Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality
Pope Francis urged Vatican bureaucrats Thursday to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality, an appeal made days after he formally allowed priests to bless same-sex couples in a radical change of Vatican policy.
Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Holy See hierarchy to encourage the cardinals, bishops and laypeople who run the Vatican to listen to one another and to others so they can evolve to truly offer service to the Catholic Church.
Speaking in the Hall of Blessings, Francis told them it was important to keep advancing and growing in their understanding of the truth. Fearfully sticking to rules may give the appearance of avoiding problems but only ends up hurting the service that the Vatican Curia is called to give the church, he said.
“Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward,"the pope said. "We are called instead to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads.”
Is this man actually trying to get into heaven or something?
I hate the religion, I hate that there’s even a pope. But this guy, He’s the fucking best.
Honestly as Christianity goes the Catholics are fucking moderates these days. Which really is saying something.
Also the Pope has like, the world’s best hat.
We’re a non-religious, casually Christian affiliated family and we’re seriously thinking of sending our daughter to a Catholic school just for the far higher quality of education. (No concerning priests or nuns btw, these are government run schools)
I never would have even considered it as an option 10 years ago. But they really do seem to have their shit together, terrible acts in the past notwithstanding
I don’t pretend to know where you are time vs money. And it could be that private school is your best option. I’m also assuming that you’re in the US but that may not be the case. And what you can throw away everything I’m saying here because I know public and private schools in Europe and many other places are entirely different.
I did private for a few years. The only substantial difference for me was that the private teachers would make sure you do your homework and punish you if you don’t.
YMMV, but I will have to say that probably 40% of those kids in my private school were Grade-A assholes. Zero compassion, every little thing was a do or die competition. The teacher would do the best she could to control social situations but, there’s only so much she can do. She’s not going to fight the other parents for you by kicking little Jimmy out for being a jerk. They bring the two sets of parents together and that’s about the point where you find out why Little Jimmy is the way he is.
The state schools are being pressured pretty hard for testing scores, so it’s not so much that they don’t want to teach your kids or can’t teach your kids, but they’re underfunded and overworked and are going to pick the ones that are easiest to teach to raise that number.
But you can probably get the same outcome from using public school and pulling in a tutor after say middle school. Your school might even provide tutelage, but you’re probably going to have to realize that it needs to happen and ask them for it.
If you have some time, even just getting marginally involved in your kids education you can pull off approximately what the private schools do. Order the common core teacher manuals that your schools use, once a week go over the same things they did in school. Tell your public teachers you want to get on the same page as them they’d probably be delighted no matter how useless the seem.
Again if you’ve got excess cash, The private schools will absolutely get the job done. Just do some due diligence, find some families locally that take their kids there start asking them particular questions that would suit your kids well.
Anything before around 10th grade, just make sure that they’re keeping up grades and knowledge in algebra, calculus, trig, science and english.
All those high school grades and scores are honestly trash as long as they get into the college they want.
Hey internet stranger. Here is another internet strangers 2 cents on Catholic High Schools based on my personal experience.
TL:DR Education is good, but the school might make it so they can’t take the classes they want or need for Religion Class (unless they mess up). And at my school there were cliques that socially isolated me and many others, with unchecked bullying which felt encouraged by the staff. I am happy I completed it, but I’d wouldn’t want my kids to go through the same thing.
This happened over a decade ago, but the school I went to was both good, and very, very bad. The pro was why you are considering it. The education quality is much higher than the local public school. I was prepared for University much better than those I meet at the University I went to, who went to public High School.
The con was two fold. First some education options were denied to other students due to “optional” religion studies class. Technically a school can’t force a high schooler to take religion where I went. But the check box for that course was always checked before I got the class sheet. Which meant that I couldn’t choose what optional courses I wanted if it overlap with that religion course.
On a side note they messed up 3 ways in my last year. They couldn’t get me in a gym class for gr 12, so I had to goto a gr 10 class, then I took a CAD course which I wanted and a coding, but by the time they realized I wasnt taking religion, it was too late. I was given a speal on how I couldn’t get a religion high school diploma, but just the normal one. It was fun especially since.
The second big con. The school was extremely cliquey. Like debilitating so. I was from another community, my bus ride was an hour away. So in Gr 9 I tried to make friends… But the cliques were already made. And I as well as many others were socially isolated. I didn’t find the misfits hiding away at lunch in the media classroom until like gr. 10/11. There was another crowd in the art room. This attitude sadly felt encouraged by some the staff, and bullying was out of control, it often resorted to physical violence more than once. I stayed off of the radar but I hated those 4 years. If it wasn’t for my activities outside of school I would’ve been in a really bad state.
With that said, there was another (3 in total) Catholic high school in my local area, which my extended family went to. Apparently the one they went to was so much better.
Retrospectively, I understood how much of a benefit it was to go there. I am happy I was able to stick it out. But I would do a lot of research before putting my kids into a Catholic high school since I don’t want them to have a repeat of my time.
Pope Francis says to avoid Rigid Ideologies?
So, pope Francis says to avoid Catholicism.
In the name of the father, the son, and the holy Spirit. Amen.
Are we gonna end up with an anti-pope?
I really don’t know, I just know the term and it sounds cool.
Honestly it’s possible. Certain diocese of the church (looking at you USA) have become far more conservative as the rest of the Church has passed them by. Vatican 2 has fully taken hold, and I really don’t believe the conservatives hold enough power in Rome to elect one of their own when Francis passes.
They very well might just take their ball and go home like the “Old Catholics” did after the reforms of the First Vatican Council.
I mean, there are already plenty, for example, Peter III, who leads a Spanish church that believes they are the rightful Church. (Also, antipope is a subjective word, like heretic. From the perspective of various sects, the Pope Francis is the antipope.)
Nothing stops you from calling yourself Pope and claiming you’re the rightful leader of the Church, hereby making you an antipope to the eyes of the Church.
Now is there going to be a relevant antipope, that’s a lot less likely.
The relevancy of antipopes hinged on the political power of the pope. Having the pope at your beck and call was an extremely powerful tool in the Middle Ages. But nowadays, between the secularization of most Catholic countries, and the massive loss of influence of the Catholic Church, an antipope would only have as much influence as his followers would give him, especially since they wouldn’t have the support of the Holy See or the Church.
(Also, antipope is a subjective word, like heretic. From the perspective of various sects, the Pope Francis is the antipope.)
I thought the Church claimed an unbroken line of popes going back to the apostle Peter.
Wouldn’t any competitor only have a legitimate claim if they named their first pope during the brief downtime between popes? Otherwise they’re just another protestant sect.
Some did (the Spanish church from the example I gave named their first pope after the death of Paul VI in 1976), but nothing stops you from having your own conclave of bishops, and have them say that the current Pope has been judged inept to rule (although that has never happened before in the Holy See).
Which would make the line unbroken, the same way that the line was still unbroken when Benedict XVI resigned and Francis was elected pope.
I imagine it’s quite a bit different when an actual pope turns into an anti-pope, compared to just some random dude in Spain claiming to be Pope, no?
For the Pope to turn into an antipope, you’d either need to have a massive schism in the Church that leaves the current pope completely stranded politically and causes the Church to ignore him, or you’d somehow need a higher authority than the Church to show up and name a different pope, and assume the current one wouldn’t yield.
So basically, short of Jesus showing up and naming a new pope that the current one doesn’t agree with, the current pope won’t become an antipope.
How do you be gay and catholic?
It’s not gay if it’s a young boy duh! /s
This is actually a huge issue though on accepting the LGBTQ+ community at large and getting them in at least here in the United States. A lot of other religions have started to and I have gay and trans friends that go to these churches because they accept them for who they are and don’t try to shame them or try to change them
Church always has at least one extremely obviously gay dude serving. My interpretation of that stereotype is that usually that gay dude has the fear of god and his daddies belt instilled into them. Not a cute look. This usually prevents dates from being in public and reduces the whole situation into hidden meetings and idk, I wish them the best and to eventually see out of the church.
Short answer is: You just be gay and also Catholic.
In most Catholic churches, no one is going to care that I bang dudes any more than they care that I show up on Christmas and Easter.
They care significantly more if you say “Thanks!” when receiving communion than they do that you’re gay.
Catholics aren’t Evangelicals and they care about radically different things.
“Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward"
Never expected pope to diss christianity.
Former Christian here… I’ll give the religion credit it allows for a lot of openness and exactly what the pope is talking about. The main icon of Christianity was all about accepting people, legit the time where Jesus got angry with whips and table flipping was because money changers and vendors were cheating the poor (long story: You had pilgrims that would come bringing currency that would not be accepted by the temple so the money changers would do exactly what was on the tin… for a fee, and then the temple was selling animals to be sacrificed, the doves being brought up specifically because they were sold to the poorest that couldn’t afford the bigger sacrifices.) This is the idealogical head of the religion who is said to have sat and dined with those considered sinners while shunning the so called “faithful”
Honestly even as parable the stories in the bible are perfect reflections of the way most Christians would react. It’s said regularly that the Christians would kill Jesus as a heretic if he came back… ignoring the fact that it was those that had power within the church that crucified Jesus in the Bible.
I got lucky in being raised to go to a church with a preacher that was big on critical thinking. Another fitting example of Christianity ignoring its own teachings, post 9/11 said preacher gave a sermon talking about a religious extremist with a middle eastern background that spoke out against the prevailing government at the time, explaining that was exactly who Jesus was, the sermon on not hating from statements just made by assumptions, had the magazine that on the cover that had the ‘real face of Jesus’ to show not your white long haired man but the middle eastern face as a part of the sermon… naturally said preacher was politely “let go” from the church.
