Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

In a delayed comment, I did a quick search on the Papacy's facial hair and the last Pope to have facial hair was Pope Innocent XII (1691 - 1700), with his glorious moustache plus goatee combo. The last pope with a full-on mane of hair known as beard was the brief Pope Leo XI.

There hasn't been a bearded pope in a few centuries, and not a single facial haired one since the invention of the camera.

Interesting beards of the papacy include Pope Honorius III with the most magnificent mane of hair of all, Pope Leo I'st (hypothetical) intense mane of dread, Pope Pius I's whole Gandalf look, Pope Paul III's beard which seemed to compose most of his face, Pope Julius II's Beard of Sorrow (he grew due the loss of Bologna during his war against the French and Venetians).

Clearly, Pope Francis needs to grow a mighty beard.

EDIT: What a page-topper.

edited 24th Mar '15 7:15:52 PM by Gaon

Pizza for the Papa?

edited 24th Mar '15 8:18:38 PM by Joesolo

Several of the "bearded Popes" were ordinarily clean-shaven, but were growing their beards out in time of war, which was the done thing among many Renaissance monarchs (both temporal and spiritual)—you shaved your beard once you'd won.

Reposting the link that examines it all coherently.

A beard would suit him. Two hundred years hence, children wouldn't await for some secularized "Father Christmas", but for "Papa! Papa!" And they wouldn't leave pork pie and cherry, but a pizza and some orange juice.

But we're already not taught about the secularized Father Christmas. We learn about St. Nicholas.

Not that I have any problem with Pizza Pope either. St. Nicholas and Pizza Pope. They fight crime and give children food.

So, The Pope will be visiting Obama in the White House on September 23d.

He will also speak to congress.

This time, someone will speak in congress actually invited by the executive power, you know.

Oh, I can't wait to taste the corporate crony tears.

Out of curiosity, when was the last time the Pope spoke to Congress?

This is actually the first time a pontiff is gonna address the Congress.

...Wow.

That's...literally unprecedented. I guess one more achievement to add to Pope Francis's list.

Can we please pray that no one in Congress will imitate Ian Paisley?

That's a safe bet. The worst that will happen is that a few crazies might not show up and make a fuss about it.

The worst of the crazies tend to be the kinds of evangelicals who already have a strong anti-Catholic streak, so they're probably just going to snub him as yet another Antichrist.

However, many of the worst Republicans currently there are actually Catholic, and I'm hoping Francis will call them out explicitly. Boehner, Paul Ryan, Steve King, and Scalise come to mind.

Happy Palm Sunday everyone!

That is one unfortunate name...

Here in Portugal we call it Domingo de Ramos (Ramos meaning branches, so, Branches Sunday?). Due to an insufficient number of palms, here we use olive branches.

Happy Domingo de Ramos (of various kinds) to you too!

Same in Spain. So Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, corroborated by all four canonical Gospels. There's also a very strange amount of text spent dwelling on something about a donkey...

I find this hard to believe, given his eventual fate. If he had the People with him, how could the Sanhedrin get him?

Romans m8.

edited 29th Mar '15 11:17:05 AM by Achaemenid

I thought the Romans really weren't all that interested in ecce homo◊, and executed him only on behalf of the local haters? Which was the Vocal Minority?

That's pretty much it, the local haters wanted him gone and had enough pull with the Romans to get them to do the dirty work for them thought the Romans honestly didn't give much of a shit.

The Romans killed a lot of messiahs.

The Romans thought the Sanhedrin were nuts and gave a token effort to dissuade them. Jesus went through the legal process and got shunted around to a couple of the local prefects and lords, most of whom found him interesting and/or amusing, but not threatening or seditious. But as it was a backwater occupied area with little in the way of potential reinforcements, a riot would have been much more trouble than it was worth to quell. So they just said fuck it and handed him over, hence the whole "Pilate washing his hands" thing.

As for the donkey thing, the Jews were expecting a bigshot nationalist liberator who was probably going to be riding something a lot more dignified. Riding in on a donkey a) undercut that angle through an unexpected show of humility as well as b) fulfilling one of the prophecies in Zechariah.

Also note, the whole whips and flipping tables business happened very shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem, and it hit the Sanhedrin in the pocketbook. It was very likely a large part of why they put so much effort into capturing him and risking pissing off the Romans.

edited 29th Mar '15 9:34:30 PM by Pykrete

Fascinating.

The "donkeys are humble" trope was also used by early Muslim Caliphs. They would, like, the Eastern Roman empire's dignitaries in a little trotting donkey.

Was he trying to emulate Jesus, and if he was, was that pious, or the height of arrogance? Was Sophronius actually amazed? A mystery for the ages!

edited 29th Mar '15 10:55:03 PM by TheHandle

Then the Jews revolted 3 decades after his death anyway.

Judeans were the Taliban of their era. So recalcitrant to civilization...

edited 29th Mar '15 10:58:10 PM by TheHandle