561–570 of 875 posts
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I'll admit that I am curious about if we'll ever see a conservative African pope.
I see a lot of people in my news circle hoping for Robert Sarah, who seems to be exactly that.
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> He riled many of his flock and hierarchy when he said that "even atheists can be redeemed". It's quite a bit above our pay grade to proclaim categorically who supposedly cannot be redeemed; it verges on blasphemy. Cf. Job. 38: 1. Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? 3 "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall a…
As an agnostic who spends a lot of time reading scriptures of several religions, trying to grasp the themes and motivations of others I share a world with -- those passages are particularly inscrutable.
I'm curious how devout Catholics will perceive it when the leader of their Church dies on their holiest day, which commemorates the resurrection of Christ. Will they going to see it as a symbol, a sign, or perhaps some kind of deeper message?
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Jesus famously said turn the other cheek
You can’t turn your other cheek when you’re dead, so I am pretty sure he didn’t mean it as allow yourself to get killed. Besides, Ukraine did turn other cheek after 2014 war, they just run out of cheeks to turn. Back to main subject, I believe nothing weakened Pope Francis’s policies as much as his widely misunderstood position on this subject.
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That’s how I’ve read it firstly. Hard to imagine worse hell than this to me. And then I realized the real meaning of the quote. Made me cry a little.
Same here, probably says a lot about us. Made me happy to finally understand what he actually mean.
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Pretty disappointing from someone who spent his career modelling language and the cognition behind it.
It is probably exactly because he spent a career considering the cognition behind language that he is not as impressed by LLMs as many others are. I'll readily admit to being expert in neither language and linguistics nor AI, but I am skeptical that anything going on inside an LLM is properly described as "cognition."
Does anyone have any theories why his predecessor, Benedict, so shockingly resigned? (And then, according to this article, continued to live there, which was news to me). The conventional wisdom is that Benedict was a hardline, conservative nut who had to resign for unknown reasons and was replaced by this well-loved, progressive guy. As seen in this thread, lots of people liked him and his philosophy, and his progre…
Conventional wisdom is he attempted to resign 3 times, had a stroke, and had a pacemaker all before he spent a further 8 years of his career elected as pope and then actually resigned. This all extends decades prior to his final resignation, giving the same health and desire for retirement reasons as prior attempts. As for whether there was something more than the conventional wisdom to the story... I'm not really su…
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He was, but John Paul II was traditionally conservative. I think Francis resonated with more people–Christian or not–because he emphasized compassion, humility, and social justice. He spoke more openly about issues like poverty, climate change, and inclusion–his encyclical LAUDATO SI’ is a great read–, and he often used language and gestures that the "common man" could relate to. Perhaps the way he dressed so simply–…
He also spoke incredibly directly about abortion - "hiring a hitman" cuts right to the heart of the issue.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean here? You seem to be alluding to a stance that Francis had towards Russia that I am not familiar with.
He said Ukraine should surrender. To Russia which wants to exterminate Ukraine as a nation, culture and language. Feel free to google for more details. There were multiple occurrences when he doubled-down on his words after backlash.
Which would be bad, had he done so, but he didn't actually say that; the white flag comment was specifically and explicitly about being willing to directly negotiate with Russia, not about surrender.
> There were multiple occurrences when he doubled-down on his words after backlash.
He certainly called on multiple occasions for all parties to negotiate, but he was also consistent, both before Russia invaded, after the invasion and before the "white flag" comment, immediately after the "white flag" comment, and since that the invasion by Russia is (or "would be" before it occurred) unjustifiable, immoral, an act of aggression, and that Russia has the primary obligation to stop it.
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You are correct that most people do not use the term any more. But the Pope isn't like most people. It's an informal requirement that the Pope be able to speak Latin and Italian is commonly used in the Vatican (being surrounded by Italy probably has something to do with that). Even though Francis was not as fluent as his predecessors in Latin and Italian, he certainly understood it better than most and his speechwrit…
As the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina, Francis was quite fluent in Italian. He’s old enough that his formation would have included significant Latin instruction as well. I would guess that Benedict’s Latin skills were superior, but Francis was reasonably conversant in the language from what I understand. The thing that I found interesting was during trump’s visit to the Vatican, he asked trump’s Slovenian w…