I genuinely liked him, even as an atheist. He seemed to be trying his best to make the world a better place and I can't fault him for that.
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lots of christians didn't like him, considering he was too progressive
I'd researched popes' policies and statements toward the poor some years back, and he really had no peer going back centuries.
Partial exception in the late 1900s, under Leo XIII (1878--1903), in the encyclical Rerum novarum.
I will always applaud a person who retreats — even just a little — from dogma and fanaticism.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/29/187009384/...
Which is "interesting", considering how much of the New Testament is about redemption and reaching out to outsiders. Aren’t we all supposed to be God’s creation, and wasn’t Jesus supposed to teach us about salvation, redemption and forgiveness?
(And by "interesting", I mean that it is yet another of example cognitive dissonance amongst fundamentalists. If anyone can be redeemed, it implies that atheists can, as well.)
> I will always applaud a person who retreats — even just a little — from dogma and fanaticism.
Indeed. He was not perfect but he was better than most. I hope the next one won’t be a catholic version of patriarch Kirill.
False. Russia has sought the cultural genocide of Ukraine for hundreds of years.
https://ukraineworld.org/en/articles/basics/linguicide-ukrai...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-history-of-subjugating-...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/23/russia-ukraine-cultural...
https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/21/2/233/7197410
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/why-russias-war-ukrai...
This is why they fire missiles at museums and libraries. This is why they steal Ukrainian children and ship them to Russia for adoption. This is why they deport Ukrainian citizens to Siberia and bring in Russians to replace them.
Assuming that you are arguing in good faith you should read up on some basic game theory. The outcome of this fight is not just about this war but about establishing the incentives of all future potential attempts at aggression by Russia (and other expansionist countries).
Edited to remove the snark.
As religion has shrunk in participation in most of the west, it has become hugely susceptible to manipulation. My wife (now atheist, but grew up evangelical) often has to correct me when I make snide remarks about Christianity. Recently I made some comment about hypocrisy amongst Christians for supporting a multiply-divorced man who bragged about groping women for president (who has probably never read the bible), to say nothing of the people around him. She quickly snapped back at me that "they actually see themselves in him, have you not noticed all the sex scandals that happen in so many churches?" and then went on to list the "questionable" relationships in her own youth group. (I am NOT saying all Christians are like this, but religion is often used to cover up or excuse misdeeds).
It is not unique to Christianity or even Islam, though. You're seeing a lot of religion being used to justify many terrible things, including many smaller ones in Africa and Asia that have been used to justify atrocities and genocide.
> From a spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the single spiritual space of Holy Rus', fulfill the mission of the "Restrainer", protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West that has fallen into Satanism.
> After the end of the SVO, the entire territory of modern Ukraine must enter the zone of exclusive influence of Russia. The possibility of the existence on this territory of a Russophobic political regime hostile to Russia and its people, as well as a political regime controlled from an external center hostile to Russia, must be completely excluded.
https://www-patriarchia-ru.translate.goog/db/text/6116189.ht...
It is traditional for the EP to visit Rome on the patronal Feast of Saints Peter and Paul and for the Pope to visit Istanbul on the Feast of Saint Andrew, which is apparently when the friendship first formed. My absolute favorite story about Francis is his deciding to send some of the most precious relics in the Vatican to Bartholomew as a gift: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-09/pope-francis... (That sent some people into a fury).
Actually, it's my second favorite story. My favorite story is his insistence that he live in the Vatican guesthouse (and not the Papal apartments). Or perhaps the fact that as archbishop of Buenos Ares he insisted on taking the subway.
You should do it. Show up to my house with 6 of your friends and a tank, and then when you say "give me your living room or die" and then when I point out "this is bad, you shouldnt do this" you'll just leave? You'll realize the errors of your ways and go "you know, I was ready to kill for this but now I think I just won't".
Lets take this even further, youre openly threatening to kill me for my house. If my neighbors are going "hold on! Don't give in! Heres a gun, you got this!" are they helping or are they getting me killed? Do you think thats whats going to happen, or do you think the neighbors are saying "this psycho is going to kill you, give them what they want".
It doesnt work.
edit: this got flagged? why? Its pretty benign
(The recognition of saints is a little different, happening always after their death and depending on some degree of regional consensus. It's sloppy but whatever, it is actually not as similar as it might look.)
It's quite a bit above our pay grade to proclaim categorically who supposedly cannot be redeemed; it verges on blasphemy.
Cf. Job. 38:
1. Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?
3 "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 "Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 "On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
7 "while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?"
(etc.)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038&versio...
Cheers! As I understand the term blasphemy, our presumptuous species has a great deal to assert about the unknowable. ^_^
I believe that had mainly power reasons, because pope Paul II was pretty out of the loop, what the cardinals were doing.
And Francis likely expected to face opposition in what he was doing, so being closer to the "people" was likely helpful on having an eye on them.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/26/how-peopl...
I think the author's intent is to remind us that some things are simply beyond our ken (to which I'd add: For now).
I think she is right for some of these people. It is a human reaction, but it is still a moral failing. The proper Christian (well, Catholic, anyway) thing to do would be what is expected in a confession: recognise one’s failings, express regret, and accept consequences, including punishment. Then comes redemption.
Something that irks me fundamentally with most Christian religions is how they believe that they are Good People because they accepted God and rejected Evil. It’s all good as long as you play the part. Once you start looking for excuses, you failed twice: first, because of your behaviour, and then for failing to repent. If you support someone because he made the same error you did, then you fail yet again. This behaviour is understandable, but trippy incorrect from a religious perspective and very hypocritical.
In the grand scheme of things, it is very easy to get forgiveness, you just have to be sincere in your regrets (again, for Catholics, which is what I know).
I know there are wonderful ministers, christians, and people of all religions. But I've come to the conclusion that if said minister/church/religion gets involved in politics, there's a greater chance than not that it's being run by manipulative power-hungry people. And those people want strict control, making mistakes (often the way people learn best) is not tolerated by them. It's in some ways gotten worse, because they're now treating other people's refusals to follow (gay marriage, no prayer in schools, etc) as direct attacks on them.
gifted all women indissoluble marriage, which was practiced by the Roman aristocracy as "confarreatio".
This was trashed as soon as possible, and the trashing was billed as great progress.
Sorry I misinterpreted. Protestant denominations are convenient for politics, because there are so many of them and hey have so different positions.
> In this realm, there's no forgiveness unless you totally repent and accept the whole christian shebang. In extreme cases, it's not the the sin itself, but the rejection of god/jesus that's the worst you can do.
That’s fertile ground for extremism and reinforces the group dynamics, for sure.
> Taken to the extreme, you see this manifested very strangely, like Chick tracts where the secular lifetime do-gooder burns in hell, but the terrible multiple murdering rapist gets into heaven because they repent "in time".
I think Pascal wrote something about this behaviour. I won’t chase the source but IIRC the conclusion was that these people were hypocrites using religion to be terrible people and I tend to agree. Personally I find also weird to believe that God is so easily fooled, but that’s just me.
> But I've come to the conclusion that if said minister/church/religion gets involved in politics, there's a greater chance than not that it's being run by manipulative power-hungry people.
Definitely. It is too effective as a tool for control and coercion. At least the Catholic Church mostly retreated from this. They do some lobbying but nobody is asking for a Catholic theocracy anywhere that I know of.
> It's in some ways gotten worse, because they're now treating other people's refusals to follow (gay marriage, no prayer in schools, etc) as direct attacks on them.
Yes. It is the end of enlightenment and the end of liberal democracies if enough people behave that way. These people are functionally similar to the imams who keep babbling about the shariah, it’s time we see them that way.
And the idea that atheists can be saved isn't novel in Catholic teaching – it is implicit in the Holy Office's 1949 condemnation of Feeneyism, [0] in which it declared that a person who doesn't believe in Catholicism due to "invincible ignorance" can be saved by an "implicit desire" for God. Although it didn't include the case of atheists, it didn't exclude them either – suggesting that an atheist who doesn't believe in God in their head (due to some intellectual issue) but nonetheless believes in God in their heart can be saved.
I'm racking my brain right now dissecting what that even means. Believing there is no one but wishing it wasn't so?
Hence, anyone who loves Good loves God... so a person who truly loves Good, but who due to some intellectual obstacle, isn't able to call that Good "God" – from a Catholic viewpoint, it can be said that they love God without knowing that it is God whom they love – and by that love they can be saved
That’s an interesting correlation. Do you have any ideas about the dynamics associated with it?
I do seem to remember experiencing my tradition as less manipulative when I was young, but have never been sure if that was me not seeing it. And if true, I’m not sure whether to attribute it to size, or the internet, or political influence, or something else.
Also the condom thing is false. Keep up to date.
If you start from the assumption that Christianity is true, and some people know this, and others don't – you have to ask why the people who don't know it, don't know it. And this is where Catholic theology distinguishes between "vincible" and "invincible" ignorance - "vincible" means the ignorance is your own fault, "invincible" means your ignorance is through no fault of your own.
How to distinguish the two? Ultimately, it is up to God to decide – nobody else knows for sure what's going on in your head. At best, theologians would give some examples of hypothetical situations which could be said to be one or the other – but the real world is often much messier than any such hypothetical can capture.
Which is part of why, the traditional Catholic teaching, is that (with rare exceptions) you can't actually know where people are going to end up. The idea is that if you make it to heaven, you might be surprised to find a lot of people there you weren't expecting, and also maybe some people you were sure would be there aren't.
That is, I don't find it fundamental to our psychology nor history. To address your perspective.
It's an atheists view, sure. It assumes that if one god is real, then all gods must be real. Because in the mind of the atheist, all are equal in that they are imaginary or, at best, avatars of psychological phenomena.
It necessarily assumes the inverse logic that if 1,999 gods are fake, then 2,000 gods must be fake.
Again, because they are all fundamentally equal. And therefore it is the Christians that are illogical because they have dismissed 1999 gods as fake but couldn't quite get there for the Last God Standing.
I believe that's the sum of it.
Which is a statement that about illustrates the intellectual limit for atheism. I will give Ricky credit for that much.
Where Ricky's quip stops and Christian logic starts is that Christians know that their singular God is not imaginary nor an avatar, but is a living being. With the figurative 1999 additional gods indeed being either imaginary, psychological avatars, or worse.
Which is clear to the Christian, because he understands something singularly fundamental about Christianity's God that others may not. This fundamental characteristic, at minimum, is the difference between real and fake.
At which point the atheist would quip that there is no logic to see the Christian God as different from the other 1999 Gods, and as concrete.
The Christian would finish up with telling the atheist that their failure to see the difference is a failure in being able to interpret the Bible, a failure in being able to interpret the Christian religion, and a failure to understand their own nature including from where they come.
Some of this lack of understanding on the part of atheists is rooted in a lack of perspective that is otherwise glaringly true, and a lack of logical rigor. In other words, they take too many lies on faith.
The conversation frequently continues with a debate over supposed proofs rooted in belief (faith) for atheists.
With the Christian making more general appeals to their own faith that is rooted in Biblical and religious interpretation, ideally combined with their own verifying observations about the nature of the World.
Or, for those who have blindly committed based on instinct, then just appeals to faith alone. Which is also acceptable, because it is a correct instinct. Being a Christian doesn't hinge on knowledge alone. It hinges on faith. There are good reasons for this state of affairs.
What both sides will agree on is that he who believes in the least lies "wins" so to speak. The process of parsing being roughly parallel to discovering the rules of a game. The disagreement is over the substance of the lies. What Judeo-Christianity does is attempt to convey those rules in clear-enough language, even if the motivation to follow them is solely based on faith. With deeper Bible reading often being revelatory for greater insight.
Whereas the atheist dismisses the traditional rules out of lack of faith and lack of understanding, and often then devolves into inventing his own rules. Which is specifically against the rules, but does align with the atheist's chaos theory of his own existence.