(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928742, but we merged that thread hither)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-pope-could-it-be-american-c...
If there's a political motive in not choosing an American pope until now it's that for most of American history it wouldn't have granted them any influence over American politics. If there's a personal motive it's that until recently they felt insulted that America went for almost 200 years before finally electing a Catholic president.
Tangent: Protestantism is not a religion. The religion is called Christianity. I have seen this trend for quite a while of Protestants (or people born in Protestant countries) of referring to Christianity branches as religions. I find it very segregational. The whole point of all the branches is the same guy whose name begins with C.
But yes, given the state of America today, having an American pope will definitely be an interesting development in the context of many lobbying groups wishing for a vaticanised America.
Nit: "Christ" is actually a title, not a name — it's the English version of the Greek Χριστός (christos), from the Hebrew mashiach (in English, messiah, anointed one).
His name was Yehoshua (or Yeshua or Y'shua, "Yahweh is salvation" — in English, "Joshua") whose Greek version is Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous, anglicized to "Jesus", although the Spanish pronunciation hay-sooss is closer to the Greek).
That said, looking back there were a couple problems with the protestant viewpoint: one is that there's no attempt at explaining god's apparent 2000-year vacation and another being that the bible was effectively nonexistent until the council at Nicaea and I'm not sure what legitimacy there is in them having any authority to decide what is and is not canon unless you accept the catholic church's authority.
It'd be like saying "Talking about Rust is segregational. It's just all branches of programming languages starting with C". Technically true, but not a useful distinction.
That analogy is not valid. Protestants argue that catholicism does christianism in a sloppy way, whereas they do it right. If you're going with a programming language analogy, it's like a C++ programmer arguing that onboarding cppcheck and --Wall --pedantic is the only acceptable way to work with C++, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
Every sect within a religion is going to argue that they are the ones doing it right and the others are either wrong or at least suboptimal depending on the state of inter-sect relations. I would peg the Protestants as C and the Catholics as C++ in this analogy, as the chief defining feature of protestantism is that they do not acknowledge the legitimacy of just about everybody who has ever claimed to speak on God's behalf past a certain point; thus, like C, their view of religion is inherently stagnant. They don't necessarily deny that God continues to interact with his creations, but they've realized that statistically speaking any given prophet or saint has an approximately 0.0 probability of actually conveying messages from God so they'll just stick with the ones that are so old that just about everybody [who calls themselves christian] already agrees on them. This is similar to the way that many C programmers are really C++ programmers who got tired of all the dumb new C++2x bullshit and just want to write computer programs.
Both the protestant religion and the C programming language have viewpoints that make sense given the histories of their respective subjects, but the major drawback of these viewpoints is that they have chosen to limit themselves to only iterating through new interpretations of old ideas; both of them are fundamentally incapable of innovation because being incapable of innovation is the fundamental core of their belief systems. Thus, if God ever really does try to leave the protestants a voicemail or if bjarne stroustrup ever does come up with an idea that isn't terrible and needlessly complicated, both the protestants and the C programmers will miss out on it.
I will not even attempt to speculate as to which programming languages should represent islam and judaism in this analogy because i do not want to die or have my account banned.
And of course they vary widely in rites, practices, and liturgy.
People think they are closer than they are. The difference between the protestant denominations, catholic denominations, mormans, jehovah's witnesses, etc are quite major and in a very real sense the separation between these different sects of Christianity are essentially only a few steps removed from the separation Islam has from Christianity.
It's mostly compatible and people keep confusing them.
Deciding what is a “branch” of a religion versus whats is an independent “religion” is more subjective than objective. This might become clearer if we move away from Christianity for a moment, and look at the same question for some non-Christian religions
Consider the southern Indian religious movement of Ayyavazhi - most people, both in India and outside it, consider it a branch/denomination/sect of Hinduism, including even many followers of Ayyavazhi - but some of its followers and leaders insist it is a separate Dharmic religion [0]. The question is (in part) political - Dravidian nationalists and Tamil nationalists are more likely to call it a separate religion, Indian nationalists (Congress) and Hindu nationalists (BJP) want to view it as part of Hinduism
Meanwhile, most people consider Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism to be separate religions from Hinduism - but the British courts in India decided they were branches of Hinduism, a classification still followed by the Indian legal system to this day. Many Hindu nationalists promote the idea that these traditions are branches of Hinduism, even though most of the Indian followers of those religions reject the idea.
It is standard to classify the Alevis in Turkey as an Islamic sect - yet the Turkish government wants to insist on the idea they aren’t even a sect, just a “cultural movement”, to promote the fiction of a homogeneous Turkish Islam - but while some Alevis are fighting for government recognition as a separate sect of Islam, there is a movement among Alevis (Ishikism) which claims it is a separate pre-Islamic religion, and its Islamic content is just a superficial distraction (dissimulation) to prevent persecution. Meanwhile, many hardline Sunnis around the world agree that Alevis are a non-Islamic religion - and some of the most hardline Sunnis will even say that of mainstream Twelver Shi’a.
So, the boundary between “branch of a religion” and “separate independent religion” is more subjective (theological and political) than objective.
[0] https://m.economictimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/tamil-n...
It's unlikely that Protestants (including all the weird splinter groups/cults/sects in the US), Catholics and Orthodox will ever reunite into the same church again, so calling them separate religions is fair I think.
For starters, there is a Catholic Church corresponding to every Eastern/Oriental Orthodox Church in existence. Belarussian Orthodox Church/Belarussian Catholic Church. Including some unique outliers: Melkites, Maronites, Chaldean Catholic.
These Catholic Churches "returned" to communion when their head bishops decided to rejoin after centuries of schism. Thereafter, these churches are open to new individual converts, as well as entire parishes or eparchies coming into communion anew.
Furthermore, the Personal Ordinariates were erected quite recently to accommodate conversions from the Anglican church. It began long before that: the Catholic Church has received Anglican priests, with their families, ordained them as Catholic priests, and set them to parish ministry. Yes, even the married ones. Some Anglican priests or bishops became prelates, and entire parishes converted to the Catholic faith. They even retain their own liturgy, "Divine Worship", which is based on the Book of Common Prayer. If you're a fan of the old Tridentine liturgy, just imagine if that were presented in English instead!
Today there are no fewer than 24 Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, including a brand-new Eritrean Catholic Church, corresponding to the split in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
So I disagree with your pessimism because we have plenty of examples, in the distant past as well as quite recent history, where Protestants and Orthodox alike have come back into communion with the Catholic Church. Thanks for bringing it up!
It is true that certain protestant sects are effectively "the catholicism we have at home [in england]" and you are right that those probably can be convinced to rejoin the catholic church but the majority of protestant sects have a firmly-rooted belief that the church is an organization created by humans to worship god and there is nothing inherently sacred about it. They also tend to reject anything outside of the old and new testaments compiled at nicea as being canon.
There's a fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance wherein they believe that God is still actively involved in the world and has been for the past 2000 years yet they haven't made any attempts at recording them; I think the logic is that they'd need the church to have some sort of divine authority to add to the bible and they've already ruled out the church having that authority so the bible is effectively set in stone forever. But that's irrelevant, I'm getting off-topic here.
Anyways, as far as unification goes it doesn't really matter that nobody knows or cares about ancient wars between catholic and protestant kingdoms and it doesn't matter that they can all get along and be neighbors and even have their churches work together on charity projects because the schism between the catholics and protestants is rooted in ideology not animosity. There's no compromise between the pope being a direct line of succession from peter and the pope being "just a guy in rome who makes great sermons" and I can't imagine they're going to want to take 1700 years of catholic lore and add it into their canon like its no big deal either.
Another roadblock is that the protestants themselves are highly fractured, often due to minor disagreements over pedantic minutiae that at least 99% of their members don't care about (IIRC one of the disagreements was over whether Jesus meant it literally when he said the bread and wine are his flesh and blood or rather that was a figure of speech, i think the calvinists and the lutherans are on opposite sides of that disagreement) but they've all had a long history of peaceful cooperation and they've never let that turn into an actual conflict yet still they never even try to unite. They don't see any point as long as they can coexist peacefully as separate churches because the only thing that would grant them is consolidation of power, which they are largely disinterested in. So even putting the ideological debates and factionalism aside, they'd need to be convinced that there is even a point in unifying with the catholic church when they can continue to peacefully coexist as separate organizations.
hoo boy, be careful who you say that around, some of the jewish denominations have some very strong opinions about Christians calling themselves jews lmao.
anyways, I think beyond there being a major disagreement on whether there's any legitimacy to jesus being worshipped as a messiah or the new testament as a whole, the primary reason why they're considered separate religions is that judaism is ultimately centered around the fathers of the jewish/Israelite ethnic identity making a sacred covenant with God that cements them as his chosen people, whereas christianity's basis lies in Jesus' sacrifice forging a new covenant between God and all peoples (jewish and gentile alike). The reason why there's so much undying support for israel among modern evangelicals is that they believe judaism is still a legitimate religion because in their view there's no reason why the old covenant shouldn't still be valid for Jewish people who never partook in the new covenant.
Pope Leo is obviously not going to represent any american interests, just like the earlier popes not representing german and argentinian interests as that would be blatant and absurd.
It seems that the baptist subsection of Christianity already have a bunch of different interpretations of Christian scripture. Historically it's only a matter of time before the inevitable schism, and then they also get to claim to be a different religion.
Protestantism, by definition, is Christianity. The very nature of protestantism is that the Catholic church needed to fix errors and discrepancies. If anything, protestantism advocate that they do christianism right, whereas the Catholic church is a tad sloppy.
Despite claiming that they follow Christ, our and their definition of "following" is so different that what they do and believe often looks unrecognizable.
The same can be said about the difference between Catholics and Protestants. Despite our disagreements, the Orthodox and Catholic churches still share a lot theologically. The same cannot be said about Protestants (although, that also depends on what denominations you consider).
It's not to say that we don't share any values. We actually do and there are many individual Protestants that behave in a more Christian way than some members of the Orthodox Church.
However, that is not a highly relevant factor. For one reason or another, there are many atheists and members of other religions that do as well. But those still remain clearly separate and would never be classified as Christians.
Anti-Catholicism runs deep in America, but the particularly weird issue is the converts. People who convert into Catholicism tend to be much more conservative than those born into it, often much more so than actual Church doctrine. Hence the Vance controversy.
Gorsuch was raised Catholic, and thus the Catholic Church still considers him a member. Gorsuch hasn't publicly stated whether he considers himself Catholic or not. In 2017, one of his friends said:
>Trent, Gorsuch’s close friend, said he believes Gorsuch would consider himself “a Catholic who happens to worship at an Episcopal church.”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/18/politics/neil-gorsuch-religio...
Acknowledging and prioritizing similarly marginalized people in poor countries, or at least in countries less tetchy about their failings and political pieties, carries less political risk. (Which is not to claim Prevost cynically avoided American ministry to the poor.)
That said, that such ministry is qualification at all seems to me more a product of Francis’s remaking of the college of cardinals with a notably Franciscan philosophy. The majority of post-WW2 popes have been European, of the first or second world. Benedict was German and John Paul Polish.
I don't think they had much control over when Francis died.
You should look into the history of choosing a pope, it’s wild.
Anyways, nothing can end America on such a short timescale. Even if Donald Trump's recent decisions will cause the downfall of America's global pseudo-empire we are not anywhere near a point of no return and he could give up on playing "5D chess" and fix this all within a month; some opportunities would be lost which leads to some unrecoverable economic damage but we'd still be largely in the same position as we were six months ago; consequentially, any fears they may have had about appointing an American pope during a period of global American hegemony are still valid.
Why? Is there any reason for anyone in the world to think this behavior will change suddenly? Is there a reason the church wouldn’t think the US has a crisis of faith if those in power and their followers are so willing to commit sin against their fellow man? Clearly we all know how Jesus proclaimed, “Gather ye the masses of immigrants and send them to another country, lest they not be tortured for their grave sins of migration.”
Or are you referring to some other type of hypocrisy?
What the actual hell?
If you believe the city too small, then please consider Italy - which require asylum applications to be submitted while in a third country, the "Cutro Decree", limits on number of non-EU citizens who can enter, non-EU citizens need work permits, nothing given for "family reunification" - laws that are strictly applied or you are kicked out with little fanfare and 1000% less drama than in the USA.
Yes, the hypocrisy is mindbogglingly astonishing. I can say even more firmly: What the actual hell ?
Are you suggesting that the decline has only been apparent since Trump's re-election? For some (myself included), America has been in obvious political decline for some time - highlighted and spurred along by some significant events (Trump's first election and the nature of US involvement in Gaza to name a couple).
The reason I said "four months" is because America's media establishment has been pushing this narrative that the tariffs and the argument with zelensky have somehow ended american hegemony overnight; I personally believe it's impossible for these events to cause a noticeable decline on such a short basis because there's far more to america than merely not taxing imports and giving limitless amounts of free stuff to ukraine with no strings attached, but I have developed a pavlovian response to the phrase "America's in decline" because it really is all about Donald Trump with these people.
I would personally put the origin of "America's Decline" at 9/11 because that was the beginning of America's self-doubt about what their place in the world is and what it should be. Everything since then has been the five stages of grief on a nationwide scale. Currently we're somewhere between Depression (stage 4) and Acceptance (stage 5) which is why we gave up on Afghanistan, and also why so many people are opposed to funding Ukraine; there's a legitimate fear that arming the Ukrainians will in some way come back to bite us in the ass 20 years later just like arming the mujahideen did.
Which I think is a great thing as the representative of a worldwide religion. Born in the US, an English-speaking country in North America, lived in Peru, a Spanish-speaking country in the South America, then in Italy, an Italian-speaking country in Europe.
As for being completely American: dual citizen of U.S. and another country here. On each April 15, the U.S. still considers me completely American even though I haven’t earned a cent there in over a decade. So in an official sense, that moniker sticks to you like Super Glue.
Granted, the new pope may have a wider scope of cultural influences than many, if not a majority of Americans, it sounds like his formative years were spent in the U.S. so I’d call him American.
Éamon de Valera was born in New York City in 1882, and served as President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973
Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1927, and served as King of Thailand from 1946 until his death in 2016
That’s just two US-born individuals who became head of state of another country, there may be more.
I assume both were US citizens at birth (de Valera was born into poverty, abandoned by his Spanish father, reputedly an artist; Bhumibol‘s father was a student at Harvard)-whether or not they ever formally renounced their US citizenship, I don’t know
There are some sources indicating that children of foreign sovereigns would be exempt from automatic citizenship, but Bhumibol's father wasn't the king, just the king's brother.
Éamon de Valera's case is unambiguous.
There are surely other world leaders who spent significant time in the US - Benjamin Netanyahu spent some time in the Philadelphia area as a child, for example. And a little bit of research turns up Naftali Bennett, prime minister of Israel in 2021-22 - he was a US citizen (born in Israel to US citizen parents) until he had to renounce his US citizenship when elected to the Knesset.
Famously Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel (which is a largely ceremonial post), which presumably would have come with Israeli citizenship, but he turned it down.
> Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City
Also, in most countries (the US included), one’s status as a citizen/national is legally independent of whether one tries to “claim” it.
1. Does the Pope have significant personal income? 2. Does, which what I think you are getting at, the law apply to a head of state?
Monthly income for pope US$32,000 equivalent.
> Does, which what I think you are getting at, the law apply to a head of state?
I don’t know if he will exempt as head of state, but as ordinary US citizen he will be paying taxes to US as his income exceeds FEIE exemption threshold.
The $32k seems suspiciously close to the monthly €2,500 reported by other sources multiplied by 12.
There also seems to be some confusion between the assets and income of the pope and the papacy.
and in addition he is also Peruvian.
so he's more than American. hyper American if you will. and now he's the head of state of the Vatican, too.
a triple whopper of sorts ;-)
my cheap excuse is that Europeans learn en-uk ;-)
Personally I don’t believe in nationalism, so he’s just a dude from Chicago if anything.
1955 born (chicago)
1977 seminary grad (chicago)
1982 ordination (->rome)
1985 canon law doctor (->peru)
1999 midwest augustinians (->chicago)
2001 global augustinians (->rome)
2015 bishop (->peru)
2021 dicasterate (->rome)What? Speaking from experience, the country you go to after 20s is the one you choose, not the one you were forced to live in. This has a huge factor in your thinking more than the number of years on paper.
/s
Not going to lie, I had to check that this was a real name (it is)
The drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(vermouth)
The company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_%26_Rossi
Personal motto: Sufficit tibi gratia mea ('My grace is sufficient for you')
This guy is a baller.
2005 world series (chicago)
Traditional papal symbols of Benedict XVI return and that whole speech of “Do not be afraid to evangelize with the truth” gave me a sense of confrontation with the modern ideology.
It’s true that the man was born in the USA and was a bishop in Peru. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Peruvian catholics were happy to have a pope who lived their country.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/08/pope-leo-xiv-p...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewdl4e57v7o
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/for-us-pope-is-peruvi...
and, unsurprisingly, the Peruvian-Americans:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/paterson-nj-new-pope-le...
I don’t really see that from the articles you linked.
It’s all quotes about how the Pope is Peruvian (definitely true as he indeed has the Peruvian nationality) and how Peruvian people feel blessed in that.
Even your last article reinforces that he is a dual citizen with knowledge of both culture which obviously makes people joyful.
I have yet to see people argue if he is more American or more Peruvian apart from here.
Now, Latin Americans living in the US proudly call themselves "Americans"
Edit: Albeit long, the correct gentilice for the US is "Estadounidenses" as in "Estados Unidos de América"
I think there are legal implications. Akin to "Washington District of Columbia"
Decades ago, Mexicans refered to the capital as "el DF" But I dont know about more recently.
There is a similar situation in Quebec (the province and its capital city are both just called "Québec" in French, whereas in English we use Quebec/Quebec City). However, there is usually no ambiguity because French grammar requires the definite article for (masculine) names of large territories like countries and provinces, but not for cities. E.g. "Je vais au Québec"[1] = I'm going to Quebec (the province) vs. "Je vais à Québec" = I'm going to Quebec City.
I'm not sure if there is any similar grammatical distinction in Spanish.
1: au is a mandatory contraction for à + le
Which nobody uses. (It’s also meaningful to note that I would call myself an American in English but not in Spanish.)
On the other hand, some of more conscientious people in the US are feeling a little awkward about the name these days. So it isn’t surprising that we’d be the ones objecting.
I guarantee less than 1% of Americans feel like this or are even thinking about the issue at all.
If the folks who got us into this mess with label obsession move on to something less charged like USian, that’s probably for the net good.
But also sure, telling Americans to rename things, that hasn't caused ANY backlash now resulting in the renaming of huge bodies of water to stupid things, keep up the cultural dictates, it's totally working!
Wikipedia is helping, though.
It says (I didn’t know this) that the “single American continent” model was mainstream in the US prior to WW2, so even if there is now a single definition in the Anglosphere, that’s a relatively recent development.
I remember as a kid believing that the Americas contained three continents-North, Central and South. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have ever thought that, and given how conventional these definitions are, can it really be said to be wrong?
There is no generally-agreed-upondefinition for “continent”, in the same way that there was no generally-agreed-upon definition of “planet” prior to the IAU 2006 General Assembly.
Continents are identified by convention (and there are a few competing conventions) rather than any strict criteria.
I was taught (in Europe) that there are 6 continents, 1 of which close-to-uninhabited: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, America, Antarctica. This convention is the same as the one for the UNSD “continental regions”. The five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag represent these five inhabited continents.
There’s another convention that considers Eurasia to be a single continent. And another that even considers Afro-Eurasia to be a single continent.
Well, as per parent's logic, that claim is out the door ever since the Suez was dug out.
Suez and Panama channels created other continents.
If we made another small rut parallel to either Suez or Panama, would we add 1 to the count of continents?
What would you call Americans? United Statesians?
There are two countries called the United States in North America, there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America. People from the United States of Mexico are called Mexicans, and people from the United States of America are called Americans.
And what about people from the continent of North America? There's called North Americans, just like people from South America are called South Americans.
No, actually, there aren't.
> there's the United States of Mexico, and the United States of America.
No, México’s formal English name (which is an exact literal translation of its Spanish name) is United Mexican States (it is Estados Unidos Mexicanos not Estados Unidos de México)
I think this would translate to Mexican United States ; you're mixing up the word order.
If Estados Unidos existed in Spanish as a compound, non-proper, noun phrase—that is, if "a united states" was a generic name for a thing—rather than Unidos and Mexicanos both being adjectives that modify Estados, then that would be a plausible translation. But that's (1) not the case, and (2) even if it was the case, that's not how it is used in the actual official name of the country of México.
> you're mixing up the word order.
To be clear, you are asserting that the government of México messed up the word order in its own official English name.
I was just commenting on the fact that adjective order in Spanish is usually reversed vs. the English one, and the adjective closest to the noun remains closest to the noun.
Wikipedia mentions that an alternate official name is Estados-Unidos Mexicanos:
> All three federal constitutions (1824, 1857, and 1917, the current constitution) used the name Estados Unidos Mexicanos[29]—or the variant Estados-Unidos Mexicanos,[30] all of which have been translated as "United Mexican States"
Interesting that it's still translated this way. I'm wondering if there are some political considerations there (eg to avoid being called the "Mexican US"). Thanks for your response. I learned something today.
Aussie here, mostly we call them Seppos. Or Yanks if we're being polite.
One still occasionally hears “yanks”, but it is quite rare. “Seppos”, one more often hears joking about calling Americans that than anyone actually doing so-and the rare occasions the term is used (as opposed to merely mentioned), are (in my personal experience) self-conscious exercises in derogatory jocularity-related jocular coinages are “Sepponians” and “Seppostanis”
Of course, it is a big country, and terms which have fallen out of general use may be retained or revived in some pockets-I can only describe my own personal experiences
US-Americans
Trump doesn't control him and the pope owes no allegiance to Trump, but as an American pope, I think American Catholics are more likely to listen to him, and I think his moderate views could do a lot of good to the extremism of US politics.
What do you think the premise of the motto Make America Great Again is? The difference between Trumpists and others who see a decline is that the former see the 2016 and 2024 elections as reverses in the decline, whereas other see them as sources or exacerbations.
In my opinion, the US world order’s decay was unmasked in 2008, and it has been accelerating since. The two economic realities between the poor rural America and the rich coastal cities (and even within them there is so much clear wealth disparity) have only gotten worse, and the political and bureaucratic system isn’t really capable of skillfully dealing with it.
Trump actually speaks to the realities that few politicians will (Bernie Sanders did too in 2016, hence his appeal), though his prescribed solutions are likely just accelerating the country’s demise.
As a European, the election (and then re-election) of Trump was an aberration, but that's because I didn't know about/follow US's internal problems.
The cardinal who said 'until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope' died in 2015 (i.e. before Trump's first term)
The bishop who quoted them does hold the post you mention - but they didn't originate the quote, they just quoted it.
Bishop Barron is pretty middle-of-the-road as far as US Catholic bishops go - he’s not much of a progressive, but nor is he a traditionalist or hardline conservative. On most issues on which Pope Francis and President Trump disagreed, Barron’s views and instincts are closer to the late Pope (who made him a bishop and then gave him a diocese) than to Trump’s
No media covered / decoded what that gesture signifies.
[1] That said, depending on which Orthodox theologian you ask, Orthodoxy doesn't permit remarriage, either. Some Orthodox will tell you that a second marriage isn't a sacramental marriage; that the original marriage is never dissolved. Rather, "remarriage" is a form of "Ekonomia", wherein the community sort of ignores some misbehavior, or withholds judgment, so as to avoid cutting a person off entirely. Pope Francis explicitly mentioned this concept of "ekonomia" when discussing his preference that (civilly) remarried Catholics be permitted the Eucharist. And he arguably had this concept in mind when advocating for the blessing of people in same-sex relationships.
Do you remember a president from those eras who when asked whether he believed that he was duty bound to uphold the Constitution answered “I don’t know.”?
> It’s funny seeing people talk about the decline of America.
Funny? I’d rather say it’s pretty sad.
It's a trivial example but Biden trying to unilaterally declare the ERA law was absurd and his student loan forgiveness was obviously going to be found unconditional and he did it anyway.
Those aren't the actions of someone who takes the constitution seriously.
Nevermind the patriot act...
Whether you agree with it or not, at least the Patriot Act was passed by Congress and not simply Executive Orders because it's too inconvenient to work with Congress on legislation.
Especially with how quickly some of the Trump EOs have been turned down.
In order to sue, you have to prove standing and in order to have standing, you have to know you were harmed. It's hard to prove you were harmed if everything is top secret.
I do think we’ve been in a down period when it comes to politics for a while but I am mid to long term optimistic about things getting better. This is not the first time we’ve had crazy massively divisive politics or populist crackpottery. Overall I do not think we are in any kind of terminal decline.
What is happening is that other countries are rising. I think that’s good for us. When America was the only superpower it made us lazy and foolish.
Look at how it works out in the corporate world. Take Intel for instance. They had a near monopoly for about a decade on top performing CPUs and it destroyed the company. Google carved out a monopoly on search and they are complete trash now. Pride cometh before a fall because pride causes the fall.
If anything, the US has pulled even further ahead since 1990. Back then the USSR was a near-power to the US, but has fallen significantly since then.
Since all power is relative, you’d need to see the US falling relative to another country. And right now, I don’t really see a country on that trajectory.
If only there were numbers we could compare.
America is not gaining power, that part is pure wishful thinking.
I am not sure fascism will take here. Americans might think they want it until the fascists start telling them what to do. We are kinda starting to see that.
We will see more. Wait until some stand your ground red blooded American homeowner guns down a bunch of ICE goons doing a warrantless raid on the wrong house. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been checking the news for it daily. Then Trump tries to confiscate guns. I’ve been predicting for years that it’s MAGA who will try to “come for the guns.” That will be a hoot as they say a few hours South of where I am.
Of course they still have the culture war card. For some reason trans derangement syndrome (TDS) still has a hold on people. I don’t understand why that particular thing works so well, even on some people you would not expect.
I think it work as good as it does since there are no trans people around most people at all. It is a TV thing.
Outside of big cities I have never seen anyone. Prevalence measures varies but in my 30k pop county there should be like from 3 to <1.
But ye the line between bisexual and transsexual have been blurried lately. Or maybe better put, I am not keeping track of the trends since I am no longer a student.
It's not their responsibility to present themselves to you for enumeration and measurement, festoon themselves and their cars with trans pride tattoos and flags and bumper stickers, or allow you to sexually assault them by inspecting their genitals before playing sports or taking a shit.
Maybe they're just ordinary every day people, going about their ordinary every day lives, all around you, without you even knowing about it, because it's none of your business.
In fact, maybe that's what transphobic bigots with Trans Derangement Syndrome most fear, that they are surrounded by everyday normal trans people going about their everyday normal lives, but they don't even know it, and that is why they are so obsessed with inspecting other people's genitals and denying them human rights.
Any transphobic bigots with Trans Derangement Syndrome want to chime in and explain exactly why you're so obsessed with other people's genitals, which are none of your business? Or Trump voters who support him and his normative gender role enforcers grabbing women and children by the pussy to judge whether or not they're allowed to play sports or use public restrooms, all in the name of "protecting women", at the same time as they celebrate taking away women's right to abortion? Care to share your browser history, so we know if you're jerking off to the same secret obsession that gets you so hot and bothered in public?
NORTH CAROLINA: Anti-trans Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for North Carolina governor Mark Robinson called himself a 'Black Nazi,' admitted to liking trans porn:
https://www.advocate.com/election/mark-robinson-black-nazi-t...
>“I like watching [transgender slur] on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote in one comment verified by the outlet. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!” -Mark Robinson aka "minisoldr"
Unjustly confronting women, accusing them of being men, and expelling them from the bathroom just because they don't look stereotypically feminine enough for you is not "protecting women". It's as sexist and bigoted as it gets.
WASHINGTON, DC: Lauren Boebert & Nancy Mace confront woman they thought was trans in ‘predictable’ Capitol bathroom incident:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lauren-boebert-nancy-mace-confron...
>A misguided attempt to enforce Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s discriminatory anti-trans bathroom policy at the Capitol led to an embarrassing misstep by GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina who were involved in an incident on Thursday that transgender Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride's office called “predictable.”
>The pair confronted a cisgender woman in the restroom, mistakenly believing her to be the Delaware Democratic lawmaker, who is the first out transgender member of Congress. McBride had previously said she would follow House rules after Johnson banned transgender people from using the bathroom in line with their gender identity. The incident has reignited criticism of Johnson’s anti-trans bathroom regulations, which critics say endanger and harass all women.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Woman says Boston hotel guard told her to leave bathroom because she ‘was a man’:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/boston-hotel...
>Same-sex couple says they were appalled after being confronted and wrongfully accused in women’s restroom.
>A couple visiting Boston says they were left confused and appalled after being forced out of the Liberty Hotel during a Kentucky Derby party on Saturday, following what they describe as being confronted and wrongfully accused in the women’s restroom.
>Ansley Baker and her girlfriend, Liz Victor, both cisgender women, said a hotel security guard entered the women’s bathroom and demanded Baker leave the stall she was using, claiming she didn’t belong there.
>“All of a sudden there was banging on the door,” Baker recalled to CBS News.
>“I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom. I said: ‘I’m a woman.’”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: Cis Woman Mistaken as Transgender Records Being Berated in Bathroom:
https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/11/01/cis-woman-mistaken-...
>A woman in Las Vegas says she remains shaken from her experience last week when another woman berated her in a public restroom for being transgender. The problem is that she's not trans, and, as she puts it, regardless of whether she had been, the entire situation was plainly wrong.
>In Las Vegas, Jay, a 24-year-old cis woman, was driving with her boyfriend on Thursday when she said she had to use the restroom.
>Jay says the couple stopped at Rampart Casino after being out all day to fix a seat belt on their car.
>Because she knew she would take longer, she gave her boyfriend some money to gamble while he waited and she went to the bathroom.
>"As soon as I got in, I went straight to a stall," Jay tells The Advocate. "About a minute or so in, I start to hear a woman being extremely aggressive. At first, I wasn't hearing exactly what she was saying until I started hearing her say, 'Trans, figure out your identity at home ... they better not come out of there. .. that's not allowed ... that's a boy, [and] they think this is [OK] because it's being taught in schools.'"
Come on. That is not what I meant. I recognise almost everyone my age that went to school here. People talk.
Yeah, they do, don't they? And because of that, it's really tough to be trans or gay or whatever in a small town. And that drives people into the closet, and drives them to leave.
How much do you really know about those people you never saw again after high school?
When you engage these sorts of people and ask the right follow-up questions, there's some common underlying concerns that underpin the polite fictions.
I've found that for men, they are scared that the next woman they look at covetously might have been AMAB. Even if they understand that there is a difference between sex and gender, they are scared that their acquaintances aren't, and are terrified of the prospect of being "tricked" into being attracted to someone who they see as a man. For women, I've found that they see men as biologically and intrinsically dangerous, and that a tiger doesn't change its stripes just because they are alienated from masculinity.
Not that I agree with either viewpoint. Being worried about being "accidentally gay" speaks more to underlying insecurities surrounding masculinity, and "men are inherently dangerous" is just misandry. But I'm no longer surprised by TDS.
I can't speak to men but women are so much more comfortable around me since I came out. Most of my partners and friends have been cis women. One of the best parts of transitioning is random women will come up and talk to me when I'm running errands. This started happening early in my transition when I was very much visibly trans. People can be weird around me if they haven't met a trans person before but the people who are hostile tend to be terminally online.
However, effective propaganda needs an audience willing to listen and accept the things they're being told. I don't think that propaganda turns good people hateful. Instead, I believe it gives people predisposed to certain hateful beliefs a socially acceptable excuse they can repeat for feeling the way they do.
This is demonstrably true in many scenarios. Such as, males being transferred to women's prisons because they say they are women. As a consequence, female prisoners have been sexually assaulted and raped by these men. Drawing attention to this isn't misandry, it's reality.
Trying to argue the "facts" with anonymous internet denizens is pretty much useless, because especially in today's post-truth landscape, you can find justification for any horrendous opinion if you dig deep enough. That is even assuming the person you're talking to is even real and not an AI, a bored sociopath on an alt account, a paid shill or otherwise.
Thankfully, spaces like these are very much not representative of real life, where most individuals are nice, decent people minding their own business, and "saving face" isn't seen as such an imperative away from the public scrutiny of the internet.
In the real-life conversations I've had about this issue, most people are horrified when they find out that men, transferred to women's prisons due to trans activist policy, have been sexually assaulting and raping female inmates. Keeping in mind that this isn't a hypothetical about what might happen but is a direct result of harmful policy, and involves documented cases and real victims.
It tends to prompt a rethink about this whole topic.
Google search is only trash to the tech savvy user base, but the normies have no issues with it.
The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.”
From the last Pope Leo over 100 years ago.
Btw how do you know this?! Have you memorized stuff of all the passed popes?
For further details see the encyclical's Wikipedia entry at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_Novarum
For the text itself: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docum...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_Opus_Dei
Personal experience: when I was in high school in my country there was a teacher who was in Opus Dei. He tried to recruit students by leaving them a letter and inviting them to a "scholarship". I got such a letter, I was so excited. The school found out about that and investigated. We're a mixed-race country. The Opus Dei teacher has invited exclusively white students. He had invited top students #2 to #4 in my class by grade, but not #1, who was black.
There are single-race countries?
one of my grandparents dabbled, and every single one of them i’ve met were very… trying to be kind here… veerrry very into the church. not a normal into the church, much more extreme. i’m desperately trying not to use the c word, but it really does fit. if one finds themselves being taken in, truly, please, take just a lil bit and learn how orgs like scientology and heavens gate etc… recruit people. the recruitment similarities are uncanny. the after effects are uncanny.
Including atheists?
I was raised Catholic and couldn't have even told you there'd been a single Pope Leo, let alone 13 of them before today. The only Pope quote I could even give you is the term "Ex Cathedra".
Turns out there are a lot of 'those' Catholics.
Questioner: "Why do we need to know all of this [bible study, theology, etc]? I can just think of the medieval peasant who is illiterate and thus disqualified from any and everything that you're talking about."
Dr. Hahn: "I think the best response to your question would actually come from the medieval peasant himself, because if you could imagine him standing here next to me he would look at you and say, 'You're using me as an excuse? You have books, you have literacy, you have access to these resources, and you're using me as an excuse to not take advantage of them?'"
Before that the church did expect at least priests and monks and nuns to be able to read the Bible, and there were a lot of them.
Most is strictly true, but you are talking about a millennium between the clear primacy of Rome and the invention of the printing press, and half a millennium since so its not hugely more.
Finally, historically most people could not own books and had no to limited literacy. Literacy is not necessary to be a good anything, but its definitely better to be literate and have access to things to read.
I think it's great that literacy and the printing press has democratized the reading of books, but when you're faced with such a corpus presented by Catholic tradition, you really need to pick and choose your weekly time investments!
I've inquired with a few religious orders as a layperson. The first thing you will find when inquiring with them is the thickness of tomes that land on the table for all adherents to read. Each religious order has a particular spirituality that is synthesized in the writings of saints and mystics. So if I was not already well-acquainted and well-grounded in the Old and New Testaments, and in the habit of reading those every day, what good would it do me to read Aquinas? Or Leo XIII encyclicals? Pointless.
The Bible itself has so many layers and aspects and messages for us. Many scholars invest entire lifetimes in understanding only the Bible. The only way to be a good Christian is to live the life. It doesn't matter what books you've read, at the end of the day, only your experience and your response to the Holy Spirit. If that means reading books, then good. If that means welding metal, also good. But, don't try to break open the words of Aquinas before you've read Daniel, or Matthew!
Even today a single manuscript vellum scroll is a significant expense.
It's cool, no offence taken.
My mother took it all very seriously, but she was also syncretic New Age/Hindu/Catholic; she got me baptised at birth and took the lead with Sunday school and going to Church etc, my dad was mainly interested in getting me into a good school that was Catholic but himself was atheist.
I actually read the entire New Testament while at school, took it at face value, thought "this doesn't work, does it?" and went to Wicca for a bit before deciding that wasn't for me either.
I think at no point did anyone bother to explain the structure of the Catholic church, they just kinda assumed we all knew it, when what we knew was from pop culture. I think your local priest was unavoidable knowledge, but pop culture gave me bishops, the Pope (but not the fact that his official title isn't that until it came up on the quiz show QI), and the obvious joke about Cardinal Jaime Sin. The actual education gave me no sense of ranks or the organisation or how nuns and monks fit in — just the same five bible tales (birth, walking on water, feeding of 5000, eye of the needle, death and resurrection) over and over again. With singing.
The pattern you've noticed, I think also applies to the UK citizenship test: there's a general sense that most people born with UK nationality wouldn't be able to pass the test to become a citizen as an adult.
But still, both are highly variable in quality/coverage and likely much less consistent than you might assume if unfamiliar with the space.
Also, most Catholics are born in catholic families so it's not like they chose catholicism over something else.
I do not know whether that is true any more, at least in all countries. At one Catholic parish I knew in Britain about half the congregation were adult converts.
Then there are a lot of people who leave and return. I might count as that - Catholic family, was agnostic (and married in registry office, which turned out to be useful), and now am definitely a Christian but feel denomination does not matter and do not really accept much of the Catholic theology (and some of its practical consequences, such as no women priests really bother me). OTOH I have not, and would not, formally leave the church either.
Bring serious, it's kind of important due to the Pope's infallibility.
How does one officially leave the Catholic Church?
Sure, you can stop attending church and taking communion, but you're still on a list somewhere in your parish(es).
The classic example being asking one "What is the immaculate conception?"
That said, I have no reason to think that the average Catholic is more or less knowledgeable about his religion than any other Christian.
This is to say, or rather explain, that I respect those who convert and have a predilection to Traditionalism. Part of the reason cradle Catholics drifted away is that the boomer generation basically ruined the mystique and the tradition, so when you're a kid it just felt like another chore.
Haha obviously I’m kidding you but that’s truly tangentially relevant
"I was raised Catholic" is like "I'm not racist but".
Typically the previous pope with that name is where you look. Maybe the first too. Leo I stood up to Atilla the Hun. Leo XIII championed trade unions and workers rights (though also rejected socialism). Make of it what you will.
everything old is new again.
history repeats.
we never learn.
The Terminator: "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves"
Presumably there’s some symbolism to why the new pope wanted to adopt this particular name.
http://www.popepiusclock.com is a thing
The three most recent popes are the longest run of Popes with none choosing the name (counting JPI as choosing both of two recent predecessos) of a recent (one, two, or three back) predecessor since the 1500s.
(John Paul II is also something of an anomaly, because John Paul I died barely a month into his papacy and so didn't have time to put in place any real agenda. John Paul II was more commemorating John Paul I the man.)
It happens far more often than otherwise; you've reversed rule and exception.
My guess is new Pope Leo 14 will try to thread the needle on rising global interest in experimenting with socialism and the possible ramifications of AI automation.
> Rev. Robert Prevost bears responsibility for allowing former Providence Catholic H.S. President and priest Richard McGrath to stay at the high school amidst sex abuse allegations that dated back to the 1990s.
> That's according to Eduardo Lopez de Casas, a clergy abuse survivor and national vice president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
[0]: https://willcountygazette.com/stories/671124585-if-he-saw-an...
"[A] priest convicted of sexual abuse of minors was allowed to stay at an Augustinian priory near an elementary school and continue functions as a priest until later removed, and then laicized in 2012. However, Prevost is said to have never authorized that particular situation, the priest was not an Augustinian, and it took place before the Dallas Charter."
https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/cardinals/robert-franci...
Edit:
There is also this discussion of an incident in Peru:
"More recently, questions were raised about Prevost’s knowledge and handling of abuse allegations in his former Diocese of Chiclayo. Two priests were accused of molesting three young girls, with the allegations surfacing in April 2022 during Prevost’s tenure as bishop. The case has been a source of frustration for local Catholics due to its slow progress and unclear resolution.
"Some accusers have claimed Prevost failed to properly investigate the allegations and covered up for the accused priest, but the diocese has firmly denied this, stating that Prevost followed proper procedures. They stated that Prevost personally received and attended to the victims, and reportedly opened an initial canonical investigation. He also encouraged the victims to take the case to the civil authorities. In July 2022, Prevost sent the results of the investigation to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) for review. His supporters stress that he has documents from the DDF and the Papal Nunciature in Peru which also indicate that he was not only attentive to the presumed victims, but that he did all required in Church law in following procedures set out for these cases.4
"However, in May 2025 allegations emerged that the diocese paid $150,000 to the three girls to silence them. Described as “longtime public critics of Prevost,” the girls reportedly blame Prevost for covering up their sexual abuse by the priest.
"The allegations, reported in InfoVaticana, described the Peruvian scandal, which was the subject of a national television report including an interview with the girls last fall, as the “stone in the shoe for Cardinal Prevost.”
sadly only partly /s. That being said, people in position of power are a high target of such accusations, so I'd wait for something more proofed.
Just look up the history of what was going on in Germany following the same advice.
It's a relatively new thing where we just declare pedophiles unfixable and jail them. In the past, the social scientists told us that it was the result of the environment.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...
That is not what happened though. Is there any evidence that the church decided that it would hide and cover up accusations of abuse and move clergy around to avoid them being charged and convicted because that was the "scientific consensus"?
Certainly many within the church believed they could reform the abusers in their midst, but that's a wholly different statement than claiming the coverups, which are what's being discussed here, were due to this belief and not that they were merely protecting their own and putting their own judgement above the legal system in which they lived.
However, it seems likely that there's something about the institution that produces more molesters than normal, and clearly there is something about the institution that causes it to lean towards quieting and covering up accusations rather than rectifying them. It doesn't really have anything to do with the reformability of pedophilia; the church faces the necessity of changing either how it handles molesters, or how the nature of its organization seems to create more molesters. The problem is that the church is an institution that seems loathe to change in general.
If we were to use "was in proximity to allegations of child abuse and didn't act on it" as a barometer for who was permitted to ascent to the papacy, we'd have a pretty small pool to choose from.
The zeitgeist is inaccurate. Sexual abuse and subsequent cover ups were a massive problem that has largely been addressed, but the numbers of offenders are proportionally lower than those in public schools. From wikipedia:
"Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, the author of a 2002 report on sexual offenses in schools, said sexual violence is much more prevalent in schools than in the Church.[315] Ernie Allen, former president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, stated: "we don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this [sexual abuse and pedophilia] or as a place that has a bigger problem [with this issue] than anyone else."[316]"
Doesn't seem likely since none of the Churches that existed prior to the Protestant Reformation allow it.
All of the ancient churches, including the Catholic Church, do allow men who are already married to become priests. The rules are more strict for Catholics than the others.
I find this to be unlikely.
This position also ignores the East, as we tend to do, although I will admit they understood themselves to be changing convention when permitting it.
None of the Eastern churches allow priests to marry.
On the other hand, de-facto marriages (say, a live-in servant woman the priest treated like a wife, including having sex with her) were overlooked by the catholic church on continental Europe well into the high middle ages.
Certainly not in general. You either have to be Eastern or Greek Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal convert etc. Overwhelming majority don't have that option.
> The rules are more strict for Catholics than the others.
You can be a married Catholic man and become a Catholic priest.
Our local priest is married with kids and grandkids.
Since, IIRC, the 1200s (may be off by a couple centuries), there has been a practice (not a doctrine) prohibiting ordination of married men in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
Because this is a prohibition but not a doctrinal invalidity, it does not invalidate otherwise-valid ordinations (i.e., by Bishops holding valid apostolic succession), and the prohibition was never applied to the Eastern Churches that were at the time (Inthink the Maronite Church was) or later came into union with Rome. There is also now a special exception allowing (with individual permission, not automatically) married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism and are otherwise eligible for ordination as Catholic priests to be ordained in the Latin Rite despite being married. So it is possible to encounter married priests in the Latin Rite (Western) Catholic Church, but the door is not generally open to married men becoming priests.
Nor are they expected to refrain from sex within marriage, which may be what you mean.
Of course, if a married Eastern Catholic priest decided to join the Latin Church with the rest of his family, this could happen too.
But generally, a married man will want to discern the diaconate, as the priesthood will simply be out of the question, except in these exceptional circumstances.
Just not true; the rate isn't really higher than what you see at football clubs, scout clubs, etc. What made it so bad in the catholic church are the cover-ups. Lots can be said about that. It was really bad. But the notion that many (or all) Catholic priets are pedos is complete bollocks.
But if homosexual men begin to dabble in pederasty and begin to abuse their positions of power against vulnerable and defenseless boys, this is a real scandal, and the Church has been quite embarrassed for people to find out just how prevalent homosexuality is among the ranks of clergy and religious. And the general public and the mainstream media know this, and they have leveraged that embarrassment against the Church in order to discredit her.
And the homosexual aspect of all of this tends to get swept under the rug and sort of ignored, because the general public, in a hypocritical sort of way, doesn't really mind if men are having sex with boys, at least they're not supposed to, but the absence of little girls from the records has been difficult to deny.
The Church can try and correct this by denying entry to homosexual men. But then she will have a profound vocations crisis if she is selecting heterosexual men and hanging the gays out to dry with nothing at all to do. More than a vocations crisis, she will be accused of being "unwelcoming" and "unjust" towards gay men entirely. So she is truly upon the horns of a dilemma.
… Consider Wikipedia's explanation of the situation described upthread. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Leo_XIV&oldi...
> In 2022, alleged victims of abuse in 2007 by priests Ricardo Yesquén and Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles said Prevost failed to investigate their case.[58] The Diocese of Chiclayo stated that Prevost followed proper procedures, met with Ana María Quispe and her sisters in April 2022 to personally attend the victims, encouraging civil action while initiating a canonical investigation (which he sent to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith).[59][60] The sisters stated in 2024 that no full penal canonical investigation occurred, and an article from América Televisión agreed the church's investigation was not thorough.[61][62]
Please consider whether you might be prejudiced, and whether the things you believe might be false. Your assertions certainly are.
1 Timothy 3:1-7
[1] This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
[2] A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
[3] Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
[4] One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
[5] (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
[6] Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.
[7] Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
The official Catholic translation agrees with KJV as does Thomas Aquinas in his commentary. In fact, I don’t know that there’s ANY disagreement about this translation anywhere.
The clear issue is that the Catholic Church believes (and states) that their ecclesiastical authority supersedes even the Bible on not only this minor topic, but more important ones too.
> Late Latin episcopus in Spanish became obispo, in Italian vescovo, in Welsh esgob. The Germanic forms include Old Saxon biscop, Old High German biscof.
Episkopos literally changed over time into the English transliteration of Bishop.
Yes. Episkopos is where we get “bishop" and presbuteros is where we get “priest”, but their use for distinct positions in the heirarchy of orders are newer than the NT itself, in which they are used more loosely and apparently, at least in some cases interchangeably.
Confusing knowing etymology (either forward or backward) for knowing meaning in context is a common, but potentially very serious, error.
The only reason the word bishop exists in English is because we needed a loan word for episkopos. It has served that purpose and in the religious context has had no significant change in semantics.
As to your assertion that bishop and priest are different, you are wrong even from the Catholic framework (and completely wrong from a Protestant framework). Here's a quote from Thomas Aquinas about 1 Tim 3:1
> But since Dionysius declares that there are three orders, namely, bishops who rule, priests who enlighten, and deacons who cleanse, why does the Apostle make no mention of priests?
> The answer is that priests are included under the term, bishop, not as though the two orders are not really distinct, but only nominally. For priest is the same as elder, and bishop the same as overseer. Hence priests and bishops are indiscriminately called both bishops and priests.
Aquinas is writing a narrative more than 1,000 years after the fact rationalizing how it is possible for the biblical narrative to be consistent with the order observed later. He does a very good job of that. It is not, in the slightest, evidence that the three-orders system and the particular roles assigned to each—which has evolved considerably over time since it is first clearly attested within the Catholic Church, without even considering what Protestants and newer movements claiming the title "Christian" have done with it —actually existed at the time of the NT and was being referenced therein.
The clear reference was to the overseer of a church or what would be considered a pastor or priest. All bishops are priests.
Mark 10:8-9 KJV
[8] And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
[9] What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
This shows that even if you considered bishops to be a new creation, they shouldn't abandon their family for the position. And of course, the order of deacons isn't necessary of commentary as it is specifically addressed in the next part of 1 Tim 3.
Your quote of Aquinas also appears to disagree with you, and takes "episkopos" more generally than the modern usage of "bishop." It actually seems that the catholic bishops may have adopted a word that was in common use for an overseer of a parish.
More recent translations and scholarly commentaries all turn away from the "episkopos" = "bishop" idea. Again, the literal translation of "episkopos" is "overseer."
Because it is discussing churches, it would be saying that priests must be married. As all bishops are priests, it would apply to them as well.
Even if you took the broader position that it must apply elsewhere, the Catholic Church has only three orders -- deacon, priest, and bishop. These verses MUST be discussing either priest or bishop meaning at least one of those two is not following what Paul wrote.
Kind of, but that's only true in the Latin Rite and not the Eastern Rites, and only since 1972, when the other orders were renamed “ministries”.
You can look it up in the original Greek, but translation is extremely clear with the approved Catholic translations saying the same thing.
Thomas Aquinas in his Latin (and in the English translation of his writings) agrees with the translation and also agrees that priests fall under the Bishop, but then seems to completely ignore the obvious contradiction.
Finally, mandatory celibacy wasn’t mandatory until the second Lateran Council in 1139 with the admittance that it was ecclesiastical rather than dogma (with the ruling clearly going against the New Testament).
Like I said, it would mean that Paul was not legitimate which is just nonsense. Nobody believes that.
You should read this: https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-st-paul-say-bishops-must-be-...
"You can't find any reliable scholar" is an appeal to authority fallacy. EVERYONE regardless of Christian denomination agrees that the text says what it says very clearly (can you point to even one controversy about 1 Tim 3:1-7 ?). The idea that they reject what the book clearly states while also claiming the book to be divinely inspired is extreme cognitive dissonance.
If you are a Christian, prove your position from the Bible alone. In this case, that clearly isn't possible. You should look at what other claims from many churches (including the Catholic Church) that also aren't supported by the Bible without resorting to sophistries while obviously ignoring the parts that are inconvenient to your position.
You are not making a good argument. If the rule required bishops to be married then a large chunk of the bishops consecrated by the apostles were not legitimate. Nobody thinks that.
> "You can't find any reliable scholar" is an appeal to authority fallacy. EVERYONE regardless of Christian denomination agrees that the text says what it says very clearly (can you point to even one controversy about 1 Tim 3:1-7 ?). The idea that they reject what the book clearly states while also claiming the book to be divinely inspired is extreme cognitive dissonance.
Fine, ignore the scholars. Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position. If it was that clear you should be able to find somebody who agrees with you.
You are being prideful and assuming that you are reading it correctly despite nobody agreeing with your interpretation. This is why there are thousands of different churches. Everybody just reads whatever they want into scripture. You are trying to prove Christians, or maybe just Catholics, are idiots or whatever you are trying to do. If you actually want to convince somebody maybe you should have some charity and humility.
> If you are a Christian, prove your position from the Bible alone. In this case, that clearly isn't possible. You should look at what other claims from many churches (including the Catholic Church) that also aren't supported by the Bible without resorting to sophistries while obviously ignoring the parts that are inconvenient to your position.
Maybe you should learn basic Christan beleifs. No Christian, including those who believe in Sola Scriptura, believes everything can be found in scripture.
The Catholic Church believes in 2 Thessalonians 2:15
> So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter
There is clearly things outside of scripture they believe.
Anybody who can follow basic logic can come to the Catholic position from the Bible as I have already mentioned.
Premise 1: The apostles are bishops.
Premise 2: Paul was an apostle.
Premise 3: Paul was not married and had no children.
Therefore bishops are not required to be married and have children.
Can you point to a bishop appointed by Jesus' 12 disciples who was not married with children? If not, then you are making a baseless assertion.
> Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position.
Paul does in 1 Tim 3. We also have reformers like Martin Luther who after discovering the Bible for himself rejected his vows of celibacy, got married, and had several children. Luther would not have rejected his vows before God had they not conflicted with what he read in the Bible.
> You are being prideful and assuming that you are reading it correctly despite nobody agreeing with your interpretation.
You are jumping straight into the ad-hominems. The Bible says what it says and everyone agrees that there is no mistake or mistranslation. It's like when modern Mormons reject polygamy when it is espoused as critically important by Joseph Smith. You can't take a very clear and intentional meaning of what you believe to be inspired and ignore it just because you don't like what it says or it goes against current tradition and norms.
> Everybody just reads whatever they want into scripture.
If you can just make up whatever you want, then the whole thing would certainly be a farce. Are you simply arguing against Christianity and the Bible as a whole?
> If you actually want to convince somebody maybe you should have some charity and humility.
Another ad-hominem. I addressed the facts. You took issue with the clear writings in the Bible and went on a crusade to prove the unprovable.
> Maybe you should learn basic Christan beleifs. No Christian, including those who believe in Sola Scriptura, believes everything can be found in scripture.
Yet another ad-homenem. Setting that aside, you are making a non-sequitur here.
If I fully agree that not everything is in the Bible, that has zero bearing on what IS in the Bible. If we were discussing the nature of the divinity of the Christ, your point may have merit (though those arguing on all sides believe they can scratch together an argument), but we are talking about a very clear "Bishops should be married to one woman with well-mannered kids". There is no room for debate and you won't actually find much debate -- just outright ignoring what was said.
> Premise 1: The apostles are bishops.
What evidence do you have for this? Apostle means "messenger" or "sent forth". This is far different than Bishop which means "overseer". Paul was certainly familiar with both terms (calling himself a "servant of God, called to be a apostle (messenger)").
Ephesians 4:11 (KJV) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
Paul sees a clear distinction between the messengers and those who would oversee the churches. This is why he doesn't see his writings as hypocritical and why the other two premises simply do not matter to the conclusion.
First let me say more than just Paul was unmarried. John was also unmarried. There is also debate if Peter's wife was alive. We only hear about his mother in law, not a wife.
In terms of bishops consrecated by the apostles, we do not have a huge amount of evidence for most, but almost everybody believes St Ignatius of Antioch was unmarried.
> Paul does in 1 Tim 3. We also have reformers like Martin Luther who after discovering the Bible for himself rejected his vows of celibacy, got married, and had several children.
You can't use the verse we are debating to prove your point.
> Luther would not have rejected his vows before God had they not conflicted with what he read in the Bible.
OK? You did see that I said "Point to anybody in the first 1500 years of the Church that takes your position". I know Protestants rejected this understanding. My point is that if everybody in the Church disagrees with your understanding for the first 3/4 of the existence of the church then you are in the wrong.
I don't care what they think on the Bible because they reject what all the early Christians believed.
> You are jumping straight into the ad-hominems.
You are literally saying you know what the Bible means better then almost every Christan who has ever lived. Only a minority of modern Christians agree with you. That is a steller example of pride.
> The Bible says what it says and everyone agrees that there is no mistake or mistranslation.
Nobody is saying there is a mistake. I am saying you are misunderstanding and your only evidence is your interpretation and some people 1500+ years after it was written.
> It's like when modern Mormons reject polygamy when it is espoused as critically important by Joseph Smith. You can't take a very clear and intentional meaning of what you believe to be inspired and ignore it just because you don't like what it says or it goes against current tradition and norms.
This is a bad example. They do not deny that Smith taught polygamy. They belive that Woodruff received a revelation telling them it is no longer permissble.
Nobody is claiming there is a new revelation when it comes to the bishop topic.
> If you can just make up whatever you want, then the whole thing would certainly be a farce. Are you simply arguing against Christianity and the Bible as a whole
That makes absolutely no sense. If I write the statement "the sunrise was beautiful." Somebody could say I believe the sunrise was ugly. Does that mean that my statement is a farce? No, it just means they don't know what I was saying.
> Another ad-hominem. I addressed the facts.
This is not an adhominen. I am literally trying to help you out and give you constructive criticism.
> You took issue with the clear writings in the Bible and went on a crusade to prove the unprovable.
I take issues with your interpretation. You clearly don't understand and context and are saying if the Bible isn't worded in the exact way I want it to be, then it doesn't mean what it says.
> Yet another ad-homenem. Setting that aside, you are making a non-sequitur here.
You sure love the phrase ad-homenem despite not knowing what it is. Telling somebody they don't understand something isn't an ad homenem. I am not attacking your character or anything like that.
> If I fully agree that not everything is in the Bible, that has zero bearing on what IS in the Bible. If we were discussing the nature of the divinity of the Christ, your point may have merit (though those arguing on all sides believe they can scratch together an argument), but we are talking about a very clear "Bishops should be married to one woman with well-mannered kids". There is no room for debate and you won't actually find much debate -- just outright ignoring what was said.
It has a massive bearing because you can see that nobody took it to mean what you are claiming it means. Surely the Apostles and early bishops would not have had unmarried bishops if that is what they thought it meant.
> What evidence do you have for this? Apostle means "messenger" or "sent forth". This is far different than Bishop which means "overseer". Paul was certainly familiar with both terms (calling himself a "servant of God, called to be a apostle (messenger)").
Apostles are bishops with a special role due to personally meeting Jesus. Of course since it is only implied in the Bible you are going to reject it.
> Ephesians 4:11 (KJV) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
> Paul sees a clear distinction between the messengers and those who would oversee the churches. This is why he doesn't see his writings as hypocritical and why the other two premises simply do not matter to the conclusion.
Apostles are bishops, but not all bidhops are apostles so it would be accurate that not everybody had an apostle.
That quote also doesn't deny that somebody could have multiple roles. Surely an evangelist would also be a teacher? Surely prophets are also teachers (teaching the prophecy they received)?
This is such a weird argument.
Can you provide any evidence of this?
> almost everybody believes St Ignatius of Antioch was unmarried.
Speaking of him, read Philadelphians. He makes the assertion that the apostles were married men (including Paul). What he makes of himself, it either implies that he is married or would like to be (to be like those others).
https://www.logoslibrary.org/ignatius/philadelphians1/04.htm...
> You can't use the verse we are debating to prove your point.
I'm asserting that it says what it says. YOU are the one who must prove that Paul didn't mean what he said.
> You are literally saying you know what the Bible means better then almost every Christan who has ever lived.
To the contrary, YOU are making an assertion that everyone believes this, but are then failing to show any proof except clear cases of "nobody knows, but I'll assert that they were unmarried anyway".
> only evidence is your interpretation and some people 1500+ years after it was written.
Even the Catholic Church didn't mandate celibacy until nearly 1200AD. You are making a very fallacious argument both on this count and that an appeal to authority or extra-Bibical tradition isn't an argument to overturn what the book clearly says.
> the Church disagrees with your understanding for the first 3/4 of the existence of the church then you are in the wrong.
This is a very misleading representation of history. Locking the Bible behind a Latin barrier meant that most people couldn't read and question and most who could read Latin had no access to a Bible and it seems that most of those who did had very little inclination to read it. Of those priests or educated laity who did read and question, most were captured and tortured until they died or recanted.
Under such ignorance and extreme pressure to comply, an appeal to tradition is especially weak.
> This is a bad example. They do not deny that Smith taught polygamy. They belive that Woodruff received a revelation telling them it is no longer permissble.
The very core of their beliefs around the requirements for becoming a God are rooted in this claim and having multiple wives is a necessity for this in the afterlife (not to mention that God is believed to have multiple wives). While I disagree that polygamy is good (it seems to always result in misery), I do respect the LDS who stick to their book no matter what.
> Nobody is claiming there is a new revelation when it comes to the bishop topic.
If there's no new revelation, then the old revelation still applies, but is being ignored.
> it just means they don't know what I was saying.
Explain what you mean without then.
> Telling somebody they don't understand something isn't an ad homenem. I am not attacking your character or anything like that.
Telling me that I am prideful or uncharitable or not humble has NOTHING to do with the topic aside from trying to attach a bad label on me so the logic can be ignored. These are textbook examples of ad-hominem attacks.
> Apostles are bishops with a special role due to personally meeting Jesus. Of course since it is only implied in the Bible you are going to reject it.
Of course. It is inductive reasoning. You start with the conclusion that it must be so then try to find reasons it should be true. That's been this entire conversation. Deductive reasoning would lead to the conclusion that I am correct in my assertion, but the Catholic Church says otherwise, so you must fabricate reasons however feeble to justify them.
You haven't even hit on the actual reasoning from that 1139 decision either. Their argument was nothing like what you are trying to push. It was the argument that they otherwise couldn't keep the priesthood from becoming nepotistic with the priest father passing the role to his son.
But this doesn't hold any weight either.
First, passing on the priesthood was a strict requirement in the Old Testament, so it certainly isn't necessarily bad.
Second, if it IS being passed along for purely nepotistic reasons, they would be duty-bound to remove the offending priest and their children from their office. There's an entire hierarchy that should in theory be aimed at exactly this. The ruling speaks in at least some degree to their inability to govern their own priests.
Third, an inability to stop your priests from doing something bad is not a reason to do something else against the Bible in response. The correct response is a reformation of your clergy.
> Apostles are bishops, but not all bidhops are apostles so it would be accurate that not everybody had an apostle.
This does not hold. Paul was an Apostle, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of him overseeing a church. Instead, he would travel to a place to preach for a time then move on to the next place right up until his final voyage to Rome where he was killed.
As I recall, the Catholic view is that Paul was a Bishop because he layed hands on others, but of course, this is an argument that proves too much as the priest/bishop arrangement by their own admission did not exist at that time and as such he could not be a bishop in that manner, but also not an overseer of a church.
> That quote also doesn't deny that somebody could have multiple roles. Surely an evangelist would also be a teacher? Surely prophets are also teachers (teaching the prophecy they received)?
Certainly, but likewise, it does NOT indicate that Apostles and Pastors/bishops are always linked.
First, what is this Latin barrier? The New Testament was written in Greek and continued to be available in Greek. I assume you think that the Catholic church was the sole church back then. It wasn't. The Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, and the Eastern Orthodox churches all existed. They all agree with what I am saying. They had scrupture in a variety of languages not just Latin.
This was a universal view.
Your are misreading the letter from Ignatius. He did not say they were married he said "and the rest of the apostles, that were married men." That were married would mean not all were in fact married.
Not mandating celibacy is not the same as mandating men were married. How are you making an argument like this? The Bible says what it says, but the Bible also makes it clear you shouldn't interpret the Bible on your own (Acts 8). This is what you and Protestants did to come to this conclusion.
Unless you are willing to submit to what all the Churches that have actual claims of succession from the Apostles, there is no point in continuing. If you are a Christian you aren't following Acts 8. If you aren't a Christian then you are just pushing your secular views onto Bible to push your own narrative.
How frequently? The issue is them covering up those crimes and protecting the perpetrators. It's like saying that BBC is run by podophiles (when it was "just" aiding and abetting them).
The issue with the Catholic Church is that it is the largest church on the planet and therefore is in the news more often. People, however, are pretty much the same wherever you put them. Most are good, some suck.
No one, from any religion, should directly or indirectly support crimes against minors. If people really cared about kids, we would protect them from sexual abuse from priests and prosecute priests via the legal system.
Prevost has literally said to alleged victims that they should go to the police.
This is "why didn't she go to the police" for children. The police are not to be trusted, certainly not to against the Catholic Church.
Not to mention saying things like "we disapprove of this behavior".
Overall, I think your claim that the church cannot do anything except the one thing you named is obviously false. There are in fact many things the church can do. Otherwise nobody would give a damn who is Pope. Just a guy who can not do anything.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of catholic doctrine. One cannot have their priesthood 'removed'. However, they can be banned from the public performance of it, which is usually the punishment doled out.
As for excommunication... excommunication is removeable via confession, which is freely given.
Lifting an excommunication has a higher bar than just absolution of sins in confession. It requires permission of the local ordinary (usually the diocesan bishop), and for excommunications for especially bad things like desecrating the Eucharist or violating the seal of confession, it requires permission of the Apostolic See.
You just have to find a priest willing to offer you absolution (which could be an orthodox priest by Catholic doctrine), and either way, if you're on your deathbed, the priest must give you last rites, which will have the same effect.
The whole not-being-able-to-receive-communion thing is just an administrative punishment. While the church can make policies regarding various things, it cannot remove the efficacious power of the sacraments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_in_the_Catholi...
> If for any reason the absolution from the censure is invalid, or is not given at all, nevertheless, provided the penitent is rightly disposed, his sins will always be forgiven in the sacrament of confession
Also christianity has always preached foregiveness. They often shouldn't do anything about past sins without being hypocrytical. If the law takes over they don't need to figure this out.
It's the bias of the Church and the unwillingness to involve the law that people are criticizing.
Also "The law is unbiased" is a new one. They are as unbiased as you and I.
Very disgusting that, to this day, this cover-up is defended.
They did absolutely nothing until it became too hard to ignore reality and now they are dealing with that.
I would think the bare minimum is when multiple children tell you they are being molested by the same person, you tell that person they are fired if they are seen near a school, and you interview other children at the school. Or you go to the police yourself and ask them to investigate. You know, common sense things. You don't, for instance, do this.
> "As the Archdiocese of Chicago had already placed restrictions on Ray being in the company of minors for nine years prior to his residence at St. John Stone Priory and communicated these when seeking approval from the Provincial, Robert Prevost, Cardinal Prevost was aware of the danger that Ray posed to minors when he gave approval," the letter says. "Nonetheless, Ray was permitted to live at the Priory in the vicinity of an elementary school without informing the administration of the school. By doing so, Cardinal Prevost endangered the safety of the children attending St. Thomas the Apostle."
I would invite you to apply skepticism to the adults who famously covered all of this up, and not to catholic children.
> Is there a single entity to have ever existed in the history of humanity that has more blood on its hands?
Depending on how you count, probably many. In wars, more than 98% of casualties are attributable to political wars that had no religious motivation, and fewer so of Roman Catholic motivation. So, whatever those political entities are.
A confounding factor in answering the question is that the Catholics have been around for 2000 years, and many violently bloody entities fell after comparably short periods of time. For example, the Khmer Rouge existed for 4 years and killed 3 million people, no religious entity could attain the same level of bloodshed over their long existence even if they tried, which they don't.
I was out on the streets when the church bells started ringing here in Vienna as must have all around the globe where there are catholic churches
It was on the news but there were no bells ringing etc. Same as in your football example I suppose.
Versus how many people across the world are finding out about the new pope?
The point is how many people are actually receiving this information. Not "could look up on their phone if they wanted".
(very very rough numbers of course)
The comparison that I think matters is that the Pope and the Dalai Lama are the best-known religious leaders there are. I mean there used to be Billy Graham and the Ayatollah Khomeini but I think most people would struggle to name the leader of the Methodist church or Nichiren Buddhism or a rabbi of my than local importance.
This is about the huge number of people knowing about a single event right away.
* I say a thousand here because even someone glued to every number on CNBC is parsing nowhere near millions of numbers. A much smaller sliver of people will see each of those individual trades.
Nobody is claiming nobody follows stocks.
Stonks go up and down all time, it's not news, and people don't tune in mass from all around the world to watch sp500s chandelier bars.
Being on the street hearing the bells and recognizing what it meant while a huge number of people all around the globe have the same realization at the same time feels somehow incredibly connecting, and not even necessarily at a religious level.
And it happens every day, all day. It's not discrete information.
Maybe the exact timing is ambiguous since candidates usually declare victory/admit defeat before all the votes have been counted officially, but still.
The US presidential election is a mess compared to this.
Contested US elections are logistically, a huge mess that takes forever to resolve, and even when the writing is on the wall, everybody waits and hemms and hawws because <some other network hasn't called it yet>, <so we can't call it>. (And that's not even counting the potential faithless electors, a potential coup in the House, conspiracies to commit election fraud directed from the president's office, etc.)
Canadian elections are figured out and their results are broadcast to the world before Western Canada even finishes voting. (Spoilers: It's always all blue starting from Manitoba and going all the way to the eastern fringes of Greater Vancouver.)
They are, of course, utterly uninteresting, with the last one coming and going without even a mention on the front page of Hacker News.
Yes the whole world is somewhat curious who the president is but especially in timezones where it's inconvenient to follow that it's more a "we'll read it in the news later" thing.
The fact that a new pope has been elected is an information is information you don't need to look for because it's announced through one of the oldest public announencement systems ( the church bells )
[1] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263867/the-story-beh...
> The addition of the white smoke to announce the election of a new pope is more recent, however. Baumgartner traces it to 1914 [...]
but also
> In ancient times, the method to give the smoke these colors was to burn the ballots used in the voting with a bit of wet straw [...]
In ... the ancient times of 1914? Something's wrong here.
(For what it's worth, the Wikipedia article about this says that before 1914 black smoke meant "we held a ballot but it didn't successfully choose a new pope" and no smoke meant something other than that, though it's not clear there what the "we got one" signal was. The Wikipedia article, unlike the Catholic News Agency one, cites some references, but I haven't checked them.)
The whole black smoke/no smoke didn’t start out as a signal but everyone kept trying to interpret them as such in the 19th century. Black smoke meant no election and no smoke was ambiguous so they eventually switched to white smoke to keep the public from going crazy speculating. L
The first reference to non-black smoke I can find is in "Conclave di Leone XIII" by Raffaele De Cesare about the 1878 conclave (Leo XIII’s election):
> "Cardinal Borromeo, tasked with burning the ballots, burned them without straw, and the smoke was barely visible. There were few people in the square. The external steps of St. Peter's were full of onlookers until midday, but after the smoke, it slowly emptied. No one supposed that the Pope had been elected." (translated from Italian)
The 1914 conclave is the commonly accepted date because Pius X decreed in 1904 that all papers relating to the election (not just the ballots themselves) were to be burned after the voting. Since they’d burn all the others papers (without wet straw) only after a successful election, it would produce a lot more white smoke so the Catholic church made an administrative decision to make that into an explicit signal (though I think they use something to “enrich” the color now).
[1]https://www.history.com/articles/pope-conclave-smoke-color
I hate "intelligent" websites as much as I like touchpad microwaves, and that means not at all. Why would anyone assume an enforced(!!!) connection between my geographic location and the language-version of the website?
I don't think there is any way to access that page from outside the US.
So you don't hate "intelligent" websites, at all? :D Then you must love this lang-redirect!
Prevost was hovering around 1% on Polymarket, and was <0.5% between white smoke and announcement.
How many non-technical people are on polymarket? That seems like a poor sample size.
Diocesan priests “work” for the bishop in a particular geographical area and are in the “corporate” hierarchy of the church.
Religious orders are sort of independent from the the church hierarchy and report through to the leader of their order, at a global level. They often focus on specific things and may have different vows. Franciscans are known for their work with the poor and personal vows of poverty, for example. Also the order is a community that has its own governance.
I have friends who are in a similar organization as nuns. They govern themselves democratically and globally. It’s pretty amazing - we helped them setup their real-time voting system to manage their community. Each group is different.
each order attracts it's own flock.
so now I need to check on Augustines... fun fact: Martin Luther was an Augustine monk.
Aren't they all religious? That seems like a mandatory part of being a pope.
Religious in this context means "of a religious order" instead of "diocesan". Not the general sense of the word "believes in religion" or similar.
Some important bits:
> he expressed sympathy for George Floyd and criticized U.S. immigration policies
> Prevost advocated for stronger Church action against climate change
> Prevost opposes the ordination of women
> Prevost opposes euthanasia, abortion, and the death penalty. [...] In 2012, he criticized popular culture's sympathy for the "homosexual lifestyle" and same-sex families.
The difference the media likes to talk about between "liberal" and "conservative" popes (and candidates) is not in the beliefs but which parts of those beliefs they communicate effectively. Perceptions are also heavily influenced by what the media choose to report (they are far more interested in some topics than others).
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/08/pope-leo-xiv-is-a-cu...
https://abc7chicago.com/post/2025-is-new-pope-cardinal-rober...
Francis was a smart man, and he knew that in order for his policies to continue he would need to ensure a like-minded successor would be elected.
2. It was only in 1970 that an age-cap was put on Cardinals in the conclave, which significantly increases the power of the previous pope has on his successor; this disqualifies 117 out of 251 Cardinals today.
3. There are certain positions that customarily come along with a cardinality; following this custom diluted the pope's power a bit. Francis did not follow this custom[1]
If you want a discussion of the papal selection, you could do worse than this substack post[2] from a week ago.
1: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/no-more-princes-c...
2: https://decivitate.substack.com/p/de-civitates-very-traditio...
I'm so sick of prevailing wisdom with people just making shit up just to fill time on 24/7 news coverage and people can have their talking head shows with diverse "views".
See: "Can't select an American pope until America is not powerful anymore."
More generally, I think religion doesn't really inform your political views. It can certainly reinforce them post-hoc, but it certainly isn't the basis of one's morality.
The Pope, like most leaders, is not someone who has absolute power on what others should think and do; but is someone who can exercise a force of attraction in a specific direction. And he is very likely to have a stronger ability to attract and influence Americans because of his origins.
Could you provide some good exemplar backed by scripture please? Preferably not cherry picked lines that tacitly support your earthly ideology, please.
https://christiansforsocialaction.org/resource/false-god-con...
You can find many more online easily, but I won't waste more of my time providing them to you, as I doubt your enquiry was completely honest.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-pope-r...
We were the first country from the to be recognized by the Western Europeans, and the people at the time didn't anticipate the current situation, so forgive us for having a name in English that is a bit ambiguous, but how many people complain that there's no common name for Europe and Africa combined? Why is everyone so interested in lumping two continents together whose commonality stops with being the result of European colonialism and the consensus of a few mapmakers?
The USA may have been the first recognized country, but the term "America" was coined much earlier. But I'm a reasonable person - if we really want to keep it as two separate continents, "America" and "North America" works for me.
TIL. That’s funny because afaik Mexicans refer to the USA as “estados unidos”.
Just as bad is that norteamericanos is the popular term for Americans (in the American sense), despite the existence of Canada and Mexico itself on the continent.
Not to be confused with "The EU" (en_US) which is "La UE" (es_ES).
My money's on the Canadian taking him down in the first round with a right hook.
Which, I think, is fair, as South and Latin are also America. And so is Canada. And so was Francis.
But I usually find it a hard concept to convey to my fellow local USsians.
In Anglo cultures, there are seven continents, with a distinct North and South America, and Europe and Asia.
In Romance cultures, there are six continents, with a single America, and a distinct Europe and Asia.
In some eastern European cultures, there are six continents, with a distinct North and South America, and a single Eurasia.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It’s kind of meaningless; it’s not like these definitions are based on some semi‐objective characteristic like counting tectonic plates. In the Anglosphere, nobody is actually confused about whether “America” refers to the country or the continents. Canadians don’t appreciate being called Americans, and (in my experience) Mexicans don’t desire it either. If one wants to refer to North and South America together, there’s a perfectly normal way to do so: “the Americas.”
USian, aside from its lack of euphony and its general connotation of being used by know‐it‐all scolds, is particularly silly since the existence of two countries named “United States”—two North American countries named “United States”—means it’s just as ambiguous a country name as “America” is claimed to be.
Even though I consider estadounidense silly (why aren’t people of Estados Unidos Mexicanos considered estadounidense, exactly?), I use it when speaking Spanish, because that’s the way people say “American” in Spanish. I don’t explain to Spanish‐speaking people how ignorant they are for using such a silly, ambiguous word. One wishes the same courtesy were offered in the other direction!
I think you illustrated why the concept exists. USA actually has "America" in its name, unlike others - hence 'Americans' and not 'USsians'.
The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Spanish: Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata), earlier known as the United Provinces of South America (Spanish: Provincias Unidas de Sudamérica), was a name adopted in 1816 by the Congress of Tucumán for the region of South America that declared independence in 1816, with the Sovereign Congress taking place in 1813, during the Argentine War of Independence (1810–1818) that began with the May Revolution in 1810. It originally comprised rebellious territories of the former Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata dependencies and had Buenos Aires as its capital.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Provinces_of_the_R%C3%A...
That username had already been taken. How about Leo14?
Fine.
He also knows cos!
...
(/s)
Like people which by the Wikipedia definition of fascist being fascist using Catholicism as a tool to push their believes which are not at all compatible with the current world view represented by the Church in Rome.
A Pope which is able to say "I denounce ... as unchristian and un-american" which isn't some random person in Rome but someone seen as an American is kinda useful if you want to reduce the reach of such influences.
That didn't last thar long though. Since it was overtaken by Protestants who banned Catholicism (like it was banned in all the other colonies ) in 1689.
Texas, California, Florida, totally unimportant backwater states, right? No Latin American culture, ethnicity, political or religious influence to speak of.
Whether Texas or California, the land that is now the American southwest was almost completely empty before the Mexican War; about 80,000 hispanos, or about 1% of Mexico's prewar population, mostly in New Mexico and southern Colorado. They were very, very isolated, living in "islands", and were already dependent on the US, not Mexico, for trade <http://web.archive.org/web/20070517113110/http://www.pbs.org...>. The American takeover and attendant influx of settlers completely changed the region; by 1860 California alone had 380,000 people] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Pop...> and was a US state.
*85% of Mexican Americans today are from post-World War II immigration.* As late as 1970 <http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/01/a-demographic-portrait...> there were five million people of Mexican ethnicity in the US, including one million born in Mexico. Now there are 33.7 million and 11.4 million, respectively. The number of people of Mexican ethnicity has grown by ~16X in 75 years (from ~2 million in 1940), while the US population has grown by ~2.5X. Had the Mexican-ethnic population grown by the same rate as the broader US there would be 5 million today, not 33.7.
History, even recent history, has been rewritten in peoples' minds by popular culture. Los Angeles's stupendous growth in the first half of the 20th century was driven almost entirely off of internal US migration. So many Iowans moved to LA that it was joked that southern California should be renamed "Caliowa". Almost everything we think of about the city, demographically speaking, is a post-1970 phenomenon.
According to Census estimates <http://web.archive.org/web/20080912052919/https://www.census...>, the city of Los Angeles was 7.1% Hispanic (almost all Mexican, of course) in 1940, and 15-17% in 1970. In 1990—let me repeat, two decades later—it was 39.9%. The non-Hispanic white population went from 86.3% in 1940, to 61-63% in 1970, to 37.3% in 1990. As of 2020 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Race_and_ethnicity> the city is 46.9% Hispanic and 28.9% non-Hispanic white.
"We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us" is only true for the aforementioned hispanos. If alien space bats had rotated the contiguous US 180 degrees in 1945, all other Mexican Americans would be living in Buffalo and Portland and Boston and Rochester and Detroit. Those cities would be known as the home of Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex cuisine, not LA and El Paso and Phoenix.
What's the desired outcome? European, NATO, or Ukrainian security guarantees?
On others, like social safety nets, rights for migrants (particularly those from Latin America where Leo XIV spent a lot of time), and militarism, the RCC and Trump's GOP are at stark odds.
that would be pretty dump to try, I don't think there are any such goles
> To placate or appeal to the current American leadership?
only we speak about "appealing to them to be more human", "appealing to them to follow christian values", denouncing people which claim to represent christian values in their action which in fact are opposite to what the Roman Church things Christian values are etc.
if we speak about directly influencing politics, especially geopolitics that seems very unlikely to be the intend, or doable
Additionally, Noam refers to Trump's statements from the beginning of the Ukraine war. Trump's position on the matter has done a total 180 since. Why would Noam continue to hold the same view if Trump doesn't?
https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/...
At least in the contemporary western world, if not throughout the entire world, the human imagination concerning both religious faith and ethics is largely shaped by mass media, especially by television and cinema. Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.
However, overt opposition to Christianity by mass media is only part of the problem. The sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices that mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully engrained in the viewing public, that when people hear the Christian message it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective.
If the “New Evangelization” is going to counter these mass media-produced distortions of religious and ethical reality successfully, pastors, preachers, teachers and catechists are going to have to become far more informed about the challenge of evangelizing in a world dominated by mass media.
The Fathers of the Church, including Saint Augustine, can provide eminent guidance for the Church in this aspect of the New Evangelization, precisely because they were masters of the art of rhetoric. Their evangelizing was successful in great part because they understood the foundations of social communication appropriate to the world in which they lived.
In order to combat successfully the dominance of the mass media over popular religious and moral imaginations, it is not sufficient for the Church to own its own television media or to sponsor religious films. The proper mission of the Church is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an antidote to spectacle. Religious life also plays an important role in evangelization, pointing others to this mystery, through living faithfully the evangelical counsels.Though in USAmerica, we're pretty flexible on the meaning of "Christian" anyway. Certainly the loudest proclaimers have no resemblance whatsoever to the expected meaning.
Those troublesome CINOs.. Gosh Darn them to Heck.
Infallible (i.e. with the authority of a church council) only when speaking ex-cathedra on matters of church doctrine. Its never clear what it applies to and its very rarely generally accepted (maybe once every 200 years or so) that it applies to a particular teaching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Frequency_...
So even the Pope would say that you don't cease to be a Catholic if you call him an anti-Christ. Maybe excommunicated, but to be excommunicated you have to be Catholic.
I don't think you can (edit: reasonably) call yourself a Catholic if you do not adhere to certain tenets of the Catholic Church.
(This is where I was going with the calls-themselves-Christian-but-aintnosuchthing comment, but it's less clear on re-read...)
> I don't think you can call yourself a Catholic if you do not adhere to certain tenets of the Catholic Church.
If John calls himself a Catholic, and the Catholic Church up to the Pope calls him a Catholic, you are pretty silly saying he is not a Catholic because he doesn't agree with the heirarchy on things on your personal priority list for what makes someone a Catholic.
1. Formally a Catholic in the eyes of the church. 2. Calls themselves a Catholic 3. Is Catholic in their beliefs.
The last has a lot of grey areas as its not clear what you need to believe. There is no formal definition. its clear you do not have to agree with the Church on every single thing. On the other hand at some point (e.g. not accepting the trinity) you are seriously at odds with Catholic beliefs.
The first two definitions might sometimes include atheists.
You, and they, can use whatever labels serve your, or their, purpose.
But at some point it doesn't make much sense, or have much meaning, to do so.
I'm a Catholic.
Does it make sense to call yourself that if you fail to hold to beliefs of the Catholic Church on central issues like “Who is a Catholic”?
I mean, if we are accepting your argument that neither your belief that you are Catholic nor the Church’s beloef that you are Catholic matters and you are not Catholic despite both of those if you disagree on important matters with the teachings of the Church, what is the natural conclusion?
For a Church to place a permanent label on a person who holds Apostate beliefs is simple paternalism. A self-declared Atheist is not a Catholic, no matter what any dude with a pallium or a ferula might have to say about it.
https://religionnews.com/2025/04/07/president-trump-imposes-...
“Why should we import indulgences from the Vatican when we have domestic producers like Paula White who offer products that are much better,” said a White House spokesperson.
> this column is satire
He is to be referred to as, "Da Pope."
"Ketchup to be banned in the Vatican."
"He's going to replace Communion Wine with Malört."
Just put a cover on top of it and call it a calzone, I guess.
> As of 2013, according to Grubhub data and the company Chicago Pizza Tours, thin-crust outsells the more widely known deep-dish style among locals, with GrubHub stating that deep-dish comprises only 9% of its pizza deliveries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_pizza#Thin-crust...
So there is at least an existence proof for deep dish very much a thing for south side kids when he was in the vicinity.
For those unfamiliar, Chicago is also one of those American cities with its own style hotdog, so it's something of the local culture:
> All-beef frankfurter, on a steamed poppy seed bun, topped with yellow mustard, chopped white onions, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato slices, and a dash of celery salt.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_hot_dog
Obviously, this is only as serious as you take hot dogs, but they are very good and compared to deep-dish pizza, the Chicago-style hot dog feels almost healthy.
That said, there are exceptions (my sister is dead to me though...)
Coulda been Pope Ditka.
Also... Bears fan from [deepest darkest] Peru could've gone with Pope Paddington? (I kid because I love)
Edit: The Max Miller video was about the baby back ribs cooked in proto-bbq sauce made from grapes that was eaten by a conclave.
In the past wasn't the church basically a political entity, there was even a period when some kingdoms didn't recognize the Vatican pope... (I suppose it's still is very much a political organization)
Medieval Catholic monasteries were basically corporations where the board lived together and spent tons of time praying and celebrating festivals. Prayers were like NFTs and they traded them to nobles in exchange for traditionally-productive capital, which the corporation would then manage to provide them goods and monetary revenue.
Here I was tempted to write "the past was weird" but then we have actual NFTs and those are amazingly silly, so, how weird was it really?
But given that the conclave was so short that does suggest that there was not much division over direction.
go birds
Huh. Career counselors take note, new path opened up.
Probably two modern developments presaged this viewpoint: the laughable apologetics of the Creationists, which have already been refuted ad nauseam by the New Atheists; and semantic drift and inaccurate (or even lacking) definitions for the word "god," which is probably better understood in modern English as "mind" or "mental construct" or "the abstract" (as contrasted with the "concrete" or physical body a la Descartes, in a similar fashion to the distinction between the rarefied air of mathematical models, and the hard reality of physical law).
It's easy to chastise an ideology when you misunderstand some of its most basic terminology, as has been done with words like "god" or "spirituality."
Ironically I often find it is people who are not educated in STEM that cleave most vociferously to the point of view that religion and science are fundamentally irreconcilable.
Doesn’t you have to agree with them, but it’s a far cry from the kind of anti-intellectualism so beloved of the “evangelical” churches.
There's no need for "even" in the sentence. Georges Lemaître who was the originator of the big bang theory was a literal catholic priest and theoretical physicist, and funnily enough the theory was originally accused of bringing religious bias into physics.
Likewise prominent Catholics who were Darwin's contemporaries like John Henry Newman had no issue with evolution back then either. The Church fathers never read the bible like a positivist text. (this is a very 20th century fundamentalist invention)
Edit: Did some googling and found Toomas Hendrik Ilves was a naturalized US citizen who renounced his citizenship before becoming an Estonian ambassador and later President of Estonia. Not seeing any who actively held US citizenship while being head of state.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
> [Honorary knighthoods] are a way for the UK to recognize the achievements of individuals who are not UK citizens. They are awarded on the advice of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and are conferred by the Crown.
> In the US, accepting a title of nobility from a foreign state is prohibited without the consent of Congress. However, this prohibition is different from accepting an honorary knighthood, which is more of a recognition or award rather than a title of nobility.
But also the emolument clause is effectively unenforceable and the whole "insurgent" ruling basically made it impossible to challenge a presidential candidate. If Trump wants a 3rd term, for instance, I'm not sure what mechanism would prevent him at this point.
Religion is concerned for the ethical and spiritual good of its subjects. Politics are short sighted and can never produce a paradise. Religion can produce a paradise in the soul of one even in the worst political and economic circumstances.
Jesus was homeless and broke.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
By the Grace of God Emperor of Austria; Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; King of Jerusalem etc.; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Silesia, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, Friuli, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trent and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenburg etc.; Lord of Trieste, Kotor and the Windic March, Grand Voivod of the Voivodeship of Serbia etc.
Says who? Is it actually prohibited in the us constitution?
The british monarch is head of state of multiple nations, and has been for over a century.
Throughout that time and afterwards, the monarch of England & Scotland was often also the monarch of other territories too, so that "one title" is eliding a bunch of stuff.
King George VI/Queen Elizabeth II/Charles III - Monarch over several British Commonwealth realms.
Wilhelm II - Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia
To name a few who disagree.
His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, By the Grace of God Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; King of Jerusalem, etc.; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa and Zara; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc.; Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro and on the Windic March; Grand Voivode of the Voivodeship of Serbia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_title_of_the_emperor_of_... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_Austria#Titles,_s...
I believe USA also claims land around any Apollo device at the Moon. [no source]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
Ratzinger resigned.
> Interestingly, the Constitution does not specify whether the 14 years have to be consecutive, nor is the 14 years must occur immediately before the person becomes president. Herbert Hoover, for example, lived in London from 1910 to 1917, and when he ran for election in 1928, he had only lived, on his return, to the U.S. for 11 years. This did not disqualify him from the presidency.
There's also the interesting question of whether he will remain a US citizen after all, or whether taking the office of pope will count as him relinquishing US citizenship under INA §349(a)(4): https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/L... In the latter case, the tax question would not arise.
Existing US Department of State policy applies an administrative presumption to most cases of accepting foreign government employment that the person does not intend to relinquish US citizenship unless they affirmatively state otherwise, but they don't apply any such presumption to becoming a foreign head of state or a foreign head of government. They actively analyze such cases individually with no default presumption.
Pope Leo XIV will lose his US citizenship due to his acceptance of the papacy if and only if he intended to relinquish US citizenship by that act, based on the standard of proof of the preponderance of the evidence (the same as in civil lawsuits). He has the right to dispute the question in court if he and the US Department of State disagree on the answer, but I imagine this would in practice be handled more quietly for such a high-profile case.
> A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—
It would seem there would need to be an intention to relinquish; which I don't necessarily think is tacit in accepting the office of Pope.
I agree it's not clear that accepting the papacy involves intent to relinquish, but it's not clear either way. The Department of State (at first instance) or any court who considers the matter (if a dispute arises) would normally consider the individual situation in order to conclude what they think is the intent.
In practice, if Trump and Rubio don't want an international incident, they will probably just ask the Vatican what the Pope intended and go along with that.
Two examples from Canada: former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who represented the Canadian monarch in Canada for day-to-day head of state duties, renounced her French citizenship when before becoming Governor General; and current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney renounced his British and Irish citizenships before becoming Prime Minister. Neither renunciation was required according to law or constitutional convention, but they both wanted to remove any question as to their allegiance.
I couldn't imagine a Pope applying for a pay raise. Or rather, to whom would the Pope got to get a pay raise ... hm ;)
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume....
As far as I know there's no similar conflict with the new Pope, and he wasn't even in America for the most important part of his church career.
Bergoglio had several conflicts with the Kirchner government when he was an Archbishop. Cristina didn't tell the position the government would take when he got elected Pope, but the government-aligned (but not government-controlled) mass media associations preemptively filled Buenos Aires with anti-Bergoglio propaganda.
A week later Cristina met the Pope and announced that they were politically aligned, and the same mass media associations filled Buenos Aires with pro-Bergoglio propaganda.
Really? I am Italian, so I known Bergoglio only by name before he became Pope, but I always heard that he was not really a supporter of liberation theology. Anyway, during his papacy he showed that he was influenced in many aspectes by liberation theology and peronism approach.
If the pope renounces his US citizenship for the purpose of having diplomatic immunity or treats his acceptance of the papacy as an expatriating act with intent to relinquish citizenship within the meaning of INA §349(a)(4), he would not be inadmissible under the Reed Amendment: that amendment only applies when the reason for renouncing is to avoid taxation, and might not apply to relinquishment under §349(a)(4) regardless of reason since it uses the verb renounce rather than relinquish.
Why might the verb matter? The only parts of INA §349 that use the verb renounce are the ones about explicitly swearing or affirming an oath or affirmation of renunciation, not the other potentially expatriating acts. Relinquishment is the broader term in the statute which encompasses all such acts.
And I say "might" only because this amendment has been so rarely enforced that the courts haven't had occasion to rule on it. Only two people have ever been denied admission to the US under the Reed Amendment. It was a very badly drafted legal provision.
If the Pope were a mere diplomat, his immunities would be restricted to the acts directly related to his job in any country of which he’s a national or permanent resident. That’s because, unlike sovereign immunity, diplomatic immunity is based on a Vienna Convention full of restrictions like that.
That was indeed the premise of the comment I was responding to.
(Interesting given he's a south sider).
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/08/pope-leo-xiv-is-a-cu...
> But later in the day, an ABC7 reporter caught up with one of the pope’s older brothers, John Prevost, and asked him to confirm the report.
> He said it wasn’t true.
> “He’s a Sox fan,” John Prevost told ABC7.
I was ~8(ish) when my parents took me to their last World Series. Now, I'm a fan fueled by nostalgia and a deeply ingrained belief that 'THIS is the year they will go ALL the way!'
One day it'll pay off
EDIT - apparently a Cubs guy
Incidentally, the steel mill very close to where he grew up was idled due to the effects of Trump tariffs this week.
If you think the Catholic Church isn't a sharp institution with a pulse on humanity around the globe.
Sometimes institutions know that they are simple shells. That what is truly important is the people that they represent and how they can serve those people.
There are both theological and political implications to that view above.
Maybe serving those people can best be accomplished through humility and throwing a US pope, and their current papacy, under the bus.
That's an incredibly cynical view of Church politics. But then again my first bank account was a Catholic Credit Union and I still remember my days in Sunday School.
That's not an indictment of my upbringing. Nobody gets blamed for funkyness with tying finances to religion or lost accounts or any of that.
That's me saying regardless of what happens with the current pope, whether my views are too cynical or not cynical enough:
There will be no blame or anger for how I was raised and treated. I met beautiful family and friends through the church, and my parents found community.
For example, the Kerala church was so against statues and images that basically all the art we have from them are crosses. This was characteristic of the church of the east. The eastern Orthodox went through iconoclasms and some even have issues with statues still.
There's a reason why Final Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and many more fantasy series lean heavily into the look and feel.
I'm glad we have so many diverse cultures with such rich artistic depths and backgrounds to draw from.
The designs look nice, gold looks nice, the pope has some nice swag, but it's all a symbol of power. It's easy to forget that when you're lost in the sauce. SS uniforms looked slick as hell as far as uniforms go, but I wouldn't debate with a Holocaust survivor about why they should see the good in Nazis. The other people in this thread seem to have forgotten about the Crusades.
My source: Warhammer 40,000
IMHO, the GP has a right to share his experience here as we do ours. A thread on the election of a pope, with a subthread on the beauty of church, is a fair venue for sharing. There's no need for prejudice, disguised as policing, on either side.
This is a thread about the Pope, why wouldn't people be allowed to say good things about the religion it leads?
But guess what, some invisible hand hid my comments, even though the one where I expressed my opinion has more upvotes than downvotes and is not even flagged (cc @dang, perhaps you know what happened?). Is it breaking a policy? How is it different from the comment from @soulofmischief? Very tricky situation to be in, I can understand why someone would prefer to just hide it all.
I'm honestly tired of all this "I'm catholic and I am involved in the church" being enough to warrant attacks from random strangers.
Good news is the pendulum is swinging back, and it's swinging back hard! Deus vult! :D
Rather, I saw the start of a flamewar below (not caused by you) and I figured I'd say my piece. But it came out wrong and you got flagged undeservingly.
Sorry about that :\
No one is mocking you. You appear to have some sort of persecution complex, and are using it to shield you from having to earnestly engage with my replies. You're literally suggesting there is some kind of conspiracy to be unfair against you. I have not downvoted or flagged any of your comments. Perhaps you should consider the wisdom of the crowd and open yourself to criticism.
> I'm honestly tired of all this "I'm catholic and I am involved in the church" being enough to warrant attacks from random strangers.
You didn't have to reply to my comment with an ignorant, invalidating, dismissive and patronizing take. That was your choice, and the consequence is that people might reply to you in order to point out faults in your attitude and message.
Just because you thought you were well-meaning doesn't mean you were. Your sour approach to discourse has made itself apparent in this thread. Many perpetrators of the Crusades also thought they were doing a good deed.
Even if 9 out of 10 of cardinals, priests and worshippers were crooked, my faith in Christ wouldn't move one inch (2.54cm); it might actually become even greater.
I think there is a profound difference on how two different kinds of people approach religion.
On one side, I've never given much care to what the "social opinion" of something is in order to engage with it or not. My choice to follow Christ is rooted on myself, not on what I'm told to be right or wrong.
On the other, I can understand people who choose to associate/dissociate from specific groups/trends based on what they hear on the news/radio/etc... and I think that's completely valid as well. There was a even time in our past where having this trait was a desirable thing!
But to cater to your question, no, he did not send me an email.
He did not have to do anything, I was the one who approached God.
I hope one day you are able to understand this and live in peace with others who do not wish you any bad. You're not a teenager anymore.
> You're not a teenager anymore.
Nor are you, I'm assuming, so please answer my question.
> I hope one day you are able to understand this and live in peace with others who do not wish you any bad.
You should not become so defensive when pressed for proof of claims you make about invisible patriarchs living in the sky and turning cities into salt because people had too much anal sex.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
There is absolutely no shot that someone would respond to someone sexually abused by their parents with, "On the other hand, I have a loving spouse that makes that same action a very loving and peaceful experience!" It's brazenly distasteful.
When someone shares that their time in the Church was marked by coercion and abuse, responding with “well, my experience was uplifting” can feel dismissive of their trauma. It’s similar to hearing a survivor of sexual assault and replying, “my sexual experiences have all been wonderful.” Both experiences can coexist as true, but leading with your positive story in that moment risks minimizing the other person’s pain. It's distasteful, and is not conducive to a productive dialogue.
You have good intent, but I disagree and believe that "fair for all" does not mean "every viewpoint deserves the same consideration". Specifically, I have spent my entire life encountering Christians who try to tell me I've just had a bad experience and that things are great on their side of the pond, if I'd take a look. But I've read the Bible front to back, I was at the top of every class in my religious studies, I engaged critically with theology during my exposure to it. And my holistic experience revealed the deep hypocrisies, conspiracies and power structures inescapably tied to the Church's past and present.
The Catholic Church, and all Judeo-Christian denominations in general, are simply a vehicle for power and control. It treats its followers well, but those who don't fall in line are often subject to very dark corners upheld by violence.
The truth is that while you think your perspective is more considerate than mine, it's actually more ignorant. I have seen the things you've seen in the faith, but you haven't seen what I have seen. You have an incomplete picture about the realities of the Church.
And yes, it does get tiring and eventually a part of the overall trauma to have well-meaning people completely disregard the truths I share with them and tell me I don't know the Church for what it really is, retreating to their own limited experiences without considering the implications of mine. And while it wasn't your intent, as a group behavior it becomes patronizing. I'm glad you had a good Catholic mother. I had abusive, often homeless drug addicts for parents and was left in the care of a very evil man who used to do horrible things to me in the name of your god, and who was directly empowered and blessed by the Catholic Church to carry out his sick abuse.
P.S.
> who may be willing to improve their dialectic skills
this is also patronizing and snarky especially after beginning your post with "Lv. 0 attack dismissed." That is not what I would call dialectically skillful or considerate. We should always strive to engage with others on Hacker News in good faith.
Source: you.
For many, it is a place where they find community and make friends and build their lives around.
>it's actually more ignorant
This kind of crosses into a personal attack, but I'll let it slide. Just don't do that a lot or you'll get scolded by @dang or @tomhow, and with reason.
>a very evil man who used to do horrible things to me in the name of your god
With empathy, God didn't do that to you, you don't even believe in him so it wouldn't make sense for you to blame him. Reminds of something from a great writer, "He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence", perhaps you're in for a treat later in life :).
There's another famous quote "To Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s"; if a crime has been committed against you, there are social structures in place to call in for help, and judge and punish the people involved.
>"Lv. 0 attack dismissed." That is not what I would call dialectically skillful or considerate.
Oh yeah, because I should have taken offense at that and throw a tantrum, instead of writing a thoughtful comment. Sure.
My source is nearly two thousand years of well-documented history.
> For many, it is a place where they find community and make friends and build their lives around.
That is completely beside the point that not every person gets to have this positive relationship with their cult community, and that some find themselves in its crosshairs.
> This kind of crosses into a personal attack, but I'll let it slide
No. Lol. Calling your viewpoint ignorant is not a personal attack. It's objectively ignorant, as you have already demonstrated. "Let it slide?" Did Jesus teach you that one? You need to check yourself and tone down the pompousness and patronizing attitude in your posts.
> With empathy, God didn't do that to you, you don't even believe in him so it wouldn't make sense for you to blame him
I don't blame an imaginary patriarch who was whitewashed in order to establish colonial White supremacy.
> perhaps you're in for a treat later in life :)
I'm going to again request that you tone down the patronizing, I-know-better-than-you attitude. Apparently you did not pick up on Jesus' teachings of humility.
> if a crime has been committed against you, there are social structures in place to call in for help, and judge and punish the people involved
More demonstrable ignorance. I had no one. Everyone I told ignored what was happening, and the police who frequently ended up at my home told me to endure my abuse or find myself in a more abusive foster care system. The Church and my Catholic family empowered this man to do whatever he wanted. You can't just disbelieve this away. I know you're used to just deciding on randomly believing or disbelieving things without veritable proof, but that's not how reality works. My experience is real, and cannot be shallowly dismissed without acknowledgement as to the very real, very documented violent history of the Church, including the Vatican's ongoing direct involvement of covering up child abuse within its ranks, which again, is public record, with plenty of court cases you can google at your leisure.
> Oh yeah, because I should have taken offense at that and throw a tantrum, instead of writing a thoughtful comment. Sure.
Now you're just in denial and being sarcastic, presenting a false dichotomy. No, there were more than two choices you could make when replying, and practicing some humility would reveal those options to you.
I can see this is a topic that gets you very emotional but neither me nor this community can bring justice to you.
If you need help I'll be glad to do what I can, email in profile, or <username>.com.
I won't engage in this conversation further, not because of you, you can write to me as much as you want over there; but because it deviates from the purpose of the site.
Peace be with you.
For what? Levying warranted criticism?
> I can see this is a topic that gets you very emotional but neither me nor this community can bring justice to you
More patronization and smuggery. At no point have I displayed an overemotional response.
> If you need help I'll be glad to do what I can
You need help, but I don't think you're ready to see that. Go back and read through the Bible again, both Testaments, ironically it should help you see the error of your ways here.
> because it deviates from the purpose of the site
You know when you've lost a debate, and that's fine. I hope you have learned something, and next time someone shares their real, valid, negative experiences with the Church, you are not so quick to attempt to invalidate and correct them. There is still much for you to learn about the Church, I have learned what I needed to and moved on. Hopefully that happens one day for you, too. I sincerely mean that. The Church is a perverse organization and you can do better.
Ironically, your patience here feels a lot closer to the humility we’re all supposed to be learning!
"The aesthetics of $THING are really very impressive whether you believe the underlying mythology or not."
"Yeah well I had a bad experience with $THING so I don't get any joy out of it all because it's dark and sinister!"
...ok? What's the response to something like that supposed to be? Is this Reddit where we should fall over each other to apologize to someone we've never met about a thing that theoretically happened decades ago and also presumably happened to hundreds or thousands of other people? It just doesn't make any sense.
Also, another person posted: " echelon "It truly is. As is the Ancient Roman aesthetic. There's a reason why Final Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and many more fantasy series lean heavily into the look and feel."
So people suggesting video games and tv shows, even with lots of violence (particularly GoT) is an "aesthetic", is a lot more shallow than my basic point that religions aren't primarily aesthetic. Maybe you replied to the wrong comment.
"Religion is more than an aesthetic" is 100% true but nothing in the vFunct's statement suggests or implies anything to the contrary. So you're replying to something nobody said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_denomination says just less than half of Christians in 2024 were Catholic (48.6%), down from 50.1% in 2011.
I didn't qualify it as Catholic Championship because I thought any "World Championship" would imply a central authority and thus Catholicism would be implicit. But then again it may be organized by a Federation.
Have you ever heard of the question: "Is the Pope Catholic?"
Heh, if Epstein was still alive he'd be jumping joyfully that his buddy Trump became pope...
With the construction of tall city blocks and the breezes off of Lake Michigan, the atmospheric use has become somewhat more true. No more so than most USAmerican cities though.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation)
> The only thing that is unambiguously an US thing is the concept of calling people from the Americas latinos.
Latino is a term for people with Latin American heritage, meaning those with Spanish or Portuguese linguistic and cultural roots. You're fine with calling yourself American in English but not Latino?
Exactly! Latino is a thing created my the US to separate themselves from us. But we all have a very similar history, colonized countries, native Americans almost eradicated then assimilated, slavery, migration from Europe and Asia. The only difference is that the US got richer.
> In English, the two continents are just that: two continents; North and South America, not "America."
In Portuguese too so most of the times I refer to us as South Americans but we are as Americans as people from the US. This is all linguistics/sociology so if/when the pushback is big enough we might be able to eradicate this stupid "latino" concept (that is wrong because there are countries included that speak English, dutch, creole and other languages that are not latinas)
Maybe I'm off base here, but are you aware that most Hispanic people in the US proudly call themselves Latino? It's not a term that Americans use as a mark of separation, it's a cultural/identity thing. You can be Latino American and American American (like from the US), they're not mutually exclusive.
I might be missing your point though, are you saying that the US uses the term differently than the rest of Central and South America?
At least the people from Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia don't use the term latino to identify (South) Americans. I guess it is more common from Colombia to Mexico.
With the exception of the Oxford English Dictionary and several others, of course.
This is false. As you have just acknowledged in your own comment.
The OED has multiple on record in major print publications examples of use of the word american in multiple contexts. One of those is specific to the United States of America which is the more common usage.
Not the only, and not always unambiguously so.
I didn't acknowledge that. Instead you told me to check the dictionary which is not at all relevant to what I said. If somebody holding a dictionary came up to you and told you they're American, would you assume they meant they're from the US, or somewhere across two vast continents? Which is more likely? I think you know the answer even if you want to be pedantic about it.
"You know who else was from Chicago and on a mission from God ...."
Maybe I'm jaded but when I read that line I kind of assumed maybe that had a little to do with getting elected Pope.
A true leader must pave the way, not merely point to it. "I must decrease so that my children can increase" in the words of St. John the Baptist and the actions of St. Joseph, who St. Luke calls the father of Jesus, and who is the living image of the father.
St. Joseph's staff only sprouted the life of lilies because it was dead first (Hebrews 9:4, which book the Blessed Virgin Mary probably wrote).
(Also Chicago represent!)
[1] https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/evidence/cardinal-prevo...
I mean... they clearly already have. If Trump supporting Catholics haven't changed their mind by now I don't think an American Pope is going to convince them. And unless we're assuming a third Trump term I don't see what the point would be. The damage has been done.
Pocket change for sure (13.6 million/28.1%, says https://zenit.org/2024/06/30/the-ten-countries-that-made-the...), but there's also U.S. congregational giving of ~$20 billion, and the U.S. is the source of most large Catholic hospital, university, and foundation endowments.
This could be a factor here too. To try to mend, or keep America in faith, according how you look at things.
I'm wondering one thing - how will this affect Catholics in countries like Russia or China. I imagine their leadership will not like this at all, China especially. I know, not many of people there are Catholic, but still.
In a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/world/americas/pope-candi...
> However, regarding the Vatican’s 2023 document Fiducia Supplicans, which permits non-liturgical blessings for couples in irregular situations (including same-sex couples), Prevost emphasized the need for national bishops’ conferences to have doctrinal authority to interpret and apply such directives in their local contexts, given cultural differences.
So it’s ambiguous.
If I were in his position, and part of my duty is to interpret and lead via "the holy scriptures," then I would probably want to be as accurate as possible.
The point is that the canon of writings assembled into the book is based on how people think at the time. Things change and evolve. A book canonized today would probably undo even more of the old testament teachings as archaic and no longer relevant with their version of Romans 14 and Acts 11:4-6. Francis 2:8-10 or from a series of letters sent to the people of Americas instead of Corinthians. These writings are just a snap shot in time
No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.
I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely foreign thought process to a genuine Catholic.
That's fine, it just makes it pointless to make a argument for what the office of Pope should and shouldn't do. It's like going into a Muslim country and telling everyone how stupid their views are because you don't respect their holy texts. Why bother?
That was my point, you're not interested in having an actual conversation. Which is fine. That's why I said I had a misunderstanding of what was going on here. But it's clear now.
Since the time of the canonizing of the book, lots of history has happened where the pope of the time has softened some of what was traditional practices. Again, not sure why it is okay to accept some pope from historical time could canonize the bible, but a future pope would not have similar authority to make further amendments. He is the Vicar after all, and is infallible. Unless you do not believe that about modern popes??
No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.
I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely thought process to a genuine Catholic.
And, infamously and comically, isn't exactly well supported by the text itself.
Source: grew up in churches that tried to do just that.
For the (fortunately) uninitiated:
Said scriptures also says that a woman can be sold to her rapist after he violates her. I think a more modern interpretation would not be a bad idea.
So various churches can freely pick/discard almost whatever they want besides the 10 commandments while Muslims can't exactly just throw away the Quran or Hadith (which are much more specific)..
Except Jesus said that he didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and not one stroke of a letter of the law will pass away. So he didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.
> didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.
The "fulfill" bit is rather ambiguous. AFAIK the most popular interpretation (certainly when it comes to ceremonial rules like not eating pork/shellfish/etc.) is that his intention was to "bring the law to its intended goal/purpose" rather than to maintain it in perpetuity.
So if the remaining Jews continue following the Old Covenant, but others choose to rather follow Jesus' 'New and Eternal Covenant', then where would this obligation towards Old Testament law come from?
You aren't bringing up the moral law.
Hint: there's parts about freeing slaves, about repatriating foreigners, and about fallow fields. It's really sort of awe-inspiring how our secular government is implementing Jubilee by fiat.
What is lacking, from my perspective, are scholarly interpretations that swing the discussion the other way. The best I've seen simply just exclude the problematic scriptures which really isn't within the Catholic tradition (inerrancy of scripture and all).
contexnt: I've studied religions (and still follow the topic) and have a basic understanding of where things are, but take it with a grain of salt.
I understand that as part of the faith, it is not our place to know the reason God has chosen. However, I believe that there are very serious concerns about the intentions of the people 'qualified' to interpret the texts. Relying on "just trust us" gets us into big trouble, fast.
As the saying goes, the devil may quote scripture too.
I would disagree. The art of hermeneutics has been around for a _long_ time and has been refined over time as we develop new understandings about the ancient cultures that wrote these documents. So, yes, things do change, but I would argue they do not _dramatically_ change. For example, the message of "the gospel" has been the same since the founding apostles. But our understanding of something like Genesis 1 has changed dramatically over the years as our understanding of the sciences, history, etc. increase.
Think about it. It's been thousands of years. A little humility is called for. You're not the first or the last to make flippant remarks like this without understanding.
Christianity has been comfortable with fairly sophisticated realpolitik since day zero.
There are places where the bible gives guidance for heterosexual marriages, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all other marriages are prohibited. Most people are heterosexual, so it makes sense that the bible would talk about marriage in a heterosexual context.
There are also several verses that condemn gay sex, but I think you could make the case that it's not talking about the types of loving, committed gay relationships that we have in mind today. And also, even if gay sex is forbidden, you could still hold that gay couples are allowed to get married and adopt children, but that they should remain celibate. That's rough, but Christians commonly hold that heterosexuals aren't supposed to have non-procreative sex either. For comparison, the American Jewish Conservative movement holds that male-on-male anal sex is biblically prohibited, but all other aspects of gay relationships are permitted. And even though the sexual act is forbidden, it's also forbidden to invade someone's privacy by questioning whether they're doing it.
This is where I've yet to see convincing evidence. The whole meta-story of the first few chapters of Genesis was about creation. Not just creation of the universe as we know it, but the pro-creation between a man and a woman in the sanctimony of marriage.
Whether you have an overly-religious view of Genesis or not doesn't really change the fact that the original authors were clearly "sanctifying" this act of pro-creation (the "meme" if you want to use Dawkins' terms). Other cultures and tribes obviously had their own ways of sanctifying it, but in a large, almost universal majority of cases, it was always between a man and a woman.
Changing the gender to same-sex more or less destroy's the original intention of the meme. I mean, you can do it, but I don't think you're walking away with the authentic thought that was being communicated by the authors.
I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago). Sure, we can choose to ignore and/or change it because it's "out of date" but that leads back to a point I made elsewhere about how it's not usually within the Catholic tradition to so blatantly alter scripture.
I find this to be a very strange reading. I never got that from the creation narrative at all. Looking through it, I only see two places that seem to be about marriage. First there's Genesis 2:22-24:
> 22. And God YHVH fashioned the side that had been taken from the man (adam) into a woman (ishah), bringing her to the man (adam). 23. Then the man (adam) said, “this one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman (ishah), for from a man (ish) was she taken.” 24. Hence a man (ish) leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife (ishah), so that they become one flesh.
This doesn't mention procreation at all! It seems to say that men and women come together because they have a common origin, not necessarily because it produces offspring. You could still say that this supports heterosexual marriage, but I don't see any particular reason to read it as prohibiting other types of marriage. And in fact, it seems to work fine with gay marriage – two men or two women are also presumably from the same flesh and bones as Adam and Eve.
Then there's Genesis 3:16:
> And to the woman [God] said, “I will greatly expand your hard labor—and your pregnancies; in hardship shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
This says something about bearing children and about male-female relationships, but it doesn't really draw the line saying that the purpose of marriage is to produce children. It also presents all of this as an unfortunate state of affairs.
I guess there's also 1:28-29:
> 28. And God created man (adam) in the divine image, creating them in the image of God—creating them male and female. 29. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”
That talks about reproduction, but it doesn't say anything about marriage.
> I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago).
Right. I think whoever wrote the creation story was trying to provide an explanation for why the world was the way it was: why the world exists, why there are seven days in a week, why there are men and women, why they have dominance over the animals, why there's suffering, why snakes have no legs, and so and so forth. I don't think they meant for the creation story to give instructions at all, except a moral that one should obey God. I don't get the impression that the author was trying to sanctify marriage or procreation at all. If they were, it seems like they would have described Adam and Eve's wedding, they would have spent more than one sentence on the birth of their first child, and they wouldn't have presented pregnancy as a curse.
Later in chapter 2, God is quoted as saying:
> Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh
Jesus himself then comes back and quote this exact verse in Genesis in the context of divorce being bad (Matthew 19). It's clearly referencing marriage within the context of creation.
You may not agree it's the central thrust of the text, and perhaps I overstated the position, but marriage between a man and a woman is certainly a major theme in these first two chapters. I'd be impressed if you can find Rabbinical texts that support a different theory.
What differences are you referring to specifically?
Makes my motivated reasoning detector go off.
It wouldn't matter if 99% of animals and humans were gay.
> Natural law[1] (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory[2] asserts that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be understood universally, independent of enacted laws or societal norms. In jurisprudence, natural law—sometimes referred to as iusnaturalism[3] or jusnaturalism,[4] but not to be confused with what is called simply naturalism in legal philosophy[5][6]—holds that there are objective legal standards based on morality that underlie and inform the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws.
Also, what does your comment have to do with gay penguins that i was responding to? I was just trying to show natural law has nothing to do with gay animals.
We'll call it "natural law", to suggest that it comes from somewhere other than some random human.
Got it.
Here you are.
It then does a similar trick where the authors of the New Testament are acknowledged to have poor Greek in many cases but then using specific word choice to claim they meant an extremely forced reading, relying on the previous trick a bit too.
There’s even a discussion of how nitpicking word choice is bad practice earlier in the same document!
He did say slaves should obey their masters, however. It's weird that Christians have no problem opposing slavery despite it being unambigiously supported by the Bible, and verbatim by both God and Jesus, but they absolutely cannot budge on homosexuality.
Even though the Bible only explicitly forbids sex between men, meaning the Church should have no stance whatsoever on lesbianism, yet they do. It's like they want to eat their cake and have it too.
There are just a few (oblique) mentions of homosexuality in the New Testament. It clearly wasn't a main concern. Pope Francis' interpretation always seemed completely consistent with scripture. It's the extremely heavy emphasis on homosexuality that's inconsistent with it.
Also: being gay and gay acts are two different things. Catholic priests are not supposed to engage in any sexual acts, so in that sense, it doesn't really matter if a priest is gay.
That's not to say the teachings are right, and of course no one has to follow the teachings. But it'd be a bit like saying, dunno, dismissing a judge's verdict on the basis of it not reflecting popular opinion. It's not meant to reflect popular opinion, but be consistent with the law.
> job is to deal moral teachings, rather than follow the crowd
An American Catholic hating and despising gays is very much following their crowd.
What we have now is just saying "we super duper pinky promise that we've learned our lesson and won't do the exact same thing next time even though we totally are with MAGA."
I can actually accept this. They’re expressing an opinion, nothing more. If they then proceed to ostracise that person, or refuse to recognise their relations, that’s crossing into hate and pridefulness.
Agreed
> or refuse to recognise their relations, that’s crossing into hate and pridefulness.
There I think we need a finer view. "Mx. Other" is important to you? Yes, absolutely, they should recognize that. What you do with "Mx. Other" is good? Absolutely not, it's harming both you and "Mx. Other" who you clearly love.
See https://boldlybeloved.com/ for a beautiful example of how to do accompanying _right_ (in my opinion).
"Sorry, gay people, your desires for sexual intimacy are actually just temptation from Satan / the corrupt nature you inherited from Adam and Eve. Now be celibate your whole life because you were born broken."
They don't say the last bit in so many words, of course.
That one’s always fun to watch.
Being a homosexual or feeling attraction to your own sex is not sinful - it's a very difficult temptation that, with God's help, you are supposed not to give into. It's acting on this same-sex attraction that is sinful, in much the same way as acting on attraction to your neigbor's wife would be sinful.
If we dismiss criticism as being invalid because it happens to be another person's idea of "progressive," then that's surely the opposite of ignoring the crowd. That's using political labels to distract from the actual thing being discussed.
Considering there were literal pedophiles given more grace than openly gay bishops, it's a disheartening to hear "progressive" used like such a dirty word. But I guess the Overton window has shifted that much.
I think you need to reread the discussion. That is something you wrote in response to someone else. Someone expressed they found the position immoral, and you said "why are we judging people based on how progressive they are." I am explaining why that's reductive.
> But also I find it weird to turn around and tut-tut at a Christian bishop because he failed to express pro-gay views
Saying "we don't turn away gay people" is only pro-gay in the way that allowing Black people to have bank loans is pro-black. As in, not at all. It's just not anti-gay.
> A key tenet of Christianity is that homosexuality is, in short, bad
That's a motivation for bigotry, yes. It doesn't make the consequences different.
> And in turn, waiting for the Catholic Church to change its mind is like saying it should bend to popular, "progressive" views
What is progressive today is an outburst of long-standing grievances, previously quelled with violence. Gay people were killed purely on religious demonization, and legally tried in court as recently as the 50's. Not framed for a crime because they were gay, but tried for the crime of being gay. So yes, there may be an uptick in open discussion on the matter as we move into a world where we don't kill people for their sexual orientation, something we are still not out of in many parts of the world.
Now if you refuse to accept it as a moral judgement because "it sounds like what those progressives would say," that's you using a "dirty word" to refuse engaging with the topic altogether.
This is perhaps difficult for people to understand, but while the Church's pastoral approach toward people with same-sex attraction can change, its teachings on same-sex attraction and the gay lifestyle will not.
Even Obama opposed gay marriage in 2010.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-still-opposes-same-sex-ma...
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-comes-ou...
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/us/politics/biden-express...
You can read his original answer here
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/ju...
He further expanded on this in his books, see for instance
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/33231/pope-francis-e...
He also called abortion doctors assassins and described genderideology as "the ugliest danger of our time" (or the 'greatest danger' according to some other sources). He wasn't really all that progressive.
Sources:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-03/pope-francis...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/pope-francis-c...
Of course he was a pope. It's in line with his church's doctrine. But I wouldn't call him progressive by any means.
the commenter is trying to be funny :)
Almost every American public figure was anti-LGBT in 2012. The majority of the Democratic Party including the Obama, Clinton, and Biden families were against it. It sounds ridiculous now but Donald Trump was the most LGBT friendly president in history at the time of his first inauguration.
Wait to see what he does now or find a more recent position.
In essence, it foretold last pope was francis, as peter the roman....
A Pope and a Trump. Countries divided. Holy Roman Empire again? Trump would make quite acceptable Habsburg - lots of resources and uncanny ability to waste good potential and situations.
>Roughly 0.5% odds on him on polymarket before he was announced
--
He seemed to hover around 1%, which was the second highest behind Tagle (~20%)
https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-be-the-next-pope?tid=1...
(Credit: https://x.com/ArmandDoma/status/1920530249567056056)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937148 (works)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937147 (fails)
(Also via email.)
This suggests an item-count or time-based sliding window to me.
As I write this, earliest accessible content is <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937674> ... and that's just become inaccessible as I'm updating this comment.
I just checked against oldest accessible article (at this writing), and subtracted that from the newest comment (from the "comments" titlebar link):
43938990 - 42938990 = 1000000
Others can confirm this by going to the newest comment, and subtracting 1000001 from the contentID to find the first inaccessible comment.
An Italian would make a better pope because the Roman Catholic Church is fundamentally Italian and it has been too long without an Italian pope. An African would be a good pope because they've never had one, despite a huge number of Catholics, present and future, being African.
Interesting Fact: There are about as many—if not more—Catholics in the United States (~45-72 million [0]) than there are people in Italy (~60 million [1]). American Catholic theologians, priests, and bishops have a larger impact than many seem to realize.
I'm generally sympathetic with the idea that it is ideal to have an Italian pope—I recall hearing that Pope Benedict XVI thought having a close connection to the diocese of Rome was important—but I also don't mind having popes from different parts of the world so as to better represent the catholicity (universality) of the Church.
I also think an American pope might have a fuller understanding of the global impact of American media and political power. I felt that Francis often did a poor job of navigating the media landscape—oftentimes being represented as saying things which he did not really say or intend, so perhaps an American pope will be better in that regard.
---
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_the_United_... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Populati...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonyms_for_the_United_Stat...
A person from the US has been elected as the Pope, you have to come up with a title for this news piece.
You have these two options:
A) First American Pope elected ...
B) First US Pope elected ...
A is ambiguous because "American" means a country for 4% of the world and a continent for 96% of the world. Also, the pope that just died happened to be from Argentina, and also happened to be the "First American Pope" for 96% of the world, adding to the ambiguity.
B does not have any issues and is correct from whichever angle you want to approach it.
Which one do you choose?
Ask foreign speakers if you don't believe it.
"US Economy"
"US Job Market"
"US Military"
"US Policy"
And many other examples ...
But now that I read about it, when you use it as adjective you have to write as "U.S.".
If you want to throw the whole argument to the trash because it's missing two dots, well ... up to you.
In 50 years, when the U.S. has decided to call itself something else, then yes, this CNN breaking news headline will be ambiguous. But breaking news writes headlines for its current audience, it’s not meant to be a taxonomically accurate index.
Spanish speaking countries tend to treat America as one continent. English-speaking countries tend to treat North America and South America as separate continents, which is convenient since when speaking English, America means "the United States."
Not really. (Also we call English Channel 'La Manche' - even if we do not understand French).
Do we? I've literally never heard it called anything other than the English Channel. After some quick googling and gpting, I can't find any reference to it being referred to as "La Manche" outside of France. The closest I got was "Canal de la Mancha" in Spain.
Ehh no. In school in Argentina you are taught that the whole continent is called America, then you have subcontinents in it (North/central/south), and I would guess other south american countries are the same. If you want to say citizen of the USA in Argentina you would call them yankees.
I can't think of the last time I needed to describe myself as being from the continent, but if you really want to call yourselves Americans, I say go for it. People can call themselves whatever they like.
Still, I can't help but notice Argentinean newspapers using americano to refer to refer to things from the US.
In general, we use north american when referring to the USA. America is used to note the continent, like the south american soccer teams cup, "Copa Libertadores de America" (liberators of America cup).
La Nacion uses americano, but has to specify "continente americano" as if simply saying "americano" wouldn't be clear to readers. They otherwise also use estadounidense and norteamericano.
Neither appears to ever use "americano" by itself to refer to people from the continent, but if you're telling me that if you walked up to someone on the street and said you were an American and they would interpret that as you from the continente americano, then I believe you.
I'm still going to use the demonym American for myself (as everyone gets to pick their own demonym in their own language) and use it to refer to people from the US, but if you to call you an American, who am I to say no? You can call yourself an American, I can call myself an American and everyone is happy.
Nope. People from the US really need to get out of that bubble.
Maybe you live in a smaller bubble.
India: "Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old American, has been elected as Pope Leo XIV, making history as the first American to head the Roman Catholic Church." https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/10-facts-ab...
Denmark: "For første gang i verdenshistorien er paven amerikansk." https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/fra-missionaer-i-peru-til-n...
Brazil: "Papa Leão XIV é americano e tem cidadania peruana" https://www.estadao.com.br/brasil/papa-leao-xiv-e-americano-...
Nigeria: "America’s Robert Francis Prevost announced as new pope" https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/05/breaking-americas-robert...
Slovakia: "Lev XIV. je prvý Američan na pápežskom stolci." https://svet.sme.sk/c/23488126/novy-papez-lev-xiv-profil.htm...
Always saying "United States of America" would be rather cumbersome.
But it's the reward for being the first country on the content to become independent. Everybody else afterwards had to pick more specific names tot avoid any confusion.
BTW Columbia was also frequently used as a generic name for the American Continent back in the 1700s and 1800s. The modern country of Colombia co-opted it in a very similar way (well originally "Gran Colombia" was supposed to include entire Hispanic America it just didn't work out that well...)
I have a hard time believing people in South America actually call themselves Americans or are remotely confused about where someone identified as American is from.
This all seems pedantic.
Yes, everyone from the Americas could conceivably be called an American, but the lack of any shared continental cultural identity largely removes any need to self-identify as an inhabitant of the continent. But hey, if people desperately want to call themselves Americans, I say go for it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43929357 and marked it off topic.
Why are topics like this not considered Off-Topic by the guidelines?
A recent tomhow (and why) explanation:
I figured only the deaths of people relevant to topics discussed on this forum, but I suppose it is extended to any death of great importance.
Maybe they are a conclavist, and have elected their own pope?
Well Donald Trump will be pleased.......
...I'll see myself out.
Is that a typo?
See Wikipedia for deeper discussion of the use of the term in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_(word)
Lots to learn about the Pope Leo XIV. I liked his speech
I'm seeing a lot of shade thrown at the new Pope just for opposing Trump and his policies. Some even go as far as to call him a "woke Marxist Pope". Not very christian.
disagreeing with trump is a suggestion of non-citizenship?
> Carrying off papal pulp with immaculate execution and career-highlight work from Ralph Fiennes, Conclave is a godsend for audiences who crave intelligent entertainment.
[video trailer] https://youtu.be/JX9jasdi3ic?si=sYwqRlK-4hYUnsAa
Excited to see the drama as the US-circus is already delivering briliant lines like "why didn't he speak English".