The Pope’s Opening Remarks in America
Certain to explode some right wing heads. In the Welcoming Ceremony at the White House, Pope Francis introduced himself as “the son of an immigrant family,” and noting that America “was largely built by such families.” But he focused more on climate issues:
Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our “common home”, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about “a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change” (Laudato Si’, 13). Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them. Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.
Gave me chills. What a tremendous rebuke to those right-wingers who use Christianity only as an excuse to hate rather than love and lift up their fellow humans.
Yeah Padre Bergoglio definitely practices a different brand of Christianity. It’s almost as if some people use actual religious doctrine for political power. Here’s a provocative question. Are the Catholic politicians who “practice” (or claim to practice) a different brand of Catholicism than the pope also Catholics? Like Messrs. Rubio, Santorum, Christie, Pataki?
Sure, they’re Catholics. And they can take solace in the fact that the Catholic Church, and Pope Francis are still against abortion (though they are against the death penalty too), they still exclude women from serving as priests, and they still frown upon gay marriage.
This whole debate is all about emphasis. Under Benedict and under Republican Catholics, the only Catholic issues that matter are the social conservative ones. Catholic Democrats always argued that there is more to being a Catholic than social conservatism. There is also social justice. Helping the poor, the sick, the needy, the environment. Francis is moving the emphasis.
That’s very interesting. Same doctrine, different emphasis. Ignore this and highlight that… It’s that type of deal.
This concept doesn’t apply to the disparate factions of Sunni Islam though I’ve noticed. I wonder why. Alternate emphasis means false in that case. Here’s it’s perfectly valid.
Just making sure I have it all sorted out. I wonder if Padre Bergoglio finds it personally insulting that Rick Santorum calls himself Catholic.
This concept doesn’t apply to the disparate factions of Sunni Islam though I’ve noticed.
Um, no. Sunnis largely follow the six pillars of iman, and a larger number of specific points of creed. Disparate factions are largely around specific ideology and theology not addressed in the iman or accepted creed.
And I’d bet that Pope Francis’ reaction to Rick Santorum is one of mercy. (Even though I don’t think Santorum deserves that grace.)
I assumed that extremists calling themselves Catholic, like Santorum and Mel Gibson, were simply fundamentalists perverting Roman Catholicism. You can see why I’d be confused… It’s a funny old game.
I love this,”… proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution.”
This is the path forward. Everyone, even the most block-headed fossil fuel shill sitting in Congress, can be on the side of reducing air pollution.
Dorian
Mel Gibson (if I recall from the time of his Jesus movie) is so conservative that he belongs to a “Catholic” splinter group so conservative that it no longer recognizes the Pope’s authority because the Vatican officially let the Jews off the hook for killing Jesus. In other words, I don’t think the Catholic Church recognizes Mel as a legit Catholic at all.
Latin language mass and all. Yeah, I’m familiar. I was making a different point about factions within a religion that are still technically operating by some accepted interpretation of the doctrine. The labels are especially difficult when there is no official body recognising who is the genuine article.
Different interpretation, or as DD wrote, different emphasis, all within one larger category. We are comfortable applying this idea in some instances and not in others. We apply it only when it suits us.
Some people get to be radical fundamentalists and still get to be the thing… whilst other radical fundamentalists apparently aren’t the thing. I find this to be a dishonest political game.
The pope is infallible, the Republicans who deny him should be excommunicated as heretics
Only when speaking ex cathedra, which no pope has done for 200 years. And this pope is probably the least presumptuous in quite a few centuries. Of course this the first Jesuit pope, so knows what he will say or do. Jesuits are notorious for being unconventional.