Pope Francis thread

Politics and religion
21

Yeah, but Putin’s not running a church in the business of teaching moral propriety.

And frankly, I recoil every time I hear an American Catholic open his mouth. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re the minority religion - you get more shrill, but even the British Catholics seem to have this sense of moderation that the Americans lack (but then, they lack it in everything). It’s as though American Catholics have forgotten all about the teachings of the church and just focus on the aspects it’s easier for them to accept because it doesn’t require any sacrifice on their part. So you get them complaining about abortion, same-sex marriage and so on, but never oh never would they sacrifice their personal wealth. More troubling is that it seems to go well up into the church hierarchy.

So I think the best way to kill the Catholic Church would be to give it an American pope. Which is why there will never be one.

22

Poland’s extradiction request was rejected as well. Looks like he was pulled out of the Dominican Republic by the Vatican right before the official investigation was announced.

23

Well, Poland haven’t requested him yet per that article, so it depends if the Vatican cooperate with the investigation, and what they do if Poland do request him.

24

If he set a precedent of extraditing priests accused of committing or abetting child molestation, there would be a lot of priests killed in prison. I’m not sure that would bother me. However, I can understand that might be either difficult or impossible for the Pope.

25

BWA-HAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, but it sounds like you’re saying “All the Catholics used to be Democrats! Why are they all Republicans all of a sudden?”

Except that that’s not the case. Practicing Catholics still run the gamut of political affiliation and, often as not, kinda dwell outside the standard categories. If you want to highlight journalists (or “journalists”) like O’Reilly, there’s also Ross Douthat and John Allen and Andrew Sullivan. There are politicians like Doug Kimec and Bob Casey (Sr. and Jr.)–to say nothing of Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry. Entertainers like Stephen Colbert!

Also worth noting that, oversimplifying a bit, Mel Gibson’s brand of Catholicism (if it even qualifies as part of the fold) has been opposed to all the popes going back to the early 20th century, seeing them as too liberal and accommodating to modernism.

26

It seems that Corvo’s Syndrome is more widespread than one thought…

27

You refer to the US of course. While there is a trend of many left leaning leaving the church due to the right-leaning Vatican of the prior popes (yes, popes), the issue was further exacerbated by US specific players, I speak of the Free-Market Libertarian Catholics. While the Central/Southern Americas has Liberation Theology going on, we had Libertarian Theology happening in the North. Its not at all the same! Well funded for years both inside and outside the Church as well as out: at the top of that iceberg are the now well known Koch brothers. The fund thing like Mises (in Alabama) as a Libertarian think tank to pound out all sorts of Libertarian screeds, including some on Catholicism like this one:

http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=291

Money quote:
“Not only may Catholics licitly reject papal teachings that contravene sound economics: they should also embrace with enthusiasm Austrian theory.”

This refers to thier (and some do self-use this term, including that author) anarcho-capitalist view as “Austrian theory” in quote. Its after paragraphs arguing with a direct quote from a prior Pope that indeed paying a living wage is a morally correct thing to do!

So, anyway. US Catholicism has a very interesting shift from within. The Catholics are filled with people of this view, and most of those that disagree strongly and haven’t left are the older ones. This is a very politicized view. They’ve been arguing with dead Popes for years, I’m sure they’ll have no problems arguing with this one while he lives.

Back to this pope:

Sure it is a huge institution, and as such can only shift gradually with the biggest risk of shifting quickly left would be to have many of the remaining conservative-leaning Catholics walk out in disgust. In many areas of the Americas (usage continents, broadly) the Catholic Church has had significant declines in membership in the past few decades. He does indeed seem to be smart enough to be avoiding causing more of this. He is making excellent use of his unique “bully pulpit” status. However, more intriguing are some very interesting changes to internal procedures and staffing across the whole of the institution. He may not make a huge shift in what he does, but he has certainly greased the wheels for more shifting. I would not underestimate the internal bureaucratic strikes. It may not be changing dogma, but it will influence who does what and how they do it in many functions internally in the future.

These are steps that are canny, pragmatic, clearly intended to outlive him and bear fruit later as well as delightfully subversive administratively. So, the short answer is that he seems to know, and be realistically making all changes that would allow change while not inflicting serious collateral damage from the attempt. Which isn’t much … but stay tuned. I do not speak ill-informed. Three immediate family members have taught catechesis (dogma instruction for new or young Catholics) at three different Catholic churches in the last decade. I married into a large Catholic family and they marry more of them! Many are very active, I hear one nephew plans on priesthood.

Yes, this pope seems to be, in general, really great. That’s possibly the most awful thing about him. Wait what? This article has that intriguing premise.

28

I was pointing out a fringe element. Jennifer Granholm is a Democraft Governor we had who I really liked. So there are maybe as many good Catholic politicians and entertainers. What I was trying to point out is there didn’t seem to be such a wild semi-Nazi, Ayn Randian, fringe element in Catholicism in the late 50’s-60’s unless you count the mob. I’ve heard many arguments on whether JFK’s dad was vicious Nazi sympathizer and tried to hurt the U.S.'s support of England in the war.

29

You can find American Catholics who promote Libertarian economics, sure. But you can find American Catholics–practicing Catholics–who promote and believe in a lot of political views and often have to… bend? their Catholic beliefs, or view them through a certain lens, to support those political beliefs. I’m sure if you measured all the trends for the last fifty years you’d see Catholics moving a little more rightward, but that has much less to do with economics or hating the poor or whatever than it does with the fact that the Democratic party over that time has gotten less and less accommodating to people who are pro-life, or even merely less-then-full-throatedly pro-choice.

30

Sorry… Antonin Scalia is a wild semi-Nazi?

31

Unsurprisingly, such things have been measured.

Also unsurprisingly for such a very large group, their political views tend to mirror the country at large unless you do some ethnic sifting. For instance, the Pew study linked above notes that Catholics have shifted rightwards over the last three presidential election cycles, effectively flip-flopping the percentages that self-identify as Democrat and Republicans (sitting at 41% and 50% in 2012, respectively). But if you read the fine print, that only applies to white Catholics; Hispanic Catholics are 63% Democrat-leaning, and they are a major proportion of the US Catholic population. So the overall Catholic vote in 2012 was 50% Obama/ 48% Romney… which was pretty much the national result.

Furthermore, if you look at the abortion and death-penalty stats further down in the article, the US Catholic population is not much different from the US population as a whole - 51% say it should be legal in all cases, which is the view of 54% of the general population (2012 numbers).

tl;dr: The for most US Catholics, ethnicity has a greater bearing on their political leanings than religion.

32

He’s an activist judge who uses far right ideology to decide his verdicts as opposed to impartial law. His bias is well known and should not be tolerated on the Supreme Court. His resounding support of Citizens United just makes him even more evil to me.

33

Nothing too controversial about this, but I thought it was chuckle-worthy, and if you believe in omens I guess it’s pretty grim:

The Pope and a couple kids release “peace doves”, which are immediately set upon by other birds. A crow and a seagull, to be precise.

The Pope was speaking about the unrest in the Ukraine, so I have to assume that the crow was a symbol of Putin and his KGB-related organization. And the seagull… um… I’m going to go with the dispute in the South China Sea, because otherwise I’d have to research some crap about water being related to death and prophesy in several belief systems, and I just don’t have the patience for that today.

34

“Hey, I’m just a pontiff. Who am I to take the auspices?”

35

Did Pope Francis just call and say divorced Catholics can take communion?

Inside a home in an Argentine river town called San Lorenzo, a telephone rang. For the next 10 minutes, an ordinary Argentine woman says she spoke to Pope Francis — and that their discussion may signal a profound change for millions of Catholics across the world. Could it be? The Catholic Church has confirmed that the Monday telephone call happened. But it won’t say what it was about.

36

Now he’s excommunicated Mafia members, which is something no previous pontiff has done and could be useful. The stereotype of the Mafia don who courts respectability by being a prominent church supporter has a strong basis in fact.

37

This is the “Things the King of the Vatican says” thread.

Have he said already something that sounds like “let them eat cake” yet?

38

It seems the secular journalists haven’t noticed that here the Pope used the word “excommunication” not in the canonical, but in the colloquial sense these journalists themselves like to use it when they call everyone who cannot receive communion “excommunicated”.

39

Interesting. Please forgive my ignorance, but can you elaborate on the distinction and its implications here?

40

Excommunication properly so called is a penalty imposed by decree after due process, or incurred automatically if the law expressly establishes it. A casual comment in some speech doesn’t suffice.

But according to can. 915, communion is to be denied not only to those under excommunication or interdict, but to anyone obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin. This can “feel” like excommunication to those affected (politicians who support abortion or divorcés who attempt remarriage sometimes make the news), but it’s not intended as a penalty, but only to protect the community from scandal.