Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 11:10 pm
It is, I guess. I'm something of a curmudgeon when it comes to CatholicismMenolly wrote:Baby steps, Cambo. Allowing priests to baptize children of single mothers is a step in the right direction, nu?
Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
https://kevinswatch.com/phpBB3/
It is, I guess. I'm something of a curmudgeon when it comes to CatholicismMenolly wrote:Baby steps, Cambo. Allowing priests to baptize children of single mothers is a step in the right direction, nu?
Believing children are being discriminated against, and believing they are being abused is a big difference. I disagree with his belief regarding discrimination, but I still think it is a far more liberal view than what the heads of the church has stated in the past.“Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. ... At stake are the lives of many children who'll be discriminated against in being deprived of the human growth that God wanted to be given through a father and a mother.”
I don't expect him to last a decade as pope. He's in his late 70s and only has one lung. A lot of people were expecting a young pope this time; maybe after Francis the Cardinals will have to follow through on that.StevieG wrote:People are describing him as a humble man, who does not go for pomp and ceremony. He does appear to be a conservative. I don't foresee any major changes in the next decade or so regarding sexual equality. I don't think much will change.
If you want to alienate what is arguably one of the most powerful political institutions in the world, be my guest. All that you will do is antagonize them and set back progress in areas where they can persuade the populace.I'm Murrin wrote:Why should the Catholic Chruch be held to lower standards than the rest of the world's institutions, Menolly? The rest of the western world is decades ahead of them already.
Saying they can take it slowly, and that baby steps are good, is excusing them keeping themselves in the dark ages for as long as they possibly can.
(And how can he be a stepping stone to changes if he makes none?)
Ah, ok.I'm Murrin wrote:I'm only saying that if people - Catholics included - just keep allowing the church to stay the same on the basis of "well, they'll come around eventually", then it'll just take all the longer.
I'm with Murrin on this one, Menolly. The very small changes you've pointed to are positive, yes. But does that mean we can't criticize the much larger faults of the Church? Because they allowed some babies to have water splashed on their heads that couldn't before, does that mean they get a free pass on bigotry for an unspecified amount of time?Menolly wrote:Again, baby steps/transitions. Francis may not install changes, but perhaps he will be a stepping stone to some slight ones in our lifetimes. I honestly believe John Paul II may have been an instigator of slightly more liberal attitudes, set back some with Benedict. But ever so slowly the hierarchy may be accepting of change as more youthful cardinals enter the fray.
While Gorbechev brought about the end of socialism in the Soviet Union, he started slowly at the start of his appointment. I don't expect Francis to make as sweeping a change within the Roman Catholic church as Gorbechev did in the USSR, but perhaps he will instill enough of a change to set in motion future adjustments.
Let us have hope...
I'm Murrin wrote:I'm only saying that if people - Catholics included - just keep allowing the church to stay the same on the basis of "well, they'll come around eventually", then it'll just take all the longer.
On the whole, it would be difficult. Specifically? If both our standards claim to help eleviate suffering... at least in our personal actions... then I can criticize based on that. I could say, for example, the proscription against birth control increases unnecessary suffering by spreading disease and adding additional burden to environments that can not support that population.deer of the dawn wrote:I have hope about the guy because the world can use another Francis about now.
You people talk about "lower standards". Who decided whose standards were above those of others? The Catholic Church holds to a set of standards that THEY decide on, not the rest of the world. Who are you to say your standards are better than theirs?
The various Christian religions have always cheery-picked from the Bible. Just look at divorce. Though most denominations would discourage it, I think few would flat out condemn it as adultery like Jesus did in the Gospels. And there's all the various controversial sayings of Paul (one of which some sects interpret as being that you, deer, should not teach doctrine in church... which you, I, and your church would find absurd).Recently it has come up in my teaching about tolerance for gay people. I told my students how proud I was of them because they really get that judging people is actually worse than the sins they judge others for; that gay people are not in some special category of sin apart from others. Yet at the same time they understand that it is immoral, according to Christian teaching, and this is clearly spelled out in the Bible. So the Catholic Church will likely NEVER condone homosexuality, no matter how the world may pressure them. And I respect them for that-- it certainly isn't the popular stance.
Truth doesn't change because the world wants it to.
The world's agenda for the Catholic Church simply doesn't apply. They bow to what they feel is the highest standard of all.
Feet Of Clay
There’s a wonderful picture that dates back to the 1970s – not a particularly cheerful time in the history of Argentina – of rotund Father Jorge Maria Bergoglio walking alongside lean, dapper, mass murdering General Jorge Rafael Videla. The stroll itself is hardly proof of collusion – it merely confirms the fact that the Catholic Church and the Argentinian military regime were, occasionally, on strolling terms. But when one pairs the image with journalist Horacio Verbitsky’s devastating takedown, El Silencio, which is proof of collusion, we are able to understand the make of the man who now inhabits the Vatican.
El Silencio is an island in the River Plate, on which the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires kept a holiday home—never a more perfectly named location for a member of the Catholic gerontocracy, for whom silence is the ultimate calling. Therein did the good archbishop assist the Argentinian navy in hiding political prisoners from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.
There are all sorts of excuses for this behaviour, and the new pope has intoned them all in his husky, man-of-the-people Argentinian Spanish. The Church did what it could to protect the flock, and lo, did the regime not kill the bishop Enrique Angelelli, a great friend of Argentina’s poor, by running his car off the road? Ah, but Angelelli was exactly the sort of man who gets his car run off the road. He was not the sort of man to stroll with murderers. Or end up on the throne.
“The most shaming thing for the church,” wrote Hugh O’ Shaughnessy back in January 2011, “is that in such circumstances Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to choose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America has been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.”
...and the baby steps of change have begun.I'm Murrin wrote:(And how can he be a stepping stone to changes if he makes none?)
Pope washes women's feet in break with church law wrote:ROME (AP) — In his most significant break with tradition yet, Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of two young women at a juvenile detention center — a surprising departure from church rules that restrict the Holy Thursday ritual to men.
No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis' gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a "questionable example." Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.
Speaking to the young offenders, including Muslims and Orthodox Christians, Francis said that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion in a gesture of love and service.
"This is a symbol, it is a sign. Washing your feet means I am at your service," Francis told the group, aged 14 to 21, at the Casal del Marmo detention facility in Rome.
"Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us," the pope said. "This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty. As a priest and bishop, I must be at your service."
In a video released by the Vatican, the 76-year-old Francis was shown kneeling on the stone floor as he poured water from a silver chalice over the feet of a dozen youths: black, white, male, female, even feet with tattoos. Then, after drying each one with a cotton towel, he bent over and kissed it.
Previous popes carried out the Holy Thursday rite in Rome's grand St. John Lateran basilica, choosing 12 priests to represent the 12 apostles whose feet Christ washed during the Last Supper before his crucifixion.
Before he became pope, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio celebrated the ritual foot-washing in jails, hospitals or hospices — part of his ministry to the poorest and most marginalized of society. He often involved women. Photographs show him washing the feet of a woman holding her newborn child in her arms.
That Francis would include women in his inaugural Holy Thursday Mass as pope was remarkable, however, given that current liturgical rules exclude women.
Canon lawyer Edward Peters, who is an adviser to the Holy See's top court, noted in a blog that the Congregation for Divine Worship sent a letter to bishops in 1988 making clear that "the washing of the feet of chosen men ... represents the service and charity of Christ, who came 'not to be served, but to serve.'"
While bishops have successfully petitioned Rome over the years for an exemption to allow women to participate, the rules on the issue are clear, Peters said.
"By disregarding his own law in this matter, Francis violates, of course, no divine directive," Peters wrote. "What he does do, I fear, is set a questionable example."
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he didn't want to wade into a canonical dispute over the matter. However, he noted that in a "grand solemn celebration" of the rite, only men are included because Christ washed the feet of his 12 apostles, all of whom were male.
"Here, the rite was for a small, unique community made up also of women," Lombardi wrote in an email. "Excluding the girls would have been inopportune in light of the simple aim of communicating a message of love to all, in a group that certainly didn't include experts on liturgical rules."
Others on the more liberal side of the debate welcomed the example Francis set.
"The pope's washing the feet of women is hugely significant because including women in this part of the Holy Thursday Mass has been frowned on — and even banned — in some dioceses," said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of "The Jesuit Guide."
"It shows the all-embracing love of Christ, who ministered to all he met: man or woman, slave or free, Jew or Gentile."
For some, restricting the rite to men is in line with the church's restriction on ordaining women priests. Church teaching holds that only men should be ordained because Christ's apostles were male.
"This is about the ordination of women, not about their feet," wrote the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger. Liberals "only care about the washing of the feet of women, because ultimately they want women to do the washing."
Still, Francis has made clear he doesn't favor ordaining women. In his 2011 book, "On Heaven and Earth," then-Cardinal Bergoglio said there were solid theological reasons why the priesthood was reserved to men: "Because Jesus was a man."
On this Holy Thursday, however, Francis had a simple message for the young inmates, whom he greeted one-by-one after the Mass, giving each an Easter egg.
"Don't lose hope," Francis said. "Understand? With hope you can always go on."
One young man then asked why he had come to visit them.
Francis responded that it was to "help me to be humble, as a bishop should be."
The gesture, he said, came "from my heart. Things from the heart don't have an explanation."
Pope Francis leaves at he end of a mass he celebrated for the canonization of two new saints, Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and Artemide Zatti, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022. (Credit: Gregorio Borgia/AP)
Pope Francis has denounced Europe's treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal.�
ROME — Pope Francis on Sunday denounced Europe’s indifference toward migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea as he elevated to sainthood an Italian bishop and Italian-born missionary whose work and life paths illustrated the difficulties faced by 19th Century Italian emigrants.
Francis departed from prepared remarks to slam Europe’s treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal.� He noted that people from outside the continent are often left to die during perilous sea crossings or pushed back to Libya, where they wind up in camps he referred to as “lager,� the German word referring to Nazi concentration camps.
He also recalled the plight of Ukrainians fleeing war, which he said “causes us great suffering.�
“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous,’’ Francis said, generating applause from the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the canonizations of Don Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian bishop who founded an order to help Italian emigrants in 1887, and Artedime Zatti, an Italian who emigrated in 1897 to Argentina and dedicated his life as a lay-worker there to helping the sick.
“Indeed, the situation of migrants is criminal. They are left to die in front of us, making the Mediterranean the largest cemetery in the world. The situation of migrants is disgusting, sinful, criminal. Not to open the doors to those who are in need. No, we exclude them, we send them away to lager, where they are exploited and sold as slaves.�
He urged the faithful to consider the treatment of migrants, asking: ‘’Do we welcome them as brothers, or do we exploit them?�
The pontiff said the two new saints “remind us of the importance or walking together.�
Francis said Scalabrani showed “great vision,’’ by looking forward “to a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner.� And the pontiff called Zatti “a living example of gratitude� who devoted his life to serving others after being cured of tuberculosis.
[…]
[Scalabrani] died in 1905 in Piacenza, where he was bishop, and was beatified in 1997 by St. John Paul II. Pope Francis dispensed with the canonization requirement of Scalabrini having a miracle attributed to him after his beatification.
[…]
Zatti died in 1951, and was beatified in 2002. Paving the way for canonization, Francis signed the decree recognizing Zatti’s intercession in the healing of a man in the Philippines who had suffered a brain bleed.