hayden, that struck me, too. That and Boehner crying. He’s so emotional.
Also, I’m like Cardinal Fang – raised Catholic but certainly not practicing and borderline agnostic – but, wow, if Francis had been pope in my young adult years I may never have left the church. He’s such an amazing example, I think, of how to live a truly Christian life.
Here are his remarks:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/full-text-of-pope-francis-remarks-to-congress/
As others, we are a non practicing Catholic family, and love this Pope. I do wonder though if his message is filtering down to the parishes and if there have been any changes.
I wonder that, too. I have a friend who is taking her six kids to Philly to see him. She loves him. But my sister … I think she doesn’t think that he’s “Catholic” enough. Like how she doesn’t think ds2’s college, Georgetown, is Catholic enough. 8-|
@jonri I have friends who will be singing and they are terrific, so enjoy yourself!
@Knitneelionmom
What kind of changes at the parish level would you expect to be made as the result of Pope Francis? It’s hard to get tone across, but my question is a sincere one. PM me if you prefer.
His decisions will definitely have an impact on every day Catholics. Pope Francis is going to simplify the rules and speed up the process for annulments, for example. Reality is that the US has been a leader in this area, so the impact will be less here than in some other nations. Still, the changes should speed up things for most people and make it easier to appeal an adverse judgment. The secular press, IMO, hasn’t done a good job in explaining the changes. If you are interested, try this. http://www.catholic.com/blog/jimmy-akin/pope-francis-reforms-annulment-process-9-things-to-know-and-share
So, his papacy has already had an impact.
I so wish he would recognize that families with gay parents are important too and not a threat to the world. Oh well.
I was watching the local news yesterday (I live in the midwest), and there was a lot of coverage of the Pope’s visit, including footage of third graders at a very small Catholic school in my community watching TV coverage of the visit. The teacher, who looked to be in her mid 20s, said she thinks it’s wonderful that the students get to witness this event and the students themselves seemed transfixed.
I was able to watch his remarks to Congress, and was impressed by his ability to address meaningful issues while generally steering clear of overt politics (his call to end the death penalty was probably the most potentially divisive issue he touched on). I especially liked his remarks about MLK, and the capacity of Americans to dream big. It’s nice to have someone come over and remind us that that is who we are.
Just echoing Cardinal above. I’m an atheist. Catholic K-8 school and raised by religiously ambivalent parents. Father was raised by Jewish and Catholic parents and left the church in high school over anti-women issues. Mom was technically Church of England but religion was not really a thing with them.
There are some reasons to really, really like the Pope. One of the reasons I left the church was because I felt there was a huge disconnect with what Jesus said to do and what “Christians” actually did- primarily the lack of compassion for the poor. That he’s bringing that back front and center warms my heart and gives me hope.
OTOH, he is still Catholic and he’s not going to break with many fundamental beliefs of the church- and to think that he will is simply wishful thinking. (ETA: To clarify, I’m not saying I think he should or shouldn’t. I’m really ambivalent as an outsider. I’ve just seen a lot of hoping that he’ll come in and reverse positions on, for example, marriage equality and that’s almost certainly not going to happen.)
Fwiw, I like this Pope more than my very Catholic in-laws. They think he’s too liberal. Go figure.
“The secular press, IMO, hasn’t done a good job in explaining the changes.”
NPR had a very long segment on the changes regarding annulment when it was announced a few weeks ago. I think people who are unaware don’t listen or read the types of media which do report on these kind of things. I am Jewish and even I know about it.
“What kind of changes at the parish level would you expect to be made as the result of Pope Francis? It’s hard to get tone across, but my question is a sincere one. PM me if you prefer.” JPII and Benedict created a radical shift in the US church, which in many ways embraced the reforms of Vatican II. My wife went to a catholic school starting in the early 1970’s, and they had sex ed classes in high school, and there wasn’t the whole ‘you’ll go to hell if you have premarital’ sex vibe that Gail Collins talks about in a piece in Today’s Times. With JPII and Benedict, they appointed very conservative Bishops and in turn this led to in many cases very conservative parish priests being put in, or if they were relatively liberal and modern, they had to be very, very careful to keep out of eyesight of the Bishops. So they may be referring to priests , perhaps, who like the Pope, don’t think it is their place to judge gays or people using birth control or people who have been divorced, but rather to bring love to them (for example, as has been happening recently, priests telling gay couples who have gotten married they aren’t welcome, which would be something JPII and Benedict would agree with, from what I can tell, Francis doesn’t). The other big change I suspect may be shifting from dogmatic issues and the issues over sexuality that seem to have dominated the attention of the leadership, and shifting it back to helping the poor, and living lives into Christ rather than being worried about doctrinal purity.
It isn’t that Francis is going to change church teaching on things like abortion or gay marriage or woman priests, what he is doing is saying that these things are issues, but that there are a lot of things the church needs to be worried about and that the focus on these may have taken the church astray (just my opinion). To me, not being Catholic (my grandfather from Italy hated the church), what it seems is he is emphasizing what Vatican II seemed to, instead of judging people or being worried about dogma, he is concerned about the day to day actions of the church and its people. It is telling that under JPII and Benedict, liberation theology was suppressed and today, it is kind of making a revival.
My only criticism of him is that I don’t think he has acted as fast as he could to root out the corrupt Bishops JPII and Benedict covered for, the ones who covered for pedophile priests and continued to long after the rules were supposedly changed, or for example the horrible issues in Ireland that have seen the church literally implode there. Unlike his predecessors, I have no doubt Francis is horrified at what these men did to the church, and he has acted, he has gotten rid of more Bishops and priests then combined under JPII and Benedict for these horrible things.
I think he understands that the shift with JPII and Benedict towards doctrinal purity, and in the US, with their obsession about sexuality issues, has hurt the church, he is of a very personal nature, whereas the prior two were very theoretical and ‘above the fray’. In South America, the Pope’s own backyard, people are leaving the church for more ‘personal’ churches, like pentacostal churces, not because they are more conservative, but rather because they feel they are more personal and welcoming. In the US, the church is declining the way it did in Europe, while there are lively churches with heavy attendance, that is no longer true. The current claim is 50% of Catholics attend mass regularly, but studies have shown that it may be much less than that, when the RC used to be the heaviest attended of all churches. Like with most religions, they have lost the young people, among the young church going and such is very low, and despite the claims that they will return when they have kids, that isn’t happening, least not yet.
For one person’s question, Protestants outnumber Catholics, but Protestant is not a single faith, that covers evangelicals, fundamentalists, mainstream protestants, congregationalists, non aligned liberal churches, mega churches, etc…the Catholic Church is the largest single faith group, it is claimed there are 60 million Catholics in the US, though how many of them actively go to church or practice the faith is hard to tell (lot of them might be culturally Catholic).
Universities were established by all faiths. Georgetown, like BC, Fairfield university, Notre Dame and so forth, are Jesuit schools, which is a catholic order, and there are other schools founded by other orders. The more conservative Catholics, because schools like Georgetown, BC and Notre Dame are elite private universities and also tend to be pretty liberal/inclusive, don’t consider them “really Catholic” because they didn’t share the views of orthodox Catholics on things like gays, birth control or abortion. A lot of schools were established by protestants, I believe outside of U Penn (which were the Quakers, who I kind of consider their own group:), the ivies were all founded by protestant groups originally, though I believe they are non sectarian today, and there are plenty of others that were founded by protestant groups and/or still run by them.
The protestants dominated the US for many years, and still do (we have had only 1 catholic president), and the Catholics in the time of the founding were a much despised minority (Charles Carroll was one of them, and he was one of those who pushed for the first amendment; he knew without that, that Catholics in the US would not thrive), it was only after the great waves of Irish and Italian immigrants, that the church became more influential, politically and socially.
@romanigypsyeyes, I like this Pope more than I like my very Catholic in-laws. He’s much nicer than they are.
Oh, I think many people know he’s changed the rules. It’s just that what the changes actually are hasn’t been explaine that well by some news sources. IMO, the N Y Times explanation is very confused. I’m impressed if NPR got it right.
I’m Protestant, don’t usually listen to NPR, and I knew about it as well. I think these are things that don’t lend themselves well to click-bait headlines or very short stories to be skimmed.
@ musicprnt I don’t want to get involved in a discussion that breaks the rules. I’ll just say that, once again, your post is filled with errors. To cite a couple which are easy for you to check. Notre Dame is NOT a Jesuit school. UPenn was founded by Benjamin Franklin, who was most definitely NOT a Quaker.( If you read his Autobiography, you’ll learn that he did not have a favorable opinion of Quakers. (He DID like the Dunkards.) )
The Pope has been specific about his belief that congregations ought to act with respect to war refugees such as those from Syria. I can imagine that parishes might act in response to that call, perhaps by working with refugee families to help find housing and jobs or something like that.
Let’s say a Catholic wants to live her faith. In previous years, she might have listened to papal concerns about abortion and worked with groups opposing abortion. If she listens to this pope, she might instead work with refugees. She would still have the same positions on abortion, but now she might direct her volunteer efforts in a different direction that also reflects her Catholic faith.
@musicprnt, I cannot speak authoritatively about Saint John Paul, but I can say you are incorrect in your evaluation of Pope Benedict XVI. If you were to read the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, you would see that in many ways he paved the way for Pope Francis. A specific example of this would be the many ideas attributed to Benedict XVI by Pope Francis in his encyclical on climate change. I think if you were to go beyond the very superficial reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, you would find that he made significant changes in the Vatican that Pope Francis was able to build on due to his charisma and superior communication skills.
I agree with Pope on doing away with death penalty. We’ve got an inmate on Florida’s death row who has been there for 37+ years after one appeal after another. Put murderers away for life and be done with it.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ActiveInmates/detail.asp?Bookmark=1&From=list&SessionID=452071541
I disagree that catholics (and other religious groups) have suddenly found working with the poor to be the ‘in’ thing because of this pope. Much of the work done in the south after Katrina was done by catholic groups, parishes sending people and supplies to help. It is catholic groups in Texas and NM and San Diego helping the refugees coming across the borders get supplies and clothing? Who is preparing the food that the government supplies? Who is trying to unite the families? Much of that work is being done by church groups.
I watched an interesting documentary about this pope the other day, but one of the little points was that Benedict XVI actually abdicated to make way for this progress. Benedict couldn’t get the things done he wanted to because of his background, his writings. He was much more a scholar than Francis and B was coming into so much opposition from the level of power just below the pope. I think Benedict will outlive Francis, but B thought there needed to be a change in leadership.