Papa Francisco: The Best Argentinian Ever?

[Matt84]

posting this to see if the entire thread is going through moder-tion or just my last post because of key words. then i edited this last post and copypasted the post that is now undegoing moderation, so excuse me for eventually double-posting.

Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it and even though I (no longer) agree with a thing you say in this particular post, I value your comments in general a lot.

I come from a long non religious family of diverse origins, and I was raised in a very straight-forward manner as an atheist. God belonged to the past and when compared to philosophy it was presented to me, as well as any church or rite, as a iatrogenic witch doctor compared to scientific medicine. Alchemy to Chemistry. The fact that Chemistry was only possible thanks to long experimentation with Alchemy, was not made apparent to me, and I had to discover that link myself much later. In the same manner I had to discover that Modern Medicine developed to its level only thanks of centuries incremental experimentation with iatrogenic cures, and that in many ways, it is still iatrogenic and patients are still subject to extensive experimentation (at their own cost in many cases).
So it's conflictive to try to "take" or at least recognize the good with the bad. Ein Rhand (I'm so sorry I have to obscure her name so this post doesn't go through moderation) would have nothing of it as she preached to separate the medicine from the poison, but a quick glance at her biography (or at her explicit view of cigarettes and alcohol) reminds us of the dichotomy between "what the preacher says, not what the preacher does". So I try to be fair and balanced, and compare things and entities not only against their hypothetical competitors but also against the void that would be left without them, or if those things were changed beyond recognition.

I used to think the way you seem to think about the Roman Catholic Church and authority in general when I was 11, 12, and into my early pubescence, but then by 14/15 I realized that every time one tries to put down some-thing for their imperfections one also has to measure up that against the possibility of a void. It was the 90s and hippie rebellion to authority was very pasee, we were all skeptical, not just of power, but also of its (at best) fruitless defiance.

You compare FDRs Welfare State with Catholicism and you're not wrong: Corporativism as well mercantilism is the historically favoured economic system of the church, although that is certainly not dogma. It seems very destructive now that we have all this technological opportunities going around, but for the last couple millenia it served us quiet nicely to survive and indeed thrive. After a free market democracy (LOL, that sounds so stupid and incongruent) thrives for more than 200 years, we can talk. The Church thinks in millenia, not in decades. That is their value. They are the only ones thinking in the long term. They are incidentally the only institution that does not discriminate against old people, which will be something of increasing rarity in the very near future.

You say that the Roman Catholic Church somehow impeded or slowed down the West's modernization? I strongly believe you might be confusing the Roman Church and Western Christianity in general (with all its Reformed offshoots) with East Orthodoxy.
If you were talking about Greek, Russian, or Nestorian Orthodox Christians I would very much agree with you, but would still defend it when compared to the historical alternatives.

During the Dark Ages the Roman Catholic church was the vehicle that preserved Roman culture. It also allowed for families to marry, have children, and have all of that be recorded so when the inevitability of death would come, the individual would have some redemption. In a time without mail or Facebook, or literacy, an international registry was of great personal value and consolation.
Before the French Revolution a last confession was considered the equivalent of a human right. It would take 200 years for a secular alternative (the very expensive psychoanalytical session) to arise and another century for Live Journal

During that time the ones who did not form families (for whatever reason in addition to the homosexuals, the widowed and the insane) had the extraordinary possibility (only otherwise seen as highly organized in the Bhuddist temples, which is in comparisson quiet a horrible collection of churches/monasteries for all the reasons you just mentioned in your post) to join the Priesthood and dedicate their lives to helping the poor, nursing the sick, exalting the very best of existence (they called it "God") in art and architecture, distilling spirits such as wine and beer, and many liquors, cultivating the land, cultivating the illiterate, expanding the "Good News", towards the tribalistic indigenous regions of Northern and Eastern Europe, and then the Americas and thus including those regions into the World network.

In the Americas the Catholic Church specifically in contrast to other Christians tried their best to include the indigenous population in a spirit of fraternal equality. The Jesuit and even Franciscan orders are a testament to that effort hindered by worldly politics.

I'd love to see someone come into the Catholic Church and make another run at big reforms. After all, with the infallability of the pope as Church law since the late 1800s, maybe Pope Francis can do things like allow priests to marry and have somewhat normal lives since they are, after all, only men and not holy unto themselves. Yes, I know it is possible that some priests can be married, but they are relatively few and far between (has to do with converting from the Episcopal Church), and as I understand it they are supposed to take the vow of celibacy but don't necessarily do so.

Which reminds me, when are women going to be allowed to be consecrated as priests? I guess at that point the Church would cease to be as Catholic as it once was...according to the Church as i understand, it is impossible to grant the Church power to consecrate a woman as a priest due to scripture. If the pope tried that, would he be ousted in some fashion as being the devil in reality? Or is he infallible and it's time for a modern adjustment to the scriptures?

Women who join the priesthood are called nuns (or sisters). Women have never been excluded from the Church of Rome. They exercise their power in a traditionally feminine way, behind the curtains, enjoying (if you permit it) lack of publicity. I am forced to point out that the last Polish Pope had a de-facto concubine, a sister. For all practical matters a wife. But the Church doesn't want to call it that, and you have no right to impose otherwise. Hypocrisy is not the worse sin.

Killing 12 people in cold blood because of a cartoon (or even if conspiracies are right because of politics) is the worse sin.

The Church has been gradually separating from the Worldly powers ( Ceasar different from God) in the last hundred years, and now can only be seen as a force for good and reconciliation, but also as the oldest uninterrupted entity of cultural transmission.

In such a time of exponentially faster change and Global Homogenization such an entity as the Roman Catholic Church has more than a rarity value.

 

[Matt84]

The Catholic Church warns us of the possible implications of Technology, which is undoubtedly a double edged sword. The church is not against science and technology. Modern Genetics were first researched in a Catholic monastery.
http://anthro.paloma...el/mendel_1.htm
http://en.wikipedia....ian_inheritance

PS
Western Christianity, that is the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, its descendants, and all of the Reformed Churches, are quiet a phenomenon worth of some recognition when contrasted to other religions and churches.
Just to think a minute about reformation, let's consider that the in Eastern Christianity the phenomenon also happened (in Russia the Raskolninki) but they were oppressed into being hermits.
At some point in your post you quote a Medieval Pope that ordered the squashing of one of the first Reformed Churches, the Cathars of Occitan, ordering to kill them all and let "God sort them out". A few hundred years from that event other Protestant sects succeeded in seceding and forced the Church of Rome to undergo a "Counter Reformation" which further aided the Renaissance.
At the time the Inquisiton was active, the Roman Catholics were a lot more secular and tolerant than their fundamentalist Protestant counterparts who burned witches without the benefit of an "Inquisition", or trial. Most of the people who underwent an inquisition from the Holy Office were absolved. The Protestants of Northern Europe and Massachusetts would simply burn them all and then spread lies and exaggerations of their Catholic enemies using the print, which is why you were raised to believe that the Catholic Inquisition employed certain torture methods that were factually historically employed only by the Fundamentalistic Religious Revolutionaries during the bloody Wars of Religion.

Even with those differences, all of Western Christianity allowed for the Renaissance (before the Wars) and the Enlightenment, for better or worse, depending on your view of the Enlightened or its word for in latin which is so popular in internet sites these days.

 

[ElQueso]

George W. Bush, who thought he had a religious mandate from God to bring order out of tyranny in the Middle East, seems to me to be a good example of what Christian rulers have done all through their existence. Christian rulers aren't the only ones, for sure, but we're talking about Christianity.

While perhaps the Roman Church was a force for relative order in dark times, I don't believe that it was the only thing that could have kept order. It merely generated the Western world of today, which many people don't think is necessarily a good thing. But we'll never know because it happened the way it did.

But what is obvious is that even the early church, of around 200 CE+, was already turning into something that I don't think Jesus would have ever condoned (if we can believe anything that was written about him). After Constantine, Christians began pushing out all other religions forcefully and bloodily. By the 400s and 500s, Christians were destroying temples of religions that didn't follow their beliefs, burning scientific writings that didn't agree with the Bible, and this set the stage for what Christianity was during the "dark ages" after Western Rome fell.

To think that they became the peace and light of the Western world because they "held it together", and thereby helped the poor of western Europe seems a bit farfetched - but it's sure what the current Roman Church would have one believe. Instead, the dark ages were filled with intolerance and adherence to Christianity as barbarian warlords took on Christianity as a means to take on aspects of Roman civilization, Charlemagne being one of the biggest examples of exactly that, and the creation of the Holy Roman Empire.

Aside from all the ignorance that the Roman Church insisted on (after all, everything you need to know about life is right there, in the bible, as put together by Constantine and the priests that decided the fate and direction of the Roman Church) let's not forget the Crusades in the Middle Ages. Must get those lands back from those evil Muslims. After all, it's not enough to just accept Jesus' teaching to turn the other cheek, and all other non-violent actions or inactions. I'm sure Jesus would have approved of killing millions of people to ensure that Christians could visit his religious scenes.

The Inquisition, for the most part, was certainly not what has been portrayed in many history textbooks. Galileo was a "victim" of the Inquisition directly in the Papal States:

"In 1633 Galileo was formally interrogated for 18 days and on April 30 Galileo confesses that he may have made the Copernican case in the Dialogue too strong and offers to refute it in his next book. Unmoved, the Pope decides that Galileo should be imprisoned indefinitely. Soon after, with a formal threat of torture, Galileo is examined by the Inquisition and sentenced to prison and religious penances, the sentence is signed by 6 of the 10 inquisitors. In a formal ceremony at a the church of Santa Maria Sofia Minerva, Galileo abjures his errors. He is then put in house arrest in Sienna. After these tribulations he begins writing his Discourse on Two New Sciences.

Galileo remained under house arrest, despite many medical problems and a deteriorating state of health, until his death in 1642. The Church finally accepted that Galileo might be right in 1983."

So yeah, he wasn't actually tortured, and he wasn't killed, but he was not acquitted at the time and spent the rest of his old-age life under house arrest, because the Copernican theory (which turned out to be mostly correct) was contrary to what the church said reality was. And Pope Urban VIII was a friend of Galileo. He just couldn't let anyone bring down the Word of the church.

The Spanish Inquisition was completely different than the other versions of the Inquisition that other parts of Europe were putting forth. Considering that Spain pretty much controlled large parts of Italy, including many aspects of the Church, they had a pretty heavy hand in their own lands, backed up by the "Church". Quite bloody compared to other Inquisitions that were going on at the time. And unfortunately, done in the name of the Church. And let's not forget the Spanish pope who "gave" all of the Western Hemisphere to Spain and Portugal and all the wonderful things done by them in the name of the Church.

The Roman Catholic Church was founded and grew on violence, hypocrisy and intolerance and continued its climb in the same fashion. It did indeed keep science at bay, as it feared and hated any truth that did not agree with its own bible. It killed and persecuted millions in the name of God and Jesus and had uttered the horrible words "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" (Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own. Supposedly said by Arnaud Amaury, who died in 1225, to a soldier who was worried about killing Catholics along with heretics), which is a great philosophy if one believes in the distortions of the divinity of Jesus and the addition of Heaven and all that came out of Nicea. If not, you were actually assigned to oblivion, life cut short violently and probably painfully.

Had the Church not been so against true science and punished it so over the centuries, i personally believe that what took centuries to achieve would have happened in a lesser amount of time, and a lot of pain and suffering would have been alleviated. But who knows, maybe something worse would have happened. Not sure what it would have been, but fears always abound and too many think the church keeps the phantasm behind those fears at bay.

Would life have been better if Constantine had not codified Christianity? No idea. But as dogmatic and disparate as the various factions of Christianity were at the time, had he not done what he did, maybe the Western Empire would have fallen somewhat sooner and Christianity would have been something completely different. Who knows what that might have looked like?

Who knows if FDR really helped the US get out of the Great Depression, or if he merely prolonged the darkness felt at the time.

 

[ElQueso]

As far as women in the church, sure they are allowed, as nuns. But never to be the pope or a cardinal or have any real serious say in the direction fo the Church. no, it's all hail to the patriarchal Church and women must keep their places. After all, they were given a place - shouldn't they just be satisfied with that?

 

[Matt84]

George W Bush is a Methodist. We're talking about the Church not about religion, so I have no idea what this character Jesus Christ has to do with it.
In fact I am only talking about the institution that, by contraction, carried on the legacy of Rome, of the first Rome, the one to the West.
The Universal Call (or Assembly) of Rome.

I don't know if this is what people mean by Idealism, but you seem to be comparing the history of the World in the last 1800 years with, not even the present which is not that rosy, but with some standard that simply doesn't exist. Aspects of that standard actually do exist, but it took us, alas, 1800 years to get there, and I contend the Catholic Church helped as much as it hindered.
I used to think that the Enlightenment and Industrialization happened in spite of the Catholic Church; now I think they happened as an almost direct consequence of the Renaissance which could only have occurred under the Patronage of the incredibly rich and open minded (for that time) Church of Rome.
I expect it's clear I don't believe in utopias and therefore I don't hold institutions to utopian standards, or in other words, I'm not claiming the church was or is free of sin (I believe they don't either). I do believe they built more than they destroyed, and I cannot help but notice that it was humans under that spiritual and logistical leadership that finally closed the Geographical gap of the oceans, setting in motion a series of events that would lead to industrialization and, for better or for worse, humanism and modernity. Of course this could have been a non related coincidence, I admit I have not yet proven a causal link.
In that context I naturally think that the Treaty of Tordesillas was a great, very necessary document and one rather egalitarian when compared to America claiming the moon without giving the Soviets a chance to claim the Earth's orbit because of Sputnik.
The treaty was obviously just ceremonial and it was broken almost as soon as the settlers and conquerors could get to the proper longitudes to break it; but its importance lies in that it was the first political document in history that described the World as a Globe.
Of course this closing of the Oceanic Gaps that allowed, for better or worse (in life expectancy terms for better), Globalization to begin, could never have happened without the experience of the Crusades and the Reconquista: that point in history where Western Christendom began to retake (with mixed results) the territories that had historically been part of the same Christian Mediterranean World.
Pre-Christian Scandinavians had very likely touched the coasts of America before to no avail (they also settled Greenland only to go back and almost lose memory of it). Phoenicians or rather Carthaginians probably sailed the Atlantic and they probably kept it as a state secret and perhaps initiated the myth that there is nothing else further to the West of the Pillars of Hercules (non plvs vltra). It is extremely likely that Japanese and Chinese fishing vessels had seen or ran aground in North America or Australia, but China soon enacted a prohibition.
It was Catholics (and Conversos) specifically during the Renaissance that intentionally crossed the ocean and then built upon a continent and raised its long isolated people to the level of the rest of the World. They could not have forseen the epidemics and there was nothing they could do about it (only largely non-Catholic Americans in the mid XIX century used Old World diseases and alcohol deliberately against New World populations. Catholics built hospitals). If you want to discuss whether the discovery and colonization of the Americas was good or inevitable I have a thread on the subject that's been active for a few years on another forum.
If you think in traditional terms (conquerors automatically bad) you might enjoy reading "Brasil, the Land of the Future" by Stefan Zweig.

About Galileo: You're proving my point about how the Inquisition had more elements of intellectual pursuit than zealotry and debauchery. The same courtesy was not always extended to infidels in other churches or in other times. You would have earned more points mentioning Giordano Bruno - but in any case, I have to again remind you that I am not sanctifying the Church. But I don't believe humans would have evolved more rapidly without it either.

Most people don't talk about Ancient Greece in the same negative light that many people portray the Catholic Church. In fact the Ancient Greek World is sometimes portrayed as that lost secular paradise that only 18th century Humanism began to "revive".
What you mean by speeding things up, or not slowing them down, the whole FDR depression comparison, can be more easily defined if we just called it industrialization. First of all, after the Western Roman Empire fell, while there was chaos (until the church restored some order) there was not a long depression or dark age. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe continued to grow at pretty much the same quasi-stagnant rate as before and as you pointed out civilization expanded thanks to warlords adopting and spreading Catholicism and with it wine-making and roads and cities in places where there were no road, cities or established distilleries before.
The real Dark Age of the middle ages was the Plague that Venetian traders imported from Mongolian-occupied Crimea. It was inevitable and comparable to what the Native Americans would go through. (Hint: every group of people suffered devastating epidemics before becoming immune. Europeans also suffered smallpox without previous immunity at some unrecorded point in history)
After the plague came the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery and successful industrialization.
Hero, an ancient greek, had already invented the steam machine (In the same way that Chinese vessels could have touched upon America) but his invention was not favored by the King because he wisely and humanely considered that such an invention would render slaves useless, and letting them starve would be against the mores of the time (inhumane). As pointed out in another thread (Humans need not apply) we are still dealing with this problem.
However under the kind of civilization built by (recently) Reformed Christians and then even Catholics too, the steam machine and liberation of slaves was permitted a chance.
At this point I must admit that Catholic countries did not favor industrialization, but they did allow for it, funded it, and they created the prerequisites for it to appear.

You contend that it could have occurred faster. I contend that if the steam machine was created more than 2000 years ago but was not implemented for centuries because of politics, then just as many more centuries could have gone on in stagnation.
If the Atlantic gap was closed in the 1100s(?) by the Vikings but to no consequence, then I contend it could have been closed several times before (by the Carthaginians for instance) and after again to no consequence.

It was the Romans who went West in the times of their Republic, and even further West in the times of their Church, for there is something else further: PLVS VLTRA

Who knows if FDR really helped the US get out of the Great Depression, or if he merely prolonged the darkness felt at the time.

I believe Emperor Hirohito helped the US get out of the New Deal.

As far as women in the church, sure they are allowed, as nuns. But never to be the pope or a cardinal or have any real serious say in the direction fo the Church. no, it's all hail to the patriarchal Church and women must keep their places. After all, they were given a place - shouldn't they just be satisfied with that?

Precisely, in accordance to the reality of the very recently defunct Patriarchal Age. During that age Catholic women enjoyed privileges (such as being nuns or being the sole legitimate wife of a man) that women under other Patriarchal systems, simply did not.