20 thoughts on “The Red Pope”

  1. Their main complaint with the Pope is his belief that someone who has divorced and then remarried may still be permitted communion.

    I assume that is not your primary beef.

    1. I haven’t read in detail, but they can’t be happy about his stance on homosexuality. But my primary beef with him is his Marxism, and scientific ignorance on climate.

      1. I’d describe it as Dope Francis falling hook, line, and sinker for the false gods of socialism and climatism.

    2. It’s the most obvious, easiest to make point where Francis seems to have traipsed on formal doctrine.

      There’s a growing sense among some Catholics (including probably all who signed this correction) that Francis dogmatizes questions of policy that require a great deal of prudence (and expertise he does not possess), and reduces to the prudential questions of moral conduct that really are dogmatic. Which is what one might expect of a left wing politician, but not a pope.

      But it would be harder to make a clear cut case of heresy in regard to his track record on all that.

  2. Trying to search for fall out of Pope John XXII’s filial correction but only Pope Francis links found. Does anybody know of repercussions of earlier example?

    [off topic] comments are closed on 6 options for N.K. but I thought of a 7th. Russia has 11 mile border w/ N.K. and is moving tanks there. If Russia over runs N.K., N.K. would have no excuse to target any other country. China already has Russia as a neighbor so wouldn’t create the same problem for China if we took out N.K. and Russia would be a vast improvement over Kim with very little downside. It might make Japan nervous but perhaps less than Kim Un remaining in power?

  3. “I think a lot of Catholics, perhaps even some who voted for him, are starting to think he was a mistake.”

    Um, Rand, this is not like “fill out a ballot for the Church Council election and place it in the basket.” Only the College of Cardinals gets to vote — you know, sort of like how the Electoral College used to be.

      1. Nice try. If you had said, “I think a lot of Catholics, perhaps even some of the church leaders who voted for him” but you didn’t. Your original sentence was a Maxine Waters-worthy stretcher.

          1. That’s the ambiguity of language. Don’t let it screw with you.

            Everybody knows you’re intelligent Rand. It’s a coutesy we should all extend to each other.

            If people understood my physical disabilities (which most could not unless actually experienced) I know they’d show a bit more kindness. Most intelligent people know about white vs black smoke and cardinals even if not Catholic.

            With my bad retinas I can almost not see what I just wrote. I get needles stuck in both eyes every month by an eye surgeon.

    1. I’ve heard there are plenty of cardinals with buyer’s remorse. They won’t say it in public, of course.

      But you’re right that they are the only ones with a vote.

      1. Heard where? I’d be interested in a link for that if available.

        But speaking just for my [Jewish] self, this pope seems a natural outgrowth of where the vast majority of Catholics in the world have gone in the last few decades. Left-wing politics override religion, though of course you find ways to justify in your religion whatever it is you think ought to be done. As we’ve seen recently, this applies to absolutely every issue; there are no issues that are sacrosanct.
        Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

        1. As both a religiously-conservative Catholic and a political Conservative who happens to be a Catholic, I am rather less than happy with Francis, but I really don’t see him as representative of or derived in some way from the “vast majority” of my co-religionists over “the last few decades” – where did that deranged notion come from?

  4. If it was about the timing of beatific vision, then the pope backed down.

    John XXII believed that those who died in grace do not see heaven and God face-to-face until Judgement Day. That contradicted the more traditional belief of immediate reward upon purification. The more traditional view was not part of official dogma, and while John XXII continued to preach his more novel view after he became pope, he never proclaimed it as an official church position.

    After the College of Cardinals met to discuss the subject, the pope backed down and accepted their more traditional view. His successor, Benedict XII, proclaimed the immediate eternal reward of the saved upon death as official doctrine.

    1. That was meant as a response to Ken Anthony’s “Trying to search for fall out of Pope John XXII’s filial correction but only Pope Francis links found. Does anybody know of repercussions of earlier example?”

  5. Can’t say I’m happy with his talk about “climate change” or with his stance on this particular issue the article talks about. The Catholic Church is against divorce for dogmatic reasons but there are plenty of practical reasons to be against it as well. It makes light of the institution of marriage.

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