There’s been a lot of commentary about Pope Francis being a commie, mostly from Official Conservatism, which now holds a puerile understanding of both communism and capitalism. Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), is a 2013 apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis that criticizes neoliberal global capitalism, among other topics. American “conservatives” took this mild critique to mean the Pope opposes the new religion of Globalism, so he must be a Marxist, because Marxists are bad.
The thing is, Catholicism has always been opposed, to some degree, to capitalism, particularly certain aspects of what we now call capitalism. The most obvious example is the opposition to usury. Every lecture on the evils of antisemitism contains some reference to the Church forbidding usury. Less well known is the Catholic Church’s embrace of localist economics and politics, in opposition to the internationalism of Soviet communism. The point being, the Church has never been a fan of global capitalism.
The criticism of the Pope on economic grounds says more about the bottomless ignorance of modern conservatism than it does the Pope or the Church. For the Church, any church for that matter, economics are downstream from theology. In fact, economic positions should only matter in so far as how they advance the particular theological points of the faith. Catholicism long attachment to the sovereign authority of the people, naturally leads it to embrace national economics over global economics.
That bit is sure to get some spergy responses from Catholics and Christians, but we’ll deal with that in the comments. The point to take away is that it is perfectly plausible for the Pope to be within Catholic doctrine and oppose the current fads in global economics and not be a communist. The fact that secular defenders of globalism are more hive minded than the clerical critics, suggests globalism has become more of an all-consuming religion than Catholicism. It is international fascism.
Whether or not the Pope is a globalist is unimportant. What matters is whether or not he is a Catholic. Look at the response from Francis when Trump announced that he was withdrawing the US from the Paris climate deal. The Pope had heavily lobbied Trump in person on the mysteries of climate. He gave him a book pushing the apocalyptic claims of the most unhinged climate fanatics. It’s not unfair to say that the Pope bet a big chunk of the Church’s prestige on this, so naturally he was very angry at the result.
Now, the Pope had a joint presser with Trump on his home turf. Trump has been divorced a few times, has children from a variety of women. He is, by his own admission, a serial adulterer. The Church, at its core, opposes the way in which Trump has lived his life. At their meeting in Rome, the Pope could have taken the time to admonish Trump on these basic theological issues. At the minimum, he could have made the most powerful man in the world blush a bit about his lifestyle, even if he was not willing to be Thomas More.
Of course, the Pope is more than a theologian and spiritual leader. He is a politicians so it is understandable if maybe he would avoid the personal. He could have, however, weighed in on the oppression of Christians and Catholics in the US. That health care bill everyone says is a mess has provisions that compel Catholics to act in a way that contradicts their faith. That should be pretty damned high on the Pope’s list of concerns to be broached with the American President.
It’s not just a question about the Pope being Catholic, or at least prioritizing Catholic theology over his personal theology. The question is whether the Catholic Church is still Catholic. It used to be that the Church was at the forefront of social issues like abortion and homosexual marriage. Today, it is rare to hear anything from the Church on social issues. Instead, in the US at least, the Church is more concerned with maintaining their refugee rackets and defending Gaia from your lawnmower.
We are in a post-Christian world so perhaps it is inevitable that the Catholic Church would be looking around for a way to remain relevant. Attendance at Christian services continues to drop and the median age of self-identified Christians keeps going up. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to think that maybe what hurts the Catholic Church is that it has stopped being Catholic. There are a million places to hear sermons on Gaia, diversity and other Progressive fads. The Pope is just another voice in the choir.
ZMan, the whole idea of “International fascism” is absurd. Fascism is inherently nationalist, as its authority springs from family, tribe, ethnicity, and race. The system you describe is closer to Communism, which is inherently internationalist, where authority springs from a political/technical/managerial elite who administer a deracinated population of economic human-resource units, largely for the benefit of the elites themselves. Since the international elites have no organic (i.e. family/ethnic/racial) human connection to the human-resource units they manage (consequently developing a closer connection to their fellow elite), they rapidly develop contempt for their charges, treating them like a faceless mass of interchangeable parts that the elites themselves have turned them into.
I went to a Brazilian sushi place for dinner. Anything is possible in the new world order. If you examine the economic arguments of globalism, they sound a lot like what the Italian fascists were peddling, just scaled up.
ZMan,
Mussolini, IMO, was simply arguing that when the State becomes the perfect expression of the People, then it becomes an all-encompassing entity. Obviously, for anyone outside the definition of “the People”, the State became a bad thing. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, criminals and troublemakers fell into this category.
I am willing to concede that we could play with word definitions to make this work for you. Substitute “global elites” for “the People” in the above paragraph, and then define “non-People” as “everyone who isn’t a member of the global political and managerial elite” and you could make it work.
The point being is, Fascism, as employed by Mussolini and Hitler, actually worked well for the vast majority of human beings in Italy and Germany. You can go into houses in Italy today and find a picture of Mussolini on the wall, and then get an explanation of how, specifically, Mussolini helped elevate that family’s prospects up from poverty and deprivation, in a permanent and lasting way. I guarantee you that in 50 years, exactly nobody will have a picture of Bush (any of them), Clinton (any of them) or Obama hanging on their wall. Whatever system we have today is ruinous and obnoxious to literally every human on earth who isn’t a member of the privileged Elite.
Z-man, we all have our weak points and the Church is clearly one of yours.
Why on earth would the Pope insult Trump to his face at their first formal meeting? What possible good could come of that?
You said:
“He could have, however, weighed in on the oppression of Christians and Catholics in the US. That health care bill everyone says is a mess has provisions that compel Catholics to act in a way that contradicts their faith. That should be pretty damned high on the Pope’s list of concerns to be broached with the American President.”
The thing is, the Pope did this. The very first item summarizing their meeting reads:
http://www.news.va/en/news/audience-with-the-president-of-the-united-states-o
“During the cordial discussions, satisfaction was expressed for the good existing bilateral relations between the Holy See and the USA, as well as the joint commitment in favour of life, freedom of worship and conscience.”
If you think Pope Francis hasn’t talked about marriage and abortion, it’s only because you haven’t been listening. In Amoris Laetitia, he not only defended the family and the culture of life, he attacked transsexualism as well.
There are plenty of things not to like about Francis, but you have to at least be honest and admit what he’s doing right. In terms of orthodoxy, he hasn’t yielded an inch on life, marriage or doctrine.
As a side note, my liberal college town is seeing a huge surge in conversions – so much so that we’re scrambling to find sponsors. I volunteered and I can tell you that the doctrines on traditional marriage, the sinfulness of homosexuality and the right to life are big motivating factors. A lot of folks are fleeing from Protestant churches that went full SJW.
Church attendance is down as a whole, but our corner of Christendom is flourishing.
The Pope is most certainly not Catholic. He is a universalist religious figure, a symbol of western post Christianity. Like virtually every western politician he shows no allegiance to the people he is supposed to represent and instead sides with others.
Anyone who has been a Catholic knows that the bar for getting into heaven is extremely high. A Catholic has to go through various rites and sacraments and any hint of sin or failure to follow the proscribed path is enough for banishment to hell. Yet the Pope has no problem with welcoming Muslims, Jews, secularists, to the Vatican. Not once does he consider the fate of their immortal souls and try to insist that they go through a year of the catechism and then baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, and so on. No matter how many times he washes their feet these poor souls are going to hell. He could lick their feet clean and it would not change Catholic doctrine regarding this.
Clearly he doesn’t believe in his own religion! He is supposed to be an expert, a scholar in Catholicism yet he doesn’t insist non-believers follow the path to salvation for their own good. Thus he is not Catholic but some sort of universalist that doesn’t believe in basic Catholic doctrine.
I think you have a skewed/twisted vision of the Catholic faith if you think “any hint of sin or failure to follow the proscribed path is enough for banishment to hell.” The faith is about relationship with Jesus. The sacraments were given to us by Him to deepen that relationship and give us “not just life, but life abundantly.”
I do share your concern about what looks like Bergoglio’s failure to preach the Gospel “in season and out of season.”
What do you mean skewered? Catholic doctrine states that the only way to get into heaven is in “a perfect state of grace”, That means no sin on your soul. A mortal sin is eternal banishment and venial sin will send you to purgatory for a while. Unless you make a confession to a priest before death you are fated to purgatory or hell.
A mortal sin is rather easy to commit. Any impure thought is enough for example. One of the big issues that Protestant religions have with Catholicism is that their entry to heaven is usually easier, belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior is enough for example in many Baptist religions. I think you have the wrong idea about the Catholic faith. Back to the catechism for you!!
Z-man. Your outsiders point of view of the Catholic Church is somewhat off target. I commend that you see problems, as we in the Catholic Church know there are big problems, but you are not well informed, as you are an outsider looking in, to see the real issues.
– The pediophile thing is far from over, it’s stain in the church is certainly a big clue to the problem.
– Research the St. Micheal prayer, its origins. Us informed Catholics know there’s a battle for the Church of Christ, and it seems to some of us traditional conservative Catholics that the smoke of Satan is present in the Vatican.
– Your question is not the right one. Of course Bergoglio is Catholic (as it seems to me you may be – but you turned away from the Church) but the real question is is he Pope? It’s more and more clear to me Cannon 188 is in play. Let me ask you, does Benedict still live in the Vatican and dress in Papal clothes? If so why? Is there any history of a resigned Pope, and their actions? These are the right questions.
The politics side of what is occurring in the church is minuscule compared to the big game – the one played at the highest level for your souls.
Many of us Catholics are not blind to what is ongoing, and some of us are actively opposing.
My observation is there is no coincidence that there is growing division within the Church and the growing divide occurring in National and world politics. Sides are being formed, a battle is building. Choose your side carefully, your soul is in play.
All of those years in Jesuit schools makes me an outsider?
You need to re-examine your assumptions.
“All of those years in Jesuit schools makes me an outsider?”
No. But they make you a suspect.
Dad29 – yes, Jesuits, the missionary order, have always fallen into sin more often than other orders, and that’s reasonable as they have much larger interaction with worldly things…
But it is clear the Jesuit order is most responsible for satan’s smoke entering the Vatican.
Jesuits are traditionally good educators, but what they are educating is more questionable today.
The only assumption I made was that you grew up as a Catholic. It’s clear in your posts that you have not been a practicing Catholic for some time, this makes you an outsider, by your choice, currently (this was my outsider statement).
“…Catholicism long attachment to the sovereign authority of the people…”
Viva Christo Rey! He ain’t no “people”, but He has all the ‘sovereign authority.’
Yes, I know what you think you meant.
No, I know exactly what I meant, which is why I clearly wrote it that way.
Maybe you have a cite wherein the RCChurch declared ‘the people’ to be sovereign moreso than Christ?
Pope Leo III. Look him up.
“the pope approached Charlemagne, who was kneeling before the Confession of St. Peter, and placed a crown upon his head. The assembled multitude at once made the basilica ring with the shout: “To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, to our great and pacific emperor life and victory!” By this act was revived the Empire in the West, and, in theory, at least, the world was declared by the Church subject to one temporal head, as Christ had made it subject to one spiritual head. ” (End quote, Cath. Encyclopedia)
“Temporal” head. Not replacing Christ the King.
And Charlemagne is a ‘people’? What about the other 49,999,999 Frenchmen?
You keep trying to start a debate and I have no interest so you should stop.
Is the Pope Catholic? Well, he looks like one, dresses like the supposed leader of the Church, talks like one, walks like one, but he is only a figment of the imagination same as Obozo was an American who was President for all the People of the USA.
You want to know more about the real Francis, go see what Ann Barnhardt has to say on the subject. She is pretty fierce in her condemnation of this man and his goals. For example, in her latest post, she states in part
“FIVE: Oh yes, I am definitely enjoying Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord, which anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows is an extortion and money laundering racket on a global scale, run by the Soros machine. I see Antipope Bergoglio and his faggot henchmen are hissing and spitting, and one even admitted that Antipope Bergoglio’s fake-ass “encyclical” “Laudato Si’ ” was written explicitly and consciously as agitprop for the Paris accord and the Soros environmental extortion racket. Heh. Youbetcha. Y’all know I’m not on Team Trump, but I’m still able to appreciate when even he sticks it to those filthy, satanic, Freemasonic sodomite psychopaths in the Casa Santa Marta. And I am certainly happy to see that Jared and Ivanka did NOT sway Trump on this point. That is a very good thing.”
I am in agreement on the Soros/Clinton type scam using the Green Energy Fund for money laundering but you can see what she thinks of “The Pope.” Not much. Not much of a man, a leader, or a Catholic.
Ann Barnhardt makes a very good case that Bergoglio is an anti-pope, and that Benedict is still Pope.
http://www.barnhardt.biz/2017/01/16/cutting-the-crap-31-questions-and-blunt-answers-about-the-catholic-church-and-antipope-bergoglio/
Given that there have been politicians who specifically stated that their Catholic faith required them to support abortion and the Pope proceeded to do sweet fuck all about it (which, to be fair, was of a piece with his predecessors), it’s pretty safe to say that his understanding of his own faith is questionable, at the very least.
I suspect the author was raised by a loving but pious Catholic mother, and cannot entirely break free of the faith he acquired at his mother’s knee.
Catholicism is opposed to globalism? The Catholic Church was simply the theological arm of the later Roman Empire, the folks who invented modern globalism. Catholicism and Globalism are merely the technical and trades names, respectively, for the same drug.
“Catholicism[‘s] long attachment to the sovereign authority of the people”?
Are you freakin’ kidding me? The people are sheep, literally, the “flock”, in the eyes of the Catholic clergy. The sole repository of all authority is in the figure of Christ – as represented on earth by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church uses “the people” exactly as the Liberals use them: as a political cudgel in its dealings with the Moneyed Interests.
Marxism, Communism, is merely a politico-economic reiteration of the apocalyptic, post-historical propheticism of Catholic doctrine. While it denies the existence of Jehovah God, it nevertheless prophecies the end of the reigning world order, to be supplanted by an eternal state of existence in which all men stand utterly equal before the One True State (God). The Battle of Armageddon and the Revolution are the same thing.
Listening to a John Venari CD today confirmed my observation of the complete infiltration & upheaval of the Church by Freemasonry.
More Muslim mass-murder in London. Link through Drudge to see pictures of fleeing White men. They need leaders. Tommy Robinson, please tell them what to DO!
Buy stock in candle and teddy bear manufacturers.
And the rights to “Imagine”
It seems to me that some men are natural leaders, and that the majority of men who aren’t may nevertheless be willing to sacrifice their lives or accept the likelihood of imprisonment in defense of their societies when they are in fact led by these natural leaders. One can’t really blame non-leaders for non-action when they’re not being led. (I know I’m not a natural leader.)
The decline of all religions is a symptom of the decline of the species as a whole. We no longer value ancient wisdom instilled at a young age via the mechanisms that all religions historically afford, and instead young people today meander aimlessly through their developmental years until the addiction to modern social media indoctrinates them with all manner of trendy and transitory ideals. Instead of establishing a sound bedrock based upon time-tested principles, they blow in the wind of popular opinion and are forever at the mercy of charlatans and megalomaniacs. Most don’t even know that this country is the home of liberty, nor have they any idea what that word actually means.
I am not in a position to say what is and what is not a Catholic.
However, based on the fact that he had a reception hall built in such a way as to make it appear that he is standing in the mouth of a serpent, and addresses audiences there regularly, I think the Pope is some sort of Satanist.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Paul-VI-Audience-Hall-in-Rome-Vatican-City-look-like-a-serpent-And-what-does-this-say-about-the-intentions-of-the-Catholic-Church
That photo is a fish-eye lens distortion made by someone with an agenda who is deliberately manipulating things.
I can weed out the haters because they always preface with: I am not in a position to say what is and what is not “a” Catholic, then proceed to beat you over the head with some unproven nonsense. I would’ve respected you more if you told me the six hills the Vatican is built on is described in the book of Revelation and Pope is the Anti-Christ, or maybe even some Jack Chick illustrations. The methods of winning converts or people over to your side are so predictable. Par for the course as a Catholic I guess, but I’m not an apologist just know anti-catholic “christian” when I see it.
As a post v2 catholic I realized the destruction first hand. It’s not a coincidence this crap began in the 60’s of free love and experimentation. I’m disgusted by the church as an “institution” and am doing some soul searching after our Archbishop decided it was o.k. to purchase a $2 million mansion for fund raising purposes, because he didn’t realize the hardship of others during the “Great Recession”. Or the preaching from the pulpit about how no human is illegal. Social Justice has crept in like a cancer. Since this Pope is Argentinian where social justice has its origins, I’m assuming he’s the same. No theologian by any means and spouts off the cuff without any thought.
“it is not unreasonable to think that maybe what hurts the Catholic Church is that it has stopped being Catholic”
Yup.
As we have seen with a number of corporations and media outlets, the Catholic church erred in forgetting who their core audience is. The recent. ESPN example is salient: a kowtowing to the urban Left while disregarding the stodgy suburban. The former are either not sports fans, or simply have no money to spend on their advertisers’ wares. Meanwhile the latter, once recognized as their core audience, slowly withdraw, closing the door quietly behind themselves.
Likewise, the Church saw the much ballyhooed Hispanic demographic as a means to fill the pews. They are now finding that they do not fill the collection plate quite as well. The old faithful have moved on to the mega churches; the less faithful to Gaia and a “spirituality” that is better served by an uncensored Debbie Wasserman Schultz than by Bergoglio’s tortured rhetoric.
I noticed a lot of leftists all of a sudden become football and basketball fans the second they realized that their side was taking over. This in retrospect, of course. I can’t really say that I picked up on it at the time.
Key lesson: if someone on the left starts liking something he paid no attention to before, it is usually for an evil reason.
The Hispanics fill the pews for a WHILE — but a lot of them drop out or migrate to the Evangelical Protestant churches.
First of all, Catholic anti-capitalism whining is nothing new, it has been fairly ritualistic under at least 6 latest Popes I remember. However, the current one is something special. One knew already at the monent of his election that he was one of the loudest voices of the ill-famed Liberation Theology, in other words, Latin American radical leftism cosmetically covered in holy smoke.
Second, even for a Latin American progressivist, Francis is extremely reality-blind and dogmatic in everything that promotes Western suffering and the Third World expansion. In doing so, he definitively takes his church on the path of a vicious suicide cult. But, actually, thanks to this he may be quite true to the whole Christian origin shit, the religion having emerged 20 centuries ago, after all, as a perverse semitic doomsday sect.
Ergo, he is, no doubt, on the same boat with nearly all brands of commies, old and “new”. So, if someone calls him a commie, the statement is self-evident and can be only criticized on a secondary nitpicking basis, The essence is uncontestable, even if it is a traditional conservative of the ilk so much loathed on these pages, who issues that statement.
I feel earnestly sorry for all sencerely right-wing Catholics there may still exist out there in the wide world, but, unfortunately, am unable to find any meaningful words of comfort for them. Their cult is in its final convulsions and I am glad to not have anything to do with it.
“Promotes western suffering”
The monk wants everyone else to wear hair shirts, too. Even if he doesn’t.
As a Catholic who is a big fan of Benedict (and felt abandoned by his retirement), I will tell you that Francis is kind of a Peronist who is also sympathetic to liberation theology (and for those who happily are not familiar with that, a flavor of Marxism). Given his history and upbringing in Argentina this is just how that river flows. It also helps explain why he is so very ignorant about the society-wide benefits of capitalism–he was formed by what he saw of it in his native land, which especially while he was coming up was deeply corporatist and cronyist–though to be fair, U.S. capitalism has become much more like that.
Francis is something of a globalist, very comfortable with structures like the European Union, all the NGO baggage and so on. But to some degree he is hard to pigeonhole because he’s not exactly intellectually rigorous–the opposite of Benedict–and goes with the feelz. To give him his due, I think it’s fair to say he rejected the bedrock Marxist materialism of liberation theology.
If I were just yakking with the guy about faith in some bistro without knowing who he was, I’d probably go away thinking he was definitely Christian, but Catholic…… hey gotta run!
The Catholic Chrurch started going sideways when the priests started throwing “social justice” into their homilies, which was probably the inevitable result of the marxists and homosexuals taking power in the leadership. A letter the local pastor wrote to the editor of the weekly paper shaming the town for requiring recipients to work at the dump in exchange for town welfare drove me away for about 30 years. Being your age and having recently started to attend Mass again, I find that I’m on the younger side of the crowd, so I imagine that the situation will resolve itself within a generation or so unless the Church starts booking the ariana grande crowd to fill the seats. Would be a fitting end.
I hope any frustrated Catholics here will check out Ann Barnhardt. She has a lot to say on these matters. I’m not sure if I agree with her on all points, but her ideas are definitely worth consideration.
I’d check out Church Militant rather than Barnhardt. She’s good, but the CM group does a better job exposing all the problems in the Church right now.
Remember when Oprah was trying to purchase a handbag in Switzerland and she got mad that they weren’t bowing down and kissing her feet because she’s … Oprah? Oprah was apparently too dumb to understand why people in Switzerland, where they don’t air her show, wouldn’t know how important she is so she tried applying the American template of race relations and accused them of being “raciss”. Of course, the American template doesn’t really work there since they didn’t have slavery and they don’t have the same dynamics in their relationship with what few blacks there are in Switzerland.
This is what conservatives remind me of when they try to overlay their template on the rest of the world. The rest of Christianity outside of North America doesn’t go ga-ga over Israel, nor is it crazy about full throated dog-eat-dog capitalism. American conservatism is simply out of context as some kind of framework for understanding the rest of the world. We have our own issues and political dynamics that are unique to America and aren’t really applicable elsewhere.
That Oprah incident was a result of her being dressed like w welfare black. Right after the story broke, one of the British tabloids who was following her around in Switzerland posted pics of her. She was dressed like a fat black hood rat.
BTW the store had security cameras – notice they were never shown? Because they put Oprah in a bad light.
You are right about conservatives and Christianity here. Over the decades conservative Christianity has been synonymous with rah rah Ayn Randian capitalism. Being rich brought you closer to God and then there is the cult of the prosperity gospel which is quite popular and the other when Jesus is your “bro” . A lot of American Christianity is just plain bizarre, a lot worse than what Bergoglio is peddling.
Without makeup Oprah is an ugly, ugly woman. At a medical meeting at the Drake once. My wife and I were standing out front and a couple of black women in jogging outfits walk by. She says hello like she knows them. I ask what’s going on. She says that’s Oprah. I’m like, Yewwww!
The first time I ever encountered the term “social justice” was in sophomore year theology class, St. XXX Catholic High School, circa 1978 or 79.
Liberation theology was a Latin RC movement. Remember those guys? That was Marxist-Catholic fusion that turned out to me just the same old Marxism.
It’s where I learned the Russian expression, “A man who chases two rabbits, catches none.”
I think the Catholic Workers had something to do with it.
A lot of bad things have come from that bunch… things that are often associated with the progs and po mos.
The name and year of founding alone might suggest it was yet another USSR founded/funded communist front group, amirite_?
Maybe. I never heard any priest or nun speak ill of them. The clerics in the parishes and HS’s always seemed to look up to them as if the CW was some resurrection of the primitive Petrine church.
CW may have been the church outsmarting itself. The church was very reactionary in those days. It felt that it had to counter all of these very robust and growing Protestant organizations. They stood up the CYO to counter the YMCA, the Knights of Columbus to counter the fraternal organizations, the Catholic Daughters of America to counter the Girl Scouts, etc. I was always under the impression that the Catholic Workers were the Catholic _Social_ Workers.
I like to call Liberation Theology as the idea that Christ was nothing more than the Anticipation of Karl Marx.
Different High School, same era, same indoctrination. And the Xavarian Brother teaching it was a flaming H-mo, one of more than a few as I recall.
The order running my high school had a reputation for being somewhat blue collar and pretty good at screening for deviants. I recall them mostly being frustrated straights.
I always have a hard time understanding how things like this infiltrate a large organization or a society so evenly and simultaneously. I vaguely remember the year the nuns left. My first grade year, we had ten nuns. The next year, about four left and another three or four moved out of the convent and into a Catholic Workerish home in the community where they all wore civvies. When I started third grade, those three quit and we were left with about three or four to run the school. My understanding at the time was that this was typical.
Every time the Church tries to become more “relevant” it loses members. People can get kumbaya and folk songs anywhere. To me Francis is not a communist but just another member of the cult of modern liberalism. If he would bring back the Latin mass, and start talking about sin and salvation he might actually turn things around, but that will not happen. The Vatican hierarchy is now an elitist club with absolutely no connection to the dirt people.
I think it’s clear that bergoglio doesn’t believe Catholic teachings.
On Topic: To atone for my previous transgressions: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=aaplw&p=Lutheran+Satire%3A+Frank+the+hippy+Pope#id=1&vid=8668fc935aeb5f979da2fd930168e4df&action=click
Appeals to a certain upper midwest sensibility 😉
Perfect, thanks.
LOL!
It seems to me that he is probably just being realistic about dealing with the rest of the world. It might not be the way the Church teaches or the way the Church wants things, but that’s the way things are and there’s also no sense in being hostile to the rest of the world, either.
the word you are looking for is “appeasement” or perhaps “collaborator” (I would go with “Judas” myself, but then I am old testament school)
As someone who is an “ethnic Catholic”, I rub elbows with people from all walks of life within our parish and you have all kinds who are members there. When you have someone not toeing the line and doing the right things in their life, we typically don’t ostracize the person. It’s hard to ostracize someone you’ve known for many years. You usually just shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, it’s his life–he’s only hurting himself.” It’s not “live and let live” so much as that being the reality of life and that people phuck up and make mistakes or they have weaknesses. We don’t go all Ned Flanders on these people.
Examples: 1) We have a person with a gambling problem who stole $10K from the church and he still a member of the parish. He’s still a friend and I’ll have a beer with him at a church festival. 2) The Corleone family in “The Godfather”, especially the baptism scene.)
That’s where I see the Pope as coming from. Otherwise, I don’t see anything he’s said about changing church doctrine. He is unequivocally behind it.
I don’t like his politics either, by the way. I just think I know where he’s coming from.
So you play the coward and dress it up as being pragmatic…I think Christ called this behavior lukewarm.
Have some freaken zeal for your faith, TempoNick. Otherwise, leave and be a Protestant. Most Catholics are, even the priests, since Vatican II. Just be honest about it. Then you can carry on with life without external strife or internal dissonance.
Nick, the Church started out being hostile to the rest of the world. It did pretty well until it decided to join the globalist club.
Francis is not a communist but just another member of the cult of modern liberalism
He had a lot of VERY strange mentors and friends–for a non-Commie. But granting that, there’s little question of his Thoroughly Modern Millie-isms–except for abortion (!)
True, he doesn’t support abortion. But during the big initial Zika scare last year, he essentially excused the use of contraception — that is, he bucked the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church — implying that a risk of birth defects means that the teaching can now be discarded. In other words, he bought into the eugenic mentality. Once one buys into that, by the same logic, it would be allowable to abort any such baby who managed to squeak through because of faulty contraception. This has always been the argument of the pro-abortion people. So it really doesn’t matter that the Pope doesn’t EXPLICITLY support abortion; he’s already caved to the abortion MENTALITY. That’s not to say I think the Pope in his heart supports abortion — but many Catholics will be misled by the Pope’s fuzzy, muddled statements, and will now think that abortion can be justified.
Point taken. Still a Thoroughly Modern Millie. And by the way, his flipso/flopso on marriage is of a piece with that Zika thought, when you stop to think of it.
Z Man;
Para 3 , last sentence: Did you mean to say “… long attachment to the sovereign authority of the _pope_…” instead of “…long attachment to the sovereign authority of the _people_…”. The restatement is is at least partly accurate, the original is questionable. The RC Church was trans-national for most of its history, having its own language (Latin), legal structure (cannon law), literature, etc. The trans-national RCC is a big part of why we can talk about Western Civilization because it was the cultural glue binding the various Slavic, Germanic and Latin/Keltic nationalities that comprise W Civ. until about the French Revolution at the earliest or about 50 years ago at the latest.
Now, this objection doesn’t negate your point about the RC Church being likely opposed to global capitalism (whatever that means) but I don’t think the RC Church has historically been much interested in anything specifically national at all. They’ve claimed to be a transcendent authority, even now.
The Church figured out quickly that being on very good terms with the monarch was good for the Church. Pope Leo III learned first hand that being on good terms with Charlemagne was a benefit.
Don’t forget that the Church is a monarchy in and of itself.
and the pope is queen!
The pope is a heretic
Either that or he is the greatest psyops of all time, planted to root out the true perverts and heretics.
But I’ll place my bet on you being correct.
Nah, he’s just a retard, a LoFo LoQ third world dolt.
when people tell me the catholic church is full of paedophiles, i get very upset with such careless talk. the catholic church has a few paedos, for sure. but for the most part they are pederasts, which is a very different thing altogether.
the vatican and all of its franchisees is a jobs program for homos, and nothing more. they haven’t lifted a finger to help the ME christians, and that tells you all you need to know about “the church”.
I used to enjoy my liberal friends during the Church scandal by pointing out that if the Church had kept out the homos, they would have avoided the scandal. They hated that observation.
The Catholic Church has paedophiles, so do the Mosques. The crime is turning the other way, as an institution, to ignore the paedophilia, and use the assets of the church to hide the problem and try to buy the silence of the victims. Individual persons will go wrong, but it is up to the larger institution not to stand for it.
is islam the test, for christianity?
the thing is, the pederasts are running the church, top to “bottom”. it is a predatory organization with no actual religious feeling at all. it is irredeemable.
Oy vey, goy! Don’t foget those Jewish pedophiles in the temples! Gotta keep that under wraps, as well, Moshe.
So in 1992, when the worst was over, the rate was 15 incidents of reported abuse per 100,000 confirmations. By 2001 it had dropped to of 5 incidents of abuse per 100,000 confirmations in the Catholic Church. There was a similar drop in American society as a whole but less steep and from a consistently higher rate.
For comparison, the Swedish figures for reported sex crimes against all children under 15 was 142/100,000 children in 1992, and 169/100,000 in 2001.
These figures suggest that during the 1990s a child in Sweden, possibly the most secularised country in Europe, was between 10 and 30 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than an American Catholic was by his priest. Even making allowances for the considerable margin of error that must be built into these figures, it’s clear that what went on in US Catholic churches was terrible but rather less terrible than what went on at the same time in many other places where Catholicism was not involved. If the US Catholic church is a hotbed of child rape, Sweden is an awful lot worse. (Just to be clear here, I think the idea that Sweden is a dangerous country for children is entirely absurd.)
I picked Sweden for comparison largely because I know my way round the crime statistics there. But the US government figures quoted in the John Jay report show also that Alaska has a rate of reported child abuse that dwarfs Sweden’s – 788/100,000 in 2001, or 140 times the incidence of reported child abuse in the US Catholic church at the same period. So there is nothing uniquely rotten about the American Catholic church.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2011/may/21/child-abuse-catholicism-johnjayinstitute
what is your point? that there is a lot of child molestation in the world? was that ever in doubt? looks very much like you are making excuses for the pederasts in the catholic church; endorsing their predations as “better than “.
The point is that your kid is still safer as an altar boy than he is out in the real world. Safer by a multiple of at least 28.
Except that being an altar boy would be an *additional* risk; he’d already face the same real world risk as everyone else when he was away from the Church.
My guess is the priesthood (and sisterhood) has always been chock-full of homos. In the past, if little Patrick or Patrica was ”questioning” their interest in the opposite sex there was always a publicly approved ‘out’ – the church.
If someone says ”Hey Pat, why not go to the dance? (or on dates, ect.)” the collar (or habit) provides a shield to such issues: ”Ooh! Sorry, didn’t know of your seminary (nunnery)”. In the past, (and in places like Argentina, like where Francis came from) there were plenty of orphans, street urchins and foundlings that if they ”just disappeared” one day there wouldn’t be alarms sounded all over the place, in fact, no one would know or care.
Note all the stories of priest abuse are nearly all post-1975, before then if a child were to claim a priest did something strange to them the typical reaction would be to deny or even shame the child ”for saying such a thing about a man of the cloth”. Not much attention was paid either to sexual abuse or even child disappearance prior to the late 70’s. The child would go missing, the local paper/radio/TV would mention it, and typically after a day or two the police would no longer even actively search.
The activism of the late 70’s/early 80’s changed all that in the West.
For decades it has been observed by some that the seminaries were being overtaken by homo influence. It should come as no surprise that pederasty would come to fore at some point with a pecentage of them.
If you want good insights into the traditional views of Catholicism, E. Michael Jones is good to read or view on youtube. Jewish capitalism as he calls it. Usary in the old tongue.
Mike was a helluva good read about 30 years ago. Subscribed recently (again) for a year, and he’s gone off his rocker.
Agree with all. “Is the Pope Catholic?” is no longer part of a joke. My vibe is that if Francis were a younger man and could pontificate forty years we would see the Church preside over homosexual marriage….between priests.
It is a good example of entryism. The Catholic Church was taken over by people who seem to despise the basics of Catholicism. The results have been predictable.
“The Catholic Church was taken over”
Like the West in general, it failed to mount any real effort to defend itself. It seemed to have forgotten all about the bell, book, and candle, for example
That’s not true. A string of great popes from Pius IX to Pius XII (1846 – 1958) struggled mightily against religious indifferentism and modernism (“the synthesis of all heresies” – Pius X), which are the roots of almost everything that’s going wrong in the West today. Under Pius X, prelates of the church had to take an oath against modernism. That didn’t stop the enemies of the church from infiltrating.
Even though they are abandoned by most of the hierarchy, the dogmas of the faith are still intact. When you read a bad document from the church today, you’ll be met with a bunch of weasel words that strongly imply a heretical conclusion (such as communion for the divorced and remarried), but tip toe around it. Christ’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church is still intact.
If you ever hear the pope, or a council in union with the pope, formally bind the christian faithful to error by ratifying some heresy like this…
“By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: [something that contradicts a previous dogma].”
…then you will know that Christianity is a false, man-made religion. But that hasn’t happened in two-thousand years, and, if I may venture to say it, is impossible.
“That didn’t stop the enemies of the church from infiltrating.”
And they weren’t excommunicated – i.e., they were not defended against.
I’ve actually had dinner with a leftist priest who obviously hated his church.
One of the saddest encounters I’ve ever had was with a priest who had been the minister of education and culture in the early Mugabe regime. He had somehow offended Mugabe and had to leave the country for fear of his life. When I asked him about things the only thing he would say is that “Mugabe is a very sick man.” He talked a bit about how optimistic everyone was in 1980 and said little or nothing about how things had not progressed, but regressed. He had received word that it was OK for him to return to Zimbabwe and was making plans to go back. Question is, to what? There was a cholera epidemic at the time and he was an old man. He looked like he was going back only to die.
I have relatives who are Catholic. Good people. It is obvious that they do not support those who are in the top tier of their church. They ignore most of what they are told and live by the Bible. It’s like there are two churches. The official one and the real one.