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The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

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Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#41
post #13
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt many are Catholic. J.D. Vance would be an option, tho.

I'm confused as to why you think one of the most popular religions on Earth would not be a decent chunk of the American military.

If you take this argument that general, then I would say Islam is also one of the most popular religions on earth but well, very lowly reprecented in the US army (below 0.4 percent)

https://soldiersangels.org/the-diversity-of-our-service-memb...

History is why catholics are at 20%. Which is a significant force and a dangerous game to alienate them.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#42

Lot of Catholics are MAGA aren't they? The few I talked to recently were really anti-woke, like 'woke' is ruining the world. Very Maga. How does this land with them?

Not a Catholic, but a Christian, and I think Christians in general are in a very difficult position in the US, which has not historically been the case. Today any party-line vote is a vote against one Christian core belief or another.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#43

Time in minutes after which christian nationalists will form a circular firing squad once they've cemented their grip on the US government: 2 The past which the 'make america great again' people want to take us back to absolutely loathed Catholics, something I don't think modern Catholics realize. The colony of Maryland was originally intended to be a safe place for Catholics, and the first chance the Puritans got, t…

Yes, the stupidity and shortsightedness of American Catholic integralists like Vermuele is stunning to me. If America does ever become a Christian theocracy, it's going to be a Protestant theocracy. It wouldn't be an altar-and-throne continental monarchy, it would be more like Cromwell's England, where "Papists" were considered enemies of the state. Do these guys not remember that Jack Chick wrote just as many comics villainizing Catholics as he did atheists? That's how evangelicals actually think, once any temporary alliances of convenience have accomplished their goals.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#44

Idk which is more impressive that someone referenced the Avignon Papacy in a heat of the moment argument or that the same person who could reference that thought it was a good idea. (Not Catholic...but like...why?)

It is literally this tweet from a few years ago: > Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses."

You get three kinds of adult converts. The first kind of convert wants to marry somebody Catholic. They're joining because they love somebody. The second kind of convert was approached by missionaries that built their community a school or a well or something, and they're grateful that somebody clearly cares about them and their community.

The third type of convert, though, joins because they like the structure. They like the gravitas. They like the moral absolutes. They like the patriarchal hierarchy that doesn't let women lead. They sign up and immediately declare that Vatican 2 was a terrible mistake and that all of the popes since then have been illegitimate. JD Vance didn't join because he loved their soup kitchens.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#46
post #19

> America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. Yeah, well. That aged like raw milk.

Republicans have talked like this for a long time, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#47

Idk which is more impressive that someone referenced the Avignon Papacy in a heat of the moment argument or that the same person who could reference that thought it was a good idea. (Not Catholic...but like...why?)

It is literally this tweet from a few years ago: > Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses."

This is exactly my observation. Every now and then there's an Anglo posting on Polish social media asking people questions about some obscure Catholic doctrines and getting offended after they're told that no one there cares. I guess that such people see the number "98% Catholic" on the page for Poland on Wikipedia and conclude that it must be some medieval tradcath white nationalist theocracy.

I am deeply skeptical of all converts to Catholicism and I speculate that the alt-right spaces online painted a picture of conversion as going back to the foundation of the Western civilization, or at least its idealized white nationalist picture.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#48
What is tiresome is how sincerely these people insist on being able to make everyone act according to their will, while simultaneously displaying weakness, incompetence, and extreme pettiness. Trying to threaten people into respecting them. The lack of class is just so unsightly.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#49

I have recently deepened my search in Christianity which started with the Catholic Church, one of few points I struggle with when it comes to Catholicism is the papacy, and the Avignon Papacy debacle and the events that followed (a la Western Schism) has quite a bit to do with that. I was a little confused by what they meant here by “threatening with the Avignon Papacy.” If anyone else is curious, I think the phrase…

It's not 100% clear by this article what was said, and I don't have access to the source article either. But I think the parts, even if they don't mention verbatim what happened, makes it a pretty clear threat:

> America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.

> As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

I'm also not 100% sure what they mean with "invoked the Avignon Papacy", a bit like saying "Invoked the Second World War", it was an event/time period as far as I know, not something you "invoke" exactly. But even mentioning it makes it pretty clear what they're hinting at to be honest.

Re: The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

#50
There is a lot to source from Christian ideals, many of which are the foundations of Western culture: human dignity, moral equality, conscience, limits on power and care for those less fortunate and weaker. Much of what is happening in the world today feels like a stark reversal of those ideals: selfishness and divisiveness manufactured to promote a narrow segment of society.

Recent news articles have indicated an increase in church attendance. This makes sense: we have lost our moral compass... Specifically in the USA... And people are searching for a new direction.

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