If you want to be the judge of that, have at it.

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I will.

All non-Roman Catholics are frauds.

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Pope Francis said the Catholic Church should not allow its bans on gay marriage, abortion and contraception to dominate its teachings, but must be a more welcoming Church where priests are understanding pastors and not cold, dogmatic bureaucrats.

In a dramatically blunt interview with Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit monthly, Francis said the Church had locked itself up in "small things, in small-minded rules". It must find a new balance between upholding rules and demonstrating mercy, "otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall like a house of cards..."

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-says-church- ... 20900.html

This guy is rolling.

Yeah, I've been pretty impressed with his frankness and open ways of thinking on today's
issues thus far. I am not very religious and just read what is in the paper but I have to
applaud the guy for his actions to date.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Yeah, he talks a good game. Now lets see some action.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

What's on your list Hatchet?

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First and foremost excommunicate anyone who had anything to do with the coverups.
Secondly, tangible moves to bring women into leadership roles, eventually women as priests.
Formal apology for recent vatican rebuke of nuns.
Once those things happen, we can start to think about more.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I'm not sure how abortion fits in with the other two. If you believe that life begins at conception, which the church does, then it is murder. There really is very little grey area on this.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

All three deal with sex and God's will. My seminarian brother-in-law explained it to me, once. Basically, having a child or conceiving a child is the will of God and the purpose of sex. If you have sex that cannot result in conception, it is deemed to be a sin. That is why gay sex, masturbation, and using contraception is a sin to the church. Further, obviously, terminating a child after conception is against the will of God, as well.

They basically deem all three to be an affront to God and against the purpose of life.

none of the nuns I know promote abortion.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I appreciate the explanation for others but I am pretty well versed on the subject. There still is a clear distinction between the interruption of the possibility of creating life and the actual destruction of it once you believe it has been created.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Seems like the best way to be a well-liked Pope is to just disavow Roman Catholicism. Priests should be able to marry, gay people should be considered human beings; next thing you know, he'll say that birth control is really a practical solution to a lot of global realities, and that you can go ahead and eat meat on Fridays as long as you have God in your heart. By my calculations, you should all be Episcopalians by, oh, carry the 1 here, and I came up with, let's see, November 12th.

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God's will is pretty illogical.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

He hasn't disavowed a single Catholic teaching on moral matters.

It's actually refreshing to see someone in the media cover the Catholic Church in a fair and fprthright manner.

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Yeah but Pope Francis is a shithead because of which high school he went to.

Am I doing this right??

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A lot of Evangelical churches view some of this stuff slightly differently and generally are not against birth control that is preventing the sperm from fertilizing the egg. Gay sex is forbidden because it's listed in the Bible as abomination and being idolatry. Evangelicals are against pornography in all forms. Sex is not just for creating children. If you follow that logic then a sterile person should not be allowed to have sex since they have no potential to have a child or an older couple should not be allowed to have sex since the wife is post-menopausal. But at the same time sex is not a recreational activity either to be engaged in by non-married people. It is to join a husband and wife together in soul and body for the purpose of making them one body. The Bible says that if you have sex with someone you are joining your soul with them. It is okay to use birth control as long as that is not against someone's conscience. The marriage relationship is an illustration of the role of Christ and his bride the Church. Evangelical churches generally don't have catechisms and a church hierarchy that says that people must subscribe to every form of doctrine taught by the church. If anything Evangelical churches do not hold to much of what is taught by the Catholic church that is not directly from the Bible.

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

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If you tell me where he played his high school soccer I could answer that for you.

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I really enjoy this pope. As a former catholic, he has me optimistic for the future.
Two thoughts though:
1. There will never be another Jesuit pope.
2. If this were 1513, he would probably be dead by now. I was talking about this with someone today. He seems to not care as much about the institutional culture of the catholic church and more interested in living/acting out the mission statement of the church. Makes you popular with the people but makes a lot of enemies within the corridors of power in any organization.

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I think in reality he is forcing a cataclysmic shift within the institutional culture of the Church. Very similar to what Christ did while he was on earth. Forcing the priestly class that was in power to own up to their dogmatic approach versus one of love and mercy.

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I hope so and I hope he is allowed to do it but he might want to have a food tester or two around just in case.

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He's the Guitar Mass of Popes.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

He's not making many of the people happy either. I love the move to the 21st century.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

This sounds very nice and all, but if you have no doctrine then you have no religious faith.

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

I'm with him on the stance of the church against homosexuality and birth control, but I can't move on abortion.

The man is a missionary and is someone that can make me proud to be a Catholic again.

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I like you MD.

But for you to discuss or understand Catholicism would take an earthquake of seismic proportion in your own world view. I for one won't be sitting around watching the Richter scale.

Enjoy your week end.

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This.

But God I hope I'm (we're) wrong.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Missionaries tell people about the Gospel. They don't try to sugarcoat or water down the truth to make it more palatable. Too many people want to say "I'm a Christian, but I vote pro-choice, I support same-sex marriage, I like to get drunk or whatever activity it is that is forbidden by the Scriptures." Jesus would have told people like that, "You cannot serve two masters. Repent or perish." The goal of Christianity is not to get people to feel comfortable about their sin. The goal of Christianity is to turn people into the image of Christ.

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

I accept the challenge of "Mr. Jesus."

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Going after big business today in Sardinia.

Tall Midget will be back soon to sing his praises.

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