write or take Scully's "catholicism" very seriously because the show extremely does not take it seriously except for the like 3 episodes that dial it way up in the most incoherent way -- revelations, all souls and orison. Which were not written by any overlapping writing teams, btw, with revelations being cowritten by someone who only cowrote quagmire and orison being written by someone who only wrote that episode and someone who only worked on s6, s7 & s8. As someone raised atheist and non-christian, whose only points of contact with christianty growing up were the unavoidable side effects of pop culture and history (mainly having a christmas tree/presents in december and watching secularized, santa clause focused christmas movies, learning about the actions of missionaries, colonists, the inquisition, etc) these episodes were incomprehensible to me even beyond the average MOTW. And when i started looking into the imagery of Scully's catholic background on purpose, they seemed even more incoherent.

if anything, on the whole, Scully is 95% of the time written as a kind of spiritual agnostic instead of a catholic. she seems to have found a very oblique sense of divinity that seems to have a lot to do with process and suffering and justice and searching for signs, and even seems to latch onto mulder as a kind of instrument through which those signs come to her. As far as i can tell, the only overlap with actual christian/church thinking in that is the more suffering = closer to god or goodness, which is, imo, the least healthy part of spiritualism to embrace, and isn't something that Mulder in particular is likely to want to encourage in her, and not something I like to see her embrace either. So in fic land, i tend to romanticize them enough, and soften Scully enough to be able to see them making a compromise in shared beliefs over any potential children. Potentially a compromise that would raise some eyebrows, given the justified paranoia and belief in paranormal involved but still some ground way off to the side.

But yes in fact, in canon the way they're written in the text, it's very hard to see how they could find a compromise that wouldn't be a constant sore spot from one side or the other.

also yes, being theistic and working in science aren't necessarily at odds, but that doesn't mean that atheists, jewish people, and other cultural and spiritual minorities need to give christians, especially catholics the benefit of the doubt, given their relative cultural positions. Thinking someone is a hypocrite for saying 'my spiritual beliefs and mythology is good and right, but yours is wrong/deluded/offensive' isn't confused about that person's belief system and doesn't simply need to learn more. Getting them to be more 'patient'/'nicer'/hearing them out isn't going to make them agree with christian theology or make them stop thinking that they're a hypocrite and wildly privileged for telling them that "your 'superstition' or non-belief is stupid/insane/petty, meanwhile cultural majority faith is important and rational." constantly asserting that it's an equal exchange, but that the non-christian just needs to be 'less judgemental' and 'relax' and learn the error of their ways is frankly offensive. The way to get someone to stop believing you're a hypocrite is to be less judgemental of that person's beliefs instead of dismissing them out of hand and demanding they agree with your beliefs first.

(also no, atheism isn't "just another religion no matter what you tell yourself." there is atheism that can exist within some cultural religions, and then there is areligious atheism which doesn't exist within any framework. i've been seeing this conversation come up lately and seen people be incredibly dismissive of and hostile to dis-affiliation from religion as a choice while also trying to claim that people who put in the effort to dis-affiliate from religion aren't ever marginalized or excluded, it's crazy-making.)

I'm sorry but I'm still annoyed about this. The idea that Mulder should submit, conform, or acquiesce to Christian hegemony by "listening to Scully" despite everything canonically in him that resists that is as repulsive to me as the idea that Scully should submit, conform or acquiesce in terms of traditional gender roles in a sexual relationship with Mulder despite all the ways in which that contradicts her character. Let them be weird and atypical and together despite the ways they rub each other the wrong way. Let him be an angry atheist (he has plenty of reasons to be). Non-Christians don't owe Christians a damn thing.