Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

I like Saint Cucuphas, or San Cucufate, because try saying his name out loud very fast.

What about Bernie?

edited 17th Jan '16 1:16:04 PM by TheHandle

Thomas, Paul and Francis.

Suddenly reminded of the time in high school where a friend and I joked that Lorca should be canonized as the patron saint of homosexual playwrights.

edited 17th Jan '16 1:54:03 PM by majoraoftime

Elizabeth of Hungary seems nice. Though I'm so wishing that there was a recognized patron saint of homosexuals and trans people.

It'll take some time to get there, I think.

Why exactly is it bad to have another Pope named Peter, which leads to this?

@smokey: if you need to know anything about saints in the Catholic Church (and some in the Orthodox Church who don't overlap with the Catholic Church, for that matter), you can ask me. You can also start here.

@Favourite saints: Blessed Virgin Mary (mother of Jesus, Queen of All Saints), St. Francis of Assisi, St. Joan of Arc, St. Nuno of Saint Mary, Saint Anthony of Padua (aka Saint Anthony of Lisbon), Saint George (the Dragon-Slayer), Saint Jerome, Saint Thomas More, and others I'm probably forgetting. Yeah...

@Hallow: Well, the prophecy is not really accurate (especially from the 1590's onwards), and some Catholic theologians have dismissed it as a forgery. That being said, it would make sense for another Pope to be called Peter to be a bad thing. Since Peter began the Church (as the Catholic Church claims), it would be understandable to want to avoid an end of the Church itself.

edited 17th Jan '16 7:07:21 PM by Quag15

dRoy, I strongly recommend G.K. Chesterton's biography of Aquinas for starters. For a great digest of Aquinas' thought that won't overload the brain of anyone who isn't Aquinas, I recommend Peter Kreeft's Summa of the Summa. I'm not as up on secondary Augustinian texts, but hope someone can recommend something good. Best of luck!

If you want weird syncretic Catholicism, the go-to religion for that is Voodoo.

Thank you Quag.

@ Tropers/Quag15

How exactly is naming the current Pope after the first Pope supposed to lead to the end of the Church anyways?

edited 17th Jan '16 9:53:48 PM by HallowHawk

If you're Korean and you want to convert to Catholicism, you have a home here in the Philippines LOL. I still find it weird that there are those Korean Protestant missionaries "doing their work" here too. Pope John Paul II was here, it was a world record! Then Pope Francis was here, and it was another world record! Catholicism is the dominant Christian denomination here for a reason...

On Saints, I share Quag's list of favorites, but I'd also like to add: St. Expeditus, St. Nicholas the wonderworker (a.k.a Santa) and St. Peter the apostle.

If his path to sainthood finishes, you can add Blessed Dom Justo Takayama, a.k.a the Holy Samurai (or the Samurai Pope, Christ's Samurai, e.t.c) to that list.

Seriously?

Why...on Earth, would anyone send missionaries to a country that is already predominantly Christian?

Oh yeah, that's right, there are some Protestants who don't consider Catholics Christianity.

-sighs-

Maybe they're the "We Help the Helpless" type of Missionary rather than the "Convert to my faith" type of missionary? Granted they sometimes mesh together but still.

They do tend to mesh the stuff together. They generally have sort of dick-ish passive aggressive ways of being "helpful" such as scheduling meetings for certain health services ata certain hour, only for services to begin at that hour and the actual prodecures a bit later.

Hand them proselitizing material after they have recovered and always making sure to mention tenents at least twice in each sentence.

Kinda creepy, really.

I met a Scottish Catholic missionary once. He was insane, but very noble. I accompanied a bit of his work and he always stressed the We Help the Helpless part rather than the converting people part. He in fact encouraged a community to accept and embrace Evangelicals and Candomblé folks (the Brazilian variation of Voodoo, basically).

He was a Large Ham Hot-Blooded fellow with a strangely foul mouth for a Priest with a fondness of massive, epic speeches about the nature of humanity and how the rich oppress the poor.

His problem was more one of intense ego and arrogance than fundamentalism. He sort of viewed the plight of the people he helped as the only important one, and if he viewed you as not doing your absolute best to help them he would flip his shit, but all in all he was a admirable guy.

That and despite his claims, he still carried a bit of European arrogance in him, having a visible disdain for Brazilian culture in several regards and from time to time some comment about "this backward country" would slip by.

edited 18th Jan '16 8:18:19 AM by Gaon

Sounds like a well-rounded Character with a capital C. Love to hear that these people exist.

@Gaon - Is the country that poor to require such people coming over?

While our relationship soured after he told me Brazilians (and he included me in this category) have no concept of responsability and called me a irresponsible fool, I will give credit where is due: The man is fascinating and he's doing (literally) God's work, flawed as he may be as a human being.

Well yes and no. The country isn't in such a bad state, but there are regions in terrible state.

In this specific case I accompanied him was a rural community that sought to keep the land they lived in for a few generations, but technically belonged to a farming MegaCorp (even if they haven't used it in decades). The MegaCorp wanted to expel them and retake the land, and in the process they would ruin the land's ecosystem so they can plant what they want.

The Priest leaded efforts to help them keep their land, bringing in lawyers and all, and helped them organize their society (which effectively works in a big council that decides stuff), helped with food, tries to make sure the MegaCorp doesn't trick them.

This is no easy job, and of course several activists have been murdered defending this place, and the Priest himself survived a few kidnapping attempts. My filming crew (my involvement in this story was doing a short documentary about it) was ambushed by hired gunmen, and only escaped by bullshitting their way out.

So yeah, noble job this man does.

Damn brazil you scary

I see you live in a place with a high HSQ...

Why don't people make TV Series from this? This kind of "Little guy vs. Murderous Megacorp" tale is Thriller gold.

edited 18th Jan '16 2:20:22 PM by TheHandle

I agree.

But see, when I decided to do short documentary about it, pretty much everyone in the business I know asked me if I have a goddamn death wish. Everyone was afraid I was toying with forces beyond my understanding (which means large landowners who basically own the police such as this specific MegaCorp) and that doing this movie could legitimately get me killed (I grew fond of answering with "certainty of death, small chance of success. What are waiting for?").

So there's why no one makes bigger things about it. Even the Missionary in question was entirely unsupported by the Catholic Church. As he told me he basically paid to work as a missionary, as the Church did not aid him at all.

edited 18th Jan '16 3:06:21 PM by Gaon

I did not know we had an Intrepid Reporter among us.

You've put me in a tremendously good mood.

Jesus Christ...

I wonder how long it will take before the general public learn that the term Dark Ages was a load of nonsense and that the Catholic Church was actually responsible for the progress of science...