No, it involves seeing the RCC as something that won’t go away any time soon.
Getting ISIS to behead fewer people would be an improvement. If we saw ISIS as something so big that even such minor changes would result in either being destroyed or fundamentally changing into a non-terrorist organization, we’d be happy about that, too.
History is full of people we treat as being good because they were better than the people around them. George Washington held slaves. Lincoln still thought black people were inferior to white people. Martin Luther King Jr. was a plagiarist and serial adulterer. Gandhi slept with teenage women.
It really is the idea that the perfect must be the enemy of the good. What the Pope is doing now is good, even if it’s not as good as we would hope.
At the risk of infinite repetition, I have credited him for the good he is doing.
You raise good points. We want our saints, secular and otherwise. We want people of whom to think, “What a great man! A genius! A holy man!” Though we love to take out celebs with juicy schadenfreude, we also need our objects of worship (even better if one can turn into the other!).
But I don’t think we should think that way about “great men.” Admire them for the great qualities and deeds, but don’t worship.
Right now, I think Francis is doing some pretty basic stuff that popes ought to have been doing for a long time. I don’t think he’s quite at the “great man” stage yet. After Darth Benedict, anyone is bound to look good.
As to the RCC’s good works, I suspect your 95% is a bit low. The RCC runs low cost schools, hospitals, hospices. Now, you and I would, I expect, agree that there is a pernicious element to all this in that the RCC tends to proselytise as it helps, but it’s hard to deny that there are a lot of “Religious” who are doing good works along the way.
As to whether I’m being unfair in accusing you of condemning the Pope out of hand, you said this:
Which is basically saying (to use my analogy) that he should jump off the bus. But for reasons I’ve pointed out, that may not be much use given the momentum and weight of the bus (RCC) and it may be that by staying in there and doing at least some good, he’s a good guy overall.
I agree. Seems there’s always a price tag attached to it. We’re so nice, we’ve proven we’re connect to the God! Believe like us!
No. I’m not advocating a simplistic template, and I think that’s why people are getting tripped up on what I’m saying. We’re used to black and white thinking about people, and I was, in my OP, advocating against painting guys like Pope Frank (as you humorously call him :)) and the Dalai Lama white.
Pope Frank is a grown man seemingly of high intelligence who ought to know better than to believe that the Catholic Church is the conduit for God’s truth. If he really believes, well, that’s a problem (with most intelligent people who believe incorrect things, there is quite often a self-serving reason). If he doesn’t believe, then he’s being dishonest. In either case, though he may be better than Benedict, he is still serving as the PR guy for a bad outfit.
It’s an interesting case in ethics. But my original point was simple: just because this guy isn’t total shit, don’t be like, “Lurve lurve lurve lurve!” (Unless you are actually a Catholic and think this pope really is correct in his beliefs and actions.)
As much as the Dalai Lama might believe he’s the reborn soul of 13 dead people, it still seems kind of unfair to hold him personally morally responsible for actions taken by somebody else in the 1830s, for instance.
Well for me yes but by his own belief system no. At the least, he should be able to explain in what way his previous incarnations were “Enlightened” rulers.
On this point, I doubt Jesus would say that. That quote was uttered 2x under very specific circumstance that related to Jesus being tested by Satan in the wilderness (in Mathew and Luke ), and the time with Peter from which you quoted. It is uttered only when Satan is directly in Jesus’s way of His personal mission. Basically get out of my way Satan, I’m going through.
In this case, If Jesus did address the Pope, it would be more equal to Matt 16 1-4, and how Jesus addresses the 7 churches in Revelation, He calls them on their error and reveals what the problem is.
I don’t give either of them any slack for their backward, harmful, unjust, and dangerous views on sexuality in general, homosexuality, and women, but I’m not sure exactly what good that does anyone because I’m neither a Catholic nor a Tibetan Buddhist, and neither the pope nor the Dalai Lama knows or cares what my opinion is.
Well, I for one think that New Age has done a lot of bad things to people’s minds. Good thing that there’s no pope or lama of New Age, just some unorganized nutcases.
ETA: for the record, both the pope and the lama guy suck ass.
I don’t agree with your argument. So whom should the pope listen to? Only Catholics? He should ignore all critiques that come from outside the Church? I doubt that the pope does think that way.
Your statement also implies that the pope need not listen to Liberals, which is also absurd.
You have a set of opinions and an agenda that are incompatible with Catholicism. So yes, the Pope should ignore you, because you want to change his Church into something unrecognizable. If he’s open to that, he himself is unfit to be the Pope.
There are plenty of other religions that will gladly tell you what you want to hear. I hope mine is never one of them.
I was raised in your religion, and it told me a lot of false shit that directly harmed me, so now I’m glad to see it’s a drying piece of shit in the desert. May it desiccate and dissipate ever so quickly, Amen.
If you want the Catholic Church to die, then OBVIOUSLY you and the Pope have nothing to say to each other. Why on earth would you object to my saying so?
You are right about one and only one thing: Pope Francis is not the arch-liberal many liberals think or hope he is. Nor, for that matter, were Benedict and JP2 the hard line conservatives they were perceived to be. The Church has never fit neatly into the left/right dichotomy most Americans subscribe to.
If the Sexual Revolution is sacred to you, the Church will never be on your side. Stop waiting for any Pope to change the rules to suit you- it ain’t happening. Francis is a very likable guy, but guess what? He’s still Catholic. He still believes in the rules. The secular left SHOULDN’T admire him any more than they did his predecessors.
There’s already a Unitarian church. The world doesn’t need another.
