If you really want to talk about this, I’d be very happy to go over the history of it, but if you just want to argue, let me know and I’ll skip it. Saying that the church spent more time in Avignon than Vatican City is kind of disingenuous. The popes didn’t move the church there, the city was created around the existing location of the church. It’s like saying there were no Catholics in Italy before the 1860s because the country hadn’t yet been created.
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George Carlin had it right: "Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you! He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"
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I didn’t say the CHURCH I said the PAPACY. There is a BIG difference.
Hope it all works out, but historically, attempts to make Christian denominations more humane and Christian tend to just result in schisms. Not that I have a problem with that. If conservatives decide that all this turning of cheeks and judging not and loving the poor and the weak and what not is so heretical and intolerable that they need to start a new church where the Pope is actually infallible and they can once again attend services in a language no one speaks and most of them don’t understand, it’s no skin off my nose. Just means they’ll be smaller, crazier and less influential.
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The Papacy was based in Rome in essentially the same physical location, for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 years.
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Cardinal George’s article that this links to is just mind boggling. I appreciate that he tries to compare deaths due to wars between nation states and deaths due to wars involving religious motivations, but the time frame he picks is just so rigged, it’s breathtaking. He talks about the last 300 years, a timeframe which contains the early parts of the rise of nation states and also the drastic reduction in the influence of the Catholic church on the political stage. I would invite the Cardinal to take a better look at things like the 30 years war, which practically depopulated sections of Germany in the early 16th century, the Albigenisian crusade that helped to practically depopulate sections of Southern France in the 11th century. I think all in all, the church easily holds its own when it comes to death and destruction.
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Because, by international treaty, the Vatican is a Sovereign State. International treaties being, according to the Constitution, among the highest laws of the land, people concerned with actually respecting the law accept that that is the case.
Now, if you want to ask ‘why the hell did anyone sign a treaty saying the Vatican could be its own State?’, the answer to that’s far, far simpler: Because Garibaldi was a Catholic, and when he and his redshirts fought to unify Italy, they gave that respect to the Pope - the Vatican would wield no temporal power, but simultaneously not be subject to a temporal power, either.
Clearly, that deal hasn’t always been respected by the Vatican, as popes have, to one extent or another, attempted to influence politics, but the Vatican has no actual temporal power other than what ‘respect’ accords it. And really, I think that given the fundamentally psychological nature of religion, if we want to encourage popes to follow more in the vein of this pontiff than the previous one, we should probably offer some positive reinforcement. Sure, it might be nice to get humanity past the need for religions, but given the sheer number of people who believe, and believe deeply and zealously, it ain’t happening in our lifetime.
Better to try to encourage the institutions toward a-political efforts to better the world than to try as hard to tear them down as we would the misguided and dangerous among them.
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Also, I think as important as Francis is for this reform movement, it will be just as important, if not more so, to see who follows him. John Paul was Pope for so long that practically every Cardinal Elector was someone that he had elevated to the post. So many of them had very similar philosophies to his. Right now, Pope Francis hasn’t had time to nominate new Cardinals to replace the ones who will age out, and until he does that, a counter reformation is quite possible when Francis passes from the scene.
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Also because France was and is Catholic. Napoleon III was the protector of the Pope at that time. When the Franco-Prussian war broke out, the French garrison in Rome had to be withdrawn so that it could be swallowed up whole at Sedan with the rest of the French army and at that point Italy swallowed up the rest of the temporal holdings of the Papacy. Garabaldi, King Victor Emmanuel and the Italian population generally, were all supportive of the Pope’s spiritual power but didn’t want him as a temporal lord. So, as a result, they gave him a microstate to be in charge of. The Pope responded by excommunicating practically everyone in Italy. Ah, well.
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Hey, I lived in Tommy More. Still live very close to it and still say Tommy More to anyone who asked where I grew up. No address required.
Great comment Dave. You obviously know what you are talking about. The RC church is still the social center of many neighborhoods in and out of the City, even for people like me that don’t subscribe to the spirtual mumbo jumbo of organized religion.
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Well, nobody said the Papacy reciprocated that respect. 
Weather, it means there will be more center-left bishops like him. It really is significant.
God Bless Pope Francis, and bless us all by giving him a long time on this earth to do God’s work.
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Pius IX, who was Pope then, was kind of an odd one. He was personally beyond reproach. Honest, thrifty, trustworthy, but as Pope he was kind of an incredible jerk. He was a big mover for centralization of power in the Pope and it was under his watch that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was formalized. Even people who disagreed with his policies generally liked him personally. So maybe he excommunicated them respectfully?
How about some non window dressing changes Beroglio?
Put some women in charge as Cardinals, otherwise, go back to Buenos Aires.
First he’d have to allow for their ordination as priests, then give it 10-20 years for any of that first group to become bishops. And if he did that, he’d risk the first truly significant schism since the Reformation. Massive risk for a payoff that likely wouldn’t be seen during the tenure of his successor or even his successor.
And that’s assuming that he even wants to. We shouldn’t project our own idea of an ideal pope onto him - just because he’s better than his predecessors, it doesn’t mean he’s not at least partially a product of the institution he leads.
Tommy More? That’s funny … almost.
“Yo hey Richie, what’s up with you running the show at Wales. Who cut you in?”
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No projection, he’s a Tweet machine, lobby the world and get it done although your assiduous illustration is appreciated regardless.
Besides, he isn’t the one revealing peace within, so the badge of courage, not so much.
Having been in BA for a few decades he knows full well who that person is.
So far he’s tolerated - in fact, he’s barely been here as Pope long enough to be active. I have to wonder how much knife sharpening is going on behind him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
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The Pope Francis Revolution Is Coming To America
Right! Let’s see how long it sticks around this “revolution”. Changing 2,000 years old practices is quite a challenge that will take decades.
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