If Hell is empty, then where do all of the souls too poor to buy Genuine Church Indulgences go?
Yeah, he really was decent for a pope. And I think he might have been more decent as a pope if he had his way entirely. He really seemed like he wanted more compassion and change than he was able to make happen.
Nobody can’t change an institution like the Vatican in a few years, but I guess he tried.
Hopefully the new one will not be a conservative one.
From what I’ve seen elsewhere he appointed ~80% of the voting cardinals so there’s a better chance than usual that new pope will be at least relatively liberal.
I kind of want the next one to be a traditional African Roman Catholic partly to mix it up a bit, and partly because it fucks with racists.
Also kind of fucks with progressives, though. Lots of people would accuse them of racism when progressive christians critize a conservative black pope.
I agree. Though the pragmatist in me also thinks it’s for the better for things to change slowly, as bad as that feels. It kinda feels like social progress moving too quickly just results in more intense backlash.
Broader culture has to be able to keep up with the change and if it outpaces them it seems like people reject the changes and it can cement the problems in place as people dig their heels in :/
I appreciate that he pushed things forward though. There’s a lot more change still that needs to happen- I’m not holding my breath but I really hope the next pope actually carries that forward.
Yeah, there’s always a lot of flex in social movement. The harder you push, the further you get; but unless the system resilient enough to most adapt, it snaps, or it rebounds. Neither of which is a reliable form of change.
To me, once lives are no longer on the line on the big scale, it’s better to ease up and push for change gently from the bottom up rather than forcefully from the top down.
It doesn’t fix problems as fast, but once they get fixed, the populace’s inertia will serve up keep the changes as the status quo. Since the kind of changes that Francis was making were the kind that work from the bottom up, despite him being a power, I look at his changes as the result of the work already done, rather than something that was supposed to be the vanguard of change.
But, like you said, moving slow means that there’s going to be people getting ground down by the system as it exists. Even once you get past the point where people are dying frequently by way of violence or gaps in the system, there’s still going to be death, and suffering, until things change completely. But if you don’t slow down once that goal is met, the serious enemies of humane change will fight harder and nastier.
You end up with a worse situation overall by pushing until a system breaks. You get the crazies making desperate moves instead of being gradually worn away.
I mean, I did say for a pope there.
And it’s possible to be flawed and still have compassion. Should he have done better? Absolutely. But he was better than the pope before him, and the one before that, alllll the way back.
It’s okay to recognize the good in a person while also recognising the bad.
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome and it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to bring up the bad in a top level comment.
It’s fine in child comments, imo, but if a community is geared around things being uplifting and positive, a top level comment should stay focused on those things. It’s one of those things where if I have to say something that drags down the overall thread, I shouldn’t say it at all. So I focused on the good side of things.
And, again, I did say that he was decent for a pope. I acknowledged that he had flaws indirectly in as friendly a way as possible by phrasing things that way
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome
You make a good point. I’ve deleted my comment. I was out of line bringing it to this community. My bad.
He did approve blessing same sex marriage which is an improvement compared to the previous pope who called it evil, so he was compassionate compared to that.
But yeah, standards for popes are very very low.
The previous pope was a Nazi, I can’t even remember the guy’s pope name, just his real name. Fuck Ratzinger.
Decent for a pope isn’t saying much when he wasn’t decent as a person. Homophobic slur using piece of shit he was behind closed doors.
My mother is a divorcée. In 90s Ireland, she was demonized by the Catholic Church, and was publicly refused communion by the local priest after she left my (at the time alcoholic and abusive) father. She had a crisis of faith after all that and accepted the “fact” that she was doomed to hell while her five children would go to heaven. She quietly accepted this and from then on refused communion at all events, making up excuses with us none the wiser.
In the mid 2000s, I came out as gay and following that, spurred by the church’s cruel treatment of my mother, left the church via apostasy. I had to tell my mother in detail as I was no longer allowed to be buried in a Catholic graveyard. She laminated the letter confirming my leaving of the church from the bishop.
In the mid 2010s she and I campaigned for Marriage Equality together. She told me about her crisis of faith. She also told me how I helped her through the other side of it just by existing. Before she thought all her children would be separated from her after death. But heathen that I was had equally doomed myself to join her. Logically that would make hell lesser. Logically that means the more sinners in hell, the less hellish it is. Therefore hell in its most hellish is empty, and the whole threat is bullshit whether you believe in an afterlife or not.
The fucking POPE saying something like this is huge, and very important for people that carry a burden of Catholic guilt. Good on him, and RIP.
Wow! Your mom is a certified badass. She showed courage, stood up for herself and protected you and your siblings. Accepting eternal damnation with full understanding and dignity.
I grew up in a cult that took elements from different faiths. Every religion has the empty threat of a hell. All to keep people in their place. Even if it means to be an abusive man’s posession.
This made my ultra-catholic mother really angry. If non-catholic people didn’t go to hell, then what was the point of all the effort she was putting in? She went to church every day. She followed rules like not eating meat on Friday. To her, it was really unfair that someone might get to go to heaven without having to put in all that work. How is anybody supposed to be a good person if they’re not constantly terrified of hell?
Needless to day, despite following the rules, I don’t really think she lives by the spirit of her religion.
It’s a normal response to effort and fairness. You see it in every situation where someone is treated differently and needs to make sacrifices other people don’t.
Generational trauma has good examples. “But I had to learn how to deal with x on my own!” Or “I wasn’t allowed to x, x or x when I was younger!” or “but I was left alone for days!” For x, fill in words like: raise, live, express, assert, have friends, have fun, have free time, have an opinion, have boundaries, keep my hard earned money, deal with neglect, be considered less of a human being, love or be worthy of love, having a sense of safety, etc.
If she things she ‘worked’ to get to Heaven, she doesn’t understand salvation
It is a gift
We don’t follow the rules to ‘get into heaven’, we follow the rules so people can see the public face of Jesus in our works, it is sometimes the only gospel people see, and we have a lot of regressive assholes to make up for
Works or grace has been debated for ages, no idea if the Catholics have found consensus though
Yeah it’s been debated, but for no reason because it is a gift that cannot be bought or justified.
You say this like it’s unsettled when both a plain reading of the text as well as even a cursory understanding of Hebrew temple sacrifice culture makes it clear that the only thing that salvation hinges on is a sincere desire to accept it as a gift from Jesus.
The REASON it has been argued is that there are some intellectually dishonest religious leadership that want people to work harder for no reason
Since the counter-reformation, about.
Salvation is a gift, freely given, but we can separate ourselves from that grace by choosing to do terrible things. How much you want to consider doing good things Work is, I guess, a matter of perspective but most Evangelicals certainly view it as us saying you’re saved by works.
If non-catholic people didn’t go to hell
Man, she’s going to be extra pissed when she finds out that’s not what the Church teaches, to begin with (and also been publicly published, in some capacity, for a century, now).
What a pleasant thought for the child diddling priests he did nothing about.
you only need to take one look at the Pope’s evil gold throne to know the entire institution of Catholicism is bullshit….
i mean, there’s a lot of other ways to figure that out, but the throne is glaringly obvious
I mean, in the photo he’s just sitting in what appears to be a wooden chair… which I’m sure still cost more than my entire life has.
Yeah @xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com the guy (pedophile enabler? Can’t remember when he started) refused all this gaudy shit, kept some jank car, wouldn’t sit in the gold chair… I think, I’m remembering correctly? Carried his own bags maybe too
PS pedophilia enablement is bad, just was impressed he seemed to suck less than he had an option to
