re: Catholics Only: What's Your Take on Pope Francis?

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“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43)

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That's the tricky part about the Bible. The original New Testament was Greek and had no punctuation. Move that comma to after today and it changes the meaning.

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I've always been interested in the early, early days of the church...like 35-90 AD.

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Me too. Particularly as it relates to the establishment of the three patriarchal sees (one for each continent) in Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome.

Peter became the first Bishop of Antioch around 37 A.D., and then the first Bishop of Rome sometime before 64 A.D.

Mark, the gospel writer associated as the closest follower of Peter, became the first Bishop of Alexandria around 42 A.D. (The Church in Venice took his remains after the Muslims conquered Alexandria.)

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for some reason, early church leaders dismissed James' writings and decided to keep Paul's

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Paul had a very special mission, but every person has their own gifts, and James's gift seems to have been as a Jewish leader. Because he had such a good reputation as a pious Jew prior to the crucifixion, he was able to serve as a good community leader to instruct the early Christians how to live as a new community in Jerusalem. Paul's gift was based more on Church expansion to Jews & Gentiles in Asia Minor and Europe.

What's really interesting to me is when Paul uses the phrase "Holy Spirit" to refer to the decisions of the Church, thus showing that he believed and accepted some form of Church hierarchy. There was the Incident at Antioch from around 44 A.D. (see Galatians 2), and then the Council of Jerusalem around 50 A.D. (see Acts 15, where James played a huge role), and then in Acts 16, we see that the "holy spirit" forbade Paul & Silas from preaching in the provinces of Asia, after they parted ways with Barnabas & Mark. That sounds like a Church decision to me.

Once you get to a place where you accept Church councils and decisions of bishops, it's but a small jump to also accept that a sign-off from the successor of Peter is necessary for the Church to officially endorse such council decisions.

(no message)

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Have you ever asked a friend to pray for you when you were going through a difficult time? Prayer requests, prayer chains, etc?

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Sure, my living friends

He's fine.

He's a Jesuit, and he'd be about what I would expect from a Jesuit. To a certain extent, I want my leaders to make me uncomfortable.

Then on the other side of the coin, he's a good reminder why Catholic countries tend to be shittier versions of Protestant countries in social and economic development and innovation.

Edit to add: You display a pretty common mistake among Southern Prots w/r/t the Pope's infallibility. It's a very specific set of circumstances to proclaim that, and it's only happened a few times in the two thousand year history of the Church.

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JPII was a great man. South America cucked Francis' mind. No more Popes from south of the equator.

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I disagree with this.

Picking a Latin American Jesuit was a pretty radical departure, but from what I read and hear (and Doc Fenton would probably know a lot more on this), African cardinals are conservative as frick both socially and economically. I'd find it refreshing.

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See: PJP II

That's how you Pope.

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This is the answer.

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Edit to add: You display a pretty common mistake among Southern Prots w/r/t the Pope's infallibility. It's a very specific set of circumstances to proclaim that, and it's only happened a few times in the two thousand year history of the Church.

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Yeah, that's one of the things I've learned tonight. I honestly thought that the "concept" of infallibility was a pervasive, across the board dynamic.

I'll freely admit when I was wrong about something. Bothers me not. I'm just kind of elated that the thread turned out so well. Initially, I had two hopes for it. (1) Just to guage how Catholics felt about Pope Francis, and (2) hopefully get a smidgen of insight & information about Catholicism itself. Well, I ended up getting a lot more than just a smidgen. Very, very pleased at the quality and depth of this thread, and thanks to all who contributed to it.

I know it will never happen, but I would give anything if we could have some sort of Spritual/Religion board on this site. All they would need to do is set forth some rigid guidelines of what is and is not acceptable.

I actually started a thread here once that was entitled "Do you believe in a spiritual realm?" That ended up being my favorite thread of all time. 1,400 replies later, somebody RA'd it and some admin deleted the entire thread.

PS - If liberals were smart, they would support my idea for a Spiritual/Religion board. I would spend 50% of my time on that board instead of blowing up their arguments on this one....lol.

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I'll freely admit when I was wrong about something. Bothers me not. I'm just kind of elated that the thread turned out so well. Initially, I had two hopes for it. (1) Just to guage how Catholics felt about Pope Francis, and (2) hopefully get a smidgen of insight & information about Catholicism itself. Well, I ended up getting a lot more than just a smidgen. Very, very pleased at the quality and depth of this thread, and thanks to all who contributed to it.

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Sixteen years of Catholic education for me - including university - while growing up in the Bible Belt, you get a lot of questions exactly like that: about the Pope's infallibility, why we "worship" saints and Mary, transubstantiation, and the like. You learn to handle them. There'e a lot of ignorance (not talking about you) out there about the faith, and it becomes a task to respond to them.

I am not the most religious person by a long shot and don't agree with the Church on certain things, but the older I've gotten, the more I've grown to really appreciate the intellectual depth of the Catholic Church. There are two thousand years of hard-won lessons buried in a lot of the why and how and what of what they do, and many of the greatest minds, from Augustine to Aquinas to Descartes, who have ever walked this earth contributed to a lot of that. I don't think it's any accident as well that so many good and great high schools and universities in the U.S. are Catholic schools. Check out a message board like this for a big Catholic school if you want to see an amazing array of Catholic and Christian though - there are dozens of Doc Fentons and even better on some of those places discussing issues of the faith that even I, with 16 years in the formal system, didn't really even know.

Then again, on the other hand, I appreciate quite a bit of what Protestant faiths imbue in a culture, and I find some of it superior.

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ee: PJP II

That's how you Pope.

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Didn't he hide up all of that priests mollesting choir boys stuff?