Pope Francis Calls Sex Outside Marriage ‘Not the Most Serious Sin’
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  Pope Francis Calls Sex Outside Marriage ‘Not the Most Serious Sin’
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Author Topic: Pope Francis Calls Sex Outside Marriage ‘Not the Most Serious Sin’  (Read 2160 times)
Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #25 on: December 19, 2021, 08:40:01 AM »

Dante's work is also fiction, not a chapter of the Bible.

The 7 deadly sins aren't in the Bible either, you know.

If you think the Bible is supposed to clearly and definitively settle every religious question, you really don't understand Catholicism.
Lol. I don't believe in biblical inerrancy, you're barking up the wrong tree.

I mean, it sounded a lot like you were saying the Divine Comedy was an invalid reference in understanding Catholic tradition because it's not in the Bible. Which sure sounds a lot like the sola scriptura position, but if that's not what you meant fair enough.
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Nathan
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« Reply #26 on: December 19, 2021, 05:04:34 PM »

And on a side note, Nathan, I understand the point you were making, but using f**king lynchings as your parallel is an unnecessary rhetorical escalation and just plain gross. You're better than this.

The only reason my mind went to lynching was because, as I said, it's the subject that the term "whataboutery" was coined in reference to. I obviously shouldn't have left open the interpretation that I thought the severity of the problems was similar (which I don't, as I'm sure you trust), and you're right to call me out on that.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #27 on: December 19, 2021, 05:07:50 PM »

And on a side note, Nathan, I understand the point you were making, but using f**king lynchings as your parallel is an unnecessary rhetorical escalation and just plain gross. You're better than this.

The only reason my mind went to lynching was because, as I said, it's the subject that the term "whataboutery" was coined in reference to. I obviously shouldn't have left open the interpretation that I thought the severity of the problems was similar (which I don't, as I'm sure you trust), and you're right to call me out on that.

Thanks. Yeah, I knew you didn't actually mean to draw a moral equivalence between those two, hence why my criticism was rhetorical rather than substantive. I think I've been able to address the substantive part of your comment in my reply to PiT, but if you have further thoughts on it I'm always happy to hear them.
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #28 on: December 20, 2021, 04:00:56 PM »

Because we live in dumb world, I'm sure this will be blast all over as "Pope says adultery ok now", which is unfortunate. 

     This is the one thing that worries me about this story. While it is definitely true that sexual sins are not the worst sins one could commit, there are certain folks representing a few different causes who would gladly interpret this as meaning that sexual sins aren't bad. Being charitable to Pope Francis he probably did not intend that understanding at all, but that could easily be warped into the intended meaning in the eyes of the general public.

This would be a valid concern if there wasn't an equally pervasive tendency on the right to act like sexual sin is the only kind of sin worth worrying about, at the expense of all the far more serious sins rooted in greed or pride that they regularly condone.

No, it's a valid concern anyway, in the same way that lynching was a valid concern despite being the object of the OG whataboutery. Someone with PiT's political loyalties and low overall opinion of Pope Francis might not be the best messenger here, but it's difficult to deny that the secular press has a habit of exaggerating Francis's liberalism to advance its own "liberal default worldview".

     In the interests of disclosure, I'd also mention that this sort of stuff bothers me because of a tendency by many to see the Orthodox as "Catholic but Greek", and as such they impute Pope Francis's statements that are construed as progressive onto us despite him having absolutely no standing within our ecclesiastical hierarchy. I am reminded of a poster on here (who I will not name, to spare the embarrassment) predicting that not only the Catholics but the Orthodox would be marrying same-sex couples within 30 years. Such a risible prediction is only made possible because certain people assume that we are just like Catholics. While the ecclesiastical structure and the traditional adherents of our respective churches differ substantially (to the point that the complaint that "trads believe only sexual sins are real sins!" is mostly irrelevant to Orthodox), there are plenty of people in both churches who do not pay close attention and who are prone to believing that the liberalization is real.

I don't believe for a second that either the Catholics or the Orthodox will be recognizing same-sex couples in 30 years, of course. And if the latter did, I'm perfectly aware that this has nothing to do with what the Pope says (and fwiw, it's not like we should expect every Pope after Francis to keep talking like he does, although I'd certainly hope future Popes will continue to look down on the reactionary heresies that have festered in places like America for years).

I just think that saying "the Pope shouldn't say this thing that is clearly true, and that he has a very good reason for saying given that some people within his Church are acting like it isn't, because some people outside his Church will willfully misinterpret it" strikes me as seriously backwards in terms of priorities. Like, I'm sorry that other people are taking something the Pope is saying and using it to make dumb points about your Church, but I think the crypto-Evangelical rot that's actually festering within the Catholic Church is a far more pressing issue for him to be concerned with and tailor his rherotic around.

And on a side note, Nathan, I understand the point you were making, but using f**king lynchings as your parallel is an unnecessary rhetorical escalation and just plain gross. You're better than this.

     It's not only outside though; the Vatican has had problems with its German bishops ignoring its directions for the bulk of 2021 now and has done precious little about it. If the situation could accurately be characterized as the Vatican's enemies being conservatives inside and liberals outside, Pope Francis's tack would be clearly the correct one.

     For an Orthodox example, I supported Pat. Theodoros's decision to bring back deaconesses in the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Some conservatives were warning it would become a pretext to ordain women priests, and some modernists were excited for the same reason, but in truth it didn't matter because that debate was something entirely foreign to the context of Orthodox mission in Africa, which is the primary responsibility of Pat. Theodoros and in which situation the utility of deaconesses was apparent.

     You are right that he should not be trying to mould his message to what the media cannot misuse (which is impossible anyway), but liberal subversion is also a problem within the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Francis seems somewhat less interested in dealing with that. A lot of tradcaths speculate that that is because he supports the liberal elements seeking to renovate the Roman Catholic Church, but I would rather not speculate about his motives.
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« Reply #29 on: December 20, 2021, 04:18:00 PM »
« Edited: December 20, 2021, 04:52:17 PM by Butlerian Jihad »

The back of genuinely liberal (in the sense that, say, the Episcopal Church is liberal) Roman Catholicism was successfully broken by the JP2-Ratzinger CDF in the 80s and 90s, though. The most notorious "liberal" cleric in the US (or at least in the US conservative Catholic imagination), James Martin, is tacitly heterodox on two or three questions specifically related to homosexuality and transgender identity, as opposed to someone like Charles Curran who systematically and publicly rejected Church teaching across the whole issue area of human sexuality. Cardinal Marx is not as liberal as Cardinal Kasper, who was not as liberal as someone like the late Hans Kung. The liberal flank of the Church is still causing problems for "Pope's Catholics" and for the magisterium as an institution, but they're not nearly as far beyond the pale as they were forty or fifty years ago, whereas the conservative/trad flank is only getting more extreme with time. Even when it comes to the liturgy, the sorts of "abuses" people talk about today mostly comprise things like sludgy, mediocre music and laypeople making hand gestures they technically aren't supposed to. Macrame-chasuble hippie Masses are a fading memory and widely acknowledged to have been embarrassing even by people who were proponents of them at the time.
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« Reply #30 on: December 20, 2021, 05:48:09 PM »

The back of genuinely liberal (in the sense that, say, the Episcopal Church is liberal) Roman Catholicism was successfully broken by the JP2-Ratzinger CDF in the 80s and 90s, though. The most notorious "liberal" cleric in the US (or at least in the US conservative Catholic imagination), James Martin, is tacitly heterodox on two or three questions specifically related to homosexuality and transgender identity, as opposed to someone like Charles Curran who systematically and publicly rejected Church teaching across the whole issue area of human sexuality. Cardinal Marx is not as liberal as Cardinal Kasper, who was not as liberal as someone like the late Hans Kung. The liberal flank of the Church is still causing problems for "Pope's Catholics" and for the magisterium as an institution, but they're not nearly as far beyond the pale as they were forty or fifty years ago, whereas the conservative/trad flank is only getting more extreme with time. Even when it comes to the liturgy, the sorts of "abuses" people talk about today mostly comprise things like sludgy, mediocre music and laypeople making hand gestures they technically aren't supposed to. Macrame-chasuble hippie Masses are a fading memory and widely acknowledged to have been embarrassing even by people who were proponents of them at the time.

     I don't think extremity is the most pertinent measure to assess a problem. Look at the Arians vs. the non-Chalcedonians. The Arians were far more extreme in their error, but their episcopal line ultimately died out, whereas the non-Chalcedonians claim some 60 million adherents worldwide today, including the large majority of Christians in several countries. With that in mind, the non-Chalcedonians have done more damage to the global reach of the Church than the Arians ever did.
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« Reply #31 on: December 20, 2021, 06:00:22 PM »

The back of genuinely liberal (in the sense that, say, the Episcopal Church is liberal) Roman Catholicism was successfully broken by the JP2-Ratzinger CDF in the 80s and 90s, though. The most notorious "liberal" cleric in the US (or at least in the US conservative Catholic imagination), James Martin, is tacitly heterodox on two or three questions specifically related to homosexuality and transgender identity, as opposed to someone like Charles Curran who systematically and publicly rejected Church teaching across the whole issue area of human sexuality. Cardinal Marx is not as liberal as Cardinal Kasper, who was not as liberal as someone like the late Hans Kung. The liberal flank of the Church is still causing problems for "Pope's Catholics" and for the magisterium as an institution, but they're not nearly as far beyond the pale as they were forty or fifty years ago, whereas the conservative/trad flank is only getting more extreme with time. Even when it comes to the liturgy, the sorts of "abuses" people talk about today mostly comprise things like sludgy, mediocre music and laypeople making hand gestures they technically aren't supposed to. Macrame-chasuble hippie Masses are a fading memory and widely acknowledged to have been embarrassing even by people who were proponents of them at the time.

     I don't think extremity is the most pertinent measure to assess a problem. Look at the Arians vs. the non-Chalcedonians. The Arians were far more extreme in their error, but their episcopal line ultimately died out, whereas the non-Chalcedonians claim some 60 million adherents worldwide today, including the large majority of Christians in several countries. With that in mind, the non-Chalcedonians have done more damage to the global reach of the Church than the Arians ever did.

Have they? The current Catholic position on the non-Chalcedonians is that the...unfortunate events of the mid-fifth century were mostly due to a semantic issue (whether to translate ὑπόστασις into Latin as persona or natura given the respective connotations of those words at the time) that spiraled out of control, and that the resulting lack of communion thus has historical rather than theological causes. Is the Eastern Orthodox position different from this?
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #32 on: December 20, 2021, 06:11:44 PM »

The back of genuinely liberal (in the sense that, say, the Episcopal Church is liberal) Roman Catholicism was successfully broken by the JP2-Ratzinger CDF in the 80s and 90s, though. The most notorious "liberal" cleric in the US (or at least in the US conservative Catholic imagination), James Martin, is tacitly heterodox on two or three questions specifically related to homosexuality and transgender identity, as opposed to someone like Charles Curran who systematically and publicly rejected Church teaching across the whole issue area of human sexuality. Cardinal Marx is not as liberal as Cardinal Kasper, who was not as liberal as someone like the late Hans Kung. The liberal flank of the Church is still causing problems for "Pope's Catholics" and for the magisterium as an institution, but they're not nearly as far beyond the pale as they were forty or fifty years ago, whereas the conservative/trad flank is only getting more extreme with time. Even when it comes to the liturgy, the sorts of "abuses" people talk about today mostly comprise things like sludgy, mediocre music and laypeople making hand gestures they technically aren't supposed to. Macrame-chasuble hippie Masses are a fading memory and widely acknowledged to have been embarrassing even by people who were proponents of them at the time.

     I don't think extremity is the most pertinent measure to assess a problem. Look at the Arians vs. the non-Chalcedonians. The Arians were far more extreme in their error, but their episcopal line ultimately died out, whereas the non-Chalcedonians claim some 60 million adherents worldwide today, including the large majority of Christians in several countries. With that in mind, the non-Chalcedonians have done more damage to the global reach of the Church than the Arians ever did.

Have they? The current Catholic position on the non-Chalcedonians is that the...unfortunate events of the mid-fifth century were mostly due to a semantic issue (whether to translate ὑπόστασις into Latin as persona or natura given the respective connotations of those words at the time) that spiraled out of control, and that the resulting lack of communion thus has historical rather than theological causes. Is the Eastern Orthodox position different from this?

     Eastern Orthodox tend to fall into two camps, one saying as you describe and the other saying that they are monophysite heretics. I adhere to the former position, and have great affection for the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Even so, they are outside of the institutional Church in a literal sense and as long as they remain as such there are countries wherein the Church has not had success growing because of the presence of heterodox Christianity. Contrast this with the Arians, who despite being extreme heretics are a past tense phenomenon who are no longer doing damage in the world today (I don't blame them for the coincidental existence of sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses that teach similarly).
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Spark
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« Reply #33 on: December 24, 2021, 04:07:53 PM »

Didn't Dante rank lust as the lesser of the deadly sins? I don't necessarily agree myself, but this is certainly nothing new and would only be surprising to the perpetually sex-obsessed Americans.

See you in circle I.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #34 on: December 25, 2021, 07:07:33 AM »

Didn't Dante rank lust as the lesser of the deadly sins? I don't necessarily agree myself, but this is certainly nothing new and would only be surprising to the perpetually sex-obsessed Americans.

See you in circle I.

hahahahahahahahahaha
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