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Pope Francis I

ramonmercado said:
Pope Francis has denounced the “evil pastors” in the Catholic Church who “lay intolerable burdens on the shoulders of others, which they themselves do not lift a finger to move.”

The pope made his comments in his homily at mass for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops which opens this week in Rome and is being attended by 191 cardinals, archbishops and bishops and well as lay persons.

Francis appeared to be criticizing those among the church's hierarchy who insist on hardline policies that many lay people could not follow, especially rules on divorced couples not receiving communion and the wide-spread use of contraception by Catholics despite church teachings.

Francis has put forward a more liberal view of such issues since becoming pope but has run into strong resistance from more conservative forces in the hierarchy.

He seemed to implicitly criticize such clergy for being overzealous and driving many faithful away.

“God’s dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants,” Francis said. “We can ‘thwart’ God’s dream if we fail to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit.” ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Pope-F ... hurch.html
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Encouraging. I think what he is criticising more than anything else is hypocrisy - I don't know if the doctrine that the Pope is infallible is still current - I'm no Catholic -- but the clergy are obviously only too fallible and yet act as if they are not. I have had the exact same hypocrisy spouted at me by high church Anglicans.
 
Yes, the pope is infallible but only when pronouncing ex-cathedra.

And the Church has always been excellent with semantics - look at, for example, the Jesuits and equivocation, mental reservation, and sophistry :)
 
Yesterday, in a preliminary report published half way through a Vatican synod on family life, an assembly of 200 bishops, offered a remarkable change in the Church’s tone over gay rights issues.

Homosexuals have real “gifts and qualities to offer” the report said, adding that the Church could now see its way toward greater acceptance of gays and toward recognizing positive aspects of the relationships of same-sex couples.

The news created an immediate international sensation. Vatican expert and author of the 2013 bestselling book "The Vatican Diaries" John Thavis called yesterday's document “an earthquake” in the Church’s attitude towards gays. ...

But the change in tone does not imply a change in doctrine, however. The statement says that gay unions “cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman,” but the Church says it now recognizes there are many positive aspects to relationships between same-sex couples. ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cah ... gays.html#
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Grapes are being served sour at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome this week, and the man behind the bitterest ones is none other than conservative firebrand Cardinal Raymond Burke. Critics say there has been more than a hint of score settling in Burke’s pointed criticism of the synod and even Pope Francis this week - with Burke claiming a statement from the pontiff “defending Catholic teaching” is now “long overdue.”

Do you hear that Pope Francis, it’s time you explained yourself. There aren’t many Church figures who will condescend to “clarify” the pope’s intent for him, but it’s looking like Cardinal Burke simply can’t trust Francis to be pontiff.

After his unceremonious removal as head of the Vatican’s highest court in 2013 Burke was given the much less glamorous assignment as patron of the Order of Malta last month. That means from being a sort of Chief Justice of the Vatican Supreme Court, Burke’s been sent out to pasture to a ceremonial role that’s more fitting for an 80 year old (he is 66, which is 25 in Vatican years).

And in Vatican terms his demotion is worse than an exile, it’s a decapitation. But like a figure in Greek mythology Burke’s back again this week, Hydra-like, having grown another head on which to wear his abolished galero. ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/oth ... Burke.html
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Another throwback.

Yet another senior Catholic Church figure has this morning been openly critical of the “welcoming” language used in a Synod document earlier this week in relation to homosexuals.

African Cardinal Robert Sarah, the current Prefect of the Cor Unum Pontifical Council, told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that media coverage of the Synod’s midway Relatio document last Monday represented “an attempt to push the church (to change) her doctrine.”

The document, which spoke of “welcoming” homosexuals who have “gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community”, provoked worldwide reaction since it appeared to indicate a radical change in church teaching on homosexuality. Until now, the Catholic Church has considered homosexuality “intrinsically disordered” and judges the homosexual act to be a sin. ...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-a ... -1.1968905
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This Pope is having to put up with a lot of shit.
Let's see how he handles it!
 
Mythopoeika said:
This Pope is having to put up with a lot of shit.
Let's see how he handles it!
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If I was him I'd let the Albino Monks loose.
 
garrick92 said:
I am watching this Pope's career unfold with increasing pleasure and developing something of an affection for the man. Go, Popey!
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I really want to see a coach-load of reactionary cardinals tumble in to a steep ravine.
 
A rather downbeat assessment of the Synod. Francis has made clear though that there will be a Round Two.

The reign of Pope Francis as a reformist pope is over.

Gays in particular will need to find another religion, Catholicism made it clear this weekend that it doesn’t want them.

The synod at the Vatican began with the publication on Monday of a historic “Welcome to Homosexual Persons” document but it ended on Saturday with the Traditional Church Message To Homosexuals: Get Lost.

Yesterday conservative Catholic websites could not contain their glee at the about-face. “Here's the good news: the paragraph on gays has been scrapped from the Final Relatio. It is gone,” wrote the far right Church Militant website.

They continued: “The bishops failed to approve even a watered-down section on ministering to homosexuals that stripped away the welcoming tone of acceptance contained in a draft document earlier in the week."

Only conservative christians are delighted when a “welcoming tone of acceptance” is replaced with naked hostility. But in seeking to protect the Catholic church from modern life conservatives are turning the eternal faith of St. Peter into the spiritual wing of the Tea Party. ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/oth ... -over.html
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Time to make this F%*!er Papal Nuncio to Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis, continued his veiled criticism of Pope Francis and made some ominous statements about the Catholic Church while speaking at a conference in Ireland.

Speaking in Limerick at a conference held by the “Catholic Voice” newspaper, Burke told an audience of 300 that the sanctity of marriage is under “ferocious attack, even within the church itself.”

"Even within the church there are those who would obscure the truth of the indissolubility of marriage in the name of mercy," he said.

The Wisconsin native with Tipperary roots was recently demoted by Pope Francis from his prominent role as head of the Vatican’s supreme court and transferred to the largely ceremonial position of Chaplain of the Knights of Malta. ...

http://www.irishcentral.c
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om/news/American-Cardinal-Burke-criticizes-Pope-Francis-in-Irish-speech.html#
 
Now the Albino Monks will be set loose.

Pope Francis is removing the commander of the Swiss Guards, with the pontiff reportedly unhappy at the officer's strict authoritarian style.

The news that Daniel Anrig would not be continuing as commander was published in the Vatican's daily newspaper. He will leave the Vatican after Christmas at the end of an eight-year stint, and be replaced by his deputy.

Since his election Pope Francis has made efforts to reform the church and make it more open.

The notice in the L'Osservatore Romano said: "The holy father has ordered that Colonel Daniel Rudolf Anrig end his term on 31 January, at the conclusion of the extension of his mandate."

Col Anrig's approach has riled colleagues, with one Swiss Guard telling Italian media "this is the end of a dictatorship", on news of his departure. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30320800
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This Pope gets better and better. :D
 
Thousands of people sang "Happy Birthday" and danced a mass tango on Wednesday to celebrate the birthday of the first Latin American pope. Argentinian Pope Francis was born in the birthplace of the tango on Dec. 17, 1936. On Wednesday, he heard versions of "Happy Birthday" in Spanish, Italian and other languages as he was driven through St. Peter's Square to start his weekly general audience.

Argentine priests handed him a cake and he blew out the candles before his open-top jeep moved on. The vehicle stopped again so the pope, visibly pleased, could accept a birthday drawing from an Italian boy. ...

http://www.independent.ie/world-new...birthday-to-pope-as-he-turns-78-30844626.html
 
Pope Francis has issued a blistering critique of the Vatican bureaucracy that serves him, denouncing how some people lust for power at all costs, live hypocritical double lives and suffer from “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that has made them forget they are supposed to be joyful men of God. Francis’s Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who run the Holy See was no joyful exchange of holiday good wishes. Rather, it was a sobering catalogue of 15 sins of the Curia that Francis said he hoped would be atoned for and cured in the new year.

His criticism included: How the “terrorism of gossip” can “kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood”. How cliques can “enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body” and eventually kill it by “friendly fire”. How some suffer from a “pathology of power” that makes them seek power at all costs, even if it means defaming or discrediting others publicly. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaki...g-critique-on-vatican-bureaucracy-655532.html
 
He has to beat the bureaucracy. First he weakens them, then there will be a night of the long knives. Hes not going to be done in like JP I.
 
Pope Francis said yesterday he is convinced global warming is “mostly” man-made and hopes his upcoming encyclical on the environment will encourage negotiators at a climate change meeting in Paris to make “courageous” decisions to protect God’s creation.

Francis has spoken out frequently about the “culture of waste” that has imperiled the environment and he elaborated en route to the Philippines. While there, Francis will meet with survivors of the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, which the government has said was an example of the extreme weather conditions that global warming has wrought.

“I don’t know if it [human activity] is the only cause, but mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” he said. “We have in a sense taken over nature.” ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/pope-says-climate-change-is-mostly-man-made-307267.html
 
Made the hares stand on the backs of their necks.

The Pope’s comment that Catholics do not have to breed “like rabbits” has caused offence among Germany’s rabbit breeders.

Francis said Catholics should instead practise “responsible parenting” and use Church-approved forms of birth control.

But Erwin Leowsky, president of the central council of German rabbit breeders, said only rabbits that live in the wild are sexually overactive. He said those in captivity have tamer reproductive habits,

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/...rks-offend-german-rabbit-breeders-308297.html
 
Has anyone asked the rabbits if they're offended?
 
Pope Francis has ruled that Salvadorean Archbishop Oscar Romero died as a martyr, paving the way for his beatification. Beatification is the step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

An outspoken critic of the military regime at the outset of El Salvador's civil war, Archbishop Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass in 1980. For years, the Church blocked the process because of concerns that he had Marxist ideas. The bishop was one of the main proponents of Liberation Theology - an interpretation of Christian faith through the perspective of the poor.

Unlike other candidates for beatification, martyrs can move to the beatification stage without a miracle attributed to them. A miracle is needed for canonisation, however. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31115837
 
The Vatican did something it has never done before by giving a group of US gay and lesbian Catholics VIP seats at Pope Francis’ weekly general audience.

But in a sign that the welcome wasn’t all it could have been, the New Ways Ministry pilgrims were identified on the Vatican’s list of attendees only as a “group of lay people accompanied by a Sister of Loreto.” And not even that got announced at yesterday’s audience: When a monsignor read out the different groups of pilgrims attending, he skipped that reference altogether. Francis didn’t mention them either.

New Ways Ministry officials were nevertheless pleased that they had been invited to sit up front by Monsignor Georg Gaenswein. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/francis-effect-earns-gay-rights-group-vip-seats-313452.html
 
This ensures that the Popes visit will be controversial.

University of Scranton employee insurance plans will no longer cover abortions in cases of rape, incest or life-threatening pregnancies under a plan that the Jesuit school says is consistent with Catholic doctrine.

But the Pennsylvania university’s faculty union, which represents about 300 of its 940 full-time employees, says members must first approve any changes to its coverage. The union negotiated away coverage for elective abortions nine years ago in return for adoption coverage, but its current contract pays for abortions in cases of rape, incest, or to save the live of the mother.

In a letter to faculty released by the university on Friday, its president, Rev. Kevin Quinn, said that even limited abortion coverage is “inconsistent with the moral teachings of the church.”

The move comes as Pope Francis, the first Catholic pontiff who is a member of the Jesuit order, prepares to visit Pennsylvania in September. He has called on the Church to deemphasize divisive social issues like abortion and homosexuality. ...

Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2015/02/pennsy...-abortions-in-rape-cases/#QuGl438x4i8Ifr2H.99
 
More than one way of flensing a feline.

Unscripted and sometimes controversial statements by Pope Francis are part of the larger reform of the Church and the papacy, according to the author of a new biography on the first Jesuit pope.

Speaking before a public lecture at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Austen Ivereigh said his book The Great Reformer; Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope deals extensively with any criticisms of the first non-European Catholic Pope.

However, the London-based journalist, who has a PhD from Oxford on Church State Relations in Argentina, admits he began to “deeply admire” the new pope during his research for the book, in particular for his “great courage”.

“A lot of the writings that came about after his election, were reading him through a lens which really didn’t apply to Argentina. It was a European or a North American lens, so part of the motive of the book was to explain and contextualise him,” he explained. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/popes-controversial-statements-part-of-reform-plan-316121.html
 
Ulalume said:
Ermintrude, is your real name Walter Abish by any chance? :D
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Not so far..!
... :cool:
Sorry, no, I'm not that person. I'm familiar with his type of style, though. I can kind-of do something similar, but not nearly as well as I used to be able to. Using a computer, so as to be able to scribble-out, instantly, instead of Tippex or correction fluid or typewriter ribbon (all archaic artifacts, now) makes it easy.

But I'm always original. I copy no-one, ever. Never have, never will. Might sometimes rarely tread into the same footprint, but if so, I got there all by myself.
 
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