“They are all God's children and are looked upon by Him. Even those who have not yet met God, those who do not have the gift of faith, can find their way through this, in the good things they believe in: they can find strength in love for their children, for their family, for their brothers and sisters. One can say: ‘I cannot pray because I do not believe.’ But at the same time, however, he can believe in the love of the people around him, and thus find hope”.
March 18, 2020
"How can those who do not have faith have hope in days like these?"
A question to the Pope. His answer:
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The Pope sounds more like a Christian and less like a communist every day. There may be hope for the Pope.
As the Pontiff, this Pope is not helpful.
The pope is not catholic. He has ceased to be god's emissary on this earth. I will not listen to that 'man'.
“Believe in the love of the people around him.” Brotherly love. It’s around you. Believe and be best.
Jesus said, "Far easier for a camel to pass through a hydrogen nucleus than for a Socialist/Marxist to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Those first two comments are so good together they seem purposely juxtaposed. Drudgingly so.
“Who needs God,” says the Pope.
Thanks,Papa.
Does he understand what his job is, not to be a motivational speaker, but to bring people to Christ.
A lot of churches will give up and close forever during this period of isolation.
Many were teetering on the edge before the plague hit.
My client church is trying to get thru with virtual services. I'm busy recording videos of the service hymns.
They're also trying to keep a check coming my way in the hope that I'll stay. The organist/pianist is, along with the pastor, the glue that holds services together. Without that Sunday morning service and communion, a church has ceased to exist.
When he's right, he's right. And this time he's right.
Pretty goddamn easy. Math works for me.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/
There is no percentage in trying to talk believers out of their faith, but I sometimes wish they would STFU and let me disbelieve in peace.
"How can those who do not have faith have hope in days like these?"
LOL. Same as any other time: gods just aren't part of any equation.
As far as that goes, how can those who do not have faith in astrology or numerology have hope in days like these?
Days like these? This interruption in the American Postwar Fantasy will end quickly. We will return to our scheduled programming.
The impact of the Black Death and the crisis of faith in the Catholic Church gave rise to the Flagellant Movement. Flagellants practiced an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments. How will Americans respond to the terrible devastation of Covid 19? Especially the religious types? I went for a walk yesterday and I got a pamphlet about the end of days and all the assorted nonsense from some creep.
On an unrelated note. A Muslim scholar described the Black Plague's presence in the Near East in the 14th century, where it “sat like a king on a throne and swayed with power, killing daily one thousand or more and decimating the population." I think a good slogan to describe Covid 19's impact right now is "King Covid."
Oso, And yet you read the comments.
There is no percentage in trying to talk believers out of their faith, but I sometimes wish they would STFU and let me disbelieve in peace.
Right back at you: I feel exactly the same way about unbelievers. Especially the STFU part.
Well, once again it looks like the time of day agrees with the stopped clock.
That's what being in a position of authority will do for you.
Saying STFU means you don't true confidence in your opinions or faith.
Faith and hope aren't the same thing, that's why we have different words for them.
The crisis of the Catholic Church began with Vatican II, not with this pope.
Vatican II initiated the gradual collapse of the Magisterium. In retrospect, ditching the Latin Mass seems to have been the fatal mistake. Allowing the seminaries to turn into gay bathhouses followed quickly.
The Church is lost for the moment. Not for the first time in its history.
How will it find its way back? I dunno.
I wonder if Jesus had anything to say on this topic.
(Pope: Who?)
“ Flagellants practiced an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments. How will Americans respond to the terrible devastation of Covid 19?”
By whipping the economy to death.
@ TickTock - Yes! My virtual community for years! I prefer to disbelieve quietly, but sometimes I don't.
@ Roughcoat - Sorry, Roughcoat, there is something about the Pope that just chaps my ass.
Oso Negro said...
Pretty goddamn easy. Math works for me.
Seems a very superficial analysis. Yes, the Diamond Princess was a wonderful experiment. But it was an experiment run for a very short period of time. Once they realized they had an outbreak, they locked things down.
So the fact that 17% got the disease in a short time period tell us little about how many would get it if it was allowed to run its course, either on the ship or in the general population
and yet the cases seem to be piling up in iran, and less in the kingdom and Iraq, for instance,
"Howard said...
Saying STFU means you don't true confidence in your opinions or faith."
Nope, just means they doubt your intellectual honesty or tolerance for opposing beliefs.
In sharp contrast to the Pope, ex- if not now anti-Catholic blogger Rod Dreher continues to pull out any stop he can find to spread terror and despair about the virus, including everything from apocryphal anecdotes from anonymous doctors who Greg Gutfield among others would like to locate to bad "prophetic" dreams from his friends.
When it comes to shorting the human market at this level of dedication one imagines a creature akin to Tokyo Rose, played by Nurse Rachet's Louise Fletcher.
Sorry, Roughcoat, there is something about the Pope that just chaps my ass.
No worries. I don't like him either. Also don't like my own [Chicago] archbishop, Cupich. He and the pope are birds of a unlikeable feather. But I love Holy Mother Church, transcendent and eternal, and I love Catholicism.
As for Shouting Thomas's question: "How will it find its way back? I dunno." I dunno too. But it will.
What chaps me about the epidemic is what it's done to Lent. I was going to use this Lenten season to get my Catholic back on in a big way, you know, get back to my faith and the observance thereof. I was so looking forward to sitting in an old fashion confession booth and telling the guy on the other side, "it's been xx years since my last confession," and then rolling with it. I was going to return to attending mass regularly, and to doing all that other Catholic stuff. This was going to be my year for that. But now ... *sigh* Man plans, God laughs ...
"The crisis of the Catholic Church began with Vatican II, not with this pope."
I realized this truth in 1970, when I was 16, in Catholic high school and solidly planted in the agnostic camp for a couple of years. It accelerated my inexorable journey away from religion.
Vatican II did me a favor. And several of my friends, too.
I like what the Pope said here. I see it as a gentle way of expressing the belief that God is present and always reaching out to us and manifesting in our lives, whether we realize it or not, and that when we seek to be our best selves and promote virtue, we cooperate with God and manifest His will.
Catholics believe they need the sacraments. This Pope implies that it does not really matter. He also points to faith as a gift that you can live without if you know that your family loves you. Interesting approach.
The Pope-- and like others I... have reservations (ahem; that's meant to be a joke at the expense of the Jesuits)-- has asked that we all pray the rosary tomorrow (1300 Pacific, which I believe is 2100 in Rome), invoking the Blessed Virgin Mary's patronage as Our Lady Help of the Sick, and of St Joseph. Am happy to accede to that sort of plea.
Actually, I find this sentiment “They are all God's children and are looked upon by Him. Even those who have not yet met God, those who do not have the gift of faith, can find their way through this....... to be comforting and sensible.
Much better than the...all you sinners who haven't come to JEEEEESUS (or whatever other religious figure) are going to die and go to Hell sentiment from some religions. Repent or else you are doooooomed!!!
The idea that people can find God without a church or someone to tell them what and how to do "religion" is a logical and kinder way to think. More likely to attract than repel.
@Roughcoat & Shouting Thomas,
I'm in complete agreement with both of you. The decision to dismantle the Latin Mass as the focal point was deliberate and diabolical. But it has risen like a phoenix from the ashes.
Here in San Francisco, where it seems there is nothing beautiful or sacred is left to be found, there is a bright beam of hope. A parish in the city offers the Latin Mass every Sunday and Holy day, with a choir of incredible voices to bring tears to your eyes. This is all under the auspices of our Archbishop Cordeleone, who is bullish on returning our tradition to regular use. And who do I see in line for confession before Mass? Young pre-teen girls in chapel veils; thirty-something millennials, missals in hand. Those are the ones who will make it happen.
“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you [unless you’re the Pope, in which case you can just do the love bug thing.]’ Matt. 28:18-20 amended.
Not being a member of the club, and averse to singing circles in general, I still give this pope a +1 for the comment. It's interesting (to a totally objective outsider's eye of course) how much of this discussion is about the effect of Panic2020 on the church as an institution--and the opinion that it will survive: that's commendable faith.
It is said that we live on hope, or that history teaches us to hope . . . I dunno. It seems trivially true to me-- I hope I don't get sick and die, I hope nobody I love gets sick and dies, I hope very few people get sick and die, but I do not now, and never had, Hope of some better future, material or otherwise.
Oh well, they can't cancel spring. The early bloomers--dogwood, azalea, tulip poplar, cherry--are budding, and the front yard is a field of white, blue, purple, and purpleblue wildflowers.
Narr
Too cloudy for planet-gazing this morn
Following are the four most important things about Catholicism that non-Catholics should know and understand before they talk about Catholicism:
1. In company with Lutherans and other Prot denominations, we Catholics are believe in the Doctrine of Justification, i.e. justification by God's grace through faith in Christ, i.e., justificatio sola fide.
2. There are three types of baptism: water, blood, desire. The last of these, desire is IMO the most important of the three but also the most mysterious and difficult to understand and articulate.
3. "Papal infallibility" is almost never invoked. Since 1870 when the doctrine of papal infallibility was formally declared, there has been only ONE ex cathedra decree. Before 1870, from the Church's beginning, the number of declarations that could be considered infallible, in the 1870 understanding, are very limited. In other words, almost everything a pope says, unless he explicitly declares that he is speaking ex cathedra, should be understood, in true Ghostbuster's fashion, as "more of a guideline than a rule."
4. We have no beef with science (e.g., evolution, "Big Bang Theory," etc., etc., etc. ad infinitum). We LOVE science! In our book, science is the vicker's knicker's, the cat's meow, the cherry on top of the whipped cream! We believe that science is an instrument of God's revelation.
The crisis in faith was well underway long before the 1960s -- long before the Council was called or even thought of.
Look what happened to Job, who epitomizes "man of faith." The moral of the story is "when things are at their worst, the best you can hope for is that God leaves you alone."
The Pope must not read his Bible much.
Yeah. Shouldn't the Pope be telling "Those without faith" that Christianity is the answer?
This comment sounds like: "Hey just do what works for you"
Its good the Pope rarely speaks infallibly. Because this Pope comes off as "fallible" squared.
Its good that he occasionally talks about Religion.
God didn't leave Job alone.
And He doesn't leave us alone.
Catholics believe they need the sacraments. This Pope implies that it does not really matter.
I am a former Catholic, but I still know people who take their Catholicism very seriously. From one of them I heard that hospital staff in Italy are upset with the Pope because he has ordered priests to stay away from coronavirus patients for fear that the priests will catch it. Italy is still a Catholic country, and many of the elderly ill are desperate to receive the last rites, an important sacrament to them. Not getting them is causing tremendous suffering, something those who are not devout Catholics probably don't understand.
The Pope's action is unprecedented. In previous epidemics, priests willingly took the risks to provide the sacraments, and many of them died. Their deaths were not unexpected. They were, and still are, honored as martyrs. This Pope, however, seems not to actually believe the Catholic faith.
this is a problem, when the leading religious authority, doesn't really believe in the faith,
rcocean,
You mean his fallibility is exponential?
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