Y’know, one of the “criticisms” of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) by certain Protestant sects is that the RCC teaches not only do you have to accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you must also do good works for your fellow man to join the kingdom of Heaven. Simply being “saved” isn’t enough.
and some people are surprised when the Pope reminds people of that?
and as for the comments about terrorism, I’ve long interpreted statements like that to mean “these people were sticks of dynamite already. Their religion might have lit the fuse, but they were still seeking to destroy things anyway. It doesn’t matter what lit the fuse, we must understand why they were sticks of dynamite in the first place.”
All of you people who think Blinky-Pinky is a Trumpist or a right-winger have been Whoooshed! I admit he’s had me going for a few weeks, but this latest thread gives it away.
The “support for leftist climate change” should have made it pretty clear that he was putting on a show, trying to out-stupid the stupidest Trumpists, but it was the “walls in the Vatican” that made it crystal-clear.
@ Blinkyandpinky — I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve. By carrying the stupidities of Hannity and Coulter to a reductio ad absurdem you hope to wake up the GOP sheeple. You hope they’ll read your post and think “My God! Is this what my ‘thinking’ is like? I have really fallen for a pack of nonsense.”
I do admire the effort, but it doesn’t work! I tried it myself on Usenet two decades ago. But when I finally got my spiel so stupid I thought it was obvious parody, I started getting fan mail at my e-mail account … and an invitation to appear on talk radio! :smack:
Ah well, nice to see this Blinky pinko dunderhead to brand himself as an ignorant jackass.
But just to counter the expected stupid comeback that that could be a leftist site, the Pink one here should look at what conservative scientists like Republican Barry Bickmore, From Brigham Joung University in the Red state of Utah.
Nah, I have found that this subject is a good way to tell who is the one actually blinded by partisanship, besides showing who is being clueless of not knowing how the Republican party is fooling many of its followers.
It was the republican Frank Luntz who came with the idea for the republicans in government to just call it “climate change” (both terms have a long history of usage) because “global warming” was more dangerous sounding, did not want the Republican congress critters or Bush to sound as if this was something to be worried about.
Religion did not light the fuse. Their fuse was already burning. They just happened to find an excuse in whatever religion they found at the moment they decided to blow up. They could just as easily have found an excuse in, say, a song that they still must twist to mean what they want it to mean.
No sorry, if that was his game he would have done a better job of it, spent more time on the logical absurdities of the conservative mindset rather than insults. Insults are B&Ps sole reason for existence. This is just pure Trollery. But apparently the mods have decided not to enforce the rule against trollery in the pit.
It’s not that: it’s that, if you truly believe, you see everybody else as your brother in Christ, and this will logically lead you to do your best to help others. Anybody who claims to be a Christian but who never helps others (within whatever his means happen to be) is about as Christian as a cat’s fart. The exact expression in English would be “whitened sepulchres”, I think.
I’d agree with OP to this limited degree. Francis clearly shows how a person’s own background and assumptions affect their approach even as leader of the arguably most immutable institution. Francis is an Argentine. In Argentina there’s generally been state corporatism/cronyism called capitalism, opposed by socialism. Free market capitalism regulated by a fair rule of law hasn’t generally existed. It’s not surprising people from countries like that tend to be more skeptical of capitalism compared to people from Germany where a real world facsimile of free market rule of law capitalism has existed, or Poland if they grew up under communism, such as the last two Popes.
A lot of the other Francis quirks (from my POV) are also typical of the Latin American RCC clergy.
You don’t have to agree as a Catholic with the Pope when he gets political (nor, obviously, if you’re not a Catholic). I don’t agree with him much, hope we get a better one next time, but to me the position deserves respect and I don’t believe his motives are bad. There might be a secondary issue of consistency where non- or anti-Catholics praise left leaning Popes like Francis but crudely insult right leaning ones.
As a left leaning non-christian I’d say there is nothing wrong with criticising a pope who does not follow christian ideals. Jesus was a socialist, he told his followers to share amongst themselves and he famously made that comment about the rich man, needle and camel.
So yeah it’s rather refreshing to have a pope that actually seems to be preaching christian ideals as actually espoused by Jesus, you know the guy you are supposed to be following as an example for your life.
Maybe the “problem” is, this pope is walking the walk. That makes it awkward for the self professed (but fake) “Christians” out there. This guy doesn’t buy into the “prosperity gospel” or the “just say the magic words and don’t worry about actions” crap.
We all know Blinky and his conjoined twin Pinky are idiots which is why I won’t bother to respond to them. But I can’t let your little dig at Bush pass without comment. You speak as if Obama was some sort of Green Beret who heroically took part in the mission to kill Osama and wimpy Bush was too pathetic to lead his own mission out there. You must realize that this has nothing to do with being pathetic or not pathetic. Presidents depend on intelligence. Both Bush and Obama expended every effort to find Osama, it just so happened that the right intelligence came in on Obama’s watch.