Pope Francis' Legacy & Successor

[NotHardUp1]

I was shocked by how awful Pope Francis looked during Christmas mass.

Rest In Peace

I wasn't. He had been approaching his expiry date. You get a feeling for how many years octagenarians have. He was consistently, steadily declining, and being around so many elderly, I could see it.

I think he had just been out of the headlines increasingly, which is always the case with aged popes as they hang on.

Compare his passing with his predecessor's and the difference in mourning, and his real stature comes alive.

 

[NotHardUp1]

He who enters as pope leaves as cardinal? I'm sure there's a lot of truth in that. The only recent papal election where I think the predicted cardinal was elected was when Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II.

My all-time favorite remains Pope John XXIII.

He was absolutely elected as a bench warmer, a compromise "harmless" man to keep the fires going until one of the competing factions could get enough votes the next time. He was old. He should have just died inconsequential.

Unfortunately, he was blissfully unaware of his unimportance. He convened an Ecumencial Council and had more impact on the world's largest religion than perhaps anyone since Martin Luther. The world had not been as shocked since the dropping of the atom bomb.

When history takes a left turn, it is worth studying.

 

[rareboy]

Sadly, there are mutterings about the election of a reactionary conservative this time around.

 

[rareboy]

From M. Rowe on FB:

"I was delighted, for instance, by the Pope's gentle chastisement of JD Vance's self-serving, creepily crypto-fascist Republican notion of "love."
"There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens," Vance brayed at a political prayer breakfast this year. "And then after that," he added, "prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."
Pope Francis's response was that love needed to be a totality, not a prioritized list. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups," he wrote in his letter of February 10th.
It is not lost on me that his last official act as Pope before he died—yesterday—was a pointed rebuke of the Trump regime's sadism towards migrants, the poor, and the vulnerable. In this last instance, he was the embodiment of the answer to that irritatingly twee acronym WWJD. The answer? Jesus would have delivered just that sermon.
Rest in peace, Your Holiness, and thank you for trying."

 

[cityboy-stl]

Sadly, there are mutterings about the election of a reactionary conservative this time around.

Pope Francis added 21 new Cardinals who should be more in line with his philosophy. So, we will see what they do. I certainly hope they do not elect a hardliner.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Apparently, Jesus himself looked about in Judaism of his time and identified a lowering of the bar, a tendency to imbue familial piety as a some elevated spiritual virtue.

2,000 years later, we see exactly the same tendency in Christianity today.

Although it's true that loving and providing for family is a mandatory baseline of personal morality, it doesn't represent any elevated virtue. To fail to do this only causes the individual to fall below a norm that isn't even a unique standard to humans.

Altruism has waned in some modern branches of Christianity, but not all, and maybe even not most. But it is still an issue.

 

[HoodedRat]

 

[NotHardUp1]

All sorts of reactions to the new pope.

I had heard from a friend out of state via text that we have a new American pope, so I immediately asked if they had shot Trump again. No, she was serious.

Here is a funny post I just saw:

"New Popemobile just dropped!"

 

[NotHardUp1]

In reflecting back on recent popes, Saint John Paul II reigned for over 26 years, but ascended at only age 58 years, so had that advantage, so to speak.

With Leo XIV being 69, is it not unlikely that he could reign at least 20 years, so he may well be the last pope many of us may know this side of hereafter.

Although no one expected an American to ascend, as a non-Catholic, I share their thankfulness in that His Holiness has travelled widely, having studied in Rome and served in South America, in addition to other travels.

And, he's from a major Catholic hub of the nation, and is on record speaking up against the selfish statements of would-be leaders like Vice-President Vance. He likely will be less outspoken going forward, inasmuch as our administration lets him be so.

We are headed for the roughest times in our lifetimes with the government, so it may be very helpful to have a moderate from America's clergy who may be called upon to speak to the more conservative arm of the Catholics here who may lean pro-Trump during the crisis that is coming.

We shall see.

 

[rareboy]

I have to think that the Cardinals see him as the man of the times, socially and doctrinally similar to Francis but the best positioned to provide a spritual centre and figure for a country that seems to have lost
touch with and is bastardizing the fundamental tenets of Christianity in service to an actual anti-christ.

As Pavlovitz wrote yesterday, the right wing christians don't hate Leo XIV.

They hate his Christ.

Hopefully he can help motivate his priests and Catholics in the US to actively fight back against the cruelty of its mad emperor.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

An American Pope!

 

[rareboy]

Some context on the selection of Prevost.

This was a long game strategy.

The politics in the election of Pope Leo XIV

This was clearly very well thought out--including the selection of an American--as the world is in a very precarious place because of the dangerous leadership in the U.S.

www.signorile.com

 

[TickTockMan]

They are all the same.

Abuse allegations cast shadow over Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV has been accused of mishandling allegations of child sex abuse.

www.aol.com

 

[Kulindahr]

Conclave.

I heard that the new guy, Leo X-whatever, watched that just before heading for Rome.

 

[rareboy]

^ Actually, a lot of Cardinals apparently watched it as a bit of a Primer on what to expect.

It would have been great if they had Isabella Rossellini do a guest appearance at the real conclave.

 

[Kulindahr]

An American Pope!

I remember hearing that he's fluent in eight languages.

They are all the same.

No, they're not. This guy is a lot different from the bishops in the 1960s who just shuffled priests from one place to another, and in between there was a pope who made a Vatican law making it a crime for clergy anywhere to commit a sex crime of any sort, so that if somehow an abusive priest wasn't prosecuted in the country where he served he could be brought to the Vatican and charged. And as a Cardinal given the authority to investigate bishops and bishop-nominees, Prevost was instrumental in removing several bishops for being lax on disciplining abusive clergy.
And in Peru he was out in charge in a place where the mantra "the church can do no wrong" still held sway, and likely faced what other new South American bishops did, where he could give an order and priests would ignore it if it wasn't how things had "always been done".
He may not be perfect but he's far better than predecessor Benedict who as a bishop helped cover up some instances of sexual abus!

 

[Kulindahr]

^ Actually, a lot of Cardinals apparently watched it as a bit of a Primer on what to expect.

It would have been great if they had Isabella Rossellini do a guest appearance at the real conclave.

Now I'm going tom have to watch it!

May as well; Knox lived up to his joking name -- "Knox people over" -- and I'm on crutches for a few days till I can walk again.

 

[rareboy]

Weenjoyed it for exactly what it was. No more. No less.

But we loved the idea that with so many new Cardinals, it was a basic intro.

And hopefully influenced their understanding of the complexity of humanity and the reality of the world they occupy.

 

[NotHardUp1]

We enjoyed it for exactly what it was. No more. No less.

But we loved the idea that with so many new Cardinals, it was a basic intro.

And hopefully influenced their understanding of the complexity of humanity and the reality of the world they occupy.

My guess is they watched it more out of a sense of duty to be able to speak to a contemporary pop culture view of the Vatican, as it would invariably be among the many questions peppering them from the press. They didn't want to appear to be ignorant of modernity.

I also share your tepid rating. I saw it in a theater, but found it to be adequate, and a bit too contrived in the "surprise reveal" at the end.

 

[NotHardUp1]

They are all the same.

Abuse allegations cast shadow over Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV has been accused of mishandling allegations of child sex abuse.

www.aol.com

I respect your comment but respectfully disagree.

Even Francis was quite different in his response to the scandals. He elevated the issue and openly compelled his "direct reports" to come and be trained on it and underestand the new directives.

My read is that many in the world view the hierarchy of the HRCC to be hopelessly turgid, corrupt, and dishonest when it comes to scandal of any sort, not just sex abuse. Equally, much of the world believes that the incredible power of the Vatican can make change happen as if the Holy Father was a sort of King of Siam.

That is really not his position. He does indeed weild great power across the 1.5 billion Catholics, but that huge following is not some bee hive with only instinct to guide them to blind obedience as if to pheremones. It is a vast bureaucracy, theocratic, with regional, cultural, national, racial, and ethnic influences that number in the hundreds of variants. None of them accept child abuse, but that is not to say they all see and address the crime uniformly.

And, the Holy Father can only deal with what makes it to him. When bishops and canons and archbishop and cardinals run interference, as the prelates in Chile absolutely did with Francis, it leaves the entire Church damaged from the deception and fallout.

Yes, the Church has been guilty of abetting pedophiles and rapists, but fairness still matters in distinguishing how different men have dealt with the reforms.