Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

Well, renaissance poetess then. I think she was their founder, actually. YES! Santa Teresa de Jesús a.k.a. Teresa de Ávila, and San Juan de la Cruz, now those were some haunting poets.

Pope Francis Names 19 New Cardinals, None From The U.S.

Seems reasonable. Trying to shift the stats to reflect where the congregation actually is is a highly overdue change.

The United States has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world, and a growing Latino population.

Catholic bishops ask people to pray for rain to break California's third year of dry weather.

I'm concerned, not because he's emphasizing poorer countries, but because Catholicism in poorer countries tends to be rather more extreme.

You know, its funny. I see the pope make comments that are pretty nice and at worst relatively harmless.

Then you go on internet comment sections and see people trash talk him like "Oh sure, you say helping the poor is good but you still don't like abortions!" Or something like "Oh its all an act to fool you"

Man, thats like the definition of someone having haters.

That's nothing.

A document obtained by The Associated Press on Friday shows Pope Benedict XVI defrocked nearly 400 priests over just two years for sexually molesting children.

I guess this only goes to show that the Church doesn't like to talk a lot about its internal affairs, which the media (and many people) interpret as "doing nothing" or "covering up and hiding dark secrets".

Actually, if you read the article, they just defrocked the priests. They didn't tell the police. They didn't do anything to stop these men from abusing children again. They just took away their priesthood and let them go on their merry way. That's the bit that upsets people. That's why people say they covered things up.

edited 17th Jan '14 5:29:17 PM by shimaspawn

While there are issues with that (I personally think that, yeah, they oughta have told the police), I think it's mostly an issue of avoiding mixing canon law and secular law (though I might be wrong. I haven't checked the canon law recently).

edited 17th Jan '14 5:33:30 PM by Quag15

So they think they're above the law.

Some of them do, some of them don't. Let's see if the attitude will get better from now on.

edited 17th Jan '14 5:45:21 PM by Quag15

Church turns its canons against it.

UN slams Vatican for 'efforts to cover up' pedophile priests in sex abuse scandal.

And the canons fire a blank.

How goes the campaign against the vow of celibacy? And where did it start in the first place?

edited 18th Jan '14 3:45:09 AM by TheHandle

Pope Francis will open the Vatican archives from the era of Pius XII in order to determine if the controversial pontiff, who has been accused of failing to speak up during the Holocaust, can be considered for sainthood.

That would set some cats amongst the pigeons if it goes ahead... 0.o

Indeed, the Church has some not-speaking-up to answer for.

This looks like a pun but isn't one, actually. I think.

Francis wants to air all the Church's dirty laundry. I honestly think it's a good thing. The first step to reform is clearing out the past.

I don't blame Pope Pius for not wanting to get bombed or kidnapped by the Nazis. Plus, nobody listened when they talked about WW 1.

Though, I personally don't see Pius as saint material.

Pope Francis shakes up Vatican Bank, sets financial cap for sainthood.

edited 19th Jan '14 1:57:15 PM by DeviantBraeburn

Thing is, the Church could have mobilized a huge deal of people if they'd stood against the Nazis. You know when that oaf Stalin allegedly asked "The pope? How many divisions has he got?"? The answer would be "More than you'd think."

From any other recent pope, the bank thing would be huge news. From Francis it's more of the same trend of general awesomeness. I really hope that doesn't make the magnitude of what he's doing with it get lost.

I agree. Other popes? That'd be a bombshell. Francis? Business as usual: he saw a table that needed flipping to let the underneath see a little sunlight.

Pius's actions during the Holocaust were at the very least easily understandable. Keep in mind Nazi Germany was rounding up and executing Catholic clergy during that time, and were strongly considering an occupation of the Vatican, so aiding the Jews or speaking out against the Nazis' actions was something he had to do relatively quietly or wrapped in wishy-washiness. But saying he was silent is pretty flat-out wrong. I mean, they organized a ton of humanitarian aid throughout the war, and saying Summi Pontificatus wasn't about Nazis is kind of like saying Animal Farm wasn't about communism (strictly true but the context rather screams in one's face).

In any case, I wouldn't call him saint material. But then, I don't like popes getting canonized for little more than being popes.

edited 19th Jan '14 3:49:46 PM by Pykrete