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Pope Francis has died

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#751

Post by mvieira38 »

tptacek wrote: post #619
swat535 wrote: post #299

Pope Francis caused quite a bit of controversy among Catholics. From his crackdown on the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) to his often unscripted, pastoral tone on issues like sexuality, economics, and interfaith dialogue, he unsettled many and yet drew others closer to the Church. With his passing, we’re left to process a papacy that disrupted in the deepest sense of the word. As a Catholic, I often found myself both i…

People who aren't familiar with mainstream Catholicism might not understand that TLM is a pretty powerful cultural signifier; it's something close to a separatist movement within the church (in fact, it's the launch pad for an actual separatist movement, SSPX) and it's quite conservative. When you hear the pejorative "tradcath", these are the people they're talking about. Naturally, the tiny but vocal minority of peo…

SSPX is in no way separatist, that is severely misinformed. If anything it is reformist, as they recognize the pope as their legitimate ruler and the local bishops as the legitimate local authorities. The claim is not that Rome has failed, it is that papal authority does not extend to the banishment of the Latin Mass, a position many regular clergy agree with.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#752

Post by mvieira38 »

throwawaybob420 wrote: post #379
Loughla wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Catholics I know were absolutely shaken by this Pope, and were absolutely not supporters of the man. They thought he was too liberal and too modern.

That sucks, because if you’re catholic and you _dont_ support the pope…you’re not really a catholic

Catholics are not obliged to follow the pope in matters not related to faith and morals, and even then not when he speaks as a private person instead of in the voice of the Church (the same sex marriage interview as a prime example where he directly states it is his own private opinion). Though every catholic IS obliged to pray for the pope and defend his legitimacy and claim to power, which I suppose could constitute a degree of obligatory support

Re: Pope Francis has died

#753

Post by mvieira38 »

daedrdev wrote: post #481
lazzurs wrote: post #240

A man has died, that is sad. Under his watch he did not move the church to fully acknowledge or deal with the historical and widespread abuses the organization he led was involved with. He had opportunity to be the leader to bring the organization around and he did not. Let's all hope his replacement will.

He is restricted by the system around him, with the internal Vatican politics and overall views of members of the Catholic Church being very relevant here. His replacement may be more conservative as a reaction to the decline of Church membership, or may not be, but I don't think he can be faulted personally for not attempting to set the wrongs of the church right, he clearly wanted to do so.

No he isn't. The pope is the absolute king of any matter Vatican related and can charge his priests however he wants

Re: Pope Francis has died

#754

Post by senderista »

dhosek wrote: post #743
ithkuil wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just to be clear, mine was not a jab against the georgaphy or culture knowledge of the average Italian. They are likely to know more details about German, French or Spanish geographical or culinary features than something from the balkans despite sharing a border.

Indeed. I grew up in a cultural milieu that was overwhelmingly Slavic (Chicago suburbs, mostly Czech and Polish but smaller numbers of Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs) and even within that, the lack of understanding of distinctions was surprising (so many people thought Slovak and Slovene were the same thing, which isn’t helped by the fact that the countries have very similar flags since independence and near-ide…

I don't know how large the Lithuanian community in Chicago is, but when I lived on the South Side in the late 90s there was an amazing Lithuanian restaurant called just "Healthy Food", a weird amalgam of traditional Lithuanian cuisine and hippie wheat germ and molasses-based fare. They also sold amber jewelry, as well as their own swag like "I ♥ Kugelis" T-shirts. Anyone remember that place?

Re: Pope Francis has died

#755

Post by tptacek »

mvieira38 wrote: post #748
tptacek wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding obscurantism, I don't know how one gets around that observation. It's striking to me that even many TLM celebrants aren't fluent in the language. You know why you're going and you seem to have a good reason for it, and I respect that. I think the rap on the TLM is that, in addition to reasonable people like yourself, it also attracts a lot of whackjobs, some of whom have unfortunately included priests. I'd…

Bishop Williamson, the source of that statement, was kicked from the SSPX partly due to raging and irrational antisemitism and misogyny. If that's enough for you to never set foot in a chapel, you shouldn't be Catholic at all, just take a look at what many popes and saints have said and done about jewish people, it's far worse

I don't think SSPX matters, really, but I'd encourage anyone curious about this particular controversy to simply Google [SSPX antisemitism]. There's a whole Wikipedia article about it (going back to the founder of the order), but lots more than that. Suffice it to say, we're just not going to agree about this.

TLM, don't TLM, but conservative Catholics had a beef with Francis about the Latin Mass, and this is important context to that beef.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#756

Post by aeturnum »

fastball wrote: post #702
aeturnum wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read these? I think they actually go against what you argue. One of the passages about "hell" is John 3:16, which could not be less about hell if it tried (IMO). Also the passages that actually mention hell/hades are extremely sparse on details: it's separate from god, there will be fire and it will be unpleasant. Considering the length of the bible, I think this list shows that the bible has "very little" to…

Yes, the Bible is long, but it talks about many topics. The only thing that is mentioned a lot is Yahweh and Jesus. Beyond that you're not really gonna get a lot of consistency on topics. This is a random Bible search website to show some verses about hell. I was not implying that all of these verses are definitive treatments of hell or anything similar. However you will notice that what is said in these verses is ge…

I guess if you wanted to argue that the fact that it doesn't say much should not be mistaken for being able to pick and choose your understanding, you should have said that before. Instead you contradicted "The Bible has very little to say about hell in general." - and linked that list of passages. I would say that ~10 passages there clearly describe "hell" and that, because the bible is a long book, that absolutely qualifies as it having "little to say" about hell.

> Beyond that you're not really gonna get a lot of consistency on topics.

This just seems like moving the goalposts to me. There's not a lot of consistency in talking about the "kingdom of heaven / god" but there are a LOT of passages that describe it. Many more than describe hell in any form. That doesn't mean that hell couldn't be a real thing but it's not a thing that's very present in the canonical text. Christian thought goes far beyond the contents of the traditional bible, but if you want to argue for a "paradise lost" hell or somesuch, you need to cast your lot with thinkers beyond the old and new testament authors.

That said, I don't think any of my sibling comments have responded with sources that ignore the biblical text. I think Ehrman is a bit liberal to stand in for all of christendom, but he's a respected scholar and I think his analysis is not in the category of "ignoring the text and inserting his own beliefs."

Re: Pope Francis has died

#757

Post by tptacek »

senderista wrote: post #754
dhosek wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I grew up in a cultural milieu that was overwhelmingly Slavic (Chicago suburbs, mostly Czech and Polish but smaller numbers of Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs) and even within that, the lack of understanding of distinctions was surprising (so many people thought Slovak and Slovene were the same thing, which isn’t helped by the fact that the countries have very similar flags since independence and near-ide…

I don't know how large the Lithuanian community in Chicago is, but when I lived on the South Side in the late 90s there was an amazing Lithuanian restaurant called just "Healthy Food", a weird amalgam of traditional Lithuanian cuisine and hippie wheat germ and molasses-based fare. They also sold amber jewelry, as well as their own swag like "I ♥ Kugelis" T-shirts. Anyone remember that place?

It's the largest population of Lithuanians outside of Lithuania, for what it's worth.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#758

Post by wat10000 »

rglullis wrote: post #735
larkost wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "direct" is carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence. The Catholic Church (as well as the Protestant and others) are very responsible for, or at least implicated in, many horrible things in the last few hundred years alone: - signed off on the slave trade for hundreds of years (even gave excuses about how that was God's will) - during World War II they promised to hide many Jewish children, only to s…

> So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players. So are all the other countless media companies, tech corporations, Hollywood, labor unions, pharma companies, academia... From this list, which one do you think is more intertwined with Government affairs? The Catholic Church or Amazon? The Mormons or Blueshield? Seventh Day Adventists or Disney? The Baptists or General Motors? The Anglicans or FOX N…

Catholics and SDAs don't have a whole lot of political influence here, but evangelicals are basically running the place now.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#759

Post by wat10000 »

skissane wrote: post #723
wat10000 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s reprehensible, but also refreshingly open-minded. It shows an awareness that other religions deserve an equal footing to his own. I prefer this over the nuts who decry Sharia law while wanting to implement a Christian equivalent.

> I prefer this over the nuts who decry Sharia law while wanting to implement a Christian equivalent. The idea of a "Christian equivalent" to Sharia law is actually very fringe. The near unanimous teaching of Christianity, from the Church Fathers through to the mainstream Reformers, is that the criminal laws in the Jewish Torah were only ever intended for Jews, and Christians are not bound by the letter of them – the…

This distinction might sound very important for people within one of those religions, but it sounds pretty trivial from the outside. Changing secular law to reflect religious law versus directly applying religious law, who cares? The result is the same.

And for excessive focus, maybe you haven't noticed, but that fringe position is wielding a tremendous power in the country where I live at the moment.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#760

Post by wat10000 »

j_timberlake wrote: post #667
wat10000 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? He said it. The words are his responsibility. If his speech had advocated for grinding orphans into a nutritious paste, we wouldn’t be defending him on the basis that he didn’t write those words. He chose to read them and give them his official backing.

This is a perfect example of a motte and bailey. The "motte" is that people should be judged badly for parroting horrible ideas they heard (which makes sense) and the "bailey" is that people should be praised just for parroting nice things they heard (which doesn't make sense).

Doesn't "motte and bailey" involve the same person taking the more extreme position followed by the more defensible position?
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