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Pope Francis has died

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clear direction for church growth.

You hear this a lot from TLM proponents. First, it's a category error to suggest that church doctrine has a goal of maximizing the number of people to that turn out to mass. But second, no, it really isn't. The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim.

> The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim.

Lots of religions have liturgical languages which are nobody's mother tongue any more. Orthodox Judaism has Hebrew (Reform/Conservative/etc too, albeit with variably greater use of vernacular): many diaspora Jews have limited Hebrew proficiency, and even for those who speak Modern Hebrew, the liturgy is in mediaeval Hebrew, which has significant differences. And some of the prayers (including quite important ones like the Kaddish and the Kol Nidre said on Yom Kippur) are in Aramaic. Most Muslims pray in Arabic despite the fact that less than 20% speak it natively, and even for those who do, modern vernacular Arabic has diverged a lot from the classical Arabic of the Quran and the prayers. The Russian Orthodox Church prays, not in Russian, but in Church Slavonic, which is a (somewhat Russified) descendant of mediaeval Bulgarian, which comes from a different branch of the Slavic language family. The Greek Orthodox liturgy is in mediaeval Greek, not modern Greek – many Middle Eastern Greek Orthodox have Arabic as their mother tongue, and many ethnic Greeks in Anglophone countries have quite limited Greek proficiency, yet still attend services in the language. The Coptic Church still uses Coptic, a descendant of ancient Egyptian, for its liturgy. The Ethiopian Church uses Ge'ez. The Syriac Churches use Syriac/Aramaic. (And what I just said of those Eastern churches is also true of many Eastern Catholics.) Many Theravada Buddhists pray in Pali. Many Mongolian Buddhists pray in Tibetan (there are many Anglophone Buddhists who pray in Tibetan too). Many Hindus pray in Sanskrit.

Having a special language set aside for prayer, a holy tongue (Lashon Hakodesh, as many Jews call Hebrew) is something a lot of people find spiritually beneficial, across numerous unrelated religious traditions. It can give people a sense of an encounter with the deep past of their own tradition. It can make a religious community feel more unified despite being divided between different mother tongues. And most Catholics, pre-1970, thought the same thing.

It wasn't like people couldn't understand it – they followed English-Latin parallel prayer books, just like people follow English-Hebrew parallel books in many synagogues today. Globally, very many Catholics have a Romance language as their mother tongue, which is historically descended from Latin, which helps with understanding some of the words. Even though English isn't, the heavy infusion of Latin (both directly and via French) into English helps achieve some of the same thing.

I think if I'd grown up Catholic with Latin instead of the vernacular, my understanding of Latin would be a lot better. I feel like I missed out on something there.

So one definitely doesn't have to be a regular Latin Mass goer – I've never been to one in my life, I've thought about doing it but its always just been too out of my way – to wonder if the Church has lost something by throwing away so much of its linguistic heritage. Personally, I'd be quite happy with a kind of compromise in which Latin was much more heavily used but the majority of Masses were still vernacular. Which I actually think is what Vatican II intended, I think the Council's original vision was closer to majority vernacular / minority Latin, than the almost-all-vernacular / almost-no-Latin which actually evolved afterwards.

And this is a separate issue from the Tridentine liturgy – you can say the Mass of Paul VI in Latin and you can say the Tridentine Mass in English (Roman Catholics never have, but some Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and schismatic Catholic churches do it)

Re: Pope Francis has died

#812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The result is very different. If Sharia were fully implemented in your country, you’d go to the local courthouse and the judge would be a religious scholar applying…

The laws I’m complaining about don’t do anything remotely similar yet . They would if the fundamentalists had their way. Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn about religion, but who do you think put him in office? Who does he pander to?

> The laws I’m complaining about don’t do anything remotely similar yet. They would if the fundamentalists had their way.

I don't know who you are calling "fundamentalists" – I personally think the term should be restricted to the historical fundamentalist movement in American Protestantism, and those Protestants who view themselves as heirs of that movement today – but I think the vast majority of people you are labelling that aren't theonomists, and have zero interest in emulating Islamic Sharia by replacing secular courts with tribunals of Christian clergy, or modifying evidence laws to make the word of a Christian worth more than that of a non-Christian. Nobody is asking for anything remotely resembling that, except for a very tiny movement on the fringes of Reformed Protestantism – which the vast majority of Reformed (even conservative Reformed) reject, and I've never heard of a Catholic or Anglican or Methodist or Lutheran or Eastern Orthodox or whatever supporting it.

From a Catholic perspective, replacing secular law with "Christian Sharia" is clearly a heresy – never officially condemned because no Catholic of significance has ever proposed it – but if it ever did become a serious issue I'm sure the Church would waste no time in doing so, since it is just so blatantly contrary to the Catholic tradition. And the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the vast majority of Protestant churches (even otherwise very conservative ones), would say more or less the same thing – the details of their reasons would likely differ, but the conclusion wouldn't.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#813
post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... who doesn't believe in God in their head [..] but nonetheless believes in God in their heart ... I'm racking my brain right now dissecting what that even means. Believing there is no one but wishing it wasn't so?

if you're good but in your mind reject God, I guess they're saying that it's good enough

Pretty much, although it also depends on your mind's reasons.

If you start from the assumption that Christianity is true, and some people know this, and others don't – you have to ask why the people who don't know it, don't know it. And this is where Catholic theology distinguishes between "vincible" and "invincible" ignorance - "vincible" means the ignorance is your own fault, "invincible" means your ignorance is through no fault of your own.

How to distinguish the two? Ultimately, it is up to God to decide – nobody else knows for sure what's going on in your head. At best, theologians would give some examples of hypothetical situations which could be said to be one or the other – but the real world is often much messier than any such hypothetical can capture.

Which is part of why, the traditional Catholic teaching, is that (with rare exceptions) you can't actually know where people are going to end up. The idea is that if you make it to heaven, you might be surprised to find a lot of people there you weren't expecting, and also maybe some people you were sure would be there aren't.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Did the Americans feed the Japanese? I'm sure you don't seriously intend to bring up American treatment of the Japanese in its territory as a positive example. As you are not American, I forgive you your apparent lack of knowledge of the concentration camps, or the theft of property that was never returned to innocent Japanese Americans.

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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That's not really been the standard the world holds itself to since World War II. Yes, aggressors in a just war are expected to care for the civilian population in conquered territory. Starvation as a war weapon against civilians is a war crime. https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/BSG-WP-... In fact, the only place it's currently legal (though generally frowned upon) is in the context of a civil war,…

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Timeline-wise, the Palestinians were there long before the Israelis in modern Israel. I don't think forcing them out is a reasonable starting point. At best, that becomes a perpetual shame like the US treatment of native Americans. Personally, I look to Ireland and England as a potential model. People have been conflating Hamas and Gaza in this thread... At the height of the Troubles, more Irish supported the IRA tha…

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timeline-wise, the Palestinians were there long before the Israelis in modern Israel. I don't think forcing them out is a reasonable starting point. At best, that becomes a perpetual shame like the US treatment of native Americans. Personally, I look to Ireland and England as a potential model. People have been conflating Hamas and Gaza in this thread... At the height of the Troubles, more Irish supported the IRA tha…

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The non consentual sterilization of tens of thousands of Native American women by Americans was completely justified and justifiable?

The destruction of language and culture via Indian schools was completely justified and justifiable?

That's an opinion I and many others disagree with.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear this a lot from TLM proponents. First, it's a category error to suggest that church doctrine has a goal of maximizing the number of people to that turn out to mass. But second, no, it really isn't. The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim.

> The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim. Lots of religions have liturgical languages which are nobody's mother tongue any more. Orthodox Judaism has Hebrew (Reform/Conservative/etc too, albeit with variably greater use of vernacular): many diaspora Jews have limited Hebrew…

You mistake me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with saying the mass in Latin. I'd kind of like to go see one! Put my 4 years of Jesuit Latin to use! But no, I don't think that's going to be a big draw for ordinary people to join the church.

My Greek Orthodox friends growing up definitely spoke Greek!

Re: Pope Francis has died

#819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really been the standard the world holds itself to since World War II. Yes, aggressors in a just war are expected to care for the civilian population in conquered territory. Starvation as a war weapon against civilians is a war crime. https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/BSG-WP-... In fact, the only place it's currently legal (though generally frowned upon) is in the context of a civil war,…

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[deleted]

Re: Pope Francis has died

#820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that a great way to get lots of ordinary people to become practicing Catholics is to literally conduct services in a dead language nobody understands is an extraordinary claim. Lots of religions have liturgical languages which are nobody's mother tongue any more. Orthodox Judaism has Hebrew (Reform/Conservative/etc too, albeit with variably greater use of vernacular): many diaspora Jews have limited Hebrew…

You mistake me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with saying the mass in Latin. I'd kind of like to go see one! Put my 4 years of Jesuit Latin to use! But no, I don't think that's going to be a big draw for ordinary people to join the church. My Greek Orthodox friends growing up definitely spoke Greek!

It would definitely attract some people. An old friend of mine (from our Catholic high school), who almost never goes to Mass, told me he’d be willing to venture back if it were in Latin, just for the experience. We started looking into it, we were going to go together, but lost interest in the idea when we realised there weren’t any convenient to attend. I don’t know how common that attitude is, but I’m sure he’s not the only person like that.

And the fact is, if Latin doesn’t attract many ordinary people, will anything else? Catholicism (and Christianity more broadly) is full of grand evangelistic plans to “get people back to church”, the vast majority of which produce very little results. If anything, niche offerings such as Latin masses or Anglican Use or Eastern Catholicism at least have a bit of a ”it’s different” factor to draw people in with.

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