The Pope

[Star Wolf]

I don't know if there will ever be a significant number of them but the Catholic Church does have a number of married Priest who transfer over from Catholic lite churches because of other doctrines.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

when the church reports a pedopriest to the police instead of moving him on and covering it up it'll stop being just words. until then you can be as eloquent as you want, but it wont mean a thing.

I take it that many think that the current generation of Priest will act no different then the molestors who saw society change to the point victims went public? even though now we have our eyes on them. And we will only be satisfied when some are found and served to the public with their head on a pike. Wait, no capital puniment. Tarred and feathered.

We're talking about child rape here.

I won't be satisfied until those who committed the crimes are in prison and until the church itself does what I assume YOU would do if you realized a work colleague was molesting children. That the church wants to handle all of this internally without calling the police, without ever reporting crimes that victims tell them have occurred is horrifying.

This is not something that happened a couple decades ago, it is still going on. Yes we now "have our eyes on them" but the problem is the abusers are protected by a huge and powerful organization.

I'm sick to death of catholics getting defensive about this matter. Yes I'm sure many would like the taint that their church now has to go away, for everyone to nod along to the nice hand wringing words the well meaning write about change. And yet still stories of deception, destroyed evidence, obfuscation, priests being moved, and crimes still not being reported to the police continue.

 

[Avon]

star wolf, your response to child abusing priests boils down to 'oh stop whining, it's all in the past and now you must be quiet'?

oh, i'm sorry cardinal star wolf.

 

[Sagart]

when the church reports a pedopriest to the police instead of moving him on and covering it up it'll stop being just words. until then you can be as eloquent as you want, but it wont mean a thing.

The very purpose of the new policies is to ensure that the reporting of cases is immediate and independant and such cases are then placed in the hands of the police and other concerned authorities. The moving on or covering up will become an impossibility in a completely transparent process. I'm not trying to be eloquent, simply trying to convey the changing attitudes present on the ground in Church communities. The patience of good Catholics, lay and clergy alike, has reached its absolute limit in these matters. Believe me, these words are becoming a reality as we speak. If they weren't, I would have packed up and left by now.

 

[Amaris]

when the church reports a pedopriest to the police instead of moving him on and covering it up it'll stop being just words. until then you can be as eloquent as you want, but it wont mean a thing.

The very purpose of the new policies is to ensure that the reporting of cases is immediate and independant and such cases are then placed in the hands of the police and other concerned authorities. The moving on or covering up will become an impossibility in a completely transparent process. I'm not trying to be eloquent, simply trying to convey the changing attitudes present on the ground in Church communities. The patience of good Catholics, lay and clergy alike, has reached its absolute limit in these matters. Believe me, these words are becoming a reality as we speak. If they weren't, I would have packed up and left by now.

I sincerely hope so, and I say that as someone who knows a number of clergy who are too good and kind to be tarred by that terrible brush.

 

[stoneroses]

New pope might me a bit of a franker

 

[stj]

This might be interesting for some: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21802684

My view is that Bergoglio was in a position to criticize the regime and the Dirty War but preferred to criticize liberation theology. I think that says all you need to know about what kind of man he is. I already think of him as Pope Sucio.

 

[Sagart]

I think that says all you want to know about what kind of man he is.

 

[sonak]

I was hoping for a Jewish or a Buddhist pope to really change things up.

 

[stj]

I think that says all you want to know about what kind of man he is.

And far, far too much you don't want to know.

 

[Sagart]

So, after just 4 days of Pope Francis and a couple of, to my mind, very fair and open minded posts from me, you feel you know all about us both. Your eagerness to accept one view in this argument, with seemingly no willingness to listen to a balancing view, is unfortunate and, ultimately, very short sighted.
For the record, I have been reading many articles about the incidents in Argentina in an attempt to understand all that is being said on this matter so, rather than not wanting to know, I'm interested in understanding the full picture. Anyone interested in truth should be open to all views, not just the one that backs up their preconceptions.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

If anyone's interested, this is an article on Pope Francis and the Dirty War by a prominent church historian.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Of those, I'd say you would see an African Pope first, especially since the whole "the Pope must be Italian" tradition now seems to be conclusively broken.

There have already been Popes of African birth or descent in the early church.

While it can seem to the contemporary mind that the papacy is a purely European institution, and predominantly an Italian one to boot, the early popes in fact reflected the diversity of the early church -- a community that was born in the Middle East and spread around the Mediterranean basin, from Greece to Rome and the Iberian peninsula and with great success to North Africa.

"North Africa was the Bible belt of early Christianity," said Christopher Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in New Jersey. "Carthage was the buckle," he added, referring to the city located in modern-day Tunisia.

So it should be no surprise that three early popes hailed from that region: the 14th pope, Victor I (circa 189-198 A.D.); the 32nd pope, Miltiades (311-314 A.D.); and the 49th pope, Gelasius I (492-496 A.D.).

According to the sixth-century Liber Pontificalis, the earliest known record of the popes, Victor was from North Africa, while Miltiades and Gelasius likely were born in Rome to families of African origin.

Interestingly, Victor was the first pope to speak Latin because Christians in Rome were still using Greek in the liturgy. As one historian has written, it was "remarkable ... that Latin should have won recognition as the language of African Christianity from the outset, while the Roman church was still using Greek."

But were these three African popes "black" in the sense that we would define race today? And did it matter back then?

The Rev. Cyprian Davis, a Benedictine priest who is a leading historian of African-American Catholicism, notes that by Pope Victor's time, the Roman aristocracy had large holdings in North Africa. It's not clear, however, whether these so-called African popes came from those families or from the rural, somewhat darker-skinned indigenous population known as the Berbers.

Davis said the best bet for what we would consider a "black" pope is probably Victor, but he added that the church and the empire of those early centuries were a mosaic of colors and ethnicities.

"It's important for us to look and say that yes, the early papacy was not white. No, it was much more diverse than you might think," Davis said.

Moreover, race as we think of it today did not have quite the same meaning back then.

"When you say 'black pope,' you have to think Roman Empire, not African-American," as Bellitto put it. Some popes in those days -- along with many renowned saints and martyrs and bishops like St. Augustine of Hippo -- probably looked more like modern Arabs than any pontiff of the last millennium.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/has-there-ever-been-a-black-or-african-pope_n_2795549.html

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Interesting piece, and not surprising when you consider where the early Church Fathers lived and wrote their works, and that this was probably also before the Coptic Church split off.

 

[Sagart]

If anyone's interested, this is an article on Pope Francis and the Dirty War by a prominent church historian.

Thank you for that. As the article says, even with the facts laid out in front of us, there will be some who say that not enough was done, while others will see what was done in a more understanding light. What happened in Argentina has happened in many places, not least here in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Clergy in each community were deeply involved, both publicly and behind the scenes in ways yet to be fully revealed, to ensure protection for others and ultimately to work for peace, that may have led them into murky waters that some would find unacceptable.

 

[stj]

So, after just 4 days of Pope Francis and a couple of, to my mind, very fair and open minded posts from me, you feel you know all about us both. Your eagerness to accept one view in this argument, with seemingly no willingness to listen to a balancing view, is unfortunate and, ultimately, very short sighted.
For the record, I have been reading many articles about the incidents in Argentina in an attempt to understand all that is being said on this matter so, rather than not wanting to know, I'm interested in understanding the full picture. Anyone interested in truth should be open to all views, not just the one that backs up their preconceptions.

You don't know what I've read, either in favor of or against, nor do you know what my preconceptions are. All you have is malicious rhetoric. I suppose that's appropriate to the cause you're defending. Might I suggest that the real problem is your preconceptions about liberation theology that are driving your conclusions? Pope Sucio's extraordinary belief that liberations theology was the main problem is uncontested in the entire range of commentary.

 

[Hound of UIster]

If anyone's interested, this is an article on Pope Francis and the Dirty War by a prominent church historian.

The two jesuits who were interrogated and tortured believed he gave them up to the Junta.

 

[Brolan]

If anyone's interested, this is an article on Pope Francis and the Dirty War by a prominent church historian.

The two jesuits who were interrogated and tortured believed he gave them up to the Junta.

Unless they have some kind of proof it proves nothing.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

^Exactly.

Here's another interesting take on the subject, this time from the WSJ.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Oh we think they just pulled this out of their asses?