No, and it appears that’s not correct.
I am not Roman Catholic, but I thought the pope was considered to be more directly in touch with God than laymen, and that the basic definition of “prophet” would apply to him. While that may be a reasonable assertion, it seems it is not official doctrine. My apologies.
Well neither is it official doctrine that he’s a politician, but he’s still referred to that based on the dictionary definition. So even if the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t regard him as an official capital-P Prophet, he can still be regarded as one, based on the dictionary definition of a prophet.
Enough people believe he, by virtue of his title, is an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God to qualify him.
I don’t think we need to get hung up on the “predicting the future” part. No one expects the Pope to do that. But the dictionary definition isn’t the one that really matters here, it’s the Catholic Church’s definition that matters. Does anyone know if such a definition exists?
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but the Catechism is probably the best place to look for an answer.
Also, the pope may or not be the Biblical definition of a prophet, but the NT does talk about different gifts of the Spirit, prophecy being one of them. So who knows, maybe he’s got that gift?
Benedict?
How did the discussion come to be about HIM?
Pope Frances. He’s been a puppet, a pirate, a poet, a prophet, a pawn and a king.
Has he also been up and down and over and out?
And are his words written on the subway walls and tenement halls?
Note that a lot of the “prophecies” predicting the future people find in the OT are later interpretations. Some OT passages that are interpreted by some as foretelling Christ are taken as comments on current events of the day by others.
Even the Book of Revelation was widely seen as mostly a contemporary commentary in the earliest days of the church.
Right.
Yeshua of Galilee was never called Immanuel (or Emanuel). The latter mean “God with us” which is not even the same derivation as “Jesus” (in whatever form) which means “YHVH saves”.
But the fundies have an out. They can always claim that he will be called that when on an Earthly throne after the 2nd Coming.
It may be of interest here what I’ve gathered the Eastern Orthodox consensus (?) is on the modern prophetic role.
NO ONE since the Apostolic qualifies as a prophet in the sense that Isaiah and others in the so-called Old Testament did. Christ was surely a Prophet, speaking for “the Father” – but not usually referred to as such. Because he was so much more.
Only the E. O. Church as a whole has that role in the post-Apostolic Age. (Not sure what they would have said about the original Apostles.)
That means the “Church” in all its national branches although, especially since the 1920’s, there have been caveats by some authorities as to which branches are still canon-abiding, hence “truly Orthodox”.
There has [del]traditionally[/del] long been a “democratic” sentiment. When some started calling the Patriarch of Constantinople the head (leader? or some similar term) of the entire Church, it did not sit well with everyone. The feeling expressed was that this could lead to Orthodoxy becoming a late parallel to “Papism”. An unacceptable danger, they said.
I remember being told that even little old ladies in the Church had the right to confront a Priest/Presbyter, a Bishop, an Archbishop, even a Patriarch if they felt they were drifting into heresy. You can’t get any more “democratic” than that!
Think Kahlil Gibran.