Pope Says Christians Should Apologize to People They Have Marginalized

[Skumring]

Pope John Paul II did that already, decades ago.

 
Must have been before my time then; or when I was still too young to care about religion as I was still being forced to sit through Mormon services...

And with that I tell you the Inquisition is still going strong. They just changed torture tactics.

[Jack]

And with that I tell you the Inquisition is still going strong. They just changed torture tactics.

Okay, I can think of a variety of things this might be referring to depending on your approach. Please elaborate.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

[Skumring]

Okay, I can think of a variety of things this might be referring to depending on your approach. Please elaborate.

 
Have you ever sat through a mormon church service? Try doing it as a kid. It's torture as an adult. It's worse when you're a kid.

[Jack]

Have you ever sat through a mormon church service? Try doing it as a kid. It's torture as an adult. It's worse when you're a kid.

I have not, having been raised Catholic and not Mormon. I can't imagine you're suggesting the Pope should apologize for Mormons, though, so could you please elaborate further as to which Catholic Church-related Inquisition we're talking about?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

[Phouka]

I believe that the doctrine of the Catholic Church should remain as it is; and that Catholics should continue to oppose LGBT advancement because that is what the Church, in light of both Scripture and Sacred Tradition, teaches.

 
But doctrine is man made, not God made. And the scriptures are also man made. God nor Jesus wrote either  of the testaments, mean did. I'm sorry but I would rather follow in Jesus's footsteps than follow the hatred of the man written interpretations of what God and Jesu meant.

Phouka

[Faemon]

Castus is upset at the mere appearance of a softening stance--which he's entitled to be if he so chooses--but let's not mistake that for a change of actual substance.

Exactly. Where do you (Castus) exactly think the Pope is drawing the line? Does a Catholic apologizing to a classmate for tripping them in the school halls because of a rumor they were gay, mean that the whole substance of the church's doctrines have changed so much you want to vomit? Or is that still cool because it's closer to an act of contrition for bearing false witness against a neighbor only rumored to be gay? What I hear othewise is Castus saying Catholics should totally brutalize gender traitors and justify that violence with religion because that's what the religion is there for, no apology. It's hardly humane or constructive to keep marginalization so abstract.

[RecycledBenedict]

And with that I tell you the Inquisition is still going strong. They just changed torture tactics.

The organization once known as the holy Inquisition still exist. It changed name in 1904 to Sanctum Officium, then again in 1965 to The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Its methods today are less dramatic: Some lecturers are sometimes forbidden to speak at Roman Catholic universities (but are allowed to speak at other universities). Some authors are sometimes forbidden to be published by Roman Catholic publishing houses (but are allowed to be published by other publishing houses). And it publishes certain official documents.

[Skumring]

I have not, having been raised Catholic and not Mormon. I can't imagine you're suggesting the Pope should apologize for Mormons, though, so could you please elaborate further as to which Catholic Church-related Inquisition we're talking about?

 
What? You enjoyed church services and all of the little indoctrination classes afterward? For a normal child, or even abnormal, being forced to sit quiet & still for hours on end while the adults drone on and on is torture.

Also, I only reference the mormon version because that's the one I'm most familiar with as my folks didn't really attend any other churches. Plus, to my knowledge, the format of nearly all christian church services are similar and all resemble, to some extent, the RCC method.

[RecycledBenedict]

What? You enjoyed church services and all of the little indoctrination classes afterward? For a normal child, or even abnormal, being forced to sit quiet & still for hours on end while the adults drone on and on is torture.

Also, I only reference the mormon version because that's the one I'm most familiar with as my folks didn't really attend any other churches. Plus, to my knowledge, the format of nearly all christian church services are similar and all resemble, to some extent, the RCC method.

There are significant differences between the ways different Christian denominations practice their worship. From the sound of what you describe, Mormon worship differ deeply from what I have encountered among Lutherans, High Anglicans, Eastern (and Oriental) Orthodox and Roman Catholics, but it sounds similar to what I have encountered among Congregationalists (relatives!) minus the 'indoctrination classes'. I don't even know what that is supposed to mean?

The 'sitting still' part is not something I recognize from my experience of the Eastern (and Oriental) Orthodox: Both children and adults are able to walk around in the room during the Divine Liturgy (or the Hours). Some - especially younger men - take a pause for smoking cigarets outdoors now and then during the service. And the Lutherans, aware of the short attention span of children, rather often have a room filled with toys for children, especially in modern church buildings built in the last 60 years, or so.

'For hours' is something else I do not recognize from my own encounters with Christian worship. A Choral Evensong takes 30 minutes, 45 minutes max, and have nice theurgical qualities, especially when incense is used and the candles blessed. A read Mass might be over after 20-25 minutes, but a sung Sunday Mass takes 60-65 minutes. 'For hours' is an exaggeration. The Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy might take as long as two hours, but the Greek Orthodox finish it within 60-75 minutes, since their musical compositions doesn't repeat the text as many times as the Russians.

The Mormon experience sounds quite different from the forms of Christianity I have first-hand experience of.

[Jenett]

What? You enjoyed church services and all of the little indoctrination classes afterward? For a normal child, or even abnormal, being forced to sit quiet & still for hours on end while the adults drone on and on is torture.

I was raised Episcopalian originally, and my parents returned to and I converted to the Catholic church at 13 (and remained an active Catholic through the year after I finished college, when I was 23 or so.)

In our Episcopal parish, younger children went to the first part of the service, were usually brought out of church for a 15-20 minute age appropriate thing during the sermon and the more dry parts of the service, and came back for the end.

Afterwards, the kids went to Sunday school, and adults did too, and the activities were age appropriate, and with some flexibility about which room a particular kid went to, depending on their needs. Sunday School usually lasted about an hour, and it mostly focused on things like Bible stories (which, regardless of one's beliefs, are handy knowledge for a wide variety of cultural literacy and historical topics in Western Europe and the Americas).

So, not really 'hours and hours' and definitely not any more torturous than my (also well-run) public elementary school at that time. Not a great fit for every kid, but they made a real effort to make the classes interesting, engaging, and on a level that made sense to the children.

So, on the Catholic side, a standard Catholic mass in the US also only lasts about 45 minutes to an hour (depending on how much music there is and how long it takes, and how long the homily is). Basically, many Catholic parishes in the US are active enough that the priests are saying 3-5 Masses on a given Sunday (because not everyone will fit in the church at once), so *they're* very busy, and also want to have time to have lunch in there and sit down sometime, but any given part of the parish congregation is only there for an hour or so.

At the parish I attended in my teens, you could attend Mass on Saturday afternoon (handy, if you were going to be busy all day Sunday with something), 8am (limited music), 10am (full choir), noon (folk music), and 5pm (limited music). Most people/families would have a preference, but would go to whichever service fit their schedules best in a given week. The limited music ones ran more like 40-45 minutes, the others closer to 50-55 minutes, usually.

I obviously didn't attend Catholic CCD except for the last years (I had one year of pre-confirmation CCD and then two years of their pre-confirmation sequence, which was designed to give a full view of what it meant to make a deliberate choice to become Catholic as someone reasonably adult.)

Those lasted about 90 minutes or two hours, and also involved a nice mix of other activities (the parish I was in was on the border between two towns, so it was also a chance to spend time with people who didn't go to your particular high school.)

They covered a variety of topics: ethics, Catholic teachings, some Bible stories, but more about more nuanced interpretations of same. I sometimes found them intellectually frustrating (in the sense that I was a good bit smarter than most people in my confirmation classes, and wanted to go deeper than the classes would go in the time involved and with the other people there) but I'd go home and talk about the same topics with my parents, and that was fine. And I got a lot out of the community aspects, especially toward the tail end when my father was diagnosed with and then died of cancer.

Still definitely not torturous - and if at that point someone really didn't want to be there, our parish was very clear that confirmation was a decision someone had to make for themselves, and if they weren't feeling like they wanted to, confirmation would be an option for them later, and the parish would rather not pressure anyone who wasn't sure they wanted to be there. (So some kids definitely did do CCD up to that point, but not the confirmation sequence, or dropped part way through confirmation prepartion.)

In other words, no, not all churches work like you think they do, there's a lot of variation. (And there's a lot of variation even within a given denomination, and some parishes or churches do kids stuff *way* better than others - my parents chose the Catholic parish we went to in large part because they did teen programming much better than the other parishes that were an equivalent drive from us - there are about 5 within a 10-15 minute radius of where we lived. But people - including kids - were very happy at those other parishes too.)

[Darkhawk]

What? You enjoyed church services and all of the little indoctrination classes afterward? For a normal child, or even abnormal, being forced to sit quiet & still for hours on end while the adults drone on and on is torture.

Also, I only reference the mormon version because that's the one I'm most familiar with as my folks didn't really attend any other churches. Plus, to my knowledge, the format of nearly all christian church services are similar and all resemble, to some extent, the RCC method.

 
I am getting the impression that you thought you were making an obvious clever joke, rather than making a comment about the historical and current facts of the nature of the Inquisition.

It appears to me that most people have been responding to you as if you were making a historical statement and trying to figure out what you were talking about regarding facts, rather than humour.

I hope that helps.

[Castus]

Castus gets it wrong, and it's exactly why I'm unimpressed with this pope: There hasn't been any change in doctrine (nor is there likely to be), and the political activity of the Catholic Church against LGBT rights remains largely unchanged. Castus is upset at the mere appearance of a softening stance--which he's entitled to be if he so chooses--but let's not mistake that for a change of actual substance.

I realise that 'Castus gets it wrong' are some of your favourite words Altair, but I disagree :p My contention that the Pope's words undermine doctrine seems fairly well borne out even in the OP; with Demophon breathlessly exclaiming that this could possibly lead to Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and the ordination of women being overturned. This, exactly, is my problem with Francis. His comments undermine doctrine, which is the opposite of what he's actually supposed to do.
 

Have you ever sat through a mormon church service? Try doing it as a kid. It's torture as an adult. It's worse when you're a kid.

 
Attending a Mormon church service is the reason I'm not a baptised Mormon today. I was very close to converting, then attended the worst church service of my life. *shudders*

But doctrine is man made, not God made. And the scriptures are also man made. God nor Jesus wrote either  of the testaments, mean did. I'm sorry but I would rather follow in Jesus's footsteps than follow the hatred of the man written interpretations of what God and Jesu meant.

Phouka

I beg to differ. Orthodox and conservative Jews (myself happily among them) believe the Tanakh (i.e. the OT) was dictated directly to Moses by G-d at Sinai. Meanwhile, most Christian denominations, and in my case Messianic Judaism, believe that the Brit Chadasha (i.e. the NT) was divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit/Ruach HaKodesh. The Bible is in both cases very clear on homosexuality and it is from that that the RCC draws it's rightful condemnation.
 

Exactly. Where do you (Castus) exactly think the Pope is drawing the line? Does a Catholic apologizing to a classmate for tripping them in the school halls because of a rumor they were gay, mean that the whole substance of the church's doctrines have changed so much you want to vomit? Or is that still cool because it's closer to an act of contrition for bearing false witness against a neighbor only rumored to be gay? What I hear othewise is Castus saying Catholics should totally brutalize gender traitors and justify that violence with religion because that's what the religion is there for, no apology. It's hardly humane or constructive to keep marginalization so abstract.

Again, my problem with Francis' statement is that it undermines doctrine. Nowhere in Catholic doctrine does it say "go be a dick to gay people" and I'd be fine if Francis was more specific in forbidding such things; but he isn't. His statement is -- as always -- characteristically vague. I mean, he has set the bar so low that, according to him, the Catholic Church should apologise to gays it has merely offended; not even apologise for any actual harm.

[Altair]

I realise that 'Castus gets it wrong' are some of your favourite words Altair

Right up there with "We hold these truths to be self-evident"! At least I didn't write "Castus gets it wrong--as usual" :whis:

but I disagree :p My contention that the Pope's words undermine doctrine seems fairly well borne out even in the OP; with Demophon breathlessly exclaiming that this could possibly lead to Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and the ordination of women being overturned. This, exactly, is my problem with Francis. His comments undermine doctrine, which is the opposite of what he's actually supposed to do.

We'll have to agree to disagree--as usual. The breathless excitement of casual Vatican observers (particularly the Western press) does not signal an erosion of doctrine to me nor to many others with a bitter history of conflict with that church; we've fought them long enough to know better. Nor is it read as an erosion of doctrine by the petrified fossils who make up that church's hierarchy and its various affiliated bureaucracies. For example, the staunchly right-wing Catholic League:

http://www.catholicleague.org/washington-post-lies-about-pope/

What it *does* signal is that this pope is adept at PR, able with a few carefully placed words that change the Catholic church's doctrine and actions not one iota to generate good will among the naïve. As a Catholic booster, you should be pleased; this pope has been very successful in hoodwinking many into buying that his is a kinder, gentler Catholic church.

It isn't.

[Altair]

I think one of the real linchpins of that is the "If you have to explain to people that you're behaving lovingly, you are not very good at expressing love.  If those people's further reaction is not 'Oh, I get it now' but 'Wow, your sense of what love is is so fucked up it's indistinguishable from hatred' you have gone beyond being not good at it into abject incompetence."  (What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; upon this rests the Law and the Prophets, after all.  Okay, so that's Jewish.  Still.)

I appreciate the current Pope actually paying attention to the poor, which I agree with him is core to the fundamental Christian message as originally presented, but the rest of this stuff is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

 
All of this.

[Castus]

Is this the same Cool Pope who, while on tour in the US, decided Junipero Serra was a saint?  

It is? Ok, then back to this week's episode of "I don't give a shit what the Pope says."

 
To be fair to the Pope, canonisations aren't really individual decisions. There's a whole process to follow, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to listen to, etc etc.