Holy S**t! Pope resigns

...you called?

Yonder wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

But the guidelines the Church published clearly stated that the indulgence only counted under very specific circumstance: you have to go to Church, receive the sacrament, and say a pre-canned prayer. Absolutely none of those things has anything to do with social media.

Doesn't it? Is a person watching the events in high def that much less there than a peasant sitting in the back row with blurry vision because glasses haven't been invented yet? Can't that person say the pre-canned prayer from his computer? The sacrament is the only thing that person is really missing out on.

To return to game terms, does modern high-bandwidth connectivity nullify the range modifier?

jdzappa wrote:

Well, at my local parish, the inquisitor is quite savvy at rooting out traces of witchcraft on Facebook.... One of the problems though is kids today think Facebook is for old people

The problem of the inquisitor, and the would-be receiver of a virtual sacrament, both have an elegant, high-tech solution: Second Life. I can't imagine anything going wrong.

Podunk wrote:

No. Vatican spokespeople have clearly stated that one must do more than simply follow news, internet, and social media to earn an indulgence. And indulgences are not forgiveness of sins, and have nothing to do with time in hell.

edit: and dude, what? The "Vatican Court?" Where are you even getting this stuff?

Because Apostolic Penitentiary is very cumbersome to type and read, it is a religious court responsible to issuing judgments on breaches of canon law, excommunication of members, and issuing edicts on indulgences among other matters. It is most similar to the ecclesiastical courts others may know of in the Church of England or rabbinical courts in Judaism.

And you can read the decree if you like. You could also read the article, it is a very thoughtful illustration of how such indulgences work. Can you get sins forgiven for retweeting the pope? No, can you for following the events of World Youth Day? Yeah, the edict says that. Will there come a day when liking the Vatican on Facebook will grant an indulgence? I suspect so. And if the President or a Governor began to pardon crimes like this, people would be pissed.

KingGorilla wrote:

Because Apostolic Penitentiary is very cumbersome to type and read, it is a religious court responsible to issuing judgments on breaches of canon law, excommunication of members, and issuing edicts on indulgences among other matters. It is most similar to the ecclesiastical courts others may know of in the Church of England or rabbinical courts in Judaism.

And you can read the decree if you like. You could also read the article, it is a very thoughtful illustration of how such indulgences work. Can you get sins forgiven for retweeting the pope? No, can you for following the events of World Youth Day? Yeah, the edict says that. Will there come a day when liking the Vatican on Facebook will grant an indulgence? I suspect so. And if the President or a Governor began to pardon crimes like this, people would be pissed.

That's a pretty coarse characterization of the Apostolic Penitentiary--although I guess it's better than referring to as one of three tribunals of the Roman Curia as some sort of monolithic "Vatican Court"--but you're still misunderstanding the theology of indulgences. The theology is pretty convoluted. Here's what's not, though: an indulgence does not grant forgiveness of sins. You're basing your opinions on a faulty premise. I don't know what else to tell you.

Also, I can't f*cking believe I'm reduced to defending indulgences.

edit: since citations are good:

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/myths...

Myth 3: A person can "buy forgiveness" with indulgences.

The definition of indulgences presupposes that forgiveness has already taken place: "An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven" (Indulgentarium Doctrina 1, emphasis added). Indulgences in no way forgive sins. They deal only with punishments left after sins have been forgiven.

Since the definition doesn't actually alter what KG was trying to say, don't you think you're sort if splitting hairs?

ruhk wrote:

Since the definition doesn't actually alter what KG was trying to say, don't you think you're sort if splitting hairs?

To anyone who has a decent understanding of Catholic doctrine, it does alter what he is trying to say quite substantially, and no, it's not splitting hairs.

ruhk wrote:

Since the definition doesn't actually alter what KG was trying to say, don't you think you're sort if splitting hairs?

We're talking about Catholic theology, and you're complaining that we've wound up splitting hairs?

Isn't that like the guy who becomes a proctologist, and then complains about having to look at assholes all day?

Do you mean asshole assholes, or [em]asshole[/em] assholes?

[size=6]Oh...[/size]

KingGorilla wrote:

The Blog is wrong. The Vatican Court has stated that for those who cannot make it to Rio for the festivities will still be able to partake if they follow news, or internet, or social media on the event. And you will have sins forgiven. Forgiven sins remits time in purgatory or in hell. If this is not what forgiveness of sins is for, then I want to know why Catholics put such import on confession and last rites?

Off the top of my head (and what Podunk's links probably explain), the importance of Confession is that if you die without confessing a mortal sin (i.e. Catholic Felonies), you are in danger of going to Hell to suffer forever (edit: you can't really remit time in Hell--it's pretty much "Eternal Life - No Parole" as I understand it, and that's part of your misconceptions here). If you die having confessed a mortal sin, you go to Purgatory to suffer, but only for a limited amount of time. If you confess AND get an indulgence, you don't go to Hell OR Purgatory (or at least, you don't spend as much time in Purgatory or get punished as badly, I guess).

CheezePavilion wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

The Blog is wrong. The Vatican Court has stated that for those who cannot make it to Rio for the festivities will still be able to partake if they follow news, or internet, or social media on the event. And you will have sins forgiven. Forgiven sins remits time in purgatory or in hell. If this is not what forgiveness of sins is for, then I want to know why Catholics put such import on confession and last rites?

Off the top of my head (and what Podunk's links probably explain), the importance of Confession is that if you die without confessing a mortal sin (i.e. Catholic Felonies), you are in danger of going to Hell to suffer forever (edit: you can't really remit time in Hell--it's pretty much "Eternal Life - No Parole" as I understand it, and that's part of your misconceptions here). If you die having confessed a mortal sin, you go to Purgatory to suffer, but only for a limited amount of time. If you confess AND get an indulgence, you don't go to Hell OR Purgatory (or at least, you don't spend as much time in Purgatory or get punished as badly, I guess).

To continue with your analogy, I believe that's time off for good behavior. At least that's how I've understood it. Other posters clearly know more so maybe I shouldn't post this. I just wanted to continue the analogy.

Or perhaps "time served". The base idea is that certain sins are so grave that even when you are forgiven, you cannot escape some amount of punishment. But, doing penance, including good works, may be done in life as well as in the afterlife. And then the final part of the picture is that in the Catholic model, the Church mediates between laypeople and God. A Heavenly bureaucracy, if you will. An Indulgence is an official recognition by God acting through the Church that you have done sufficient penance in life to not require it in the afterlife.

I'm probably getting some amount of this horribly wrong, so sorry. Still, the key idea is that doing certain things is in itself penance, but you still need the paperwork.

OG_slinger wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

In short: You didn't bother to read the rebuttal article.

No, I read it. I simply don't count a CNN religion blog as necessarily being impartial when it comes to the story.

The simple fact remains that the Church has repeatedly tried to show that it's hip and cool by doing things like having the Pope send a Tweet from an iPad. But it's not hip and cool.

It's a 2,000 year-old organization with rites and beliefs that were hammered out in the Dark Ages. It's never going to be hip and cool. But it has to try if it's going to compete with evangelical churches that have bands with electric guitars and coffee shops (and who have been eating its lunch for years).

The Church could have simply announced the indulgences for the World Youth Day and let it be. Instead, they had to try to be hip and cool--hey, it's World Youth Day after all--and say that folks could participate through social media.

But the guidelines the Church published clearly stated that the indulgence only counted under very specific circumstance: you have to go to Church, receive the sacrament, and say a pre-canned prayer. Absolutely none of those things has anything to do with social media.

So it's not the media's fault that the Church actually didn't have a plan on how people could participate through social media and got caught with its pants down when someone asked for additional details, like if Twitter counted.

First and foremost, I'm a little sad nobody commented on my Professor Genki Bible Camp joke. Too dark? Too soon?

OG, I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Ok, so the Holy See itself is a bit stodgy and behind the times. At the parish level, plenty of priests, youth ministers, school principals, etc, use social media to great effect. And your comment about evangelical churches is also off base. Plenty of the local parishes here in Seattle have Sunday evening masses with all the electric guitars, modern Christian songs, and pizzazz of Evangelical services. Ok, so we don't have espresso stands. Instead we have Octoberfests, Wine Festivals, etc. I'd say that's not a bad trade.

You're an atheist and see little to no value in religion, and that's fair. I just wish you would stop acting like the Catholic Church is stuck in the Dark Ages, which it isn't.

Hypatian wrote:

Or perhaps "time served". The base idea is that certain sins are so grave that even when you are forgiven, you cannot escape some amount of punishment. But, doing penance, including good works, may be done in life as well as in the afterlife. And then the final part of the picture is that in the Catholic model, the Church mediates between laypeople and God. A Heavenly bureaucracy, if you will. An Indulgence is an official recognition by God acting through the Church that you have done sufficient penance in life to not require it in the afterlife.

I'm probably getting some amount of this horribly wrong, so sorry. Still, the key idea is that doing certain things is in itself penance, but you still need the paperwork.

This is really a pretty good way to frame it. The only thing I might add is that while the church may act as a mediator, it doesn't claim to know how much penance/how many indulgences are required for any given person to really wipe the slate clean. The church--specifically the Apostolic Penitentiary--just establishes the parameters for earning indulgences. Only God can determine what is required to pass out of Purgatory.

CheezePavilion wrote:

Off the top of my head (and what Podunk's links probably explain), the importance of Confession is that if you die without confessing a mortal sin (i.e. Catholic Felonies), you are in danger of going to Hell to suffer forever (edit: you can't really remit time in Hell--it's pretty much "Eternal Life - No Parole" as I understand it, and that's part of your misconceptions here). If you die having confessed a mortal sin, you go to Purgatory to suffer, but only for a limited amount of time. If you confess AND get an indulgence, you don't go to Hell OR Purgatory (or at least, you don't spend as much time in Purgatory or get punished as badly, I guess).

This is good too.

jdzappa wrote:

OG, I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Ok, so the Holy See itself is a bit stodgy and behind the times. At the parish level, plenty of priests, youth ministers, school principals, etc, use social media to great effect. And your comment about evangelical churches is also off base. Plenty of the local parishes here in Seattle have Sunday evening masses with all the electric guitars, modern Christian songs, and pizzazz of Evangelical services. Ok, so we don't have espresso stands. Instead we have Octoberfests, Wine Festivals, etc. I'd say that's not a bad trade.

You're an atheist and see little to no value in religion, and that's fair. I just wish you would stop acting like the Catholic Church is stuck in the Dark Ages, which it isn't.

And I see the exact opposite here in the Midwest: the pews filled with nothing but gray- and blue-haired people and only music being a medicore amature on acoustic guitar or a nun who is literally deaf. Not everything is the opposite because there's a never-ending number of Octoberfests, summer festivals, and the like here as well because, you know, Catholics like to get their drink on.

As much as you'd like to think my comments about evangelical churches are off base, you really should look deeper. The Catholic Church is really getting its collect ass handed to it by the more evangelical churches. Their membership is up and Catholic membership is declining. In areas like Mexico and South America--virtually entirely Catholic a few decades ago--20 to 30 percent of the population now considers itself to be evangelical.

That is the problem the Church finds itself in now: centuries of tradition doesn't sell to well to younger generations, especially if there's a better lifestyle religion they can chose (evangelical Christianity). That and Church leadership continually comes down on the wrong side of social issues causing the average parishioner, especially here in America, to pull the ole "well, I don't believe that crazy bit of my religion" routine.

And I've never said that the Catholic Church is stuck in the Dark Ages. It's a massive, extremely conservative organization with millennia of history and tradition. That can be seen as a positive: it's survived the falls of empires and plagues that wiped out 75% of the population. But it can also been seen as a negative: it's too resistant to social and technological change, the pace of both have never been faster.

I fall into the latter camp. The Church will continue to lose members and influence because it refuses to change, because its centuries of rites and academically formed beliefs won't let it change. That, coupled with a leadership that is far too white, male, old, and isolated, doesn't bode well for the future of the Church.

Pretty sure this means she can either kill someone or be gay and still get in heaven.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/KE1bm7G.jpg)

If the Pope is taking selfies, I am pretty sure that means that they, at last, will not be the cause of the apocalypse.

mudbunny wrote:

If the Pope is taking selfies, I am pretty sure that means that they, at last, will not be the cause of the apocalypse.

Whereas I see it as proof that they will be.

So apparently now the Pope is saying that the Catholic church needs to stop focusing so much on abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. He's still not exactly endorsing any of these things, but I guess it's good that he's not actively preaching against them either.

Stop talking about things that make people hate us so publicly!

Yet another instance of apparent "try to stay relevant" PR management while continuing to ignore the sexual abuse elephant in the room. Stay classy, pope.

I think that the Catholic church has a whole herd of elephants in the room, and the Pope is addressing some of them, albeit incompletely. Just because he hasn't addressed that specific elephant doesn't mean he doesn't deserve credit for his work to make the Catholic Church a better institution.

Words are nice and all, but changing an organization as large and old as the Catholic Church requires a purge. I'll believe Francis is serious when I start seeing news about a slew of old school bishops and cardinals "retiring."

Full text of the original interview, if anyone wants the context.

Yonder wrote:

I think that the Catholic church has a whole herd of elephants in the room, and the Pope is addressing some of them, albeit incompletely. Just because he hasn't addressed that specific elephant doesn't mean he doesn't deserve credit for his work to make the Catholic Church a better institution.

Admittedly so... but the systematic cover-up and institutionalized negligence leading to the rape and molestation of countless young church members is the largest elephant in the room. I would rather they act like the world is ending over condoms if it meant that would be fixed.

Francis wrote:

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

The relevant portion. All PR, no actual change in position. Maybe there will be a change in messaging, but no actual change in philosophy.

Not wholly a bad thing. I think if they would just STFU about these things a bit, it might be helpful to those Catholics and Catholic teens who are otherwise in an oppressive church telling them they're broken, or doing the worst things ever.

Erm, ALL Catholic teens are like that. Everyone's a sinner. Everyone sins. Yada, yada. That's what I got, anyway.

LarryC wrote:

Erm, ALL Catholic teens are like that. Everyone's a sinner. Everyone sins. Yada, yada. That's what I got, anyway.

Fair point. But I don't think I've ever heard of a Catholic who committed suicide over, for example, masturbation. Most figure out, "Meh, whatever, you're wrong," after a bit. There are quite a few "sins" that don't carry the kind of oppressive stigma that being gay does.

In your locality. Maybe in others' as well. It's not the church that drives that where I live. Big name celebrities are openly gay and even take lovers. Church don't say nothin'. It can't single out the gay men and women when married men and women left and right are committing adultery. Everyone sins.

It's your people that do that. They want to persecute you, so they look to their church to justify it, and the Catholic Church does, like it has for hundreds of years for a myriad of activities that ought to be sinful themselves (killing other people, taking their land...). It's not the religion. It's your people.

It is largely the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, yes. But it's also an overarching cultural thing. Turning down the noise from the Catholics here, though, would be a welcome and helpful change.

Unless when you say "your people" you mean the gays? Because seriously. You can't mean that.

No, he is obviously referring to the US.

Yonder wrote:

No, he is obviously referring to the US.

I wouldn't say it's obvious, I never know with LarryC. But OK.