What sort of pope will Pope Francis be?

[RTFirefly]

@Kepler1571

Even the recent “conservative” popes have looked like Jane Addams on the wealth gap with zero effect on the plutocracy, but it is still good to see this pope take the name Francis for symbolic value. One hopes that he will point out even more forcefully that the perpetuation of poverty in a rich world is the signature moral failing of our time.

The problem is,while the last couple of popes have given a lot of lip service to economic and social justice, the Church has only put its muscle behind the usual stuff: birth control, abortion, homosexuality and the like.

(Remember when assorted Catholic priests, etc. said they wouldn’t serve communion to John Kerry because he was pro-choice? I rather doubt we’d see any priests threaten similar sanctions to Congresscritters who vote for Paul Ryan’s budget plans.)

Paul VI was the last Pope who seemed to actually mean any of that economic justice stuff.

[RTFirefly]

@Smapti

Wouldn’t it be more probable that the bishop would just have gotten himself disappeared as well?

That would have certainly been one of the risks. But if one really is serious about this crazy Jesus stuff, there are times when you really can’t just sit on the sidelines. And his high position and visibility would have provided a degree of protection that the average Argentinian would have lacked.

I can think of few examples in history of anyone bringing down a fascist dictatorship by sternly lecturing them into being nicer people.

Ever hear of the “mothers of the disappeared”? If they could make a difference, then our new Francis could have as well.

[ouryL]

Meh!:o

[Captain_Amazing]

@RTFirefly

The problem is,while the last couple of popes have given a lot of lip service to economic and social justice, the Church has only put its muscle behind the usual stuff: birth control, abortion, homosexuality and the like.

Back when the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was passed, the lobbying of Catholic Charities couldn’t stop the bill, but it was able to get some of its more restrictive provisions toned down. In Virginia, Catholic lobbying was one of the big factors behind getting rid of the waiting period for Medicaid and FAMIS for permanent residents. There is a bunch of social justice stuff they lobby hard for. It’s just things like abortion and homosexuality get most of the press.

[Smapti]

@RTFirefly

Ever hear of the “mothers of the disappeared”? If they could make a difference, then our new Francis could have as well.

As a counterexample, have you heard of Mit Brennender Sorge? That was the Pope himself personally condemning a fascist state- and not only did it not work, but it got a lot of people arrested and lead to a heavy Nazi crackdown on the church. It’s not difficult to understand why a low-level priest might be sheepish about taking on a mass-murdering dictatorship given that precedent.

[GIGObuster]

@Smapti

As a counterexampme, have you heard of Mit Brennender Sorge? That was the Pope himself personally condemning a fascist state- and not only did it not work, but it got a lot of people arrested and lead to a heavy Nazi crackdown on the church. It’s not difficult to understand why a low-level priest might be sheepish about taking on a mass-murdering dictatorship given that precedent.

Yes, but then after the unpleasant times, then coming forward with information on who committed the abuses and making amends should be expected, unfortunately the typical history, like in El Salvador, is for the very conservative priests that comforted the hearts of the military thugs to follow the same rule book as in the sex scandals, those books that recommend to deny and hide the past even after the danger is over.

[ISiddiqui]

@Captain_Amazing

Back when the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was passed, the lobbying of Catholic Charities couldn’t stop the bill, but it was able to get some of its more restrictive provisions toned down. In Virginia, Catholic lobbying was one of the big factors behind getting rid of the waiting period for Medicaid and FAMIS for permanent residents. There is a bunch of social justice stuff they lobby hard for. It’s just things like abortion and homosexuality get most of the press.

Well, you know, the Catholic Church actually working on behalf of the poor isn’t “interesting” enough. You almost begin to understand why some Catholics think the Western media dislike them.

[monavis]

@levdrakon

I dunno. The church says lots of things about sex before marriage, outside of marriage, divorce, killing, greed, etc. Christians blow off everything they don’t like without a second thought. I have a hard time believing they would suddenly start using condoms just because the pope told them to.

The point about birth control is that the people who would want to limit their families, are taught through guilt or fear of going to Hell. They believe the Church is the word of God and his voice, but aren’t taught that it was really the humans during Constantine’s time who decided what was inspired or what was the Word of God.

The family I know in Mexico had 8 children, she is and was a good mother, but still struggles today, and she is in her 80’s

If a person wants a lot of children, has patience, and can see they are fed and warm, is one thing, but to be forced through guilt or fear is another. I know a child from a mother who had 14 children, she took her problems out on them. Told them often she hated the ground they walked on, could have been somebody if it wasn’t for them. She was taught that birth control was a mortal sin but wasn’t taught that child abuse was as big a sin, or bigger.

It is my belief that every child should be wanted, and know they are loved.

It is just my opinion, but I also believe one should be pro after the child is born not just before or after it is conceived.

[monavis]

@KarlGrenze

BTW, Catholic church does approve the use of natural family planning (not the rhythm, but the modern version which includes basal temperature, among other things). Also, they’re OK with abstinence. That those two methods of preventing pregnancies are not what the majority of people use/want, is another point.

The real natural way is not the way the Church approves, a woman is more receptive during her time of ovulation, that is natural, I know so many Catholics who have problems in their marriage because of waiting until they cannot conceive, and going through all the things they have to go through, to make sure is not natural, at least that is how I see it and what people have told me.

There was a time that people would tell a woman who had several children," Oh you must be a Good Catholic"!

[tagos]

@Smapti

Wouldn’t it be more probable that the bishop would just have gotten himself disappeared as well? I can think of few examples in history of anyone bringing down a fascist dictatorship by sternly lecturing them into being nicer people.

What would Jesus have done? Pass by on the other side?

Why didn’t the RCC blanket excommunicate all the junta and its supporters instead of [co-operating with it](ARGENTINA’S FORMER military dictator said he kept the country’s Catholic hierarchy informed about his regime’s policy of “disappearing” political opponents, and that Catholic leaders offered advice on how to “manage” the policy.)?

ARGENTINA’S FORMER military dictator said he kept the country’s Catholic hierarchy informed about his regime’s policy of “disappearing” political opponents, and that Catholic leaders offered advice on how to “manage” the policy.

“They advised us about the manner in which to deal with the situation,” said Videla in a series of interviews conducted by the magazine El Sur in 2010 but published only on Sunday.
He said that in certain cases church authorities offered their “good offices” and undertook to inform families looking for “disappeared” relatives to desist from their searches, but only if they were certain the families would not use the information to denounce the junta.

“In the case of families that it was certain would not make political use of the information, they told them not to look any more for their child because he was dead,” said Videla. He said the church “understood well . . . and also assumed the risks” of such involvement.

The confession confirms long-held suspicions that Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy collaborated with the military’s so-called process of national reorganisation

It could not have assigned confessors to torturers

An uproar was recently caused by the publication of a survey by members of the military who say they ended up regretting the disappearances. Most shocking was the testimony of Commander Adolfo Scilingo, who, during the dictatorship, had thrown thirty living people into the sea from a plane (they had been seized and tortured at the Navy Mechanics School, the main camp of the Argentine Navy): “The church hierarchy approved of this method, because it was a ‘Christian and non-violent’ way to die.” After his first flight, Scilingo was wracked by guilt, but the military chaplain calmed him by citing the Biblical parable about separating the wheat from the chaff.

The actions of the Catholic Church - especially those of a large part of its hierarchy - have not been sufficiently explained. Several bishops and various military chaplains are suspected of complicity with the dictatorship. Many prisoners who managed to survive the torture and concentration camps denounced the fact that military chaplains ministered to the torturers, even indirectly cooperating with interrogators by trying to break the prisoners’ resistance. In all cases, those who behaved this way justified themselves by saying they were cooperating in the defence of “Catholicism” and the defeat of “communism” because, according to the military, all prisoners were communists.

Meanwhile only yesterday Darth Bergoglio said:

“He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

The RCC has swapped a Pope up to his elbows in covering up child abuse for one who was unapologetically part of a gang in cahoots with a fascist junta waging war on its own people.

The RCC in that country has since said ‘oops, sorry about all that’.

Here’s a picture of Darth B giving communion to the brutal Argentine dictator, Videla.

This next bit is from The American Conservative

The tortures they subjected their prisoners to included forcing children to watch their parents tortured, and vice versa. They would in some cases insert starving rats into the orifices of prisoners. Think about those things for a moment. Of course they did many, many more things that most decent people couldn’t dream of. The thing is, the generals did these satanic acts under the guise of cleansing the country of atheistic Marxist rabble. Truth to tell, there really had been left-wing terrorism; the generals didn’t come from nowhere. As we know from history, when radical left-wing governments have taken power, they’ve done the same thing. There is something in our nature that renders us capable of all manner of disgusting evil once we’ve decided that our cause is sufficiently righteous.

<snip>

In Argentina, however, there was a much tighter relationship between the clergy and the military than existed in Chile or Brazil. “Patriotism came to be associated with Catholicism,” said Kenneth P. Serbin, a history professor at the University of San Diego who has written about the Roman Catholic Church in South America. “So it was almost natural for the Argentine clergy to come to the defense of the authoritarian regime.”

So - to answer the question - we can expect this Pope to be just the sort of man that ignores the parable of The Good Samaritan. In fact he has proven to be just the sort of man that would have bound the bruised feet of his assailants.

[Smapti]

@tagos

Why didn’t the RCC blanket excommunicate all the junta and its supporters instead of co-operating with it?

That sounds like a question you should be asking the late Pope Paul VI, not a man who was at the time a simple parish priest.

[tagos]

He wasn’t.

[Smapti]

@tagos

He wasn’t.

Francis wasn’t created a bishop until 1992.

[tagos]

@Smapti

Francis wasn’t created a bishop until 1992.

So?

Maybe you need to go read up on this guy before posting any more.

There’s a whole lot of ranks between priest and bishop.
The Jesuit Order has it’s own power structure.
No one actually disputes that as Provincial and then a Rector at the time Darth B was one of the most powerful and most senior people in the RCC in Argentina.

The picture of him giving communion to the dictator was a clue to all this.

[KarlGrenze]

@monavis

The real natural way is not the way the Church approves, a woman is more receptive during her time of ovulation, that is natural, I know so many Catholics who have problems in their marriage because of waiting until they cannot conceive, and going through all the things they have to go through, to make sure is not natural, at least that is how I see it and what people have told me.

Shrugs

When I was younger and read more articles and local newspapers and variety news, not to mention had to take a home economics course that discussed all types of birth control methods… Natural family planning was mentioned as a method used by practicing Catholics (in fact, one of the articles was written by a very much practicing Catholic woman, based on her other writings).

And as to its ease of use. I know a lot more non-Catholics (including those these board) who use it as compared to Catholics, so your comment about the relationship strain, if any, is not only a Catholic thing.

[Broomstick]

Why are you taking the words of government thugs and murderers dropping living people into the ocean from an airplane over the words of people who aren’t thugs and murderers who claim the church helped hide people, intervened for them, and saved lives during the Dirty War?

I have no doubt that some priests threw in with the junta, but should that tar all priests? Perhaps we should just execute every Argentinian who was alive during the Dirty War because the perpetrators were all Argentinian therefore all Argentinians were guilty? Maybe anyone who didn’t physically protest the junta, who wasn’t jailed or disappeared should be deemed guilty because they didn’t do enough to end the Dirty War?

I always find it troubling how people half a world away can condemn someone else for not dying for a cause, particularly when the armchair quarterback is sitting safe in a non-violent place and has never had to make such choices under actual threat of death. It is a reprehensible form of armchair quarterbacking.

[RickJay]

@For You

I was using one of those translate things, it seems like the grammar is better as “… idem quod est”, but that screws up the nice meter. (Not sure why it gave me “culus” for “Pope”, but that is what I kept getting.)

Suuuuuure.

[tagos]

@Broomstick

Why are you taking the words of government thugs and murderers dropping living people into the ocean from an airplane over the words of people who aren’t thugs and murderers who claim the church helped hide people, intervened for them, and saved lives during the Dirty War?

Because it is an indisuputable fact that the RCC in Argentina supported the Junta and cooperated with it. They’ve even apologised.

“We share everyone’s pain and once again ask the forgiveness of everyone we failed or didn’t support as we should have.”

The notion that ‘rogue’ priests cooperated with the junta is laughable. Priests aren’t like the Lone Ranger - they work where they are told.
Like this guy did.

A court in Argentina has convicted a former Roman Catholic police chaplain of collaborating in murders during the country’s military rule.

Christian Von Wernich, 69, was convicted for involvement in seven murders, 42 abductions and 31 cases of torture during the 1976-83 “Dirty War”.

Father Von Wernich initially avoided prosecution by moving to Chile, where he worked as a priest under a false name.

Let’slook at this guy more closely.

“That man was a collaborator in the illegal repression,” said Mona Moncalvillo, a sister of one of those prisoners. “He collaborated so that there could be killings and state terrorism.”

Yet Von Wernich, 57, has never been disciplined by the church. For more than six years, he has been giving Communion and baptizing babies at his Bragado church, about 110 miles southwest of Buenos Aires. Asked by telephone to comment on the accusations against him, he said, “I don’t give any kind of reply, any kind of clarification, any kind of denial, any kind of anything.”

That is from 1995. And then he somehow turns up priesting it in Chile. Same RCC game, different criminals.

Ah well. Hiding war criminals is a step up from shuffling paedo’s I guess.
Court judgement from last month.

Argentine Court: Church Complicit in ‘Dirty War’ Crimes

In a historic ruling, an Argentine court has found that the country’s Catholic Church was complicit in the human rights abuses committed by the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

As Argentina’s InfoNews reports, the ruling was issued by a four-judge tribunal in the western province of La Rioja, which was presiding over the murder trials of Carlos de Dios Murias and Gabriel Longueville, two priests who had been killed in 1976. Both were active members of the Movement of Priests for the Third World, an association of progressive clergymen. After being detained by officials, their mutilated bodies were found dumped near train tracks in La Rioja.

In addition to sentencing three military officials to life imprisonment for the crime, the tribunal found that the Catholic Church shared responsibility for the murders. The judges ruled that Church hierarchy in the country not only turned a blind eye to the torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings committed by the military regime, but had in many cases colluded with authorities in order to target progressive priests.

So no - the RCC as a whole and its leaders in particular do not get a pass. When the going got tough the major social institution in the country’s response ranged from doing nothing to helping.

That some acted like proper christians, against the policy of the RCC in Argentina, does nothing to exculpate the collective guilt of an institution of which the new pope was a leading light.

Hey - but who knows. Out of the other 100 candidates; this priest, this Levite may well have been the finest choice.

Jesus wept.

[Broomstick]

@tagos

Because it is an indisuputable fact that the RCC in Argentina supported the Junta and cooperated with it. They’ve even apologised.

So… does that mean every member of the RCC in Argentina is equally complicit, even those arrested for directly opposing the junta, then? That’s right in line with saying that because some priests are gay or pedophile every single one of them is. We aren’t discussing the RCC collectively, we’re discussing what one man did. What did Bergogli do during the Dirty War, him personally. I’m interested in whether he in particular was individually guilty in this instance, not whether the RCC was collectively guilty. Basically, in this sentence you are indulging in guilt by association.

The notion that ‘rogue’ priests cooperated with the junta is laughable. Priests aren’t like the Lone Ranger - they work where they are told.
Like this guy did.

So… because THAT guy is guilty every single member of the RCC in Argentina is guilty? Again, guilty by association. Bergogli had his day in court and was acquitted. Granted, the Argentinian justice system is far from perfect but as your example shows conviction of the guilty is possible.

What do you want, for the church to torture a confession out of Von Wernich and burn him at the stake like in the old days? Or would you prefer a criminal priest to be tried in a civilian court? Your example is Von Wernich, but if Bergogli was so guilty where is your evidence against him? Is it possible he might have been acquitted because he was not as culpable as others were and you’re just pissy because the Argentinian justice system did not come to the verdict YOU desire?

That some acted like proper christians, against the policy of the RCC in Argentina, does nothing to exculpate the collective guilt of an institution of which the new pope was a leading light.

So… what, you want to defrock every member of the clergy in Argentina? You want to disband the RCC?

Did you even bother to read the post about the Pius XI encyclical that spoke out against the Nazis that actually made things worse and lead to the Catholics being lumped in with other undesirables and being imprisoned and killed? Or are you simply so biased against Catholics nothing pleases you unless their blood is shed?

I am constantly amazed at the nativity displayed by internet critics who simply do not understand that if you criticize a dictatorship you can be summarily executed, or tortured for years, and nobody will ever know what happened to you. That is what the “Dirty War” was all about, thousands “disappeared”, tortured, and killed. You won’t accept the notion of working quietly behind the scenes sometimes being more effective than direct, open confrontation. During WWII those who saved Jews usually had to work quietly, giving the appearance of conformity or actually working at times with the Nazis to deflect suspicion long enough to save a few lives. Directly speaking out, directly protesting, would only get you killed. Exhibit A for that is Oscar Schindler: he saved 3,000 Jews from death yet was also a member of the Nazi party and did business with the Nazis. So is he scum for cooperating publicly with the oppressors and forget how many people he saved? Funny, the people he saved don’t agree.

Likewise, I want to know what, if anything Bergogli did behind the scenes. There are reports that he did, in fact, work to save lives, intervene to get people released, hide people, get people out the country, and so forth yet you completely discount all of that. Why? You only accept the death of a priest as legitimate countering to the regime and nothing else? You think it more important people die verbally protesting than live and actually save what individuals they can?

I am trying to find something more substantial on this alleged work on the quiet by Bergogli because I’m much more interested in hearing all sides and finding out why he was acquitted than indulging in outrage from the safety of my armchair. I don’t assume he’s guilty simply because he’s a Catholic priest. But, to each their own.

Hey - but who knows. Out of the other 100 candidates; this priest, this Levite may well have been the finest choice.

Yes, he might be… in which case he is the right choice. Sometimes you have to take the lesser evil.

[Smapti]

Broomstick said most of what I wanted to say, so I’ll just ask this of you, Tagos; is your beef with the Catholic Church in its entirety, or is it specifically with Pope Francis?

Because if it’s the former, then it’s likely that no candidate for pope would have been satisfactory to you, and you should really be directing your invective towards Paul VI and the John Pauls rather than towards a man who had little authority or gravitas outside the Jesuit order at the time. And if it’s the latter, then you really need to explain what Francis specifically did that was wrong, and what he should have done instead that would have changed things for the better.