Pope Francis has died

Starting from his chosen name, since Franciscans and Jesuits have not been very close historically (although the founder of the latter was inspired by St. Francis).

From what I read, it's exactly as you say: people expect either a reaction swing to conservativism or a a big swing towards modernity. Pope Francis was old and could not do much, but he tried to set a path for the latter, afaiu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh0O2Ah-qO4

I would like to know more. My impression is that most Christian institutions have long ago disentangled from scientific debate - providing interpretative value rather than alternative science. This is part of a larger trend to focus their scope and mission in modern life. Have the last few popes made comments on scientific issues?

(The exception is evangelical Americans.)

I hope the next step is for people to understand that religious problems are actually people problems. And similar themes and tendencies appear in modern secular contexts.

https://www.pas.va/en.html

As such, they've traditionally been more open, and a disproportionately high proportion of Jesuits have been scientists. At one point about 1/3 of all members of the Jesuit order were scientists.

"The pope's astronomer"[1] is a jesuit, and the Jesuits have a long tradition in astronomy, with the result of numerous lunar craters (e.g. McNally) and several asteroids named after Jesuits. More than once, Jesuits have also tangled with the question of extraterrestial life, e.g.[2a] - a question fraught by the question it would raise about what it would mean for belief [2b].

Wikipedia also has a long list of Catholic clergy scientists[3]. When reading it, it's worth considering that if anything they had more influence as teachers (e.g. Descartes, Mersenne were both educated at Jesuit colleges), and that the order ranged from low thousands to a few tens of thousands during the centuries the list covers.

With respect to the last few popes, the most notable recent intervention is Pope Francis making clear that he saw the theories of evolution and the Big Bang as real[4]. But already in 1950, even the deeply conservative Pope Pius XII, while expressing hope that evolution would prove to be a passing fad, made clear that catholic doctrine officially did not conflict with evolution. John Paul II formally acquitted Galileo, and stated that "truth cannot contradict truth", when talking about evolution vs. catholic doctrine. [5]

[1] https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/27/vatican-observatory...

[2a] https://aleteia.org/2020/08/28/jesuit-astronomer-calls-extra...

[2b] https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/men-black-belief-aliens-no...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...

[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis...

[5] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vatican...

Those are all political terms for politicians and their platforms or parties. They do not translate to Catholic doctrines or teachings. Y’all are simply parroting what the lamestream media wants to impose, a political veneer on non-politicians who are shepherds, pastors, teachers.

I know several priests who are scientists or teachers/professors.

Evangelicals have a simpler dogma where the individual minister or church has more sway (hence the joke about the man on a desert island with a hut, a church, and a church he doesn’t go to). It’s a more populist form of worship, which has ups and downs.

In the US, reactionaries are dumping lots on money on the church, and many bishops have embraced right wing politics, stupidly aligning with evangelicals who deeply despise Catholicism in the process.

Some of the moves made are comically dumb. The archbishop of New York decided to make a big show about denying communion to the notoriously vindictive former governor of the state. That governor subsequently changed the look back period for civil sex abuse lawsuits, which has bankrupted or is in the process of bankrupting dioceses as they are forced to own up to their failures to protect children.

A conversation with a Jesuit for example can be enlightening because they have intellectual and moral arguments, it’s not just castles built on the shifting foundations of a Bible verse.

This leads to different approaches compared to a lot of American Protestants. They don’t seek to undermine science.

But the College has a mind of its own, and there is going to be some furious horse trading happening behind the scenes to steer the result in one direction or the other.

This is a Catholic media group. It uses the words as above. Think Karl Rahner or Yves Congar.

Bishops and Cardinals are very much political animals.

And the Catholic Church exists on the world stage, and is involved in politics. Its leadership can be and is political.

I found it inspiring. I'm genuinely sad about the Pope's passing. He was a man who followed the teachings as he understood them.

I don't think that was necessarily what he was doing.

He tried to rebalance it to include a lot more cardinals from the developing world–who on average tend to be more conservative, at least on some issues. He arguably avoided the more outspoken conservatives, but he would have caught up a lot of quieter conservatives in the process.

Whereas, if he just wanted to stack it with progressives, he would have focused on adding cardinals from the developed world, where Catholic progressivism is arguably the strongest.

the fun thing, ironic itself, about dismissing religion in it's entirety is that most religions have long understood that G'd can't be proven, measured, captured with experiments. the irony in this is that while you can't prove G'd you can't disprove G'd either, so the lack of proof is no proof of a lack of "The Force". quantum physics did not not exist just because the was no proof for it.

one interesting train of thought in this regard was the conclusion of a book on the neurobiology of meditation, (the title escapes me right now): what if the only "instrument" to measure religious experience is the brain? we can measure effects of systematic religious practice on the brain, like meditation aka contemplative prayer. we can identify some aspects of states that humans describe as religious experience, in the brain, as they happen. why would we dismiss those as mere "brain formations"? while we accept equally measurable effects of sound or light on the brain as "real"?

it's non-trivial...

Science doesn’t say we are the only intelligent forms in the universe. Science doesn’t say intelligent max’s out with humans. Science doesn’t describe concepts outside of time and space.

https://youtu.be/y0v0xQdiY7U