Got enough nibbles on this in the off topic thread to make a separate thread.
It appears that Liberation Theology is being being brought in from the cold by the new Pope. The usual Languish suspects are for and against.
Here is the story. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/criticized-by-benedict-liberation-theology-founder-gets-heros-welcome-at-vatican/article17101918/
This appears to be a big shift in the Vatican. Although Liberation Theology has been around, particularly in the Americas, for some time Rome has given it a cold shoulder. Up until now.
What says Languish on this move. Frankly I think it makes a lot of sense from a theological point of view. But I can understand why Yi is nervous. I mean what would happen to shareholder value if helping people became a dominant ethic?
AFAIK, Yi is not Catholic.
Wait, since when Yi is a Catholic?
But I do own some shares in a Mexico ETF! :o
He's not, but he has in the past expressed grave misgivings about liberation theology if I recall correctly.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 25, 2014, 11:06:51 PM
AFAIK, Yi is not Catholic.
What does that have to do with anything? Yi isnt a union member either, at least I dont think he is, but that doesnt stop him from holding forth on the evils of unions.
If he was a member of a union, he might have more cause to care what the head of the AFL-CIO has to say.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 25, 2014, 11:14:42 PM
If he was a member of a union, he might have more cause to care what the head of the AFL-CIO has to say.
Certainly, but not being a member has never stopped our Yi from holding very negative views on things like Liberation Theology or Unions - hence the title of the thread.
I'm still confused. Why are we to be proponents of liberation theology?
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:08:41 PM
He's not, but he has in the past expressed grave misgivings about liberation theology if I recall correctly.
That's not really correct. Seedy has asked me if the Jesuits at Georgetown were into liberation theology, as I think some of his were at...I forget where, and I told him that they were more right leaning.
I asked you what you thought it meant in the other thread, as it seems to mean anything from "be nice to poor people" to "take up arms and kill the rich."
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:19:12 PM
I'm still confused. Why are we to be proponents of liberation theology?
You never would be, not in a thousand years :hug:
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 25, 2014, 11:19:56 PM
Sure, but why should the pope holding a view contrary to his own give him pause?
Wouldn't be the first time. Leon XIII practically retracted everything his predecessor Pius IX had declared forbidden in the Syllabus of Errors.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 11:20:17 PM
I asked you what you thought it meant in the other thread, as it seems to mean anything from "be nice to poor people" to "take up arms and kill the rich."
Do you have a cite to anyone within the Liberation Theology movement who has ever preached the kill the rich version you say exists?
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 25, 2014, 11:22:35 PM
Do you have a cite to anyone within the Liberation Theology movement who has ever preached the kill the rich version you say exists?
I don't have a cite to anything. Do you?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 11:23:26 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 25, 2014, 11:22:35 PM
Do you have a cite to anyone within the Liberation Theology movement who has ever preached the kill the rich version you say exists?
I don't have a cite to anything. Do you?
No, I dont think such a cite exists and you were just talking out your ass
I can live with that.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 25, 2014, 11:22:35 PM
Do you have a cite to anyone within the Liberation Theology movement who has ever preached the kill the rich version you say exists?
No one that I know of.
The problem with the Liberation Theology is what is means in reality : clergymen, officially under the name of the Church, cozying up with marxist and leftist resistance groups, which is something the Church has always been very adamant good, honest Catholics should never do. Now that Marxism is practically dead and has been replaced with a weird Latin-American kind of populist cesarism, the 'liberation theology' is a less acute problem except to the most conservative of theologians, which Benedict XVI certainly was THE most representative.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 11:20:17 PMI asked you what you thought it meant in the other thread, as it seems to mean anything from "be nice to poor people" to "take up arms and kill the rich."
The Wikipedia entry on Gutierrez is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Gutiérrez
QuoteLiberation theology originally developed as a Christian response to the conditions in which a great part of the Latin American population live. For Gutiérrez, the centre of the problem in Latin America is sin manifested in an unjust social structure. The theologian puts emphasis on the dignity of the poor.
Goddammit, sometimes I wish we haven't had 7 different servers for Languish, or we'd be able to find some nifty discussions on LT back in the day.
QuoteAlthough Liberation Theology has been around, particularly in the Americas, for some time Rome has given it a cold shoulder.
Fighting the injustices of left-wing/Communist/Soviet-supported oppression behind the Iron Curtain? Johnny the Deuce has your back.
Fighting the injustices of right-wing/Fascist/U.S. supported oppression in Central and South America? Abandoned and hung out to dry, like so many executed dead Jesuits and nuns.
John Paul II and his hypocrisy. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:20:39 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:19:12 PM
I'm still confused. Why are we to be proponents of liberation theology?
You never would be, not in a thousand years :hug:
So a non-answer then?
Huh. It seems I was only familiar with the term in the sense most discussed in these parts, which has not much at all to do with the Catholic Church or anything in Latin America and everything to do with James Cone. I learned some new churchification facts today.
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:19:45 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 10:33:02 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 10:06:54 PM
Interesting. So far, this Pope Francis gets thumbs up from me.
Why is this move a positive?
Because it puts emphasis on the Catholic Church's social justice mission, which is one of the parts I approve of. It's a nice counterpoint to the social conservatism that has been the public face of Christianity these last few decades.
I read the bit that you noted in the separate thread but I'm not really sure I understand what that means. What does it mean to put an emphasis on the dignity of the poor?
edit:Actually I'll continue this here.
I'm not against the Church helping the poor but I'm not sure that I'm a big fan of religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on February 25, 2014, 11:37:30 PM
Huh. It seems I was only familiar with the term in the sense most discussed in these parts, which has not much at all to do with the Catholic Church or anything in Latin America and everything to do with James Cone. I learned some new churchification facts today.
Interesting. I didnt know who James Cone was, so I have learned something new today too :)
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:35:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:20:39 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:19:12 PM
I'm still confused. Why are we to be proponents of liberation theology?
You never would be, not in a thousand years :hug:
So a non-answer then?
garbon, we already have a pretty strong track record on where you stand on issues of poverty and the poor. Is there really a need to go through your I've-got-mine-so-why-should-I-care shtick again? I mean, I posted a quick summary of liberation theology upthread and i find it very worthwhile. We know your response will be a carefully calibrated mixture of disinterested ridicule and dismissal.
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:45:21 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:35:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:20:39 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:19:12 PM
I'm still confused. Why are we to be proponents of liberation theology?
You never would be, not in a thousand years :hug:
So a non-answer then?
garbon, we already have a pretty strong track record on where you stand on issues of poverty and the poor. Is there really a need to go through your I've-got-mine-so-why-should-I-care shtick again? I mean, I posted a quick summary of liberation theology upthread and i find it very worthwhile. We know your response will be a carefully calibrated mixture of disinterested ridicule and dismissal.
Actually I don't think you have a very strong record on where I stand on issues of poverty and the poor if you're referencing my shtick.
At any rate, as I may have intimated in my most recent post - I'm concerned about religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions as I've concerns about their pernicious effects.
Also, I would think it would be clear by now that when I ask earnest questions, I don't usually then leap into ridicule and dismissal. :mellow:
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:48:18 PM
Actually I don't think you have a very strong record on where I stand on issues of poverty and the poor
Ok, I think this would be a good context in which you could share your views on the topic.
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:40:52 PM
... I'm not sure that I'm a big fan of religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions.
:huh: When has the Catholic Church not acted in overtly political fashion?
Quote from: Iormlund on February 26, 2014, 12:03:07 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:40:52 PM
... I'm not sure that I'm a big fan of religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions.
:huh: When has the Catholic Church not acted in overtly political fashion?
Or any other religious organization for that matter
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:48:18 PM
I'm concerned about religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions as I've concerns about their pernicious effects.
Lolz, like helping teh poors.
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:48:18 PM
Actually I don't think you have a very strong record on where I stand on issues of poverty and the poor if you're referencing my shtick.
We can only judge you on what you post. If you are concerned about poverty in any capacity beyond ensuring that no one mistakes you for being poor, it has not come across here even incidentally; at least not in my observation.
QuoteAt any rate, as I may have intimated in my most recent post - I'm concerned about religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions as I've concerns about their pernicious effects.
I've never heard you express these reservations about the Catholic church before, and his is no more political than pretty much anything else it does. But fair enough. Still, I'd say that of all the things the Church could be political about, poverty and oppression are the most consistent with the core of Christ's message IMO.
QuoteAlso, I would think it would be clear by now that when I ask earnest questions, I don't usually then leap into ridicule and dismissal. :mellow:
I sometimes find it hard to distinguish between earnest questions and rhetorical put-downs on your part. Of course, I sometimes suffer from the same problem here...
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:29:01 PM
The Wikipedia entry on Gutierrez is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Gutiérrez
QuoteLiberation theology originally developed as a Christian response to the conditions in which a great part of the Latin American population live. For Gutiérrez, the centre of the problem in Latin America is sin manifested in an unjust social structure. The theologian puts emphasis on the dignity of the poor.
It's a good start but it doesn't narrow down my confusion. A person can, and people have, addressed themselves to the issue of "structural injustice of poverty" in a variety of ways, including political violence, all the while proclaiming adherence to liberation theology.
So my question to you remains unanswered: when you express support for liberation theology, is it just the general sentiment of caring for the poor and wishing poverty were eliminated you support, or does it extend to action? If so, what actions?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:45:20 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 25, 2014, 11:29:01 PM
The Wikipedia entry on Gutierrez is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Gutiérrez
QuoteLiberation theology originally developed as a Christian response to the conditions in which a great part of the Latin American population live. For Gutiérrez, the centre of the problem in Latin America is sin manifested in an unjust social structure. The theologian puts emphasis on the dignity of the poor.
It's a good start but it doesn't narrow down my confusion. A person can, and people have, addressed themselves to the issue of "structural injustice of poverty" in a variety of ways, including political violence, all the while proclaiming adherence to liberation theology.
So my question to you remains unanswered: when you express support for liberation theology, is it just the general sentiment of caring for the poor and wishing poverty were eliminated you support, or does it extend to action? If so, what actions?
That's not necessarily a reasonable request Yi. The Nazis never openly called for the murder of Jews. Providing intellectual and theological ammunition for killers is not peaceful. Identifying a problem is, at least in utopian or idealistic ways of thinking, a call to arms in and of itself.
As for Liberation Theology, my main issue with it is that it is Theology.
Venezuela has been addressing the injustices of the economical system for more than a decade now without religious overtures. I think the Pope just wants to jump in on that success story and steal some of the fame for himself!
Quote from: Viking on February 26, 2014, 03:12:19 AM
That's not necessarily a reasonable request Yi. The Nazis never openly called for the murder of Jews. Providing intellectual and theological ammunition for killers is not peaceful. Identifying a problem is, at least in utopian or idealistic ways of thinking, a call to arms in and of itself.
As for Liberation Theology, my main issue with it is that it is Theology.
I am shocked, shocked to read that.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 26, 2014, 12:06:29 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 25, 2014, 11:48:18 PM
I'm concerned about religious organizations acting in overtly political fashions as I've concerns about their pernicious effects.
Lolz, like helping teh poors.
Seedy's peeps:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reportero24.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2Fla-piedrita-23.jpg&hash=60a738c32afe1f97ccadb9b2db8837c0e5cc17e1)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maduradas.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2FBdqUY8HCAAAZLzE.jpg&hash=4f820bb7cf8cc1f2fb32f3f3bf09632f58cc25bf)
Another benefit of Ratzinger's time: making liberation theology orthodox. More later.
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 26, 2014, 10:27:35 AM
Another benefit of Ratzinger's time: making liberation theology orthodox. More later.
I would be interested to read your view
The present pope is scum.
I can't imagine why liberation theology, per se, would be controversial in the Catholic Church or anywhere else. There would be few people, indeed, that would openly argue that the poor, and the rest of society, would not be better off if one could wave a magic wand and eliminate poverty. Absent that, few would openly argue that the poor don't deserve respect. In that sense, Liberation Theology is merely a series of tautologies, with the added proviso that God thinks that way, too.
As Yi notes, the public controversy comes not from Liberation Theology, but from some of the concrete plans and actions that are justified in the name of liberation theology. I don't see anything by Gutierrez engaging in any really controversial proposals along those lines.
Now, clearly, LT is controversial in the Catholic Church, but that seems to be for reasons that only catholic theologians are in a position to understand. What little I have read on the theological debate about the validity of LT itself seems to me to be two sides talking past each other.
So if I get this right, this movement was born during the spread of communism in Latin America.
A movement uniting the two prevailing beliefs there, namely:
-Catholicism
-solving economic problems by robbing non-poors at gunpoint
And an Argentinian Pope is making this sorta' mainstream in the Vatican.
This thread is full of shocking news. :P
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2014, 12:19:55 PMI just don't get what is the big deal here, like grumbler.
Some people feel that government policy should be focused on alleviating poverty. Other people feel that government policy should not, perhaps because they feel it is inconvenient, because they prefer the money being spent on something that benefits them more directly, or because they feel it is somehow immoral to help the poor
Liberation theology - as I understand it - states that helping the poor is moral for Catholics, and goes further by saying that not doing so is a sin.
Given that plenty of people - some of them Christians, some of them on this very board - feel that leaving poverty as it is is perfectly acceptable, putting th needs of the poor back into focus is significant.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 25, 2014, 11:04:54 PM
This appears to be a big shift in the Vatican. Although Liberation Theology has been around, particularly in the Americas, for some time Rome has given it a cold shoulder. Up until now.
I don't think there's really a massive shift here.
I think there's two strands of liberation theology. One is perhaps best represented by Leonardo Boff (in whom Francis is interested and has asked for his thoughts on theology of the environment) which was and is incompatible with Catholic teaching and chose not to be corrected by Ratzinger. The other was less problematic and was able to be easily corrected. Gutierrez, unlike Boff, remains a priest and a teacher of Catholic theology, in a Catholic university (albeit Notre Dame) and only had to amend his book, mostly in the introduction. He was never censured by the Vatican because his teaching was, broadly, orthodox.
But there's been a revival of interest in part I think because of a more assertive Latin American church that takes pride in their greatest theological innovators. Also I think removed from the heat of the 60s and 70s there has been more interest in liberation theology in Europe. Cardinal Muller who is editing the authorised single volume edition of Benedict's work and is a great friend of Benedict, and was head of the CDF in Benedict's Pontificate, is also a great friend of Gutierrez and has written two or three books with him. The two things aren't contradictions. Personally I'd be surprised if Benedict and Gutierrez haven't spoken to each other and exchanged letters, especially given that Benedict has done this extensively with Hans Kung who's far more heterodox (and a far lesser theologian).
However I think there are two important ways in which Francis is 'changing the Church'. The first is that he's the first post-Conciliar Pope. Every Pontificate since John XXIII has ultimately been about how to interpret Vatican II. The Popes were either major protagonists in the Council - Paul VI - or defined then and since by correct understanding of it - Benedict XVI. Francis is the first Pope who had nothing to do with the Council and was ordained after the Council. It's settled for him. So I think for him and his successors there's going to be a lot less arguing over hermeneutics and lacunae of the Council.
Secondly he is probably the most famous and prominent voice of the developing world in the world right now. I think it's unlikely that we'll have a European Pope for a while so the Church's focus is going to move inevitably from issues quite high up Maslow's pyramid, to ones lower down. The best comparison I can think of is John Paul II. Everyone knew the Church's view on Communism but JPII was able to embody that and make it far more of a priority and far more real. I think Francis (and likely his successors) will do the same with the Church's social teaching, because they are the biggest global voice from the 'global south'.
Everyone knows Benedict said things like this 'it is necessary not only to relieve the gravest needs but to go to their roots, proposing measures that will give social, political and economic structures a more equitable and solidaristic configuration.' But it's rather more urgent from a South American Pope.
QuoteWouldn't be the first time. Leon XIII practically retracted everything his predecessor Pius IX had declared forbidden in the Syllabus of Errors.
This is a great comparison. Leo XIII didn't retract that at all and was just as intransigent, if more successful. But his style was totally different. Pius IX was all populism and the common touch while Leo XIII was intellectual and withdrawn.
A lot of this talk about Francis isn't because he's saying anything different, but because he's a charming, gregarious guy with a great turn of phrase while Benedict's a shy, awkward, German theology professor.
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2014, 12:07:10 PM
So if I get this right, this movement was born during the spread of communism U.S.-funded rise in right-wing government human rights abuses in Latin America.
QuoteA movement uniting the two prevailing beliefs there, namely:
-Catholicism
-solving economic problems by robbing non-poors at gunpoint
Lulz, no, doesn't look like you got it right at all.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
Given that plenty of people - some of them Christians, some of them on this very board - feel that leaving poverty as it is is perfectly acceptable, putting th needs of the poor back into focus is significant.
Who? I want names!
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
Some people feel that government policy should be focused on alleviating poverty. Other people feel that government policy should not, perhaps because they feel it is inconvenient, because they prefer the money being spent on something that benefits them more directly, or because they feel it is somehow immoral to help the poor
Yeah. I find the culture war in the North American Church tedious beyond words (luckily so does the Vatican which is why they're focusing on the Latino population :lol:) but I think there is something extraordinary that someone could talk at length about Catholic social teaching, subsidiarity and then have the politics of Rand Paul. It happens too often in the thickets of the right-wing US Catholic press.
QuoteLiberation theology - as I understand it - states that helping the poor is moral for Catholics, and goes further by saying that not doing so is a sin.
It goes further than that. That and the preferential option for the poor (and the young) is a mainstream Catholic teaching. I mean this is from Ratzinger's correction of liberation theology:
QuoteThis warning should in no way be interpreted as a disavowal of all those who want to respond generously and with an authentic evangelical spirit to the "preferential option for the poor." It should not at all serve as an excuse for those who maintain the attitude of neutrality and indifference in the face of the tragic and pressing problems of human misery and injustice. It is, on the contrary, dictated by the certitude that the serious ideological deviations which it points out tends inevitably to betray the cause of the poor. More than ever, it is important that numerous Christians, whose faith is clear and who are committed to live the Christian life in its fullness, become involved in the struggle for justice, freedom, and human dignity because of their love for their disinherited, oppressed, and persecuted brothers and sisters. More than ever, the Church intends to condemn abuses, injustices, and attacks against freedom, wherever they occur and whoever commits them. She intends to struggle, by her own means, for the defense and advancement of the rights of mankind, especially of the poor.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
Given that plenty of people - some of them Christians, some of them on this very board - feel that leaving poverty as it is is perfectly acceptable, putting th needs of the poor back into focus is significant.
Who are these "plenty of people?" Can you name, say, five of them? Can you name three from this board?
Liberation Theology may involve this kind of strawman argument, but you should probably stick to saying what you think, and not telling us what others think.
Thanks Sheilbh, that was very helpful.
"Leaving poverty as it is" is a strange turn of phrase that I'm having trouble deciphering.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
"Leaving poverty as it is" is a strange turn of phrase that I'm having trouble deciphering.
I take it to mean "not wanting to help poor people at all" and I can't think of any Languishites that would apply to-- particularly when you narrow it down to the small number of Christians here.
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 01:08:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
"Leaving poverty as it is" is a strange turn of phrase that I'm having trouble deciphering.
I take it to mean "not wanting to help poor people at all" and I can't think of any Languishites that would apply to-- particularly when you narrow it down to the small number of Christians here.
Yi cares about the poor; after all, without the poor how can you benchmark the wealthy with any reasonable degree of confidence?
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 01:08:55 PM
I take it to mean "not wanting to help poor people at all" and I can't think of any Languishites that would apply to-- particularly when you narrow it down to the small number of Christians here.
My guess is it means not favoring income transfers and/or not favoring well intentioned progressive policies like raising the minimum wage and creating another dozen job training programs.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:12:07 PM
My guess is it means not favoring income transfers and/or not favoring well intentioned progressive policies like raising the minimum wage and creating another dozen job training programs.
I'm sure that's the deeper meaning, yes-- with the implication that it's impossible to help the poor without using the state to do it.
Subsidiarity = abolish Obamacare :lol:
A friend of mine once told me he believes in separation of church and state, and helping the poor is the church's job.
:lol:
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
helping the poor is moral for Catholics, and goes further by saying that not doing so is a sin.
apart from emphasizing the sin part, isn't this Christianity 101?
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2014, 01:33:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
helping the poor is moral for Catholics, and goes further by saying that not doing so is a sin.
apart from emphasizing the sin part, isn't this Christianity 101?
And, adding the sin part, it is Catholicism 101, methinks.
Quote from: grumbler on February 26, 2014, 12:59:08 PM
Who are these "plenty of people?" Can you name, say, five of them? Can you name three from this board?
Siege, Ed & Cal when trolling, Jacob's impression of Garbon, Seedy's impression of Yi. :showoff:
:lol:
Quote from: Tamas on February 26, 2014, 01:33:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 12:42:13 PM
helping the poor is moral for Catholics, and goes further by saying that not doing so is a sin.
apart from emphasizing the sin part, isn't this Christianity 101?
Yes. Which is why it's nice seeing it being emphasized compared to things like the American culture wars; it's also a nice contrast to things like prosperity theology.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
"Leaving poverty as it is" is a strange turn of phrase that I'm having trouble deciphering.
Shorthand for relying on the following two mechanisms to address poverty:
- the shittiness of being poor to motivate people to escape poverty through individual effort;
- deregulated Capitalism to provide general economic growth, improving the standard of living of everyone, including the poor.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:05:14 PM
Yes. Which is why it's nice seeing it being emphasized compared to things like the American culture wars;
The "be nice to others & help poor people" message has been emphasized all along. It just doesn't usually tend to make headlines for some reason.
Quoteit's also a nice contrast to things like prosperity theology.
First I've ever heard of that term.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:18:59 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
"Leaving poverty as it is" is a strange turn of phrase that I'm having trouble deciphering.
Shorthand for relying on the following two mechanisms to address poverty:
Sounds more like it'd be shorthand for not wanting to do anything to address poverty.
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:34:51 PM
First I've ever heard of that term.
Prosperity theology is the teaching that wealth is a sign of God's favor; if you're rich, God really loves you. If you're not, God doesn't love you as much.
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:34:51 PMThe "be nice to others & help poor people" message has been emphasized all along. It just doesn't usually tend to make headlines for some reason.
It's making headlines with this Pope, in contrast to the previous one; which is one of the things I like about him.
QuoteFirst I've ever heard of that term.
You're probably familiar with Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts, at least by reputation? If you care, the wikipedia article seems decent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:36:07 PMSounds more like it'd be shorthand for not wanting to do anything to address poverty.
Well, yes. That's kind of my point.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:41:32 PM
You're probably familiar with Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts, at least by reputation? If you care, the wikipedia article seems decent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
Ah, got it. Bleh to that as well.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:42:19 PM
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:36:07 PMSounds more like it'd be shorthand for not wanting to do anything to address poverty.
Well, yes. That's kind of my point.
Then why not state that up front?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:38:13 PM
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:34:51 PM
First I've ever heard of that term.
Prosperity theology is the teaching that wealth is a sign of God's favor; if you're rich, God really loves you. If you're not, God doesn't love you as much.
That reminds me of an entry from Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary"
RICHES, n.
A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."
John D. Rockefeller
The reward of toil and virtue.
J.P. Morgan
The sayings of many in the hands of one.
Eugene Debs
To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels that he can add nothing of value.Did the "Prosperity theology" of Rockefeller survive the Gilded Age? I don't think I've encountered it anywhere else. :unsure:
Edit: Written before Jacob's post. I had no idea what Oral Roberts' theology was. :Embarrass:
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:44:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:41:32 PM
You're probably familiar with Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts, at least by reputation? If you care, the wikipedia article seems decent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
Ah, got it. Bleh to that as well.
On that, at least, we're in accord :cheers:
Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2014, 04:44:46 PMThen why not state that up front?
Because I think some people dress their unwillingness to address poverty up in those points and claim it's the best way to help the poor.
Quote from: Savonarola on February 26, 2014, 04:45:07 PM
Did the "Prosperity theology" of Rockefeller survive the Gilded Age? I don't think I've encountered it anywhere else. :unsure:
I've read an article or two on it. Certainly not met anyone who professed the creed.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:46:25 PM
Because I think some people dress their unwillingness to address poverty up in those points and claim it's the best way to help the poor.
By this logic Deng Xiao Ping was not "addressing poverty" and "leaving poverty as it is" when he started China moving towards a market economy.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:48:33 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 26, 2014, 04:45:07 PM
Did the "Prosperity theology" of Rockefeller survive the Gilded Age? I don't think I've encountered it anywhere else. :unsure:
I've read an article or two on it. Certainly not met anyone who professed the creed.
I have run into it quite a bit around here. It also seems to be a pretty constant theme of all tele evangelists. I find it odd that you have never been exposed to notion that being successful or rich is a sign of God's favour other than the couple of articles you have read.
Well we are doing things to address poverty. That's the way it currently is.
I'm staying out of this thread.
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2014, 05:04:03 PM
I'm staying out of this thread.
After being named one of the five I should think so.
Five what? I'm curious now. :)
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2014, 05:08:01 PM
Five what? I'm curious now. :)
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 26, 2014, 02:48:13 PM
Quote from: grumbler on February 26, 2014, 12:59:08 PM
Who are these "plenty of people?" Can you name, say, five of them? Can you name three from this board?
Siege, Ed & Cal when trolling, Jacob's impression of Garbon, Seedy's impression of Yi. :showoff:
Just for that, I'm buying a boat.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:58:14 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 04:46:25 PM
Because I think some people dress their unwillingness to address poverty up in those points and claim it's the best way to help the poor.
By this logic Deng Xiao Ping was not "addressing poverty" and "leaving poverty as it is" when he started China moving towards a market economy.
No.
I'm not dismissing the importance of Capitalist motivators in generating wealth or in contributing to the elimination of poverty. I'm critiquing relying solely on those motivators. More specifically, I'm critiquing claiming that those motivators are sufficient and justified because they help the poor when the person in question stands to gain more from them than the poor people they're allegedly arguing for.
On a personal note, I'm most certainly in favour of growing the economy through free markets (as opposed to planned economies), enabling entrepreneurship, and minimizing bureaucratic clientelism; contrary to what you seem to imply. What I reject is the notion that the pure pursuit of shareholder value is the best remedy for poverty.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 26, 2014, 05:06:11 PMAfter being named one of the five I should think so.
That's on Teach, not me.
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2014, 05:12:12 PM
Just for that, I'm buying a boat.
"If it floats, flies or fucks, it's cheaper to rent." :P
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 05:15:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 26, 2014, 05:06:11 PMAfter being named one of the five I should think so.
That's on Teach, not me.
It's on Ed. Make a few hundred remarks disparaging the poors and you get a reputation for it. :lol:
You're contradicting yourself Jacob. AFAIK Deng didn't increase a minimum wage, or institute a food stamp program, or subsidized health insurance, or anything that could remotely be considered "not solely relying on the unfettered capitalist something something." By that earlier definition he did not "address poverty."
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:48:33 PM
I've read an article or two on it. Certainly not met anyone who professed the creed.
It's big among televangelists and African churches.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 26, 2014, 05:20:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 05:15:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 26, 2014, 05:06:11 PMAfter being named one of the five I should think so.
That's on Teach, not me.
It's on Ed. Make a few hundred remarks disparaging the poors and you get a reputation for it. :lol:
I'm allowed. I was a poor once.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 05:20:54 PM
You're contradicting yourself Jacob. AFAIK Deng didn't increase a minimum wage, or institute a food stamp program, or subsidized health insurance, or anything that could remotely be considered "not solely relying on the unfettered capitalist something something." By that earlier definition he did not "address poverty."
I'm 100% confident that Deng's China had a number of redistributive programs in place.
I think you're attempting to read to universal a meaning into my point (coincidentally making it easier to dismiss). I certainly agree that in the context of China that market reforms were key to drastically reducing poverty; coincidentally, that was the opposite of leaving poverty as it was in the local context. My "leaving things as they are" breakdown was aimed at a more local context on this board. The point I take from liberation theology is to look for social and structural changes that can address the needs of the poor, and to place that as very high priority, rather than to agitate for a specific point along the redistribution-vs-free-market scale where you seem to want to pin me down - or, as you put it merely "wish that things were better for the poor" while carrying on as usual.
I think Brazil is striking a reasonable balance between market reforms growing the economy and allowing opportunities for individual wealth accumulation on one hand, and targeted redistributive programs such as Bolsa Familia on the other.
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 05:48:42 PM
I think Brazil is striking a reasonable balance between market reforms growing the economy and allowing opportunities for individual wealth accumulation on one hand, and targeted redistributive programs such as Bolsa Familia on the other.
Brazil's interesting because their economy has been struggling (for Brazil) recently but the government's still broadly pretty popular. I've read articles suggesting that that's basically because the economy's not doing so well, but there's redistribution that's working. Extreme poverty is being reduced and the middle class are still growing.
Also the impression I get is that for Brazil Dilma's government is not that corrupt.
QuoteMy "leaving things as they are" breakdown was aimed at a more local context on this board. The point I take from liberation theology is to look for social and structural changes that can address the needs of the poor
Incidentally this was, from the Vatican's perspective, a big problem with liberation theology especially the more extreme type. It talked a lot about 'structural' or 'social sin'. From an orthodox Catholic view sin is individual. You cannot propose that we need to address social sin before it is possible to address individual sinners, or that if you eliminated those 'social sins' you would create a more sinless new man.
For the Church the root of evil isn't social or economic structures but in the freely made choices of men and the solution isn't to overthrow those social sins (though capitalist society is disordered) but to convert the men to love their neighbour.
Not that Ratzinger was indifferent to the origins of liberation theology:
QuoteIn certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order. The recognition of injustice is accompanied by a pathos which borrows its language from Marxism, wrongly presented as though it were scientific language.
Because of the Marxist analysis, which is viewed as 'science' the fact of injustice and inequality is less important than class struggle - with all that implies.
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 26, 2014, 05:51:35 PM
You cannot propose that we need to address social sin before it is possible to address individual sinners, or that if you eliminated those 'social sins' you would create a more sinless new man.
Man you sure hear this view among leftwing types a lot. That somehow if we removed whatever the bugbear is, the Patriarchy or Neo-Liberalism or whatever, that people would cease to be petty and cruel.
Quote from: Valmy on February 26, 2014, 06:08:54 PMMan you sure hear this view among leftwing types a lot. That somehow if we removed whatever the bugbear is, the Patriarchy or Neo-Liberalism or whatever, that people would cease to be petty and cruel.
In this case it was explicitly inspired by Marxism.
But you hear it on the right too, I blame too many people reading Ayn Rand. I suppose the slight difference is the lefty idealist thinks if you create the perfect world everyone would be a bit more like them. On the right people think if they created some minimalist meritocracy they would, inevitably, be one of the meritorious.
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 26, 2014, 06:16:44 PM
But you hear it on the right too, I blame too many people reading Ayn Rand. I suppose the slight difference is the lefty idealist thinks if you create the perfect world everyone would be a bit more like them. On the right people think if they created some minimalist meritocracy they would, inevitably, be one of the meritorious.
:lol:
Thats a nice way of putting it
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2014, 05:48:42 PM
I'm 100% confident that Deng's China had a number of redistributive programs in place.
:lol: Excellent use of the passive. Your language is getting lawyerly in your old age.
QuoteI think you're attempting to read to universal a meaning into my point (coincidentally making it easier to dismiss). I certainly agree that in the context of China that market reforms were key to drastically reducing poverty; coincidentally, that was the opposite of leaving poverty as it was in the local context. My "leaving things as they are" breakdown was aimed at a more local context on this board. The point I take from liberation theology is to look for social and structural changes that can address the needs of the poor, and to place that as very high priority, rather than to agitate for a specific point along the redistribution-vs-free-market scale where you seem to want to pin me down - or, as you put it merely "wish that things were better for the poor" while carrying on as usual.
I'm not trying to pin you down on anything. You explicitly said that letting the market work just doesn't cut it.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 06:43:45 PMI'm not trying to pin you down on anything. You explicitly said that letting the market work just doesn't cut it.
You've shifted the just, and substituted a "letting" for a "relying solely on" providing a different meaning.
I think that relying just on the market working doesn't cut it when it comes to addressing poverty. We should definitely let the market work, but for the market to provide the best results regarding poverty it needs good social policy along with it (and a proper regulatory framework, of course).
Why is communism so popular around the world, when all their social experiments have failed?
I don't understand. Why follow a failed ideology?
I mean, wasn't the failure of the Soviet Union enough?
Wasn't the Chinese conversion to State Capitalism under communist leadership the ultimate proof that communism and Marxism don't work?
Scandinavia hasn't failed.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 26, 2014, 02:48:13 PM
Siege, Ed & Cal when trolling, Jacob's impression of Garbon, Seedy's impression of Yi. :showoff:
Yes, correct, when trolling. When not trolling, I think the Church has an obligation to help the poor which it shares with all Christian organizations, Catholic or otherwise. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister and he and my grandmother spent a great deal of their lives helping the poor through stuff like Meals on Wheels, etc. I don't see how one can read the Bible and not realize that this is a central message of it.
That said, I definitely do not think the Church should ally itself with political movements, regardless of affiliation. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. My grandfather actually never voted because he felt he should not be involved in politics in any way, shape, or form.
Yes, Siege, Communism has failed and continues to fail, drastically and with great repercussions for the citizens of those afflicted countries.
Socialism, on the other hand, hasn't failed. As Teach notes, the Scandis seem to have hit on a formula that works well in small, homogeneous nations - a relatively free market by the standards of *any* communist country, funding an enormous safety net and array of public programs.
England has failed me however. What a nanny state shithole.
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2014, 08:48:47 PM
England has failed me however. What a nanny state shithole.
The English love to moralize; the Scandinavians don't seem to have quite such a pressure in that regard.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:38:13 PM
Prosperity theology is the teaching that wealth is a sign of God's favor; if you're rich, God really loves you. If you're not, God doesn't love you as much.
Who in the catholic Church has taught that? Sounds more Anglican than Catholic.
Quote from: Siege on February 26, 2014, 07:24:25 PM
Why is communism so popular around the world, when all their social experiments have failed?
It is not so much pro-Communism as against the current system they have.
Quote from: grumbler on February 26, 2014, 09:52:03 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 04:38:13 PM
Prosperity theology is the teaching that wealth is a sign of God's favor; if you're rich, God really loves you. If you're not, God doesn't love you as much.
Who in the catholic Church has taught that? Sounds more Anglican than Catholic.
Apparently the El Shaddai movement from the Phillippines has imported Prosperity Theology into the Catholic Church; and has grown outside of that country as well.
I don't think Prosperity Theology is particularly Anglican; my understanding is that it's more prevalent amongst (some) Charismatic and non-conformist protestant denominations.
Quote from: Siege on February 26, 2014, 07:24:25 PM
Why is communism so popular around the world, when all their social experiments have failed?
I don't understand. Why follow a failed ideology?
I mean, wasn't the failure of the Soviet Union enough?
Wasn't the Chinese conversion to State Capitalism under communist leadership the ultimate proof that communism and Marxism don't work?
Weren't you a big supporter of at least local socialism years ago?
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 26, 2014, 08:07:04 PM
Scandinavia hasn't failed.
Iceland is the poster child for casino banking
Norway is Kuwait
Sweden sold off Volvo to China
Socialism has failed, the reason Scandinavia hasn't is that the political discussion is about how much socialism the society can afford. Socialism isn't a viable alternative to capitalism, it's a good that must be paid for. All attempts at society wide socialism have failed because the only way to pay for that kind of socialism is by consuming societies capital to pay for it.
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
Quote from: Jacob on February 27, 2014, 02:13:51 AM
Apparently the El Shaddai movement from the Phillippines has imported Prosperity Theology into the Catholic Church; and has grown outside of that country as well.
I don't think Prosperity Theology is particularly Anglican; my understanding is that it's more prevalent amongst (some) Charismatic and non-conformist protestant denominations.
The only El Shaddai movement I can find reference to is Jewish. I don't understand how an unknown movement in the Philippines can be so influential that the overturning of their doctrine in favor of "liberation theology" can be worth notice.
And this is Catholic doctrine we are discussing, right? I mean, what the Pope says doesn't really impact "(some) Charismatic and non-conformist protestant denominations," does it?
So, again, if Catholic doctrine must be either "Liberation Theology" or "Prosperity Theology," and it isn't prosperity Theology, then is an embrace of Liberation Theology (defined as you have defined it here) any change at all?
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2014, 05:51:11 AM
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
Again, I think that it only matters in an intellectual sense unless you are Catholic; for you and me, Catholic theology is about as applicable as Norse or Babylonian theology. Still, the intellectual interest
should be there, given that it is nice to understand how other people think, so as to make their actions and decisions comprehensible.
Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2014, 10:05:51 AM
So, again, if Catholic doctrine must be either "Liberation Theology" or "Prosperity Theology,"
Who said Catholic doctrine must be one or the other? By the way Prosperity theology is most prominant in US televangislists it has very little to do with Anglican belief as you first asserted.
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2014, 05:51:11 AM
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
The Catholic faith is still influential despite what Grumbler might assert and so what the Pope says still matters to millions of people.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 10:28:51 AM
Who said Catholic doctrine must be one or the other? By the way Prosperity theology is most prominant in US televangislists it has very little to do with Anglican belief as you first asserted.
I asked what liberation theology was, and was told that it was "a nice contrast to things like prosperity theology." No other competing theologies have been mentioned here, which is why i am wondering why anyone would think the pope's apparent acceptance of liberation theology marks any change.
And, btw, you might want to practice that reading comprehension. I nowhere asserted that Prosperity Theology had much to do with Anglicanism. I tongue-in-cheek said that it "sounds more Anglican than Catholic." What TV evangelists have to do with the Pope escapes me.
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2014, 05:51:11 AM
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
The Catholic faith is still influential despite what cRaZy CaNuCk might assert and so what the Pope says still matters to millions of people, as I have pointed out above.
Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2014, 10:49:01 AM
I asked what liberation theology was, and was told that it was "a nice contrast to things like prosperity theology."
Even you, in your height of rhetoric, must recognize that a "nice contrast" does not mean the only other alternative. Further, I am shocked, shocked I say, that you would make such an error of logic to attempt to make a point.
Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2014, 10:55:23 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2014, 05:51:11 AM
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
The Catholic faith is still influential despite what cRaZy CaNuCk might assert and so what the Pope says still matters to millions of people, as I have pointed out above.
As usual you miss the point. I think it is on purpose because you cannot be that stupid. You asserted that what Catholics think is no more important to you than some dead religion other than out of some curiousity as to how they think. But I have to think you cannot be so daft as not to notice the impact of religious believe has on the lifes of the non religious. Your country is perhaps the best example of how religious views can influence the political process.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 11:03:09 AM
As usual you miss the point. I think it is on purpose because you cannot be that stupid. You asserted that what Catholics think is no more important to you than some dead religion other than out of some curiousity as to how they think. But I have to think you cannot be so daft as not to notice the impact of religious believe has on the lifes of the non religious. Your country is perhaps the best example of how religious views can influence the political process.
As usual, you fail basic reading comprehension. I don't think it is deliberate because maybe you can be that stupid. I asserted that Catholic doctrine doesn't apply to Tamas or myself any more than doctrine of other religions, because we are not religious and so don't have to follow such doctrine. I then pointed out that we should be intellectually interested in Catholic doctrine because it helps us understand why believers in said doctrine decide and act as they do. You now argue that I am wrong because... and then repeat my second point back to me as though you had just invented it yourself. I am sorry, but lack of reading ability on your part does not entitle you to steal
my arguments!
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 10:59:34 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2014, 10:49:01 AM
I asked what liberation theology was, and was told that it was "a nice contrast to things like prosperity theology."
Even you, in your height of rhetoric, must recognize that a "nice contrast" does not mean the only other alternative. Further, I am shocked, shocked I say, that you would make such an error of logic to attempt to make a point.
I notice that you snipped the rest of my argument and now argue based on the absence of things I said but you snipped! I am shocked that you would stoop to such intellectual dishonesty... not.
Quote from: Tamas on February 27, 2014, 05:51:11 AM
So again, what is the big deal here? Rhetorics are worthless: all religions are full of messages of peace and dignity and helping your fellow man, and none of that stops people from being selfish, greedy, and violent in the name of those religions. So why should we care for this liberation theology thing?
As I said earlier I think that the Church is unlikely to have another European Pope for a long time. Instead we are likely to see Pope's from the developing world (where the Church is young, growing and vital). Given the global media attention on a Pope, especially when they're charming, that will make the Pope the loudest, most prominent voice of the developing world and one with a particular focus on fighting inequality and highlighting the dangers of unrestrained capitalism. It's like the focus JPII was able to provide for anti-Communists.
Whether the Pope matters to millions of people as in practicing Catholics I think is less important than the fact that there's going to be a very loud global advocate for the poor. Again it's something the Church has always done but I think it mattered less when the Pope was JPII (no-one cared about his warning to Poland not to rush into unrestrained capitalism) or Benedict (no-one cared that he's the first Pope to try a theology of the environment) because it wasn't their personal brand. I think we're going to have Argentine, Brazilian, Filipino and Ghanian Popes in the near future for whom fighting poverty will be key to their identity.
It'll be a good thing for global discourse.
Quote from: grumbler on February 27, 2014, 11:25:20 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 11:03:09 AM
As usual you miss the point. I think it is on purpose because you cannot be that stupid. You asserted that what Catholics think is no more important to you than some dead religion other than out of some curiousity as to how they think. But I have to think you cannot be so daft as not to notice the impact of religious believe has on the lifes of the non religious. Your country is perhaps the best example of how religious views can influence the political process.
As usual, you fail basic reading comprehension.
I will try to type slowly for you. Please explain how the millions of people who might be effected by this Pope and the Pope who will follow him with whom you will potentially interact or will potentially interact with the people with whom you interact has the same impact as the Norse religion on your life.
I can't wait to hear the pearls of wisdom that will flow on this one.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 12:31:04 PMI can't wait to hear the pearls of wisdom that will flow on this one.
I can.
:lol:
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 27, 2014, 12:31:04 PM
I will try to type slowly for you. Please explain how the millions of people who might be effected by this Pope and the Pope who will follow him with whom you will potentially interact or will potentially interact with the people with whom you interact has the same impact as the Norse religion on your life.
I can't wait to hear the pearls of wisdom that will flow on this one.
I 'l l t r y t o t y p e t h i s s l o w l y e n o u g h t h a t e v e n y o u c a n g e t i t. I d o n 't h a v e t o e x p l a i n p o s i t i o n s t h a t a r e n o t m i n e.
A good piece on Francis's first year. This is a little too harsh on Benedict. I think many of his criticisms of US conservatives are true, but could also be flipped and aimed at US liberal Catholics. I just think Americans love culture wars for some reason.
QuotePope Francis' First Year
Michael Sean Winters | Mar. 5, 2014 Distinctly Catholic
One week from today will mark the first anniversary of the election of Pope Francis. It has been quite a year and the anniversary invites us to look back and examine some of the narratives that have emerged, trying to discern the true significance of this extraordinary event in the life of the Church that is the pontificate of Francis.
The first, and most expected, lens through which Francis has been viewed is the degree to which his pontificate represents continuity or discontinuity from that of Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II. This lens is bifocal and has two key components, theology and papal leadership.
In terms of theology, there is obvious continuity between Francis and his predecessors. One of the dominant themes of his first year has been that the Church cannot be "obsessed" with issues of sexual morality and that we Catholics are called to create a "culture of encounter." Yet, it was Pope Benedict who, in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, wrote these words:
Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life" (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might" (6:4–5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29–31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere "command"; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.
Pope John Paul II was deeply committed to the proposition that the reduction of religion to ethics was the heart of Christianity's problems in the 20th century and it was John Paul II who embraced Fr. Luigi Giussani who made the "culture of encounter" central to the spirituality of the group he founded, Communione e Liberazione.
So, let us stipulate that there is great theological continuity between Francis and his predecessors on this central theological question of what the Church is and how she should interact with the world. But, let us also stipulate that many on the left stopped listening to John Paul II and never really cared to listen to Benedict, and so these insights were ignored. And not just by the Catholic Left. Let us stipulate, also, that the fans of John Paul II and Benedict in the United States, while they would not have contradicted their heroes, they were quite content to ignore what they said. Catholic conservatives in the United States passed over those words about Christianity not being an ethical choice or a lofty idea, and they insisted that to be a good Catholic, one must insist on five, and only five, non-negotiable items in the political life of the nation, all of which had to do with the neuralgic issues of human sexuality, and all of which neatly cohered with the agenda of today's Republican Party.
Similarly, Catholic conservatives overlooked Pope John Paul II's repeated insistence on the rights of workers to unionize and, instead, focused on a couple of lines in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus annus about capitalism inviting human creativity and, just so, being a good thing. And, we all recall George Weigel advising us to read Pope Benedict's encyclical on social justice, Caritas in Veritate, with red and gold pens, the red highlighting the parts that Weigel contended came from the bureaucracy at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and which should be dismissed, and the gold highlighting those parts Weigel believed came from Benedict himself. In all my years of Vatican-watching, and reading Vatican-watchers, that essay by Weigel remains the height of hubris. With Pope Francis, who is as often as not speaking ex tempore and not from a text, and whose language is more earthy and accessible than that of his predecessors, conservative commentators cannot wash away, or discount, or trivialize Francis' commitment to social justice.
This leads to a point of obvious discontinuity. Yes, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict were committed to the Church's social justice teachings. But, Pope Francis has placed those teachings front and center. If the Church's commitment to the poor, its historic and well-founded suspicions of modern consumer capitalism, and its moral horror at the gross income inequality that plagues our planet and each of the societies within that planet, were embraced by previous popes, they have been made the leitmotif of this first pontiff from the global south. And, precisely because his words are so accessible, there is no spinning them into an apology for capitalism. This, more than anything, accounts for the excitement Pope Francis has generated on the Catholic Left. For years, we have heard ourselves labeled "social justice Catholics" with the knowledge the label was hurled as an epithet. Now, we are the ultramontanes. It feels good.
Let us attend to another point of discontinuity. It can be fairly said that in the pontificate of John Paul II, pastoral theology was made to be a subset of moral theology. Responding to what he perceived as theological chaos in the post-Vatican II era, rightly or wrongly, and I think there was a bit of both, John Paul II came down hard on those who were trying to push the envelope on matters of moral theology. This is not the place to rehearse my suspicion of much so-called academic theology in the post-Vatican II era. Suffice it to say that I was not entirely unsympathetic with John Paul's concern, although I always felt his methods were heavy-handed and that he and the curia he led failed to adequately engage those they suspected of going too far. No one could credibly claim that there was not a large measure of old-style, Polish clerical authoritarianism in John Paul's character.
Benedict's encyclicals were more pastoral, which was strange seeing as he, not John Paul II, was the systematic theologian. A theologian friend of mine, who is quite conservative and also quite fond of Benedict, nonetheless thought his encyclicals did not measure up to those of John Paul II. Looking back, we can say that both men in different ways prepared the ground for Francis. John Paul II laid down a firm, maybe too firm, theological foundation, one that need not be revisited anytime soon. Benedict adopted a more pastoral approach to his teaching office.
Under Francis, it can be said that moral theology has been returned to its proper place as a subset of pastoral theology, not the other way round. Indeed, you could say that one of the principal differences between Francis and his predecessors is that he has placed far less emphasis on his job as teacher of the faith and far more emphasis on his job as pastor of the flock. A good pastor does not spread foolishness or falsehoods, to be sure. But, a good pastor also understands, to use Cardinal Sean O'Malley's memorable phrase, that "the truth is not a wet rag we throw in other people's faces." Again, I do not think Benedict treated the truth as a rag to throw in other people's faces, but his acolytes in the U.S. surely did.
There was a funny instance of cultural misunderstanding in December when Time magazine announced that Pope Francis was to be their "Person of the Year" that illustrated the degree to which conservative American Catholics had succeeded in setting the terms within which the Church is understood. Time originally ran a caption to one of their photos that read, "First Jesuit Pontiff won hearts and headlines with his common touch and rejection of church dogma and luxury." The pope did not, of course, reject any dogmas of the Church. Indeed, just the opposite. When a conservative cultural commentator on Fox News says that the Church's teaching against artificial contraception is a "core doctrine" of the Church, they do not know what they are talking about. The core dogmas of the Church are set forth in the Creed and have to do with the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ's passion, death and resurrection. The mercy of God is a central dogma of the Church, and Pope Francis has placed it back at the center of our self-understanding as Catholics. Yet, the editors of Time could not see that and who can blame them when only modern day Jansenists are seen as faithful Catholics.
Pope Francis has repeatedly demonstrated his aversion to wet rags. Nothing he has said detracts an iota from the content of the Church's teachings on this moral issue or that. But, he is a pastor, first and foremost and he was, for many years, a pastor in a country where unspeakable poverty is the norm, not the exception. The simplicity of his personal life, about which I will write more tomorrow, lends credibility to his call for the Church to be "a poor Church, for the poor." Benedict, I am sure, cared about the poor but his personal tastes tended to the Baroque, and words spoken on behalf of the poor by a man clad in layers of silk, sitting on a golden throne, well, the message did not always come through. With Francis, he has placed service to the poor at the center of what it means to be a Catholic, which is where it has always belonged. Caring for the poor never made the list of "non-negotiable" items articulated by conservative U.S. Catholics, but shame on them and blessings on Francis for reminding the entire Christian community, and the world beyond, that serving the poor is the heart of the Gospel. It is what Jesus did and, just so, it is what His followers must also do. And Francis understands his role as leader of the Church to set the example.
Finally, it must be said that Francis appears to be a better judge of character than his two immediate predecessors. John Paul II was unable to grasp that the cult of Fr. Marcial Maciel was so sugar-coated, there had to be something rotten underneath. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of Maciel's depravities, John Paul II's confidants kept everything hidden. He also staffed the curia with men who indulged, or connived at, or ignored, rank financial corruption that matched the moral corruption of the sex abuse scandals. Benedict appeared to want to change that culture of corruption – he sacked Maciel, for example – but he chose assistants who were unequal to the task. And, in an understandable effort to make an accommodation for those who missed the traditional Latin Mass, he unwittingly started a movement, an ideology, that threatens the unity of the Church.
The personnel changes wrought by Francis indicate he is more discerning. His recent selection of Cardinal George Pell to lead the reform of the Vatican finances is brilliant: Cardinal O'Malley said he told the pope that he needed a rugby player for the job, and he found one. Similarly, replacing Cardinals Raymond Burke and Justin Rigali on the Congregation for Bishops with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, is a strong indicator that Pope Francis wants to place men he can count on at the dicastry charged with selecting the next generation of leaders for the Church. The new Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, is almost universally respected and Francis' other key appointments have been similarly well received. Changing the culture of the curia will not be easy, it will require new personnel as well as new policies and new structures, but Francis appears undaunted in trying to effect such a change.
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
You know the world is going in a bad direction when gays and socialists support the Pope. :weep:
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:55:00 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
That's true. But as Pope, you are sort of expected to be someone who talks. That's in the job description.
But I certainly agree that change has to be more than words. Francis seems different from his predecessor in a good way, and more like an action Pope like John Paul II.
Tamas is so edgy.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 05:06:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:55:00 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
That's true. But as Pope, you are sort of expected to be someone who talks. That's in the job description.
But I certainly agree that change has to be more than words. Francis seems different from his predecessor in a good way, and more like an action Pope like John Paul II.
So he is doing what he is supposed to be doing for his well-paying job. Oh wow, much kudos, so rad! :P
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 11, 2014, 05:11:43 AM
Tamas is so edgy.
I am irritated by how much popularity a Pope can get by shooting off lame buzzwords without doing anything. If he was a politician in a government (ie. much less power to actually do something about stuff than what he has as Pope) he would get criticism for the very same thing.
"oh look, the supposedly most Christian guy on Earth is telling Christian stuff! HOW CUTE!" :rolleyes:
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 05:25:31 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 11, 2014, 05:11:43 AM
Tamas is so edgy.
I am irritated by how much popularity a Pope can get by shooting off lame buzzwords without doing anything. If he was a politician in a government (ie. much less power to actually do something about stuff than what he has as Pope) he would get criticism for the very same thing.
"oh look, the supposedly most Christian guy on Earth is telling Christian stuff! HOW CUTE!" :rolleyes:
If that indeed is the case, it's a rather harsh indictment of how the Church has operated previously. And maybe it is.
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 05:25:31 AM
I am irritated by how much popularity a Pope can get by shooting off lame buzzwords without doing anything. If he was a politician in a government (ie. much less power to actually do something about stuff than what he has as Pope) he would get criticism for the very same thing.
"oh look, the supposedly most Christian guy on Earth is telling Christian stuff! HOW CUTE!" :rolleyes:
Somehow I think your irritation goes deeper than that.
God forbid that a guy who hundreds of millions of people look up to for counsel on how to live their lives makes public pronunciations about lifting your fellow man from poverty.
And heck, I'm far from being a fan of religion, but one can't forget that the church does carry on a lot of charity work, how can one accuse them of speaking against poverty but not acting on it?
EDIT: Me defending the Catholic Church, what is this place doing to me? <_<
Quote from: celedhring on March 11, 2014, 06:35:53 AM
God forbid that a guy who hundreds of millions of people look up to for counsel on how to live their lives makes public pronunciations about lifting your fellow man from poverty.
And heck, I'm far from being a fan of religion, but one can't forget that the church does carry on a lot of charity work, how can one accuse them of speaking against poverty but not acting on it?
EDIT: Me defending the Catholic Church, what is this place doing to me? <_<
What Pope has
not made public pronunciations about lifting you fellow man from poverty? Isn't that (and this so-called "liberation theology") a basic part of Catholic doctrine?
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor. From the outside, I don't see this pope as any different from his predecessors, except maybe for hair color (he's more grey than white).
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 05:29:57 AM
If that indeed is the case, it's a rather harsh indictment of how the Church has operated previously. And maybe it is.
Hmm
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbitchstolemyremote.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F06%2FThe-Borgias.jpg&hash=7af3a64e03f4d76eb7570b18e8d5cd22ee4ebaae)
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 07:04:24 AM
Quote from: celedhring on March 11, 2014, 06:35:53 AM
God forbid that a guy who hundreds of millions of people look up to for counsel on how to live their lives makes public pronunciations about lifting your fellow man from poverty.
And heck, I'm far from being a fan of religion, but one can't forget that the church does carry on a lot of charity work, how can one accuse them of speaking against poverty but not acting on it?
EDIT: Me defending the Catholic Church, what is this place doing to me? <_<
What Pope has not made public pronunciations about lifting you fellow man from poverty? Isn't that (and this so-called "liberation theology") a basic part of Catholic doctrine?
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor. From the outside, I don't see this pope as any different from his predecessors, except maybe for hair color (he's more grey than white).
Fair enough, but as the article says it's a matter of focus. One got the impression sometimes that to be a good Catholic it was enough to not use condoms and thinking gays should be cured, but this guy certainly has made some pretty public gestures and discourses about fighting poverty, certainly more so than the previous ones, and pretty clearly said that family morals have taken too much space in Catholic discourse these past times. If this permeates to the hundreds of millions of Catholics, or at least a fraction of them, it will be something good.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 11, 2014, 08:01:43 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 05:29:57 AM
If that indeed is the case, it's a rather harsh indictment of how the Church has operated previously. And maybe it is.
Hmm
I look forward to the holographs of St. Francis come 2459.
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 05:25:31 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 11, 2014, 05:11:43 AM
Tamas is so edgy.
I am irritated by how much popularity a Pope can get by shooting off lame buzzwords without doing anything. If he was a politician in a government (ie. much less power to actually do something about stuff than what he has as Pope) he would get criticism for the very same thing.
"oh look, the supposedly most Christian guy on Earth is telling Christian stuff! HOW CUTE!" :rolleyes:
:secret: He is a politician in government.
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:52:53 AM
You know the world is going in a bad direction when gays and socialists support the Pope. :weep:
The pope probably went to mass a few times and saw who the old supporters were. He decided to throw his lot in with the gays and socialists for a reason. :P
Quote from: alfred russel on March 11, 2014, 10:42:43 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:52:53 AM
You know the world is going in a bad direction when gays and socialists support the Pope. :weep:
The pope probably went to mass a few times and saw who the old supporters were. He decided to throw his lot in with the gays and socialists for a reason. :P
:lol:
Quote from: celedhring on March 11, 2014, 08:10:48 AM
Fair enough, but as the article says it's a matter of focus. One got the impression sometimes that to be a good Catholic it was enough to not use condoms and thinking gays should be cured, but this guy certainly has made some pretty public gestures and discourses about fighting poverty, certainly more so than the previous ones, and pretty clearly said that family morals have taken too much space in Catholic discourse these past times. If this permeates to the hundreds of millions of Catholics, or at least a fraction of them, it will be something good.
Fair enough, but a change of "focus" without a change of actions is pretty meaningless. And I very much doubt that the pope is actually saying that the church needs to de-emphasize family morals.
I think it is great that the Catholic Church has picked a non-European pope for a change, but I will believe he is significantly different when I see it. As Tamas noted, talk is cheap.
Unless it is birds, then talk is cheep.
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 07:04:24 AM
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor.
For example refusing to occupy the Apostolic Palace and staying in a single bedroom in a guest house instead? Or wearing a plain white cassock instead of an ermine lined red mozetta? Or driving around in a Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof popemobile? That kind of divesting?
Quote from: Gups on March 11, 2014, 01:22:34 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 07:04:24 AM
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor.
For example refusing to occupy the Apostolic Palace and staying in a single bedroom in a guest house instead? Or wearing a plain white cassock instead of an ermine lined red mozetta? Or driving around in a Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof popemobile? That kind of divesting?
And the Bishop, or whatever he was, the Pope busted for his extravagant life style.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 11, 2014, 01:36:57 PM
And the Bishop, or whatever he was, the Pope busted for his extravagant life style.
The Bishop of Limburg, wasn't it? With his gilded bathroom and whatnot.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 01:38:28 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 11, 2014, 01:36:57 PM
And the Bishop, or whatever he was, the Pope busted for his extravagant life style.
The Bishop of Limburg, wasn't it? With his gilded bathroom and whatnot.
Yeah, thats the one I am thinking of.
Quote from: Gups on March 11, 2014, 01:22:34 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 07:04:24 AM
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor.
For example refusing to occupy the Apostolic Palace and staying in a single bedroom in a guest house instead? Or wearing a plain white cassock instead of an ermine lined red mozetta? Or driving around in a Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof popemobile? That kind of divesting?
No, like
selling the Apostolic palace and the ermine lined red mozetta and the bulletproof popemobile (and the Vatican art collection and the church land holdings and the Vatican bank) and spending that money on the poor. "Divest" doesn't mean "not use for personal purposes."
That's one high bar for one Pope to pass.
Are you sure you're not related to Martin Luther, grumbler?
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 02:27:55 PM
Quote from: Gups on March 11, 2014, 01:22:34 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 07:04:24 AM
The proof of the pudding will be if this pope divests himself of all of those expensive trappings and divests the church of all the trappings of majesty in order to further serve the poor.
For example refusing to occupy the Apostolic Palace and staying in a single bedroom in a guest house instead? Or wearing a plain white cassock instead of an ermine lined red mozetta? Or driving around in a Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof popemobile? That kind of divesting?
No, like selling the Apostolic palace and the ermine lined red mozetta and the bulletproof popemobile (and the Vatican art collection and the church land holdings and the Vatican bank) and spending that money on the poor. "Divest" doesn't mean "not use for personal purposes."
You mean like selling the papal harley?
Pope Francis' Harley-Davidson Sells for $327,000 at Paris Auction
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/automobiles/pope-francis-harley-davidson-sells-for-327000-at-paris-auction.html
I'm not sure what could would come from selling the buildings in the Vatican. The Church is giant bureaucracy with hundreds of millions of, if not more, adherents (I think the official number is near or over 1 billion). It clearly needs plenty of infrastructure, buildings, etc. to accommodate the faithful, both present and future.
Selling off assets to temporarily give money to the needy sounds good in practice, but in reality is shortsighted and is worse in the long run. As one example, my local parish used to have an elementary school attached to it. The school had operated for over 50 years without any problems. It was the more modest Catholic parish of the two in the area, but it provided an affordable, parochial education to the community.
A new principal came in and decided to give out a ton of scholarships to make things easier for the current students. In doing so, he drained the endowment. The school quickly went under, and closed a few years ago. Now the neighborhood no longer has an affordable Catholic school. Parents who want their kids to have a Catholic education have to send them to the further away, more expensive school. While the principal's intentions were kind-hearted, ultimately it was bad for the community and for the members of the parish.
Are certain buildings and religious artifacts owned by the Church unnecessary and overly ritzy? Probably. Should the members of the Church bureaucracy live in luxury? No. On the other hand, the Church seems to believe that beautiful buildings and artifacts have spiritual value. And the current leaders of the Church have a responsibility to be responsible stewards so that the assets of the Church are available to future generations. The Church certainly spends a lot of money and effort on charitable efforts, and the leaders of the Church probably wouldn't be very good stewards if they auctioned off all the Church assets to temporarily give additional funds to the poor.
----
And as a converse to the above anecdote, the Catholic high school I attended is supported in part due to long standing real estate investments. In the 50's, the school moved from downtown out to the suburbs. The Jesuits purchased enough land for not only a high school, but also plenty of surrounding property. They ended up selling some of the extra land, but held onto certain tracts. The tracts they held onto were developed into office parks which generate rental income for the school. The rental income defrays the cost of attendance for low income students. Do office parks have anything to do with Catholicism? Of course not. But those assets directly benefit the needy and it would be silly to sell them off.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:50:08 PM
That's one high bar for one Pope to pass.
Are you sure you're not related to Martin Luther, grumbler?
I think Luther actually expected the clergy to live up to its preaching; he was a monk, himself.
I have no such delusions, but I will point out when the Pope has no clothes. I don't actually expect him to do what he claims that the Catholic Church should do. No pope ever has.
Are you sure you aren't related to the Virgin Mary, Norgy?
I think Norgy is related to the prodigal son. He once was lost, and now is found. :)
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 05:01:02 PM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:50:08 PM
That's one high bar for one Pope to pass.
Are you sure you're not related to Martin Luther, grumbler?
I think Luther actually expected the clergy to live up to its preaching; he was a monk, himself.
I have no such delusions, but I will point out when the Pope has no clothes. I don't actually expect him to do what he claims that the Catholic Church should do. No pope ever has.
Are you sure you aren't related to the Virgin Mary, Norgy?
But this time, the Pope actually is dressed, man.
In the off-chance I am related to the Virgin Mary, tell them I like my pasta al dente.
Quote from: stjaba on March 11, 2014, 05:00:37 PM
You mean like selling the papal harley?
No, since I don't believe there even IS a papal harley.
QuoteI'm not sure what could would come from selling the buildings in the Vatican. The Church is giant bureaucracy with hundreds of millions of, if not more, adherents (I think the official number is near or over 1 billion). It clearly needs plenty of infrastructure, buildings, etc. to accommodate the faithful, both present and future.
You are not sure what could come from selling buildings in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world? :huh:
I'll give you a hint: lots of m _ _ _ _ that could be used to carry out the pope's call for the church to be "poor among the poor.'
If the catholic church needs some HQ buildings, it could surely get them cheaper in another location, like Kigali.
QuoteSelling off assets to temporarily give money to the needy sounds good in practice, but in reality is shortsighted and is worse in the long run. As one example, my local parish used to have an elementary school attached to it. The school had operated for over 50 years without any problems. It was the more modest Catholic parish of the two in the area, but it provided an affordable, parochial education to the community.
A new principal came in and decided to give out a ton of scholarships to make things easier for the current students. In doing so, he drained the endowment. The school quickly went under, and closed a few years ago. Now the neighborhood no longer has an affordable Catholic school. Parents who want their kids to have a Catholic education have to send them to the further away, more expensive school. While the principal's intentions were kind-hearted, ultimately it was bad for the community and for the members of the parish.
I have no idea what you anecdote has to do with my point. The Church property in Rome (and elsewhere in the world) could be turned into a lot of cash to help a lot of poor people. That's what the pope claims he wants to do. I don't think the pope had anything to do with the school that closed near you.
QuoteAre certain buildings and religious artifacts owned by the Church unnecessary and overly ritzy? Probably. Should the members of the Church bureaucracy live in luxury? No. On the other hand, the Church seems to believe that beautiful buildings and artifacts have spiritual value. And the current leaders of the Church have a responsibility to be responsible stewards so that the assets of the Church are available to future generations. The Church certainly spends a lot of money and effort on charitable efforts, and the leaders of the Church probably wouldn't be very good stewards if they auctioned off all the Church assets to temporarily give additional funds to the poor.
I don't disagree with you that the pope's message is all hat and no cattle, and that he can justify failing to follow through on his call to action on the basis of his requirement to be "a responsible steward" for the church's ostentatious wealth so it can be passed down to future generations of popes that are all hat and no cattle. I just point out that this is hypocrisy. Jesus never said that his successors should obtain and preserve ostentation.
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 05:13:03 PM
No, since I don't believe there even IS a papal harley.
You must have faith my son :P
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 05:01:02 PM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:50:08 PM
That's one high bar for one Pope to pass.
Are you sure you're not related to Martin Luther, grumbler?
I think Luther actually expected the clergy to live up to its preaching; he was a monk, himself.
I have no such delusions, but I will point out when the Pope has no clothes. I don't actually expect him to do what he claims that the Catholic Church should do. No pope ever has.
Are you sure you aren't related to the Virgin Mary, Norgy?
Oh goody, we've gone down this path again. Maybe Grumbler will entertain us with mind reading like he did last time he got on this high horse.
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 05:13:03 PM
If the catholic church needs some HQ buildings, it could surely get them cheaper in another location, like Kigali.
Reasonable. The Pope should sell off Vatican City and move to shack in Kigali, Rwanda. That way, he would mean business.
Having lived with disappointment in myself and the world for 40 odd years, I am sure I can live through this not happening and still think Francis is a better pope than most. At the very least, he hasn't sanctioned letting the Ustashe escape through their channels, which is an improvement on at least one pope.
Quote from: grumbler on March 11, 2014, 05:13:03 PM
You are not sure what could come from selling buildings in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world? :huh:
I'll give you a hint: lots of m _ _ _ _ that could be used to carry out the pope's call for the church to be "poor among the poor.'
If the catholic church needs some HQ buildings, it could surely get them cheaper in another location, like Kigali.
The Church needs lots of large buildings to accommodate its needs. The buildings it owns have both historic and religious significance. And the physical location of the buildings have religious significance. If it sold off the buildings, it would have to re-build somewhere else at an enormous cost, in a location without historical or religious significance to the Church or its members. That makes no sense. I am pretty sure you are trolling, but that is fairly obvious.
Quote
I have no idea what you anecdote has to do with my point. The Church property in Rome (and elsewhere in the world) could be turned into a lot of cash to help a lot of poor people. That's what the pope claims he wants to do. I don't think the pope had anything to do with the school that closed near you.
My point is that the leaders of the church need to be responsible stewards to protect the future of the church, and the anecdote is an example of poor stewardship leading to disastrous consequences.
Quote
I don't disagree with you that the pope's message is all hat and no cattle, and that he can justify failing to follow through on his call to action on the basis of his requirement to be "a responsible steward" for the church's ostentatious wealth so it can be passed down to future generations of popes that are all hat and no cattle. I just point out that this is hypocrisy. Jesus never said that his successors should obtain and preserve ostentation.
What you call "ostentatious wealth" in part are assets with historic and religious significance. Other assets exist to help fund the ongoing operations of the church. Is there corruption and unnecessary luxuries within the church? Definitely. Any human institution will be like that. But just because there is some bad doesn't mean the Church shouldn't preserve the good.
And I don't think Jesus really spoke one way or the other as to the overall principles behind stewardship. That being said, the Church believes that church tradition has theological value. The church has historically maintained assets for the benefit of future generations while also making efforts at helping the poor and others. It seems to have been an effective strategy thus far.
Of course the role of the Church is to be a Church, not in Pope Francis's phrase a 'pitiful NGO'.
Its primary duty to the poor is evangelisation and the sacraments.
QuoteHe is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
The Vatican Bank isn't a bank in that sense. It's being reformed (largely because of Benedict's appointees) which is good, but I don't see how the Church getting involved in financial gamesmanship would help.
The Church is human institution and carries with it human needs and flaws, and while they reach for the divine they can never approach the perfection and sublime wisdom that is Grumbler.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 11, 2014, 07:48:23 PM
Of course the role of the Church is to be a Church, not in Pope Francis's phrase a 'pitiful NGO'.
Its primary duty to the poor is evangelisation and the sacraments.
QuoteHe is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
The Vatican Bank isn't a bank in that sense. It's being reformed (largely because of Benedict's appointees) which is good, but I don't see how the Church getting involved in financial gamesmanship would help.
That is so convenient for them. They get to preach about people being poor, but they don't have to care about mundane material stuff (obviously being poor have nothing to do with the material world, right). But not having to care apparently also means that they can hoard wealth for the church and themselves.
Seriously dude. Financial gamesmanship? Giving aid for development in the 3rd world using Vatican resources, by forgoing profit, is really that out of line with the loudly proclaimed aims of the Pope?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 11, 2014, 08:26:05 PM
The Church is human institution and carries with it human needs and flaws, and while they reach for the divine they can never approach the perfection and sublime wisdom that is Grumbler.
True. But, they should at least try getting close to living up to the expectations they have for everyone else in the world.
Let's just say the Pope decided to put the Vatican up for sale. Who would want to buy it, and who could afford to buy it? :hmm:
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 05:16:55 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 11, 2014, 07:48:23 PM
Of course the role of the Church is to be a Church, not in Pope Francis's phrase a 'pitiful NGO'.
Its primary duty to the poor is evangelisation and the sacraments.
QuoteHe is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
The Vatican Bank isn't a bank in that sense. It's being reformed (largely because of Benedict's appointees) which is good, but I don't see how the Church getting involved in financial gamesmanship would help.
That is so convenient for them. They get to preach about people being poor, but they don't have to care about mundane material stuff (obviously being poor have nothing to do with the material world, right). But not having to care apparently also means that they can hoard wealth for the church and themselves.
Seriously dude. Financial gamesmanship? Giving aid for development in the 3rd world using Vatican resources, by forgoing profit, is really that out of line with the loudly proclaimed aims of the Pope?
Except it's not like the Church and Catholic organizations don't already do a tremendous amount to help the poor every single day.
I also don't agree that selling priceless cultural treasures to a bunch of wealthy Chinese billionaires or whatever is a win for the faithful, but I suspect that even if they did that, they still wouldn't win Tamas' approval.
Quote from: stjaba on March 11, 2014, 05:50:26 PM
The Church needs lots of large buildings to accommodate its needs. The buildings it owns have both historic and religious significance. And the physical location of the buildings have religious significance.
Wherever the church has its HQ, those buildings will have religious significance. I'd hope, anyway, because if the Catholic Church HQ has no religious significance, then it should fold up its tent. As for historical significance, that will persist even if the Church sells the property. The Palais des Papes in Avignon isn't the HQ of the Catholic Church any more, but is still a historic site with religious significance.
QuoteIf it sold off the buildings, it would have to re-build somewhere else at an enormous cost, in a location without historical or religious significance to the Church or its members. That makes no sense. I am pretty sure you are trolling, but that is fairly obvious.
Why would they have to re-build anything? There is a lot of vacant office space in the world, and the Church HQ just needs a reasonable degree of accessibility, so their choices are pretty wide-open. I am pretty sure that you are just playing dumb here, but that it fairly obvious.
QuoteMy point is that the leaders of the church need to be responsible stewards to protect the future of the church, and the anecdote is an example of poor stewardship leading to disastrous consequences.
So the purpose of your anecdote is to argue that poor stewardship leads to poor results? I hate to tell you this, but that is pretty redundant. It also has nothing to do with the catholic church fulfilling its mission, as defined by its pope, to be "the poor among the poor."
QuoteWhat you call "ostentatious wealth" in part are assets with historic and religious significance. Other assets exist to help fund the ongoing operations of the church. Is there corruption and unnecessary luxuries within the church? Definitely. Any human institution will be like that. But just because there is some bad doesn't mean the Church shouldn't preserve the good.
The items with historic and religious significance retain those traits when not owned by the church; the option isn't to leave The School of Athens in the Vatican Art Museum or destroy it, it is to have the Vatican Art Museum conserve it, or to have some other equivalent museum pay for the privileged of preserving and showing it, and using the money for the Church's mission of being "the poor among the poor." It may be true that other assets exist to help the ongoing operations of the church, but those operations don't appear to be working; there still are poor people. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the Pope calling for others to make sacrifices to help the poor, while there exists such a vast reservoir of wealth under the Pope's control that he is unwilling to sacrifice.
QuoteAnd I don't think Jesus really spoke one way or the other as to the overall principles behind stewardship. That being said, the Church believes that church tradition has theological value. The church has historically maintained assets for the benefit of future generations while also making efforts at helping the poor and others. It seems to have been an effective strategy thus far.
I disagree that the Church is poor, and that it is among the poor. The fact that the Church has historically viewed itself as a secular power deserving of the magnificence and splendor of such worldly powers is not relevant to the pope's call to be poor among the poor. And the church has failed to end poverty or even make meaningful sacrifices towards that end. I don't blame the church for this; bureaucracies are like that. I just point out the hollowness of the claims that this pope is meaningfully different from the others.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 11, 2014, 07:48:23 PM
Of course the role of the Church is to be a Church, not in Pope Francis's phrase a 'pitiful NGO'.
Its primary duty to the poor is evangelisation and the sacraments.
Tell the pope that. Personally, I think that you are right, and that this will be a'business as usual" pope in actions, even if his preaching isn't the usual fare.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 05:17:44 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 11, 2014, 08:26:05 PM
The Church is human institution and carries with it human needs and flaws, and while they reach for the divine they can never approach the perfection and sublime wisdom that is Grumbler.
True. But, they should at least try getting close to living up to the expectations they have for everyone else in the world.
Please do not feed the troll. :)
Quote from: Caliga on March 12, 2014, 06:53:14 AM
Let's just say the Pope decided to put the Vatican up for sale. Who would want to buy it, and who could afford to buy it? :hmm:
Can you imagine the hotels they could make out of some of those buildings? And the other Papal Palace, in Avignon, seems to be doing well even though it isn't owned by the Church.
Quote from: Caliga on March 12, 2014, 06:53:14 AM
Let's just say the Pope decided to put the Vatican up for sale. Who would want to buy it, and who could afford to buy it? :hmm:
I'm guessing the Vatican makes a lot of money from tourism. Selling it probably doesn't make sense from a financial point of view in any case.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 05:17:44 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 11, 2014, 08:26:05 PM
The Church is human institution and carries with it human needs and flaws, and while they reach for the divine they can never approach the perfection and sublime wisdom that is Grumbler.
True. But, they should at least try getting close to living up to the expectations they have for everyone else in the world.
And what expectation is that?
The catholic church has a more limited ability to cash in on its holdings than many realize. On the one hand, you have many old churches on prime real estate that are some of the most famous and significant structures ever built. It is very easy to assign them a huge value.
On the other hand, they are very expensive to maintain (being huge old buildings) and practically speaking can't be torn down (many are significant heritage sites - if the church decided to bulldoze Saint Peter's to put in hotels--the revenue of which would pay for food for poor people, I doubt Italy would allow it, nominal sovereignty nonwithstanding).
So if we are going to keep the buildings, the question is how to maximize their value. Grumbler points out that the former Papal Estates in Avignon are doing quite well. And they are! However, the tourism to the site is dwarfed by the number to the Vatican, and for major events it is common for Rome to have large numbers of pilgrims visit.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 12, 2014, 08:30:34 AM
I'm guessing the Vatican makes a lot of money from tourism. Selling it probably doesn't make sense from a financial point of view in any case.
I don't know of anyone who is publicly arguing that the Catholic Church's mission is to maximize financial efficiency. If one were to argue for that, however, I dare say that selling a lot of the church's property would make a great deal of sense, rather than little sense. I'm guessing that you are guessing wrong about the Catholic Church's income from tourism. I'd bet that it is fairly small (though non-church businesses and whatnot in Rome certainly DO make a lot of money off of tourism), and I'd be surprised if such income even pays for building maintenance. My guess would be that maintaining the Church's properties in, say, Rome, probably in fact takes away money that could be spent on the poor. That may, indeed, be the proper course for the church to take, but it that course does demonstrate the shallowness of Francis's exhortations to be "poor among the poor."
Quote from: alfred russel on March 12, 2014, 09:24:58 AM
The catholic church has a more limited ability to cash in on its holdings than many realize. On the one hand, you have many old churches on prime real estate that are some of the most famous and significant structures ever built. It is very easy to assign them a huge value.
Selling churches would be a far different proposition than selling palaces and museums and art work and the like. The churches have to be where they are because they are serving a population. Maybe some churches could be sold as no longer consistent with needs, but that is a separate issue from the pope calling for the church to be "poor among the poor" while maintaining its status as one of the richest and most ostentatious organizations in the world.
The Vatican Museum might be profitable but Saint Peter's isn't. That's free to visit.
Quote from: garbon on March 12, 2014, 10:07:02 AM
The Vatican Museum might be profitable but Saint Peter's isn't. That's free to visit.
Saint Peter's is a church, though, right? I don't know of anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church should be getting rid of churches to make money. But, then again, churches are supposed to be funded by their congregations and so wouldn't be taking money that could otherwise go to the poor.
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 07:02:50 AM
Wherever the church has its HQ, those buildings will have religious significance. I'd hope, anyway, because if the Catholic Church HQ has no religious significance, then it should fold up its tent. As for historical significance, that will persist even if the Church sells the property. The Palais des Papes in Avignon isn't the HQ of the Catholic Church any more, but is still a historic site with religious significance.
The significance of the location of the Vatican is more than the fact it is the HQ of the church. It is believed that St. Peter was crucified at or near Vatican Hill and that he and other early church fathers are buried at the Vatican.
Quote
Why would they have to re-build anything? There is a lot of vacant office space in the world, and the Church HQ just needs a reasonable degree of accessibility, so their choices are pretty wide-open. I am pretty sure that you are just playing dumb here, but that it fairly obvious.
Assuming you are being serious and not obtuse, "vacant office space" would not meet church needs, since the church needs more than offices. As currently situated, the Vatican has worship space that can accommodate thousands, museums, offices, and housing all located in one central location. It would be near impossible to recreate that anywhere, setting aside the historic and religious significance of the existing buildings and location.
Quote
So the purpose of your anecdote is to argue that poor stewardship leads to poor results? I hate to tell you this, but that is pretty redundant. It also has nothing to do with the catholic church fulfilling its mission, as defined by its pope, to be "the poor among the poor."
Good stewardship ensures that the church will be able to assist the poor in future generations. Having a church asset fire sale will help the poor in the short run, but not the long run. And interestingly, I found an article that suggested that the Vatican was running a deficit. That article is from 1987, so it is certainly dated, but it contradicts the claim the church simply hordes wealth. http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/17/vatican-finances/
Quote
It may be true that other assets exist to help the ongoing operations of the church, but those operations don't appear to be working; there still are poor people.
So the church's mission would only be a success if it somehow wiped out global poverty? That's ridiculous. Poverty will probably never be eliminated, but that doesn't mean the church's operations aren't effective.
Quote
I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the Pope calling for others to make sacrifices to help the poor, while there exists such a vast reservoir of wealth under the Pope's control that he is unwilling to sacrifice.
The Church holds its wealth for the benefit of the members of the church akin to how a trustee holds assets for a beneficiary. The question is to spend the wealth now or conserve it for future generations. Conserving it the safer approach. Ultimately you are criticizing the temporal allocation of church assets.
Quote
I disagree that the Church is poor, and that it is among the poor. The fact that the Church has historically viewed itself as a secular power deserving of the magnificence and splendor of such worldly powers is not relevant to the pope's call to be poor among the poor. And the church has failed to end poverty or even make meaningful sacrifices towards that end. I don't blame the church for this; bureaucracies are like that. I just point out the hollowness of the claims that this pope is meaningfully different from the others.
Again, the church is imperfect and has certainly taken things too far, in the past and certainly in the present. Does that mean the church should liquidate most or all of its assets? No.
And the fact that the church has failed to end poverty has no relevancy. Under that criterion nearly every charitable organization in the world should liquidate itself.
Quote from: stjaba on March 12, 2014, 10:50:48 AM
Poverty will probably never be eliminated,
The Singularity will fix it.
I wonder what realtors would make of the prospect of selling the St. Peter's basilica.
Might make for an interesting flyer.
Can the Catholic Church make the argument today that they are in fact already the "poor among the poor"?
What is the salary of a priest, bishop, cardinal, pope?
Do they live a life of poverty themselves, ignoring for the moment the wealth the church itself has amassed?
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 05:16:55 AM
That is so convenient for them. They get to preach about people being poor, but they don't have to care about mundane material stuff (obviously being poor have nothing to do with the material world, right). But not having to care apparently also means that they can hoard wealth for the church and themselves.
The Church is the world's largest educational and social welfare charity - by some distance. The costs of the Vatican are relatively small for a nation state, administrative centre for a global organisation and owner of several priceless (and uninsured) works of art that need to be preserved.
QuoteSeriously dude. Financial gamesmanship? Giving aid for development in the 3rd world using Vatican resources, by forgoing profit, is really that out of line with the loudly proclaimed aims of the Pope?
The Vatican already gives help to the developing world. The Vatican bank is a non-profit already.
QuoteTell the pope that. Personally, I think that you are right, and that this will be a'business as usual" pope in actions, even if his preaching isn't the usual fare.
As ever with the Catholic Church ignorant reporting creates false impressions. This is Francis in Evangelii Gaudium:
QuoteSince this Exhortation is addressed to members of the Catholic Church, I want to say, with regret, that the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care. The great majority of the poor have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them his friendship, his blessing, his word, the celebration of the sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.
QuoteLet's just say the Pope decided to put the Vatican up for sale. Who would want to buy it, and who could afford to buy it? :hmm:
I think someone estimated it would cost $500 billion. Which is enough to increase the 1.2 billion earning under $1.50 a day to $2.50 a day, for a year.
QuoteSince this Exhortation is addressed to members of the Catholic Church, I want to say, with regret, that the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care. The great majority of the poor have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them his friendship, his blessing, his word, the celebration of the sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.
Well yeah. Let us concentrate on stuff that will make them listen to the church but will keep them in a position of dependency.
The clergy in general, and populist politicians are directly interested in the maintenance of poverty and illiteracy, because those are the source of their power. As such, saying stuff like that is hardly revolutionary.
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 11:07:22 AM
Can the Catholic Church make the argument today that they are in fact already the "poor among the poor"?
What is the salary of a priest, bishop, cardinal, pope?
Do they live a life of poverty themselves, ignoring for the moment the wealth the church itself has amassed?
Don't priests mostly have free housing etc with all the property amassed throughout the years? With some monetary assistance from the diocese and something extra if they teach. I have no idea about the higher hierarchies of the clergy. But vows of poverty do exist.
"Poor among the poor" probably only refers to personal property, not the Church as such, which is for the glory of God. Probably. Heck if I know. I've spent most of my life not believing in anything, and I am not going to start now.
And this is why Libertarians should be hunted down and killed.
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 11:07:22 AM
Can the Catholic Church make the argument today that they are in fact already the "poor among the poor"?
What is the salary of a priest, bishop, cardinal, pope?
In the UK Catholic clergy are generally the worst paid. The average salary is between £18-25 000 and in general comes from the parish itself. But there is some equalisation across the diocese. So a priest of a poor parish of mostly recent immigrants will have his money topped up by the diocese (taking from richer parishes).
I'm not sure about Bishops. Obviously they all get housing and (normally) a vehicle. Most Bishops and certainly most Popes haven't been personally wealthy though. I don't actually think they get paid at all because they're in the job until death (or retirement now). It's not a job to earn money from - Pope Pius X left a request on his death in 1914 that the Vatican grant his two sisters a small monthly allowance because he had nothing of his own to leave.
QuoteDo they live a life of poverty themselves, ignoring for the moment the wealth the church itself has amassed?
Most Priests have to live a fitting life, which isn't poverty but basically means they can't be wealthy.
Religious orders - monks and Jesuits etc - do vow to poverty. In the UK that means they don't have any personal possessions, those belong to the community. Most monks don't receive money unless they need it. Many religious priests receive a stipend of £50-100 a month, for personal expenses.
QuoteGood stewardship ensures that the church will be able to assist the poor in future generations. Having a church asset fire sale will help the poor in the short run, but not the long run. And interestingly, I found an article that suggested that the Vatican was running a deficit. That article is from 1987, so it is certainly dated, but it contradicts the claim the church simply hordes wealth.
The Vatican was running a deficit until 2010. By all accounts the Church doesn't have a huge amount of cash reserves. It's got property and art.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 11:21:56 AM
The clergy in general, and populist politicians are directly interested in the maintenance of poverty and illiteracy, because those are the source of their power. As such, saying stuff like that is hardly revolutionary.
Really? Is that why the Catholic Church spends so much on educational instututions? Even though our family is not religious we gave very serious consideration to sending our boys to a catholic school here in Vancouver because it is amongst the best in the Province.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 11:21:56 AM
The clergy in general, and populist politicians are directly interested in the maintenance of poverty and illiteracy, because those are the source of their power. As such, saying stuff like that is hardly revolutionary.
I'm not claiming Francis is revolutionary. But the Catholic Church is the world's largest charitable educator, which is a perverse way to preserve illiteracy.
The Church's view is that you need to preach to the poor, help them physically and then try to change society:
QuoteSolidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property. The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them. These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible. Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.
Quote"Poor among the poor" probably only refers to personal property, not the Church as such, which is for the glory of God. Probably. Heck if I know. I've spent most of my life not believing in anything, and I am not going to start now.
Yeah. For all the 'feed the poor' stuff in the Bible there's an equal amount of descriptions of the Temple, which was not a poor building, or Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ in her most expensive perfume. An ornate church is open to rich and poor alike - and actually there are several in London that tramps sleep in through the day.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 12, 2014, 11:25:24 AM
And this is why Libertarians should be hunted down and killed.
If one post by Tamas is your justification for going on a killing spree, I am not sure who should be hunted down.
While I don't "get" the whole libertarian movement per se, I see no reason its less valid than say social democracy. It's a political position, and not necessarily indicative of whether or not you are a decent person.
Yes, I have become more mellow.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 12, 2014, 10:55:30 AM
Quote from: stjaba on March 12, 2014, 10:50:48 AM
Poverty will probably never be eliminated,
The Singularity will fix it.
:yes: I think we should start ignoring all long term problems because of the impending singularity.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 11:31:31 AM
Yeah. For all the 'feed the poor' stuff in the Bible there's an equal amount of descriptions of the Temple, which was not a poor building,
Today's building standards would classify it as such.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 12, 2014, 11:33:05 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 12, 2014, 11:25:24 AM
And this is why Libertarians should be hunted down and killed.
If one post by Tamas is your justification for going on a killing spree, I am not sure who should be hunted down.
Meh, you havent been here for a while. Tamas posts quite a lot.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 12, 2014, 11:34:26 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 11:31:31 AM
Yeah. For all the 'feed the poor' stuff in the Bible there's an equal amount of descriptions of the Temple, which was not a poor building,
Today's building standards would classify it as such.
:lol: True enough. I don't understand why glass, steel and porphyry can't be a look :(
But I used to work next door to Save the Children who had a very swanky glass and steel office. I imagine that'd be a far higher cost for a charity than the old offices you happened to inherit. But the Church needs to impress God and other charities need to impress bankers with doubtful consciences.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 11:38:56 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 12, 2014, 11:34:26 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 11:31:31 AM
Yeah. For all the 'feed the poor' stuff in the Bible there's an equal amount of descriptions of the Temple, which was not a poor building,
Today's building standards would classify it as such.
:lol: True enough. I don't understand why glass, steel and porphyry can't be a look :(
But I used to work next door to Save the Children who had a very swanky glass and steel office. I imagine that'd be a far higher cost for a charity than the old offices you happened to inherit. But the Church needs to impress God and other charities need to impress bankers with doubtful consciences.
I recently worked on a project about energy efficiency in churches. Needless to say, since most are old and inadequately maintained, the scores were poor, to say the least. And with that, a lot of the money the local church councils spend is on utilities. If you insulated churches properly, something which most of the time can't be done because of laws protecting old buildings, they'd surely have a good deal more to spend on helping the poor.
While I am all for protecting our common heritage, including church buildings, those that still are in use on a regular basis need to be suitably upgraded.
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 10:42:07 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 12, 2014, 10:07:02 AM
The Vatican Museum might be profitable but Saint Peter's isn't. That's free to visit.
Saint Peter's is a church, though, right? I don't know of anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church should be getting rid of churches to make money. But, then again, churches are supposed to be funded by their congregations and so wouldn't be taking money that could otherwise go to the poor.
There's a former church here that used to be a club, then a fashion outlet (maybe other things in between) - now it'll be gay dance club is what I think I recently saw.
At any rate, I only mentioned as it seems like certainly it could be leased out for a tidy profit for visitors. I recoken they probably make up more traffic there than any congregants. Though could totally be wrong on that. :)
Quote from: stjaba on March 12, 2014, 10:50:48 AM
The significance of the location of the Vatican is more than the fact it is the HQ of the church. It is believed that St. Peter was crucified at or near Vatican Hill and that he and other early church fathers are buried at the Vatican.
So? There are many sites (like the burial site of Jesus himself) that are not the HQ for the Catholic Church. That doesn't seem to harm the church.
QuoteAssuming you are being serious and not obtuse, "vacant office space" would not meet church needs, since the church needs more than offices.
Assuming that you are being serious and not obtuse, the church needs just office space for its HQ.
QuoteAs currently situated, the Vatican has worship space that can accommodate thousands, museums, offices, and housing all located in one central location. It would be near impossible to recreate that anywhere, setting aside the historic and religious significance of the existing buildings and location.
The church HQ doesn't need museums, worship spaces, and co-located housing. Microsoft has a huge HQ with 55,000 workers, and doesn't have the need for museums, yada yada. Total Vatican population: 798. I think the church can find alternative accommodations for 798 people.
QuoteGood stewardship ensures that the church will be able to assist the poor in future generations. Having a church asset fire sale will help the poor in the short run, but not the long run. And interestingly, I found an article that suggested that the Vatican was running a deficit. That article is from 1987, so it is certainly dated, but it contradicts the claim the church simply hordes wealth. http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/17/vatican-finances/
So, you are saying that the Vatican runs a deficit, and so takes money away from the mission to the poor to support a mission to the rich? Thatnks for making my point; getting rid of the Vatican will help the church be "the poor among the poor." Even were that not true, keeping art treasures doesn't help the poor in any case, either in the present or the future.
QuoteSo the church's mission would only be a success if it somehow wiped out global poverty? That's ridiculous. Poverty will probably never be eliminated, but that doesn't mean the church's operations aren't effective.
So the church should not do everything it can to help the poor? It should not be, as the pope suggested, "the poor among the poor?" That's ridiculous, unless the pope is just being another same old business-as-usual pope as we have seen for some hundreds of popes now. If the pope is serious about his call to arms, he will act seriously and not talk seriously. If he is just mouthing platitudes, he will be just like all the other popes, in which case people can stop pretending he is anything different.
QuoteThe Church holds its wealth for the benefit of the members of the church akin to how a trustee holds assets for a beneficiary. The question is to spend the wealth now or conserve it for future generations. Conserving it the safer approach. Ultimately you are criticizing the temporal allocation of church assets
.
It may look like I am "criticizing the temporal allocation of church assets," but I really am not. I expect nothing else from the church. It is a big bureaucracy, just like any other. I am not even, really, criticising the pope for mouthing platitudes about the poor while doing nothing special for them. What I am really criticising is those who claim that this pope is anything special, just because he is more willing to be hypocritical than most.
QuoteAgain, the church is imperfect and has certainly taken things too far, in the past and certainly in the present. Does that mean the church should liquidate most or all of its assets? No.
Agreed. The church should only liquidate assets to help the poor if it is serious about its doctrine. There is no evidence that it is.
QuoteAnd the fact that the church has failed to end poverty has no relevancy. Under that criterion nearly every charitable organization in the world should liquidate itself.
When someone makes that argument, I will try to remember to point them to your response. We could even add to that the codical that "the fact that the church has failed to end mortality has no relevancy. Under that criterion nearly every charitable organization in the world should liquidate itself." Oh, and "the fact that the church has failed to invade Mars has no relevancy. Under that criterion nearly every charitable organization in the world should liquidate itself."
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:55:00 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
That's true, everyone can TALK about things.
However, when you have hundreds of millions of people who look to you for guidance WHAT you talk about, and HOW you talk about it has a material impact.
Given your job, I expect that at some point you'll learn that what you talk about and how you talk about it does have a significant impact on the result your team delivers.
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 12:50:39 PM
So? There are many sites (like the burial site of Jesus himself) that are not the HQ for the Catholic Church. That doesn't seem to harm the church.
The pope is the Bishop of Rome. Whether any of us agree with it or not, there is more than a millennea of claiming primacy based on the location in Rome and Peter's supposed death there. Moving the headquarters to Rwanda to save on rent...probably not such a good idea.
And you'd still need to find some central Roman real estate for the new Bishop of Rome :lol:
Quote from: Jacob on March 12, 2014, 12:51:57 PM
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:55:00 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
That's true, everyone can TALK about things.
However, when you have hundreds of millions of people who look to you for guidance WHAT you talk about, and HOW you talk about it has a material impact.
Given your job, I expect that at some point you'll learn that what you talk about and how you talk about it does have a significant impact on the result your team delivers.
The comparison does not stand. What I mean, of course, is that the Pope basically ask people to do something (support the poor), he is among the most able to do himself. Is he doing it? Not as with a big tantrum as talking about it, that's for sure.
I wonder how many of you are actually Catholics. We are debating stuff Protestantism happened about. Jeebus.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 01:12:32 PM
We are debating stuff Protestantism happened about.
I wonder if you realize the irony.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 01:12:32 PM
Quote from: Jacob on March 12, 2014, 12:51:57 PM
Quote from: Tamas on March 11, 2014, 04:55:00 AM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 11, 2014, 04:41:50 AM
I like Francis. He's a good lad.
He is a celebrity with air time to spout the most basic moralities. "being poor is bad, mkay?" "we should care for the poor" Blah blah blah. I haven't heard the news about the Bank of Vatican launching aid or low interest loan programs for the poor people of the developing world.
Everyone can TALK about things.
That's true, everyone can TALK about things.
However, when you have hundreds of millions of people who look to you for guidance WHAT you talk about, and HOW you talk about it has a material impact.
Given your job, I expect that at some point you'll learn that what you talk about and how you talk about it does have a significant impact on the result your team delivers.
The comparison does not stand. What I mean, of course, is that the Pope basically ask people to do something (support the poor), he is among the most able to do himself. Is he doing it? Not as with a big tantrum as talking about it, that's for sure.
I wonder how many of you are actually Catholics. We are debating stuff Protestantism happened about. Jeebus.
As a atheist who is generally pretty strongly opposed to organized religion, especially opposed to organized religion like Catholicism that stands for ignorance and enforced adherence to revealed truth that in many cases result sin tangible and serious harm to humans and societies, I am very sympathetic towards the view you and grumbler are putting forth.
However, if I look at this from the perspective of Catholics who actually believe in their superstition, I don't find the demand that in order to NOT be hypocrites they need to sell of the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church in order to give it to the poor.
I think they can speak about poverty in an attempt to influence public and political opinion towards a certain viewpoint they feel is informed by their faith, while at the same time not feeling that divesting the Church of its material wealth, such as it is, is a reasonable means towards reaching the goal of reducing poverty or changing the system that results in what they think of as greater amounts of poverty than is reasonable.
I mean, Warren Buffet could stand up and say "Our system results in the rich becoming too rich while the middle class languishes - we should change the system" without that being hypocritical if he doesn't immediately go out and divest himself of his billions.
The Chursh sees itself as having a roll to influence public policy on matters that the Church thinks are important and relevant to their faith. In many, MANY cases I strongly disagree with those positions, but I don't think they are hypocritical for holding them because they don't feel that the solution necessarily has to do with the Church directly.
Or to put it another way, the Church is saying that poverty is a problem across the human condition, but the solution is not that the Catholic Church should sell everything they own. It would not work, nor would it actually address the core problem anyway.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 01:12:32 PMThe comparison does not stand. What I mean, of course, is that the Pope basically ask people to do something (support the poor), he is among the most able to do himself. Is he doing it? Not as with a big tantrum as talking about it, that's for sure.
It totally stands. We are talking about leadership.
Also, as has been mentioned several times in this thread and elsewhere, the Pope does in fact support the poor. In fact, by speaking as he does he is increasing the Church's focus on supporting the poor.
The Pope's job is to talk, and to set the direction of the body of the faithful. By talking about supporting the poor, he is in fact causing the poor to be supported better than they were previously.
QuoteI wonder how many of you are actually Catholics. We are debating stuff Protestantism happened about. Jeebus.
It does seem to me that you are criticizing the Pope for being insufficiently Protestant, which seems sort of silly. Personally, I approve of the fact that he seems to be a better sort of Catholic.
Being <anything> has never stopped us from debating the shit out of nothing and scratching people's face out on a regular basis over the Internet.
And that is the goddamn truth.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 12, 2014, 01:59:58 PM
Being <anything> has never stopped us from debating the shit out of nothing and scratching people's face out on a regular basis over the Internet.
And that is the goddamn truth.
No it isn't. Stop being a contrarian.
:hug:
Berkut makes the point rather nicely from my perspective.
The Lord is speaking through his keyboard mittens, mysterious as it may seem. :sleep: :P
But can we sell those Holy Mittens over the Internet and help the poor?
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on February 27, 2014, 03:11:17 AM
Quote from: Siege on February 26, 2014, 07:24:25 PM
Why is communism so popular around the world, when all their social experiments have failed?
I don't understand. Why follow a failed ideology?
I mean, wasn't the failure of the Soviet Union enough?
Wasn't the Chinese conversion to State Capitalism under communist leadership the ultimate proof that communism and Marxism don't work?
Weren't you a big supporter of at least local socialism years ago?
At the tribal level and below, where people feel they belong to a blood related group.
However I don't think even at that level it really works.
Or am I not allowed to change my position?
I change my political position as the situation on the ground changes.
This is not flip flopping.
This is adapting to the ever changing reality on the battlefield.
Or whatever it might be.
I was not a republican supporter when we met in Paradox Off Topic.
I liked Obama before he started lying and violating the Constitution.
I didn't even like the Tea Party when it first appeared.
People change, and rightly so.
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 01:22:57 PM
As a atheist who is generally pretty strongly opposed to organized religion, especially opposed to organized religion like Catholicism that stands for ignorance and enforced adherence to revealed truth that in many cases result sin tangible and serious harm to humans and societies, I am very sympathetic towards the view you and grumbler are putting forth.
However, if I look at this from the perspective of Catholics who actually believe in their superstition, I don't find the demand that in order to NOT be hypocrites they need to sell of the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church in order to give it to the poor.
I think they can speak about poverty in an attempt to influence public and political opinion towards a certain viewpoint they feel is informed by their faith, while at the same time not feeling that divesting the Church of its material wealth, such as it is, is a reasonable means towards reaching the goal of reducing poverty or changing the system that results in what they think of as greater amounts of poverty than is reasonable.
I mean, Warren Buffet could stand up and say "Our system results in the rich becoming too rich while the middle class languishes - we should change the system" without that being hypocritical if he doesn't immediately go out and divest himself of his billions.
The Chursh sees itself as having a roll to influence public policy on matters that the Church thinks are important and relevant to their faith. In many, MANY cases I strongly disagree with those positions, but I don't think they are hypocritical for holding them because they don't feel that the solution necessarily has to do with the Church directly.
Or to put it another way, the Church is saying that poverty is a problem across the human condition, but the solution is not that the Catholic Church should sell everything they own. It would not work, nor would it actually address the core problem anyway.
You're probably aware of this, but Buffet has been critical of "the system" for not making the rich pay their fair share, and he has in fact given away billions and billions of dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hard to accuse him of hypocrisy.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 12, 2014, 01:03:42 PM
The pope is the Bishop of Rome. Whether any of us agree with it or not, there is more than a millennea of claiming primacy based on the location in Rome and Peter's supposed death there. Moving the headquarters to Rwanda to save on rent...probably not such a good idea.
Mere argument by assertion.
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 01:22:57 PM
As a atheist who is generally pretty strongly opposed to organized religion, especially opposed to organized religion like Catholicism that stands for ignorance and enforced adherence to revealed truth that in many cases result sin tangible and serious harm to humans and societies, I am very sympathetic towards the view you and grumbler are putting forth.
However, if I look at this from the perspective of Catholics who actually believe in their superstition, I don't find the demand that in order to NOT be hypocrites they need to sell of the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church in order to give it to the poor.
I think they can speak about poverty in an attempt to influence public and political opinion towards a certain viewpoint they feel is informed by their faith, while at the same time not feeling that divesting the Church of its material wealth, such as it is, is a reasonable means towards reaching the goal of reducing poverty or changing the system that results in what they think of as greater amounts of poverty than is reasonable.
I mean, Warren Buffet could stand up and say "Our system results in the rich becoming too rich while the middle class languishes - we should change the system" without that being hypocritical if he doesn't immediately go out and divest himself of his billions.
The Chursh sees itself as having a roll to influence public policy on matters that the Church thinks are important and relevant to their faith. In many, MANY cases I strongly disagree with those positions, but I don't think they are hypocritical for holding them because they don't feel that the solution necessarily has to do with the Church directly.
Or to put it another way, the Church is saying that poverty is a problem across the human condition, but the solution is not that the Catholic Church should sell everything they own. It would not work, nor would it actually address the core problem anyway.
I think that this is pretty much in line with my thinking (except that I
do believe that it is hypocritical to talk about emulating Jesus while standing there in a coupla thousand dollars worth of ceremonial garb and speaking from a palace worth tens of millions), and I don't blame the catholic Church for being a hidebound bureaucracy and the pope a mouthpiece for the established interests. But, just as I'd argue in your Buffet hypothetical for the bogosity of any claim that Buffet was something new and different because he talked a different talk, so I argue for the bogosity of claims that Francis is different because he talks a different talk. If it talks like a New Zowee Duck but walks like a regular ol' duck, it's just a duck that talks funny.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 01:08:15 PM
And you'd still need to find some central Roman real estate for the new Bishop of Rome :lol:
He could work out of St. John Lateran's Basilica like... well, like a bishop! In fact, you could get rid of the two figurehead vicars general if the Bishop or Rome was a real bishop. :lol:
The idea that every bishop has to have a setup like the Vatican to live in is kinda funny. I suspect even you would think that that was going too far.
In fact, there are entire religions in which there is no equivalent to the Vatican, and somehow those religions manage to survive and even thrive. I suspect that Catholicism could survive even without its own version of Disneyland.
Quote from: Tamas on March 12, 2014, 01:12:32 PM
The comparison does not stand. What I mean, of course, is that the Pope basically ask people to do something (support the poor), he is among the most able to do himself. Is he doing it? Not as with a big tantrum as talking about it, that's for sure.
I wonder how many of you are actually Catholics. We are debating stuff Protestantism happened about. Jeebus.
I wasn't aware we were discussing nationalism, centralizing the state, and robbery.
Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2014, 04:37:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 01:22:57 PM
As a atheist who is generally pretty strongly opposed to organized religion, especially opposed to organized religion like Catholicism that stands for ignorance and enforced adherence to revealed truth that in many cases result sin tangible and serious harm to humans and societies, I am very sympathetic towards the view you and grumbler are putting forth.
However, if I look at this from the perspective of Catholics who actually believe in their superstition, I don't find the demand that in order to NOT be hypocrites they need to sell of the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church in order to give it to the poor.
I think they can speak about poverty in an attempt to influence public and political opinion towards a certain viewpoint they feel is informed by their faith, while at the same time not feeling that divesting the Church of its material wealth, such as it is, is a reasonable means towards reaching the goal of reducing poverty or changing the system that results in what they think of as greater amounts of poverty than is reasonable.
I mean, Warren Buffet could stand up and say "Our system results in the rich becoming too rich while the middle class languishes - we should change the system" without that being hypocritical if he doesn't immediately go out and divest himself of his billions.
The Chursh sees itself as having a roll to influence public policy on matters that the Church thinks are important and relevant to their faith. In many, MANY cases I strongly disagree with those positions, but I don't think they are hypocritical for holding them because they don't feel that the solution necessarily has to do with the Church directly.
Or to put it another way, the Church is saying that poverty is a problem across the human condition, but the solution is not that the Catholic Church should sell everything they own. It would not work, nor would it actually address the core problem anyway.
You're probably aware of this, but Buffet has been critical of "the system" for not making the rich pay their fair share, and he has in fact given away billions and billions of dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hard to accuse him of hypocrisy.
Good thing I wasn't then!
But to the standard demanded of the Catholic Church, Buffet is still a hypocrite since he didn't give it ALL away. He is still filthy rich.
Of course, to be fair, he isn't going around saying he wants to be the "poor among the poor".
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 05:05:04 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 01:08:15 PM
And you'd still need to find some central Roman real estate for the new Bishop of Rome :lol:
He could work out of St. John Lateran's Basilica like... well, like a bishop! In fact, you could get rid of the two figurehead vicars general if the Bishop or Rome was a real bishop. :lol:
The idea that every bishop has to have a setup like the Vatican to live in is kinda funny. I suspect even you would think that that was going too far.
In fact, there are entire religions in which there is no equivalent to the Vatican, and somehow those religions manage to survive and even thrive. I suspect that Catholicism could survive even without its own version of Disneyland.
Grumbler, their response to your point sucks, so stop beating them up on it!
The response to the point that if the Church wants to be the "poor among the poor" the Church should ditch a bunch of its rather overwhelming wealth is not to say that the Church needs that wealth - of course it does not "need" it.
As you point out, plenty of religious faiths manage to do fine with less wealth...in fact, I think a good argument can be made that every single other religious faith ever has succeeded without the Catholic Churches wealth.
The better argument against your point is to simply note that while the Catholic Church has an incredible amount of "book" wealth, that wealth is, in great part, in assets that hold significant relevance and meaning to the Church, and while they could certainly divest themselves of those assets, it would not actually help the cause of global poverty in any great way, since that problem is (to the view of those who hold to the Liberation Whatever viewpoint) systemic rather than incidental.
Another argument would be to point out that the demand to be the "poor among the poor" is really intended for the men and women who serve the Church, not the Church itself. They are, in fact, poor, even if the Church they serve is wealthy.
Those fancy robes the Pope wears are not his, they are the Churches. The cars, cathedrals, buildings, none of them the property of the actual people the Pope is saying should be the "poor among the poor".
There are so many better arguments in response to your attack than "But...but....the Church *needs* those billions of dollars worth of stuff!".
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 05:05:04 PM
The idea that every bishop has to have a setup like the Vatican to live in is kinda funny. I suspect even you would think that that was going too far.
The Bishop of Rome is different. That's a defining feature of Catholicism.
QuoteIn fact, there are entire religions in which there is no equivalent to the Vatican, and somehow those religions manage to survive and even thrive. I suspect that Catholicism could survive even without its own version of Disneyland.
Of course, every religion's different. But I think a large part of Catholicism's success as the largest Christian faith and probably the largest single religious movement in the world is because it's got a head office that's able to define doctrine and establish teaching.
QuoteThe response to the point that if the Church wants to be the "poor among the poor" the Church should ditch a bunch of its rather overwhelming wealth is not to say that the Church needs that wealth - of course it does not "need" it.
Practically the Church does need some things. Based on major festivals and events the Church would need an area of Rome that could be consecrated, with space outside for up to a million people and also enough office space to help run the faith of over 1/6th of humanity. Luckily the Church has all this on the site of the tomb of St. Peter.
Around the world the Church runs parishes that provide vital services (not to mention their religious purposes) at an enormous loss. Within local areas the well-off churches of Kensington fund the ones in Lambeth, but it's also global. The US and Germany are the richest Catholic Churches and a lot of money gets sent from them to support Churches in the developing world (incidentally arranging these money transfers without making money off them is one of the primary roles of the Vatican Bank).
Not only that but the Vatican multiplies the Church's wealth that can be used to help the poor. The Church is not cash-rich. It has a lot of assets. The regular stream of money from visitors to the Vatican Museum is far better than the proceeds of a one off sale - and from a public interest perspective it is better that that collection is still together, on display and available for loans than split up, alienated from Rome and often in the hands of private collectors.
In addition the biggest assets are probably the least plausible to be sold. There is no existing market that I know of for Baroque Basillicas, whoever designed them or painted their frescoes.
The Church isn't the institution or the building it's every believing Catholic. A poor Church for the poor is really very well explained by Francis in Evangelii Gaudium.
QuoteAnother argument would be to point out that the demand to be the "poor among the poor" is really intended for the men and women who serve the Church, not the Church itself. They are, in fact, poor, even if the Church they serve is wealthy.
Those fancy robes the Pope wears are not his, they are the Churches. The cars, cathedrals, buildings, none of them the property of the actual people the Pope is saying should be the "poor among the poor".
Quite. It's like telling the President to sell the White House.
I looked up US figures. Priests earn $25-33 000 on average. Bishops earn around $35-45 000 or so.
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 08:37:12 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2014, 05:05:04 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 01:08:15 PM
And you'd still need to find some central Roman real estate for the new Bishop of Rome :lol:
He could work out of St. John Lateran's Basilica like... well, like a bishop! In fact, you could get rid of the two figurehead vicars general if the Bishop or Rome was a real bishop. :lol:
The idea that every bishop has to have a setup like the Vatican to live in is kinda funny. I suspect even you would think that that was going too far.
In fact, there are entire religions in which there is no equivalent to the Vatican, and somehow those religions manage to survive and even thrive. I suspect that Catholicism could survive even without its own version of Disneyland.
Grumbler, their response to your point sucks, so stop beating them up on it!
The response to the point that if the Church wants to be the "poor among the poor" the Church should ditch a bunch of its rather overwhelming wealth is not to say that the Church needs that wealth - of course it does not "need" it.
As you point out, plenty of religious faiths manage to do fine with less wealth...in fact, I think a good argument can be made that every single other religious faith ever has succeeded without the Catholic Churches wealth.
The better argument against your point is to simply note that while the Catholic Church has an incredible amount of "book" wealth, that wealth is, in great part, in assets that hold significant relevance and meaning to the Church, and while they could certainly divest themselves of those assets, it would not actually help the cause of global poverty in any great way, since that problem is (to the view of those who hold to the Liberation Whatever viewpoint) systemic rather than incidental.
Another argument would be to point out that the demand to be the "poor among the poor" is really intended for the men and women who serve the Church, not the Church itself. They are, in fact, poor, even if the Church they serve is wealthy.
Those fancy robes the Pope wears are not his, they are the Churches. The cars, cathedrals, buildings, none of them the property of the actual people the Pope is saying should be the "poor among the poor".
There are so many better arguments in response to your attack than "But...but....the Church *needs* those billions of dollars worth of stuff!".
I am not sure if you are trying to be ironic or you really didnt read what people have been saying or your just an ass because the bolded part is pretty much exactly what Sheilbh and others have already said.
I suspect that much of the property the church has in Europe is almost impossible to liquidate. If the church really wanted to walk away from the property the secular governments would step in and take control.
What could possibly be liquidated is artwork and other items such as those found in the Vatican museums. I suspect the Vatican museums is already successfully monetizing those assets. Maybe they could do better with an outright sale, but is that really in anyone's interests? To really get top dollar you have to sell in the private market, and that would be really shitty imo. In general I think the Vatican museum is an abortion in terms of presentation, but it clearly is one of the great museums of the world and it would be tragic to break up the collection.
It's kind of a shame there was that typo in the translation provided to Languish, and now we're all following the credo "be the boor amongst the boor." :(
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 12, 2014, 09:50:47 PM
It's kind of a shame there was that typo in the translation provided to Languish, and now we're all following the credo "be the boor amongst the boor." :(
I mean, who wants to be poor?
Quote from: Berkut on March 12, 2014, 08:37:12 PM
The better argument against your point is to simply note that while the Catholic Church has an incredible amount of "book" wealth, that wealth is, in great part, in assets that hold significant relevance and meaning to the Church, and while they could certainly divest themselves of those assets, it would not actually help the cause of global poverty in any great way, since that problem is (to the view of those who hold to the Liberation Whatever viewpoint) systemic rather than incidental.
That's not really against my point, though. My point acknowledges that the Catholic Church is like every other massive bureaucracy; its decisions are made for bureaucratic reasons, not based on trying to accomplish the mission of the organization which the bureaucracy serves. My argument isn't against the Church, or the pope. It is against those who are arguing that this pope is significantly different from other popes because he uses a few different words or has a different "emphasis."
QuoteAnother argument would be to point out that the demand to be the "poor among the poor" is really intended for the men and women who serve the Church, not the Church itself. They are, in fact, poor, even if the Church they serve is wealthy.
This is the argument that the POTUS can't do anything about poverty because his personal wealth is only about $7 million, and that wouldn't even give each poor person a dollar. The leaders of the church could certainly sacrifice church assets to help the poor if they wanted to act and not just talk.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 12, 2014, 09:10:32 PM
The Bishop of Rome is different. That's a defining feature of Catholicism.
Mere argument by assertion.
QuotePractically the Church does need some things. Based on major festivals and events the Church would need an area of Rome that could be consecrated, with space outside for up to a million people and also enough office space to help run the faith of over 1/6th of humanity. Luckily the Church has all this on the site of the tomb of St. Peter.
Practically, the Church does need some things. But what you describe are not things it needs, they are luxuries. Office space is available all over the world. Those offices need not be in Rome.
QuoteAround the world the Church runs parishes that provide vital services (not to mention their religious purposes) at an enormous loss.
So does the Lutheran Church, the Mormon Church, the Methodist Church.... None of them have Vaticans or their own banks, and yet they manage.
QuoteNot only that but the Vatican multiplies the Church's wealth that can be used to help the poor. The Church is not cash-rich. It has a lot of assets. The regular stream of money from visitors to the Vatican Museum is far better than the proceeds of a one off sale - and from a public interest perspective it is better that that collection is still together, on display and available for loans than split up, alienated from Rome and often in the hands of private collectors.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that Jibberjabber's link is correct, and you are wrong. From http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/17/vatican-finances/ (http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/17/vatican-finances/):
QuoteThe costs of the Vatican's growing bureaucracy far exceed its means. Operating expenses divert contributions once set aside for the poor.
QuoteIn addition the biggest assets are probably the least plausible to be sold. There is no existing market that I know of for Baroque Basillicas, whoever designed them or painted their frescoes.
I am going to assume that this is a joke, since it doesn't even start to address anything in this thread.
I guess a natural conclusion of this debate is that the Catholic church is now, so to say, beyond redemption: the wealth it has accumulated during a millennia of un-Christian behaviour is now too embedded with the entire organization, while also forever preventing them to be anything than mightily hypocrite in their teachings because of it.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 07:17:05 AM
I guess a natural conclusion of this debate is that the Catholic church is now, so to say, beyond redemption: the wealth it has accumulated during a millennia of un-Christian behaviour is now too embedded with the entire organization, while also forever preventing them to be anything than mightily hypocrite in their teachings because of it.
I guess my issue is: who cares? So long as they actually do help the poor (and they might if it were not for their stupid ideas on contraception and the like) I don't give a crap if they have a lot of stuff. Unless you actually are a Catholic I cannot imagine why it would matter one tiny bit if they were hypocritical. Hell I am far more disturbed by the ideas they present in earnest, I would vastly prefer they be hypocrites.
The Catholic Church has done a lot for people I know in Texas who have been working to help abused and neglected children with zero strings attached, I mean none of them were even remotely religious much less Catholic. Which is more than I could say for the secular government which has this bizarre adversarial relationship with anybody who wants to help children. I am grateful for that, the fact they might have a fancy cathedral in San Antonio is none of my business. That is the Catholic Church being hypocrites. The Catholic Church NOT being hypocrites is fighting birth control, abortion, homosexual rights and all that. Give me the hypocrisy any day.
+1 Valmy
Well, I will not compromise my moral values just because the detestable entity is willing to throw trinkets for it's PR purposes. -_-
Valmy gets my vote for Best Defence Of Popery & Buggery March 2014.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 09:26:05 AM
Well, I will not compromise my moral values just because the detestable entity is willing to throw trinkets for it's PR purposes. -_-
Way to take a stand!
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 09:27:44 AM
Valmy gets my vote for Best Defence Of Popery & Buggery March 2014.
My Irish ancestors would be proud :)
If I could find a way to defend alcoholism they might throw a party for me down in purgatory.
Not hard. Heriditary, creates memories (for the immediate family) and leads to less pensioners. And Charles Bukowski.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 07:17:05 AM
I guess a natural conclusion of this debate is that the Catholic church is now, so to say, beyond redemption: the wealth it has accumulated during a millennia of un-Christian behaviour is now too embedded with the entire organization, while also forever preventing them to be anything than mightily hypocrite in their teachings because of it.
But it's only hypocritical because of your view of their teaching. There's no hypocrisy from a Catholic perspective in a fancy cathedral and charity or being a poor Church.
It's like when Viking attacks them for being insufficiently literalist.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 09:36:11 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 07:17:05 AM
I guess a natural conclusion of this debate is that the Catholic church is now, so to say, beyond redemption: the wealth it has accumulated during a millennia of un-Christian behaviour is now too embedded with the entire organization, while also forever preventing them to be anything than mightily hypocrite in their teachings because of it.
But it's only hypocritical because of your view of their teaching. There's no hypocrisy from a Catholic perspective in a fancy cathedral and charity or being a poor Church.
It's like when Viking attacks them for being insufficiently literalist.
True, I consider the Catholic Church a flawed and historically very hindering construction, that's only saving grace for continued existence is the fact that it has grown largely insignificant as a force to slow down humanity's progress, and as such it is no longer as a big issue as it had been for almost a thousand years.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 09:56:12 AM
True, I consider the Catholic Church a flawed and historically very hindering construction, that's only saving grace for continued existence is the fact that it has grown largely insignificant as a force to slow down humanity's progress, and as such it is no longer as a big issue as it had been for almost a thousand years.
You are aware that at no time did the Catholic Church control the entire world right?
More than one billion members worldwide, yet largely insignificant. Nowadays. Apparently.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 10:09:04 AM
More than one billion members worldwide, yet largely insignificant. Nowadays. Apparently.
Eurocentrics <_<
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 10:09:04 AM
More than one billion members worldwide, yet largely insignificant. Nowadays. Apparently.
What I mean is, that they are no longer able to prosecute and burn scientists, or people with innovative ideas in general.
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
I did forget how they contribute to 3rd world poverty by being against abortion and contraception though. So they still manage to remain a hindrance for human civilization. Thumbs up for consistency!
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 10:42:18 AM
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep seated historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Pretty much. We are not excusing Nazism just because Hitler was a great dancer. Why think Catholicism is all nice and hip just because they managed to stumble upon a Pope who knows how to handle the media?
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 10:43:47 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 10:42:18 AM
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep seated historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Pretty much. We are not excusing Nazism just because Hitler was a great dancer. Why think Catholicism is all nice and hip just because they managed to stumble upon a Pope who knows how to handle the media?
What a terrible analogy.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:56 AM
What a terrible analogy.
Marty may be gone but it warms my heart to see his spirit and example live on.
You cannot really dislike something without using Nazi references on it, I believe.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2014, 10:49:42 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:56 AM
What a terrible analogy.
Marty may be gone but it warms my heart to see his spirit and example live on.
:lol:
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 10:43:47 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 10:42:18 AM
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep seated historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Pretty much. We are not excusing Nazism just because Hitler was a great dancer. Why think Catholicism is all nice and hip just because they managed to stumble upon a Pope who knows how to handle the media?
Corner paint is going cheap these days, it seems.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
and they said sorry. What more do people want?
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2014, 10:02:31 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 09:56:12 AM
True, I consider the Catholic Church a flawed and historically very hindering construction, that's only saving grace for continued existence is the fact that it has grown largely insignificant as a force to slow down humanity's progress, and as such it is no longer as a big issue as it had been for almost a thousand years.
You are aware that at no time did the Catholic Church control the entire world right?
OOOH! A non sequitur contest! I love those. You are off to a great start!
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Light a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 10:43:47 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 10:42:18 AM
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep seated historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Pretty much. We are not excusing Nazism just because Hitler was a great dancer. Why think Catholicism is all nice and hip just because they managed to stumble upon a Pope who knows how to handle the media?
CC acknowledges that it is impossible for Catholics to see the hypocrisy of their position. Doesn't that mitigate the crime to some extent, in your eyes?
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2014, 11:16:02 AM
OOOH! A non sequitur contest! I love those. You are off to a great start!
:yawn:
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2014, 11:19:33 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 13, 2014, 10:43:47 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 10:42:18 AM
I see this is not so much a critique of the current Pope for Tamas but a deep seated historical hatred for the Catholic Church.
Pretty much. We are not excusing Nazism just because Hitler was a great dancer. Why think Catholicism is all nice and hip just because they managed to stumble upon a Pope who knows how to handle the media?
CC acknowledges that it is impossible for Catholics to see the hypocrisy of their position. Doesn't that mitigate the crime to some extent, in your eyes?
A Strawman contest. :w00t: I love watching you do those. You are off to a wonderful start.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 11:27:58 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:36 AM
Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:56 AM
What a terrible analogy.
:hmm:
That's not an analogy. Lavoiser was actually executed by a stridently secularist government.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:33:54 AM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 11:27:58 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:36 AM
Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 10:46:56 AM
What a terrible analogy.
:hmm:
That's not an analogy. Lavoiser was actually executed by a stridently secularist government.
I think the point Max was making is that his execution had nothing to do with him being a scientist and everything to do with being an aristocrat.
Also that "secularism" is not an organization.
I'm not actually clear who the scientist was who was burned at the stake. I assume it was Bruno, but he really wasn't a scientist though he is celebrated as one sometimes.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 11:40:46 AM
Also that "secularism" is not an organization.
I think Raz was talking about the Government which ruled after the French revolution which he characterizes as secularist.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 11:45:49 AM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 11:40:46 AM
Also that "secularism" is not an organization.
I think Raz was talking about the Government which ruled after the French revolution which he characterizes as secularist.
Cool, so Raz is a libertarian now!
:P
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:57:56 AM
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Yes, but secularism is not revolutionary France. Conflating the two is what makes it a terrible analogy.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:57:56 AM
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Yeah don't most secular states have an official church where the government pays all the priests?
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:13:10 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:57:56 AM
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Yes, but secularism is not revolutionary France. Conflating the two is what makes it a terrible analogy.
It is an ideology though, one endorsed by France and one they used coercion to enforce.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:17:06 PM
It is an ideology though, one endorsed by France and one they used coercion to enforce.
Yea, so? The ideology didn't kill him. The organization did.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:28:15 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:17:06 PM
It is an ideology though, one endorsed by France and one they used coercion to enforce.
Yea, so? The ideology didn't kill him. The organization did.
And...?
"Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier." makes no sense since secularism didn't execute him.
Now if you had said that nobody beats up on Revolutionary France because of the execution of lavoisier, that would not have been as bad of an analogy. It just would have been incorrect.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 11:23:08 AM
CC acknowledges that it is impossible for Catholics to see the hypocrisy of their position. Doesn't that mitigate the crime to some extent, in your eyes?
A Strawman contest. :w00t: I love watching you do those. You are off to a wonderful start. [/quote]
Not a strawman, but simply a mis-attribution:
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 09:36:11 AM
There's no hypocrisy from a Catholic perspective in a fancy cathedral and charity or being a poor Church.
I wouldn't bother to enter a strawman contest, since we all know you are far more practiced in it than anyone else here.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:32:24 PM
"Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier." makes no sense since secularism didn't execute him.
Now if you had said that nobody beats up on Revolutionary France because of the execution of lavoisier, that would not have been as bad of an analogy. It just would have been incorrect.
So tell me, what do you believe is the relationship between a government and the ideology that the government is devoted to?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:17:06 PM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:13:10 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:57:56 AM
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Yes, but secularism is not revolutionary France. Conflating the two is what makes it a terrible analogy.
It is an ideology though, one endorsed by France and one they used coercion to enforce.
How did France endorse it? The effort failed pretty spectacularly, was extremely short-lived, and was un-Constitutional. Something that was endorsed by the whole country should have had more staying power. Associating Atheism with the French Revolution is a common error though, one which the Church went along with during the restoration and ironically actually DID lead to massive de-Christianization in the 19th century as being Christian came to be associated with being Monarchist. Whoops.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2014, 12:38:37 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:17:06 PM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:13:10 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:57:56 AM
:huh: I think it's fair to characterize Revolutionary France as "secularist".
Yes, but secularism is not revolutionary France. Conflating the two is what makes it a terrible analogy.
It is an ideology though, one endorsed by France and one they used coercion to enforce.
How did France endorse it? The effort failed pretty spectacularly, was extremely short-lived, and was un-Constitutional. Something that was endorsed by the whole country should have had more staying power. Associating Atheism with the French Revolution is a common error though, one which the Church went along with during the restoration and ironically actually DID lead to massive de-Christianization in the 19th century as being Christian came to be associated with being Monarchist. Whoops.
By executing a lot of people, that's how they endorsed it. It doesn't matter how badly they did and how long they did it, the revolutionary regime did endorse secularism. Also I never said atheism.
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2014, 12:37:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 11:23:08 AM
CC acknowledges that it is impossible for Catholics to see the hypocrisy of their position. Doesn't that mitigate the crime to some extent, in your eyes?
A Strawman contest. :w00t: I love watching you do those. You are off to a wonderful start.
So now you are reduced to deceit. :(
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:38:30 PM
So tell me, what do you believe is the relationship between a government and the ideology that the government is devoted to?
One is an organization and the other is an idea that organization uses.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:32:24 PM
"Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier." makes no sense since secularism didn't execute him.
Now if you had said that nobody beats up on Revolutionary France because of the execution of lavoisier, that would not have been as bad of an analogy. It just would have been incorrect.
I see this is not so much a defense of the current Pope for Raz but a deep historical hatred for the secularism.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:42:50 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:38:30 PM
So tell me, what do you believe is the relationship between a government and the ideology that the government is devoted to?
One is an organization and the other is an idea that organization uses.
So you would distinguish between say the Catholic Church and the Papal States, or Vatican City and the Catholic faith?
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2014, 12:43:27 PM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:32:24 PM
"Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier." makes no sense since secularism didn't execute him.
Now if you had said that nobody beats up on Revolutionary France because of the execution of lavoisier, that would not have been as bad of an analogy. It just would have been incorrect.
I see this is not so much a defense of the current Pope for Raz but a deep historical hatred for the secularism.
You know, for a guy who's pretending I'm not here, you sure write about me a lot. I'm beginning to think you might have a crush on me.
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2014, 12:43:27 PM
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:32:24 PM
"Nobody beats up on secularism because of the execution of lavoisier." makes no sense since secularism didn't execute him.
Now if you had said that nobody beats up on Revolutionary France because of the execution of lavoisier, that would not have been as bad of an analogy. It just would have been incorrect.
I see this is not so much a defense of the current Pope for Raz but a deep historical hatred for the secularism.
:w00t: imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Thanks Grumbles. :hug: For a deceitful sod you can be ok at times.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:41:18 PM
By executing a lot of people, that's how they endorsed it. It doesn't matter how badly they did and how long they did it, the revolutionary regime did endorse secularism. Also I never said atheism.
The Revolutionary regime, for most of its tenure anyway, was pretty obviously not secular as they did not endorse the concept of separation of church and state. Rather a state-run church that was sorta kinda Catholic but not. Henry VIII and his successors also punished people for not going along with the state church.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:45:06 PM
So you would distinguish between say the Catholic Church and the Papal States, or Vatican City and the Catholic faith?
Of course.
Quote from: Maximus on March 13, 2014, 12:52:16 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 12:45:06 PM
So you would distinguish between say the Catholic Church and the Papal States, or Vatican City and the Catholic faith?
Of course.
Okay good enough.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2014, 12:48:30 PM
The Revolutionary regime, for most of its tenure anyway, was pretty obviously not secular as they did not endorse the concept of separation of church and state. Rather a state-run church that was sorta kinda Catholic but not. Henry VIII and his successors also punished people for not going along with the state church.
Indeed. the comparison "Secularism is to the First French republic as Catholicism is to the Catholic Church" is pretty absurd on the face of it, and would only be proposed by someone so ignorant of history as to lack all credibility.
Raz, I how do you feel about Grumbler's passive aggressive behaviour lately?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:45:10 AM
I'm not actually clear who the scientist was who was burned at the stake. I assume it was Bruno, but he really wasn't a scientist though he is celebrated as one sometimes.
Miguel Servet (Michael Servetus?).
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 13, 2014, 12:57:25 PM
Raz, I how do you feel about Grumbler's passive aggressive behaviour lately?
I think he may be into me.
Quote from: celedhring on March 13, 2014, 02:25:48 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:45:10 AM
I'm not actually clear who the scientist was who was burned at the stake. I assume it was Bruno, but he really wasn't a scientist though he is celebrated as one sometimes.
Miguel Servet (Michael Servetus?).
That was not Catholics who did that.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 02:43:37 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 13, 2014, 02:25:48 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 11:45:10 AM
I'm not actually clear who the scientist was who was burned at the stake. I assume it was Bruno, but he really wasn't a scientist though he is celebrated as one sometimes.
Miguel Servet (Michael Servetus?).
That was not Catholics who did that.
True, forgot it was Calvin's lot.
Witchburning was more of a Protestant thing than Catholic, I think. In Norway, the number of women tried as witches was staggeringly high for such a small population.
Then again, it gets cold here in winter.
This thread would be better if it was about beer and nurses.
What about witches, beer and nurses? And Swedish-made penis-enlarger pumps?
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 02:54:35 PM
Witchburning was more of a Protestant thing than Catholic, I think. In Norway, the number of women tried as witches was staggeringly high for such a small population.
Then again, it gets cold here in winter.
Yep. Almost no examples in Spain or Italy. Ireland got off the lightest in this sort of thing. Not a Catholic state so it didn't have an inquisition, but mainly influenced by Spanish Catholicism so no witch-hysteria. Unfortunately Ireland was fucked in every other way :(
Witch hunts killed about as many as the inquisition. I think both were probably examples of societies looking for an enemy within to blame and punish. In the Protestant world it was witches (and some heretics) in the Catholic heretics (and some witches) and in Iberia secret Jews and Muslims (and some heretics).
There are a few books about the witch trials in Norway. The further north you got, the more likely any female was a witch, it seems.
http://www.witchcraftandwitches.com/trials_vardo.html
Your reasoning concerning the motivations probably holds water.
But wasn't Jan Huss burnt at the stake? And Joan of Arc?
Yeah. Witch hunts exist before the Reformation all across Europe. But they are comparatively few. In 17th century Europe (and North America) there's an enormous increase in inquisitions and witch hunts.
Generally the witch hunts take place in Protestant areas (with the exception of Germany where it's more or less universal).
It is interesting to ask why. I think part of it is probably a response to the end of Medieval society and social structures. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations destroy many local differences and different aspects of popular culture. At the same time these steps centralise states and begin to create modern Europe. I think this is part of that process and a popular response to it (official inquisitions and witch hunts were often a response to local, lay allegations and suspicions).
Maybe it could also be part of the reformation of manners where you see the state and the church taking far more interest in individual behaviour (I think the Medieval understanding was more collective). So the role of women changes and becomes far more subservient after the 17th century than was the case in the Medieval period. There's also far more prosecutions of sodomy (often tied to heresy in the Catholic world). Again awful but a part of the ideological drive that created modern Europe and European culture.
Speaker Boehner invited the Pope to speak in front of Congress.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 04:01:39 PM
Yeah. Witch hunts exist before the Reformation all across Europe. But they are comparatively few. In 17th century Europe (and North America) there's an enormous increase in inquisitions and witch hunts.
Hey! New England only burned like 50 people.
I liked the museum in Salem. They had a nice little summary of the events but most of it was this big plea to stop persecuting Wiccans. I was like, um you do realize none of the people burned in the Salem Witch Trials were actual witches right? That is the whole meaning of the term 'witch hunt'.
....He's not planning a visit to the US :mellow:
Also it's been a year and he's had one trip abroad (Brazil for World Youth Day). It doesn't feel like he's a pilgrim Pope like JPII or even BXVI. I wouldn't be surprised if he only visited Argentina and the World Youth Day cities :mellow:
Interesting thoughts. I would be inclined to think you're mostly right, Sheilbh.
Maybe the "lesser ice age" also played a part with more calamity for what was mostly a rural uneducated (yet educated in Luther's catechism) agrarian people. People started hearing the Bible read in their own language, but by ministers at least up here sorely lacking in education. One notable exception is Peter Dass.
On a very different note, I remember being forced to remember Luther's catechism in school. So much for socialist education.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2014, 04:07:21 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 04:01:39 PM
Yeah. Witch hunts exist before the Reformation all across Europe. But they are comparatively few. In 17th century Europe (and North America) there's an enormous increase in inquisitions and witch hunts.
Hey! New England only burned like 50 people.
I liked the museum in Salem. They had a nice little summary of the events but most of it was this big plea to stop persecuting Wiccans. I was like, um you do realize none of the people burned in the Salem Witch Trials were actual witches right? That is the whole meaning of the term 'witch hunt'.
How do you know they weren't witches?
The ashes showed no evidence of tail.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:14:31 PM
Maybe the "lesser ice age" also played a part with more calamity for what was mostly a rural uneducated (yet educated in Luther's catechism) agrarian people. People started hearing the Bible read in their own language, but by ministers at least up here sorely lacking in education. One notable exception is Peter Dass.
I'd not thought of that but you're probably right. Add in the calamities of war in Britain and Germany and it's easy to understand why you'd want someone to blame.
I could go for a book recommendation on this topic, too.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 04:22:25 PM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:14:31 PM
Maybe the "lesser ice age" also played a part with more calamity for what was mostly a rural uneducated (yet educated in Luther's catechism) agrarian people. People started hearing the Bible read in their own language, but by ministers at least up here sorely lacking in education. One notable exception is Peter Dass.
I'd not thought of that but you're probably right. Add in the calamities of war in Britain and Germany and it's easy to understand why you'd want someone to blame.
It does to some extent correlate with the 30 Years War. I recommend "Europe's Tragedy", a splendid little book.
But that doesn't really explain why places like New England went all witch-hunty.
Crop failure, maybe? Due to cold weather, or whatever.
Domestic animal disease.
I am fairly areligious, in that I don't have faith and don't practice, but I do find religion's part of history utterly fascinating.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 04:39:03 PM
I could go for a book recommendation on this topic, too.
The number of books written on Admiral Yi and liberation theology is disappointingly low.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:42:42 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 04:39:03 PM
I could go for a book recommendation on this topic, too.
The number of books written on Admiral Yi and liberation theology is disappointingly low.
:blurgh: Too late, you already made an earnest recommendation!
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:39:42 PM
It does to some extent correlate with the 30 Years War. I recommend "Europe's Tragedy", a splendid little book.
I haven't, but I will. I've only read C. V. Wedgwood's 'Thirty Years War' which is beautifully written but probably enormously out of date.
Diarmaid MacCulloch's 'Reformation' is a very good overview of the period. It tries to cover all the regions and different types of Reformation (Protestant, Catholic and the popular), but it also has a very good section on social history which is probably the most interesting.
There's some very good microhistory from this period too. I love Carlos Ginzburg's 'The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller':
QuoteThe Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time.
For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."
Eamon Duffy's great and partisan on the Reformation in England and the transition from Medieval to modern. 'Stripping the Altars' is his big text but 'The Voices of Morebath' is also brilliant, another microhistory from one of his sources for 'Stripping the Altars':
QuoteIn this text a Reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep-farming village where 33 families worked the difficult land on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath's conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath's only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-reformation piety of a 16th-century English village. The work also offers a window into a rural world in crisis as the Reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay's accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove hitherto law-abiding West-Country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer-Book Rebellion of 1549 - culminating in the siege of Exeter which ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced, Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community: reluctantly Protestant, no longer focused on the religious life of the parish church, and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath's priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered, and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after 400 years of silence.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 04:49:51 PM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:42:42 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 04:39:03 PM
I could go for a book recommendation on this topic, too.
The number of books written on Admiral Yi and liberation theology is disappointingly low.
:blurgh: Too late, you already made an earnest recommendation!
Earnest Borgnine wrote a book?
Why, so he did! http://www.amazon.com/Ernie-Autobiography-Ernest-Borgnine/dp/0806529423 (http://www.amazon.com/Ernie-Autobiography-Ernest-Borgnine/dp/0806529423)
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:39:42 PM
I am fairly areligious, in that I don't have faith and don't practice, but I do find religion's part of history utterly fascinating.
I think it's especially because so many people are offering religious advice to the Muslim world. 'We need a Muslim Reformation'...to kick off two hundred years of unprecedented sectarian bloodshed etc.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 05:00:21 PM
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 04:39:42 PM
I am fairly areligious, in that I don't have faith and don't practice, but I do find religion's part of history utterly fascinating.
I think it's especially because so many people are offering religious advice to the Muslim world. 'We need a Muslim Reformation'...to kick off two hundred years of unprecedented sectarian bloodshed etc.
I've found most of the people offering free advice to the Muslim world are either wrong in their assumption that Muslims need it or uncultured female organs of reproduction.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
and Neil Degrasse Tyson is gonna go Enlightenment on your ass.
Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 03:18:21 PM
What about witches, beer and nurses? And Swedish-made penis-enlarger pumps?
That's not my bag, baby.
Quote from: Viking on March 13, 2014, 05:16:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
and Neil Degrasse Tyson is gonna go Enlightenment on your ass.
You mean pass off a mystic as a martyred scientist?
I'm reading Terry Eagleton's new book, "Culture and the Death of God," which has a few relevant comments for this debate concerning the Enlightenment. He points out that "atheism" as a pejorative preceded the emergence of real atheists by about 100 years.
"It would be curious, then, if the Enlightenment had taken the form of an aggressively secular movement, as some of its modern apologists assume. When it came to religion, a good deal of this audacious intellectual project landed us back on a spot not far from where we were in the first place, furnished with a new, more plausible set of rationales. The task was not so much to topple the Supreme Being as to replace a benighted version of religious faith with one that might grace coffee-house conversation in the Strand. For the most part, it was priestcraft rather than the Almighty that the movement had in its sight."
Quoting Jonathan Israel, the turning point was that it was "by the 1740s, the apparent collapse of all efforts to forge a new general synthesis of theology, philosophy, politics, and science, which destablished religious beliefs and values, causing the wholly unprecedented crisis of faith driving the secularisation of the modern West."
Eagleton says that J. Israel is pointing out that this spiritual crisis "has its roots in a thoroughly material history -- the expansion of European commercialism and imperialism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the rapid growth of international monopolies, the dislocating effects of diaspora, a new social fluidity and diversity, the impact of new technologies, the partial dissolution of traditional social hierarchies and their accompanying symbolic systems and the like."
Just though I'd share, since the book is open to these pages at the moment.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 10:38:02 PM
I'm reading Terry Eagleton's new book, "Culture and the Death of God," which has a few relevant comments for this debate concerning the Enlightenment. He points out that "atheism" as a pejorative preceded the emergence of real atheists by about 100 years.
"It would be curious, then, if the Enlightenment had taken the form of an aggressively secular movement, as some of its modern apologists assume. When it came to religion, a good deal of this audacious intellectual project landed us back on a spot not far from where we were in the first place, furnished with a new, more plausible set of rationales. The task was not so much to topple the Supreme Being as to replace a benighted version of religious faith with one that might grace coffee-house conversation in the Strand. For the most part, it was priestcraft rather than the Almighty that the movement had in its sight."
Quoting Jonathan Israel, the turning point was that it was "by the 1740s, the apparent collapse of all efforts to forge a new general synthesis of theology, philosophy, politics, and science, which destablished religious beliefs and values, causing the wholly unprecedented crisis of faith driving the secularisation of the modern West."
Eagleton says that J. Israel is pointing out that this spiritual crisis "has its roots in a thoroughly material history -- the expansion of European commercialism and imperialism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the rapid growth of international monopolies, the dislocating effects of diaspora, a new social fluidity and diversity, the impact of new technologies, the partial dissolution of traditional social hierarchies and their accompanying symbolic systems and the like."
Just though I'd share, since the book is open to these pages at the moment.
I am finding it hard to reconcile the 1740s and "the dislocating effects of diaspora, a new social fluidity and diversity, the impact of new technologies." What diaspora was taking place? The Enclosure Movement wasn't a diaspora, and the numbers moving to the New World were not, either. Ditto for the technology and social fluidity. I can understand the argument about the failure to reach a new general synthesis causing the spiritual crisis of the time, but not the bit in the last quote. Agree that "for the most part, it was priestcraft rather than the Almighty that the movement had in its sight."
The last quote seems to refer to another spiritual crisis later in European history.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 08:39:29 PM
Quote from: Viking on March 13, 2014, 05:16:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 10:35:02 AM
Christ. You burn one scientist...
:P
and Neil Degrasse Tyson is gonna go Enlightenment on your ass.
You mean pass off a mystic as a martyred scientist?
No, by bitch slapping you for murdering a man just for his beliefs while cautiously qualifying that Bruno was guessing and happened to guess good.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 10:38:02 PM
I'm reading Terry Eagleton's new book, "Culture and the Death of God," which has a few relevant comments for this debate concerning the Enlightenment. He points out that "atheism" as a pejorative preceded the emergence of real atheists by about 100 years.
"It would be curious, then, if the Enlightenment had taken the form of an aggressively secular movement, as some of its modern apologists assume. When it came to religion, a good deal of this audacious intellectual project landed us back on a spot not far from where we were in the first place, furnished with a new, more plausible set of rationales. The task was not so much to topple the Supreme Being as to replace a benighted version of religious faith with one that might grace coffee-house conversation in the Strand. For the most part, it was priestcraft rather than the Almighty that the movement had in its sight."
Quoting Jonathan Israel, the turning point was that it was "by the 1740s, the apparent collapse of all efforts to forge a new general synthesis of theology, philosophy, politics, and science, which destablished religious beliefs and values, causing the wholly unprecedented crisis of faith driving the secularisation of the modern West."
Eagleton says that J. Israel is pointing out that this spiritual crisis "has its roots in a thoroughly material history -- the expansion of European commercialism and imperialism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the rapid growth of international monopolies, the dislocating effects of diaspora, a new social fluidity and diversity, the impact of new technologies, the partial dissolution of traditional social hierarchies and their accompanying symbolic systems and the like."
Just though I'd share, since the book is open to these pages at the moment.
I agree with that. Atheists were few and far between in the enlightenment. To be honest, before 1859 knowledge of each branch of science supported theism (you needed to be a polymath to see the inconsistencies, which few people were). It was the philosophical argument against god that caused people to disbelieve. Though, even there the philosophical arguments for the most part demolished religion rather than god. This caused people to abandon their religion and become Deists and Unitarians rather than Atheists. What Darwin did is that he removed the need for God to get life, at that point everything seemed to be explained.
Quote from: Viking on March 14, 2014, 08:30:02 AM
No, by bitch slapping you for murdering a man just for his beliefs while cautiously qualifying that Bruno was guessing and happened to guess good.
Bruno was not the first, nor the last, to be killed for his beliefs. It is amusing to see the catholic apologists asserting that Bruno was a 'real enough" scientist, as though that makes his execution for holding sincere doubts about church doctrine later abandoned by the church itself okay. I'd dispute your assertion that Bruno was "guessing," though. He was hypothesizing, based on the evidence available in his day, and it isn't too surprising that his hypotheses sometimes came very close to modern ones.
I believe that the real reason Bruno was executed and his works banned was because his ideas implied that the Pope was just the pope of this planet, and that there were other popes (and other Catholic Churches) on other planets (which Jesus would have to have visited like he did earth), holding the same relationship with God as the pope on earth. The church of the time, of course, couldn't tolerate the idea that it was not unique and the Pope not more in touch with god's will than any other mortal being.
I don't think that this has much to do with the modern Catholic church, though.
This seems kind-of relevant:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2014/02/17/140217crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all
QuoteBIGGER THAN PHIL
When did faith start to fade?
BY ADAM GOPNIK
FEBRUARY 17, 2014
In Tom Stoppard's 1970 play "Jumpers," the philosopher hero broods unhappily on the inexorable rise of the atheist: "The tide is running his way, and it is a tide which has turned only once in human history. . . . There is presumably a calendar date—a moment—when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, the noes had it." Well, when was that date—when did the noes have it? In 1890? In 1918, after the Great War? In 1966, when Time shocked its readers with a cover that asked whether God was dead? For that matter, do the noes have it? In most of the world, the ayes seem to be doing just fine. Even in secularized Manhattan, the Christmas Eve midnight Mass is packed tight with parishioners, and the few who came for the music are given dirty looks as they sheepishly back out after the Vivaldi.
The most generous poll never seems to find more than thirty per cent of Americans saying they are "not religious or not very religious," though the numbers get up to around fifty per cent in Europe. But something has altered in the course of a century or so. John Stuart Mill said in the early nineteenth century that he was the only youth he knew who was raised as a skeptic; by the end of his life, skeptics were all around him. Yet, though the nineteenth-century novel is roiled by doubt, there isn't one in which the doubters quite dominate. Whatever change has occurred isn't always well captured by counting hands. At a minimum, more people can say they don't think there is a God, and suffer less for saying so, than has been the case since the fall of Rome. The noes have certainly captured some constituency, obtained some place. What, exactly, do they have?
There's a case to be made that the change is more like pulses than like tides. If the nineteenth century ended with freethinkers in every front parlor, for most of the twentieth century the sound of atheism became more agonized and muted. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the firebrand head of the American Atheists, had an occasional spot on Johnny Carson, but it was always in the last ten minutes of the show, the same spot that, ahem, Johnny gave to authors. (Billy Graham got on right after the monologue.) The glamour lay in faith. Nearly all the great modernist poets were believers: Auden and Eliot in Anglo-Christianity, Yeats in some self-crafted Hibernian voodoo. Wallace Stevens, whose great poem "Sunday Morning" is all about what to do when you don't go to church, saw his atheism treated very discreetly, like Hart Crane's homosexuality.
Only in the past twenty or so years did a tone frankly contemptuous of faith emerge. Centered on the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists were polemicists, and, like all polemics, theirs were designed not to persuade but to stiffen the spines of their supporters and irritate the stomach linings of their enemies. Instead of being mushy and marginalized, atheism could proclaim its creed. But why did the nonbelievers suddenly want stiffer spines and clearer signals? Why, if the noes indeed had it, did they suddenly have to be so loud?
A history of modern atheism—what did Voltaire say to Diderot? what did Comte mean to Mill? who was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, anyway?—would be nice to have. The British popular historian Peter Watson's "The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God" (Simon & Schuster) could have been that book, but it isn't. Beginning with Nietzsche's 1882 pronouncement that the big guy had passed and man was now out on the "open sea" of uncertainty, the book is instead an omnium-gatherum of the life and work of every modern artist or philosopher who was unsettled or provoked by the possible nonexistence of God. Watson leads us on a breakneck trip through it all—Bloomsbury and Bernard Shaw, Dostoyevsky and German Expressionism, Sigmund Freud and Pablo Picasso. If it's Chapter 3, this must be Vienna.
This makes sense of a kind, the nonexistence of God being an issue for modern people, and rising up everywhere. But reporting on every place you see it doesn't help to see it more clearly. (On one page, we hear about Anna Clark, Tennessee Williams, Stefan George, James Joyce, Philip Roth, Henry James, Wilhelm Reich, Valentine de Saint-Point, Léger, Milan Kundera, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, H. G. Wells, Gerhart Hauptmann, Aldous Huxley, John Gray, Eugene Goodheart, Jonathan Lear, and, of course, Nietzsche.) Argos, the hundred-eyed watchman, might have had more sight than other giants, but he didn't have sharper sight. Would Matisse really never have painted "The Red Studio"—which Watson takes as a paradigm of post-religious art, with the artist's self-made space replacing divine nature—if Nietzsche hadn't made that memorable P.R. statement about the Deity's demise?
The problem is that godlessness as a felt condition is very different from atheism as an articulate movement. Watson doesn't distinguish clearly, or at all, between the two, and so his book manages to feel at once breathless and long-winded—much too rushed in its parts and too diffuse as a whole. Even his chronology of ever-growing disbelief seems off. "Modern art is a celebration of the secular," he states confidently, meaning Picasso and his like, and although he backtracks quickly, he can't backtrack far enough, since so much of modern art—Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko—has been religious or mystical in nature.
Only in the last hundred or so pages does the real contention of the book appear. For Watson, we are divided not so much between believers and non- as between what might be called Super-Naturalists, who believe that a material account of existence is inadequate to our numinous-seeming experience, and Self-Makers, who are prepared to let the human mind take credit even for the most shimmering bits of life. His enduring sympathies lie with the unduly forgotten historian and novelist Theodore Roszak and with the philosopher Richard Rorty. Both are conciliatory Self-Makers, who sought to elevate experience over arguments and, dissatisfied with science, made of religious feeling its own religion. Watson regards phenomenology as "the most underrated movement of the twentieth century," and finds in its emphasis on happy sensations, on the thisness of life, the happiest alternative to old-time religion. Atheism sanctifies less of the world but names more of it, he seems to say, and this is in itself enough. This seems to leave the door open for believers to engage in expanded "naming" of their own, which would turn mighty Jehovah into little Tinker Bell—if you say his name enough, he lives. Still, for Watson this is the right, positive, mystery-affirming, life-enhancing, and pragmatic-minded faith to end up within.
That really useful history of atheism would, presumably, try to distinguish between Watson's subject, the late-arriving romantic agony of Nietzsche and his disciples—which responds to God's absence the way fifth graders respond to the absence of the teacher: you mean now we can do anything?—and the older tradition of Enlightenment rationalism: the tradition that gave God a gold watch and told him the office was now so well ordered he wouldn't be needed any longer. This more polite but, finally, more potent form of non-faith has played a larger role in politics than the no-more-teacher kind, if a lesser role in the arts. It's the subject of "Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World" (Palgrave), by the N.Y.U. journalism professor Mitchell Stephens.
Stephens's book is entirely a story of atheism as an articulate movement—one that he is rooting for, a little too hard at times. We learn an enormous amount about figures censored out of history, and about the persecution that freethinkers suffered until shockingly recently. His martyrs fill our hearts; his heroes inspire. He prefers Denis Diderot, the French encyclopedist, to Voltaire, for, where Voltaire merely mocked at a safe distance, Diderot was a real moralist, who changed Parisian minds. And he devotes many moving pages to the underappreciated life of Charles Bradlaugh, the defiant Victorian atheist—he allegedly called Christianity "a cursed, inhuman religion"—who nonetheless got himself elected to Parliament many times over, and was finally allowed to take his seat there, against the Queen's wishes. (He was celebrated after his death with a seven-foot statue in his constituency.) Stephens does remind the reader at moments of the mother in Philip Roth who, reading about a plane crash, always counts the Jewish names first. Stephens counts the atheists first, emphasizing their role in the anti-slavery movement, even though, as he knows, the Christian churches played a far larger one.
In Stephens's telling, a new human epoch of feeling is kicked off by each big name. So with godlessness: Diderot wrote this, Nietzsche said this, Darwin saw this, Bradlaugh stood his ground, and now the liquor stores are open all day Sunday. The difficulty, as always with popular chronicles of ideas, is not that ideas don't matter; it's that we too readily skip over the question of how they come to matter. Who seeded the ground is the historian's easy question; what made the ground receive the seed is the hard one.
Indeed, much of the argument against God works less well as argument and thesis than as atmosphere and tone. The sappers who silently undermined the foundations of the Church did more damage than the soldiers who stormed the walls. Two luminaries of the English and French Enlightenment, Edward Gibbon and August Comte, entirely elude Stephens's story. Neither was a nonbeliever by argument or by avowal, yet both helped kill God by implication and by insinuation. The most effective and far-reaching case against Christianity in eighteenth-century England is Chapter 15 of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Gibbon concedes—that is, "concedes"—the obvious truth of the Christian religion, and then asks, deadpan, what worldly mechanism would nonetheless have been necessary for its triumph? In a manner still not improved upon for concise plausibility, he enumerates the real-world minority politics that made it happen. The Christians had the advantage of cohesion and inner discipline that the dissipated majority, pagans and Epicureans alike, did not. Religious history becomes a question of human causes and events. Divinity is diminished without ever being officially doubted.
Comte, in his way, did more damage to organized religion than Diderot, not by quarrelling with it but simply by imitating it. He brought an aggressive form of "humanism" to nineteenth-century France, inclining toward a form of worship that replaced the God above with Good Men below. His kind of humanism created chapels (one still exists in Paris) filled with icons of the admirable: Héloïse, Abélard, Galileo. It's still a cozy space. Instead of making us God-size, he made faith us-size. Just as religious tolerance was established less by argument than by exhaustion, infidelity was made appealing by atmosphere. Argument mattered chiefly through the moods it made.
There do seem to be three distinct peaks of modern disbelief, moments when, however hard it is to count precise numbers, we can sense that it was cool to be a scoffer, trendy to vote "No!" One is in the late eighteenth century, before the French Revolution, another in the late nineteenth century, just before the Russian Revolution, and now there's our own. A reactionary would point out, with justice, that each high point preceded a revolution that turned ugly enough to make nonbelief look bad. Very much like the Christians in the Roman Empire, the noes have had it most often less through numbers than through discipline and self-confidence and an ambition for power, even claiming, like Christians, the assent of a state: first Republican France, then the Soviet Union.
Yet the need for God never vanishes. Mel Brooks's 2000 Year Old Man, asked to explain the origin of God, admits that early humans first adored "a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him." Phil "was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!" One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. "We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, 'There's something bigger than Phil!' " The basic urge to recognize something bigger than Phil still gives theistic theories an audience, even as their explanations of the lightning-maker turn ever gappier and gassier. Expert defenders are more and more inclined to seize on the tiniest of scientific gaps or to move ever upward to ideas of God so remote from existence as to become pure hot air. Stephen C. Meyer's best-selling "Darwin's Doubt" (HarperOne) reinvents the God of the Gaps—a God whose province is whatever science can't yet explain—with a special focus on the Unsolved Mysteries of the Cambrian explosion. Experience shows that those who adopt this strategy end up defending a smaller and smaller piece of ground. They used to find God's hand in man's very existence, then in the design of his eyes, then, after the emergence of the eye was fully explained, they were down to the bird's wing, then they tried the bacterial flagellum, and now, like Meyer, they're down to pointing to the cilia in the gut of worms and the emergence of a few kinds of multi-cellular organisms in the Cambrian as things beyond all rational explanation. Retreat always turns to rout in these matters.
As the explanations get more desperately minute, the apologies get ever vaster. David Bentley Hart's recent "The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss" (Yale) doesn't even attempt to make God the unmoved mover, the Big Banger who got the party started; instead, it roots the proof of his existence in the existence of the universe itself. Since you can explain the universe only by means of some other bit of the universe, why is there a universe (or many of them)? The answer to this unanswerable question is God. He stands outside everything, "the infinite to which nothing can add and from which nothing can subtract," the ultimate ground of being. This notion, maximalist in conception, is minimalist in effect. Something that much bigger than Phil is so remote from Phil's problems that he might as well not be there for Phil at all. This God is obviously not the God who makes rules about frying bacon or puts harps in the hands of angels. A God who communicates with no one and causes nothing seems a surprisingly trivial acquisition for cosmology—the dinner guest legendary for his wit who spends the meal mumbling with his mouth full.
What's easily missed in all this is something more important: the clandestine convergence between Super-Naturalists and Self-Makers. Surprisingly few people who have considered the alternatives—few among the caucus who consciously stand up, voting aye or nay—believe any longer in God. Believe, that is, in an omnipotent man in the sky making moral rules and watching human actions with paranoiac intensity. The ayes do believe in someone—a principle of creation, a "higher entity," that "ground of being," an "idea of order," an actor beyond easy or instant comprehension, something more than matter and bigger than Phil. And they certainly believe in some thing—a church, a set of rituals, a historical scheme, and an anti-rational tradition. But the keynote of their self-description typically involves a celebration of mystery and complexity, too refined for the materialist mind to accept. Self-Makers often do an injustice to the uncertainty of Super-Naturalists, who, if anything, tend to fetishize the mystery of faith as a special spiritual province that nonbelievers are too fatuous to grasp, and advertise their doubt and their need for faith quite as much as their dogma. "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," not "Onward, Christian Soldiers," is the Super-Naturalists' anthem these days.
But, just as surely, most noes believe in something like what the Super-Naturalists would call faith—they search for transcendence and epiphany, practice some ritual, live some rite. True rationalists are as rare in life as actual deconstructionists are in university English departments, or true bisexuals in gay bars. In a lifetime spent in hotbeds of secularism, I have known perhaps two thoroughgoing rationalists—people who actually tried to eliminate intuition and navigate life by reasoning about it—and countless humanists, in Comte's sense, people who don't go in for God but are enthusiasts for transcendent meaning, for sacred pantheons and private chapels. They have some syncretic mixture of rituals: they polish menorahs or decorate Christmas trees, meditate upon the great beyond, say a silent prayer, light candles to the darkness. They talk without difficulty of souls and weapons of the spirit, and go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to hear the Gloria, and though they leave early, they leave fulfilled. You will know them by their faces; they are the weepy ones in the rear.
If atheists underestimate the fudginess in faith, believers underestimate the soupiness of doubt. My own favorite atheist blogger, Jerry Coyne, the University of Chicago evolutionary biologist, regularly offers unanswerable philippics against the idiocies of intelligent design. But a historian looking at his blog years from now would note that he varies the philippics with a tender stream of images of cats—into whose limited cognition, this dog-lover notes, he projects intelligence and personality quite as blithely as his enemies project design into seashells—and samples of old Motown songs. The articulation of humanism demands something humane, and its signal is disproportionate pleasure placed in some frankly irrational love. Stephens, for that matter, takes his title from the seemingly forthright John Lennon song "Imagine." Lennon, having flirted with atheism for about nine months, from Christmas of 1970 to the fall of 1971, fell back into a supernaturalist web of syncretism of his own, flying the "wrong," or westerly, way around the world and practicing astrology. Stephens says diplomatically that Lennon "remained intermittently susceptible to belief"—but in truth Lennon was entirely captive to whatever superstition had most recently tickled his fancy, or his wife's. Imagine there's no Heaven—but pay attention to the stars and throw the I Ching as necessary. The maker of the great atheist anthem was anything but an atheist.
Doctrinaire religionists and anti-religionists alike reserve special derision for such handmade syncretism, perhaps because they see it as the real threat to their authority. (Christian rites were mocked among the Romans for their vulgarity long before they were denounced for their absurdity.) "Being Jewish is incredibly important to me, but I'm not observant," one such syncretist, a novelist, says in an interview:
At the same time, I cared deeply that my son know himself as Jewish—not just culturally, but be steeped in the traditions and rituals. His Bar Mitzvah last year—which was completely homegrown, eclectic, held in a church, led by a female Rabbi with whom we've become close, with readings from Coleridge and Hannah Szenes, as well as the whole congregation singing Leonard Cohen's "Broken Hallelujah" with my son playing his ukulele and me on the piano—was one of the highlights of my life.
One is supposed to disdain such festivals as slack and self-pleasing—that double-blasphemed church! that lady rabbi! that ukulele! But in truth they are no more or less "made up" than the older religions, which were also forged from disparate parts, and looked just as ridiculous to outsiders at the time. This is not a bastardized or lesser form of faith. It is faith as it has always existed.
Good news, right? Doesn't this mean that we are, to cite a chastened optimist, less divided than our theological politics suggest? Probably it means that we are even more divided than our religious politics suggest, because it is the point of politics to divide. It is not an accident that the crucial moment of voting in the British Parliament is called a "division." Our politics are a mirror not of our similarities but of our differences. That's why they're politics. We were less divided than our politics made us seem right on the brink of the Civil War, too. We were just divided on one big point. And the big point that divides us now is that the Super-Naturalists don't want only to be reassured that they can say their prayers as much as they like to whomever they like. They also want recognition from the people they feel control the culture that theirs is an honored path to truth—they want Super-Naturalism to be respected not just as a way of living but as a way of knowing.
And here we arrive at what the noes, whatever their numbers, really have now, and that is a monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world. They have this monopoly for the same reason that computer manufacturers have an edge over crystal-ball makers: the advantages of having an actual explanation of things and processes are self-evident. What works wins. We know that men were not invented but slowly evolved from smaller animals; that the earth is not the center of the universe but one among a billion planets in a distant corner; and that, in the billions of years of the universe's existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession with the laws of nature. We need not imagine that there's no Heaven; we know that there is none, and we will search for angels forever in vain. A God can still be made in the face of all that absence, but he will always be chairman of the board, holding an office of fine title and limited powers.
Given the diminishment in divine purview, from Galileo's time on, the Super-Naturalists just want the language of science not to be actively insulting to them. And here we may come at last to the seedbed of the New Atheism, the thing that made the noes so loud: the broad prestige, in the past twenty years, of evolutionary biology. Since the Enlightenment, one mode of science has always been dominant, the top metaphor that educated people use to talk about experience. In most of the twentieth century, physics played the role of super-science, and physics is, by its nature, accommodating of God: the theories of physics are so cosmic that the language of physics can persist without actively insulting the language of faith. It's all big stuff, way out there, or unbelievably tiny stuff, down here, and, either way, it's strange and spooky. Einstein's "God," who does not play dice with the universe, is not really the theologian's God, but he is close enough to be tolerated. With the great breakthroughs in understanding that followed the genomic revolution, evo-bio has become, insensibly, the model science, the one that so many of the pop books are about—and biology makes specific claims about people, and encounters much coarser religious objections. It's significant that the New Atheism gathered around Richard Dawkins. The details of the new evolutionary theory are fairly irrelevant to the New Atheism (Lamarckian ideas of evolution could be accepted tomorrow, and not bring God back with them), but the two have become twinned in the Self-Making mind. Their perpetual invocation is a perpetual insult to Super-Naturalism, and to the right of faith to claim its truths.
"Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds," John Updike wrote, a decade ago. "The power of materialist science to explain everything—from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms, and their sub-microscopic components—seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires, and—may we even say—illusions composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize, and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me." Does religion alone address the reality of our subjective sensations? It's perfectly possible to believe that there are many things that will never be subjects of science without thinking that they are therefore objects of faith. Human beings are unpredictable. We can't know what songs they will sing, what new ideas they will come up with, how beautifully they will act or how badly. But their subjective sensations do not supply them with souls. They just make them people. Since Darwin's starting premise is that individual variation is the rule of nature, it isn't surprising that the living things that are able to have experiences have them in varied and individual ways. The plausible opposite of "permanent scientific explanation" is "singular poetic description," not "miraculous magical intercession."
In the end, these seem questions more of temperament than of argument. Mitchell Stephens speaks of the agonized struggle within the soul and the mind between belief and nonbelief. This struggle is a modern piety, but I wonder how many people actually experience it. The sight of an open sea strikes some as beautiful and others as scary, and the line between them seems no more a matter of principle than that between people who like oceans in the summer and those who prefer ponds. Some people of great sensibility and intelligence—Larkin, Auden, and Emily Dickinson, to name three—find intolerable the idea of open seas, of high windows letting in the light, and nothing beyond. If the leap to God is only a leap of the imagination, they still prefer the precarious footing. Others—Elizabeth Bishop, William Empson, and Wallace Stevens—find the scenario unthreatening, and recoil at the idea of a universe set up as a game of blood sacrifice and eternal torture, or even with the promise of eternal bliss not easily distinguishable from eternal boredom. They find a universe of matter, pleasure, and community-made morality the only kind of life possible, and the only kind worth living. The differences, first temperamental, then become theological.
What if, though, the whole battle of ayes and nays had never been subject to anything, really, except a simple rule of economic development? Perhaps the small waves of ideas and even moods are just bubbles on the one great big wave of increasing prosperity. It may be that the materialist explanation of the triumph of materialism is the one that counts. Just last year, the Princeton economist Angus Deaton, in his book "The Great Escape," demonstrated that the enlargement of well-being in at least the northern half of the planet during the past couple of centuries is discontinuous with all previous times. The daily miseries of the Age of Faith scarcely exist in our Western Age of Fatuity. The horrors of normal life in times past, enumerated, are now almost inconceivable: women died in agony in childbirth, and their babies died, too; operations were performed without anesthesia. (The novelist Fanny Burney, recounting her surgery for a breast tumor: "I began a scream that lasted unremittingly during the whole time of the incision. . . . I felt the knife rackling against the breast bone, scraping it while I remained in torture.") If God became the opiate of the many, it was because so many were in need of a drug.
As incomes go up, steeples come down. Matisse's "Red Studio" may represent the room the artist retreats to after the churches close—but it is also a pleasant place to pass the time, with an Oriental carpet and central heating and space to work. Happiness arrives and God gets gone. "Happiness!" the Super-Naturalist cries. "Surely not just the animal happiness of more stuff!" But by happiness we need mean only less of pain. You don't really have to pursue happiness; it is a subtractive quality. Anyone who has had a bad headache or a kidney stone or a toothache, and then hasn't had it, knows what happiness is. The world had a toothache and a headache and a kidney stone for millennia. Not having them any longer is a very nice feeling. On much of the planet, we need no longer hold an invisible hand or bite an invisible bullet to get by.
Yet the wondering never quite comes to an end. Relatively peaceful and prosperous societies, we can establish, tend to have a declining belief in a deity. But did we first give up on God and so become calm and rich? Or did we become calm and rich, and so give up on God? Of such questions, such causes, no one can be certain. It would take an all-seeing eye in the sky to be sure. ♦
And a couple of responses from a believer:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/religious-experience-and-the-modern-self/
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/the-return-of-the-happy-atheist/
Executive summary?
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 08:49:12 AM
Quote from: Viking on March 14, 2014, 08:30:02 AM
No, by bitch slapping you for murdering a man just for his beliefs while cautiously qualifying that Bruno was guessing and happened to guess good.
Bruno was not the first, nor the last, to be killed for his beliefs. It is amusing to see the catholic apologists asserting that Bruno was a 'real enough" scientist, as though that makes his execution for holding sincere doubts about church doctrine later abandoned by the church itself okay. I'd dispute your assertion that Bruno was "guessing," though. He was hypothesizing, based on the evidence available in his day, and it isn't too surprising that his hypotheses sometimes came very close to modern ones.
I believe that the real reason Bruno was executed and his works banned was because his ideas implied that the Pope was just the pope of this planet, and that there were other popes (and other Catholic Churches) on other planets (which Jesus would have to have visited like he did earth), holding the same relationship with God as the pope on earth. The church of the time, of course, couldn't tolerate the idea that it was not unique and the Pope not more in touch with god's will than any other mortal being.
I don't think that this has much to do with the modern Catholic church, though.
Nonsense. The claim he was a scientist came centuries later by conflict theorists. He was not "theorizing" anymore then Pythagoras was "theorizing" that there were unseen planet under the Earth. His beliefs were based on Hermeticism, and he was was executed for garden variety heresy. Things like non-Trinitarian religious beliefs, sorcery and the like. Bruno being correct about one facet of cosmology was entirely tangential.
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 08:49:12 AM
Quote from: Viking on March 14, 2014, 08:30:02 AM
No, by bitch slapping you for murdering a man just for his beliefs while cautiously qualifying that Bruno was guessing and happened to guess good.
Bruno was not the first, nor the last, to be killed for his beliefs. It is amusing to see the catholic apologists asserting that Bruno was a 'real enough" scientist, as though that makes his execution for holding sincere doubts about church doctrine later abandoned by the church itself okay. I'd dispute your assertion that Bruno was "guessing," though. He was hypothesizing, based on the evidence available in his day, and it isn't too surprising that his hypotheses sometimes came very close to modern ones.
It's NDT that says he was guessing. NDT also points out that Bruno got his ideas from Roman Classical thinkers like Lucretius.
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 08:49:12 AM
I believe that the real reason Bruno was executed and his works banned was because his ideas implied that the Pope was just the pope of this planet, and that there were other popes (and other Catholic Churches) on other planets (which Jesus would have to have visited like he did earth), holding the same relationship with God as the pope on earth. The church of the time, of course, couldn't tolerate the idea that it was not unique and the Pope not more in touch with god's will than any other mortal being.
The reason Bruno was executed was that he didn't play by the rules of Scholasticism. Where any heresy could be proposed and discussed but once it had been ruled heresy the proposer just recanted made minor penance and moved on to a different topic. Bruno refused to recant. This is what got Galileo into trouble too, he refused to recant when his ideas were politically difficult.
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 08:49:12 AM
I don't think that this has much to do with the modern Catholic church, though.
The Catholic Church prides itself on it continuity and it's ability to provide correct answers to the worlds biggest problem. Getting freedom of thought, science and death-penalty wrong sort of does have something to do with the modern Catholic Church simply on the grounds that they still assert that the methods by which they thought that murdering Bruno for standing up for his principles was a good thing are the methods they think that condoms are bad and paedophile priests just need help from the church.
Of the two of us, I think you are far more likely to murder someone for their beliefs.
Quote from: Viking on March 15, 2014, 06:21:01 AM
It's NDT that says he was guessing. NDT also points out that Bruno got his ideas from Roman Classical thinkers like Lucretius.
I don't know who "NDT" is, and don't really care. The point is that Bruno was far more a scientist than many in his era (and earlier) who are credited with that title, even though the term wasn't used at the time. His era distinguished vaguely between "natural philosophy" and "theological philosophy" but pretty much all of the intellectuals of his time were involved in both.
QuoteThe reason Bruno was executed was that he didn't play by the rules of Scholasticism. Where any heresy could be proposed and discussed but once it had been ruled heresy the proposer just recanted made minor penance and moved on to a different topic. Bruno refused to recant. This is what got Galileo into trouble too, he refused to recant when his ideas were politically difficult.
Galileo and bruno got into trouble because they placed a premium on observation rather than received wisdom. Scholasticism said that all knowledge was already known, and that scholarly activities and observation was only useful in interpreting what was already known (from the Bible as well as other classical works), not in introducing new concepts. However, the church didn't rule on the heretical nature of most interpretations of what was thought to be known; it had to rule on Bruno and Galileo because their conclusions challenged what were believed to be fundamental "knowns" about the world. You are correct that both would have been forgiven if they had recanted and done penance, and that both refused. I don't think it coincidental, though, that both were unpleasant personalities who
could be condemned without much controversy because they had made so many enemies.
QuoteThe Catholic Church prides itself on it continuity and it's ability to provide correct answers to the worlds biggest problem. Getting freedom of thought, science and death-penalty wrong sort of does have something to do with the modern Catholic Church simply on the grounds that they still assert that the methods by which they thought that murdering Bruno for standing up for his principles was a good thing are the methods they think that condoms are bad and paedophile priests just need help from the church.
if the church were still executing those who disagreed with it, I would agree. But it isn't. Your description of the Catholic Church is the description of every church, even though the details vary.
Quote from: grumbler on March 15, 2014, 07:09:34 AM
I don't know who "NDT" is, and don't really care.
Oh I see what you missed...
http://www.cosmosontv.com/
Quote from: Viking on March 15, 2014, 07:21:16 AM
Oh I see what you missed...
http://www.cosmosontv.com/
Thanks. I didn't make the connection. That doesn't impact my argument, though. NDT got a whole lot about Bruno wrong.
Quote from: grumbler on March 15, 2014, 07:32:17 AM
Quote from: Viking on March 15, 2014, 07:21:16 AM
Oh I see what you missed...
http://www.cosmosontv.com/
Thanks. I didn't make the connection. That doesn't impact my argument, though. NDT got a whole lot about Bruno wrong.
No, the argument you made in complete ignorance of the context was not valid. Your complete lack of knowledge of the context and issue up for discussion does impact your argument fatally.
Quote from: Viking on March 15, 2014, 01:59:53 PM
No, the argument you made in complete ignorance of the context was not valid. Your complete lack of knowledge of the context and issue up for discussion does impact your argument fatally.
:lmfao:
You don't get to decide what issues I am addressing! I may not have understood the context of some dumbass comment of yours citing a non-authoritative source (Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and no more an expert on 16th-Century theology than I am), but your complete ignorance of the fact that the Bruno controversy wasn't first introduced on some TV show last week does impact your position fatally.
Alas, the Bruno case doesn't support your vitriolic take on the modern church, no matter what you saw on TV.
I can't wade in to the Cosmos thing because I've not watched the show. But it is worth remembering Bruno was primarily a religious and esoteric writer and he also couldn't turn down an intellectual fight. He toured the universities of Europe (during which time he joined and was excommunicated from three Churches) arguing his theology aggressively.
Which isn't to say he deserved what happened, but he's an odd scientific hero to pick from a time when there are many real scientific heroes.
Apropos of nothing the S.J. Parris series of mysteries starring Bruno is quite fun, if you like that sort of thing :)
I don't think Bruno even saw a telescope in his life time.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 15, 2014, 05:25:37 PM
I can't wade in to the Cosmos thing because I've not watched the show. But it is worth remembering Bruno was primarily a religious and esoteric writer and he also couldn't turn down an intellectual fight. He toured the universities of Europe (during which time he joined and was excommunicated from three Churches) arguing his theology aggressively.
Which isn't to say he deserved what happened, but he's an odd scientific hero to pick from a time when there are many real scientific heroes.
Yes, Bruno was concerned more with the theological implications of the new cosmology than the scientific ones. It is worth remembering that thinkers and writers in his day didn't have the rigid compartmentalization we have between different intellectual disciplines, and in fact didn't have a clear grasp of what was empirically true and what was not. Isaac Newton believed in the efficacy of both alchemy and calculus.
The show appears to have chosen Bruno because he was the first to propose the cosmos as we understand it: filled with planets orbiting stars. And the show is, after all, called
Cosmos. Why the writers decided to call Bruno's speculation a "guess" is a good question. He had traveled and read widely, as you note, and was drawing his conclusions, in the Scholastic tradition, from a synthesis of the existing ideas, plus his own few additions.
Calling Bruno a scientist is like calling the guy who compiled Genesis a scientist. Sure, Genesis is correct is saying that the Earth had a beginning, but that was entirely by luck.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2014, 07:37:04 PM
Calling Bruno a scientist is like calling the guy who compiled Genesis a scientist. Sure, Genesis is correct is saying that the Earth had a beginning, but that was entirely by luck.
Luck with a dash of divine inspiration? :hmm:
Quote from: alfred russel on March 16, 2014, 12:00:46 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2014, 07:37:04 PM
Calling Bruno a scientist is like calling the guy who compiled Genesis a scientist. Sure, Genesis is correct is saying that the Earth had a beginning, but that was entirely by luck.
Luck with a dash of divine inspiration? :hmm:
:lol: I don't think that some people understand the concept of "luck" at all. It doesn't take "luck" to comprehend that things have beginnings and ends. Though it may have been luck (with a dash of divine inspiration?) that Raz struck upon an appropriate analogy: Just as whoever hypothesized that, since everything with a lifespan short enough to be observable by people had a beginning and an end, so must everything (including the earth) even if their lifespan is too long to be observed by humans, so Bruno hypothesized that, if all the known stars had planets, so must the unknown stars. This is called inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning may seem like mere luck to those unable to perform the task, but it isn't really luck at all.
I think it is fascinating how tribal loyalties (and thus the tribal beliefs that people cling to) change when the subject changes. There seems to me to be no reason for modern Catholics to try so strenuously to dismiss the truths about Bruno; I don't think that any knowledgeable person doesn't recognize that the medieval and renaissance catholic church was just as prone to kill people whom it thought threatened their position of power as, say, secular leaders like Henry VIII of England. I also don't think that any knowledgeable person still believes that the modern catholic church behaves like that, or even that it would if it could, any more than Elizabeth II would.
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2014, 07:28:37 AM
or even that it would if it could, any more than Elizabeth II would.
I dunno man.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F708430%2Fthumbs%2Fs-QUEEN-OPENING-CEREMONIES-large.jpg&hash=3f2e919ca708c2e99dec7de69cbd059d4d060e0a)
Does Grumbler have some sources on how Bruno came to his conclusions.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 16, 2014, 07:34:20 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2014, 07:28:37 AM
or even that it would if it could, any more than Elizabeth II would.
I dunno man.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F708430%2Fthumbs%2Fs-QUEEN-OPENING-CEREMONIES-large.jpg&hash=3f2e919ca708c2e99dec7de69cbd059d4d060e0a)
:lol:
"Herein lies the level of intelligence: because the inferior intellects cannot understand multiplicity except through many species, analogies and forms, superior intellects do better with less, and the very best do perfectly with very little."
-- Giovanni Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity
Man, would Bruno fit in here perfectly, or what? :lol: