Pope on gays : "Who am I to judge?"

[garbon]

You are a Republican garbon, that's basically the same thing.

[Barrister]

sigh, history books. If you haven't managed to comprehend the central point we atheists here are trying to beat into your thick skull is that the catholic church is a organization peddling what it calls a universal, eternal and unchanging truth which changes with each advance in science and social mores. What you are apologizing is the latest god in a gap with acceptable social attitudes. Every pope has had a different one. The changing nature of this presentation of absolute truth is not consistent with any claim of special knowledge and the number of 180s the church has performed over time is not consistent with a better understanding of the nature of god. We know from science that 180s only happen when we know nothing about a field. In developed fields the evolving understandings about the nature of the universe usually do not change or alter previous knowledge but rather refine it.

History books, while fascinating, are a really poor place to learn about the Catholic Church.  Perhaps that is your problem.

The Catholic Church has relatively few absolute truths.  They certainly do say say certain things are absolute truths - like the trinity, the bible and the "sacred traditions", and the Assumption of Mary.  But not everything the Church says or does is considered to be infallible or incapable of error.  You are trying to hold the RCC to a standard of absolute perfection which the RCC does not claim for itself.

[Tamas]

sigh, history books. If you haven't managed to comprehend the central point we atheists here are trying to beat into your thick skull is that the catholic church is a organization peddling what it calls a universal, eternal and unchanging truth which changes with each advance in science and social mores. What you are apologizing is the latest god in a gap with acceptable social attitudes. Every pope has had a different one. The changing nature of this presentation of absolute truth is not consistent with any claim of special knowledge and the number of 180s the church has performed over time is not consistent with a better understanding of the nature of god. We know from science that 180s only happen when we know nothing about a field. In developed fields the evolving understandings about the nature of the universe usually do not change or alter previous knowledge but rather refine it.

History books, while fascinating, are a really poor place to learn about the Catholic Church.  Perhaps that is your problem.

The Catholic Church has relatively few absolute truths.  They certainly do say say certain things are absolute truths - like the trinity, the bible and the "sacred traditions", and the Assumption of Mary.  But not everything the Church says or does is considered to be infallible or incapable of error.  You are trying to hold the RCC to a standard of absolute perfection which the RCC does not claim for itself.

etc

[Razgovory]

[grumbler]

You were very obviously referencing perjury, what with the reference to "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", and then referencing my profession.

No, I was not.  I was referencing the truth, and the fact that you deal with liars all the time, know they are lying, and yet cannot read their minds.  This applies more, i am sure, in investigations than in trials.

Your language is anything but clear.  Even here at one point you talk about actions not meeting words, but then go back to 'saying things they know to be untrue'.

I have no idea what this is critiquing.  yes, I use different words for different things, and sometimes alternate words for the same thing (see what I did there?)

Yes - it is foolish to say that you know somebody is lying unless you can read their mind, or have other direct evidence about what they are thinking.  That is far from nitpicking.

Lying isn't a matter of a state of mind.  Lying is telling an untruth.  You don't have to read minds to know when someone is lying.  In this case, the Pope's statement that he is "the poor serving the poor" is obviously wrong.  Look at where he lives, how he dresses, the transportation he has access to... none of those are attributes of the poor.  That is far fro a foolish observation.  What is foolish is thinking that it takes mind reading to see that the Pope is not poor.

[Barrister]

I've danced long enough with this tar baby.  I'm tapping out.

grumbler, because I know you want it, feel free to have the last word.

[garbon]

Wow, that was all so entertaining.

[Capetan Mihali]

Throw him in the barrister patch, grumbler!

[grumbler]

Throw him in the barrister patch, grumbler!

Okay. 

Nice turn of phrase, btw.

[Sheilbh]

Where exactly do you get your knowledge of catholicism from, anyways?  Because it's just so flawed.  You continue to treat the Catholic church like a bunch of fundy bible-thumpers, when that's pretty far from the truth.

I see you have skipped away from your attempted "gotcha" on what the word "catholic" means.

It's like a 19th Century Protestant polemic

And the key really is there's very little the Church has said is the Truth (capital T). The famous example is that there's over 800 pages of genuinely groundbreaking theology in the documents of Vatican II. Among them is not one change or abolition of doctrine - the Church can't do that - and the only addition is that Mary officially got the title 'Mother of the Church', though it's been in use since the third century.

On the 'poor church for the poor' stream I think there's a few key points.

The first is that the Church is a church. It shouldn't be judged for failing on material objects because that's not what it's trying to do. The Church's primary mission amongst the poor is evangelism and acting as a church - the sacraments and so on. In addition to that it provides an enormous amount of charitable services all over the world. But that is an addition. As Francis put it within the first week of his election, 'without Christ the Church is a compassionate NGO'. That's not the point.

Secondly I think the word 'poor' has a slightly different meaning for the Church, and especially for Francis. He told a congregation of young people at World Youth Day to 'read the beatitudes: that will do you good. If you want to know exactly what to do, read Matthew 25, which is the standard by which we will be judged. With these two things, you have the action plan: the beatitudes and Matthew 25. You do not need to read anything else. I ask you this with all my heart.' The first Beatitude is 'blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven'. I think given the importance Francis has attached to the Beatitudes it's not strained to say that he very much intends a double meaning - he's not just a Catholic after all, and that's what the Church does with the Bible, but he's a Jesuit.

Thirdly I think he understands 'Church' in a slightly different way than we're used to. Francis is the first Pope I can think of who has returned to the Vatican II emphasis that the Church is the 'People of God'. It's not necessarily just the institutional Church and shouldn't be understood as synonymous with the hierarchy. So I think Francis is meaning this for all Catholics - to be poor and for the poor.

Today he went to celebrate St. Francis's feast day in Assisi and was with a group of the poor who are served by local Catholic charities in the Room of Renunciation (where St. Francis stripped himself of his possessions). Again, here's Rocco Palmo:

Acknowledging that "this is a good moment to invite the church to strip itself," Francis clarified the thought by adding that – for the church to "strip itself" – "the church is all of us!"

"But what must the church strip itself of?" he asked. Replying with another of his frequently-cited concepts, "it must strip itself today of a gravest of dangers, which threatens every person in the church, all: the danger of worldliness. The Christian cannot live together with the spirit of the world. Worldliness that brings us to vanity, to bullying, to pride. And this is an idol, it is not God. It's an idol! And idolatry is the strongest of sins!"

"Many of you have been stripped by this wild world, which doesn't give work, which doesn't help; which doesn't care that there are babies dying of hunger in the world; doesn't care if many families don't have enough to eat, don't have the dignity of [being able to] bring bread home; doesn't care that many people still need to flee slavery, hunger and escape to seek their freedom."

Francis cited a consequence of said worldliness: yesterday's shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, where the death-toll of African migrants seeking to reach the Italian island – which the Pope visited in July – is believed to have exceeded 200.

"It is a day of tears!" the pontiff said.

"It's rightly ridiculous that a Christian – a true Christian – that a priest, a sister, a bishop, a cardinal, that a Pope would want to go on the road of this worldliness," Francis said, terming it "a homicidal attachment.... It kills souls! It kills people! It kills the church!"

"Today, here, let us ask this grace for all Christians – that the Lord gives to all of us the courage to renounce ourselves, but not of 20 lira, to strip ourselves of the spirit of the world, which is leprosy, is the cancer of society! It's the cancer of the revelation of God! The spirit of the world is the enemy of Jesus Christ!"

The line about 'leprosy' is interesting. In the second interview he referred to 'a "court" mentality in the church which Francis termed "the leprosy of the papacy," admitting that church leaders were "often... narcissistic, flattered and badly excited by their courtiers."'