Get over it: The Pope IS Catholic

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='toledo_jesus' date='Apr 22 2005, 12:59 PM'] It means "Champion". I figure the Church will need a few. [/quote]
I just like making fun of him for it...he's a fourth degree knight.

"Kneel Sir Knight" or "Sir Knight Neal"...

[toledo_jesus]

I need to join the Knights.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='toledo_jesus' date='Apr 22 2005, 01:08 PM'] I need to join the Knights. [/quote]
Yes, you should. Excellent life insurance plans, too...

[WillT]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Apr 22 2005, 12:09 PM']Yes, you should.  Excellent life insurance plans, too...[/quote]
And even better AFTERlife insurance possibilities!

[toledo_jesus]

somebody told me that if you're in college you only need to pay like $30 a year...

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='toledo_jesus' date='Apr 22 2005, 01:14 PM'] somebody told me that if you're in college you only need to pay like $30 a year... [/quote]


It's a good program...and they lock you in at your premium for life, so the earlier you sign up, the better.

[RemnantRules]

ummmm...yea ...


Good article

[Ash Wednesday]

I'm pasting some exerpts from Lileks "Bleat" from Wednesday -- some might find his humor to be crass so I won't post the entire entry. But as someone who isn't Catholic (He also said "Because I disagree with the Catholic Church...I am– how do I put this? – NOT CATHOLIC.") he seems to understand all this better than many Catholics.

[quote]The selection of Ratzinger was initially heartening, simply because he made the right people apoplectic. I’m still astonished that some can see a conservative elevated to the papacy and think: a man of tradition? As Pope? How could this be? As if there this was some golden moment that would usher in the age of married priests who shuttle between blessing third-trimester abortions and giving last rites to someone who’s about to have the chemical pillow put over his face.[/quote]

[quote]You’re not going to get someone who wants to strip off all the Baroque ornamentation of St. Peter’s and replace them with IKEA wine racks, okay?
[/quote]

[quote] Note: every era is the modern era to the people who inhabit it; a “modern” pope in 1937 would have announced that godless collectivism was the wave of the future, and ridden the trains to Auschwitz standing on top, holding gilded reins, whooping like Slim Pickens. The defining quality of 20th century modernity is impatience, I think – the nervous, irritated, aggravated impulse to get on with the new now, and be done with those old tiresome constraints. We’re still in that 20th century dynamic, I think, and we will be held to it until something shocks us to our core. Say what you will about Benedict v.16, but he wants there to be a core to which we can be shocked. And I prefer that to a tepid slurry of happy-clappy relativism that leads to animists consecrating geodes beneath the dome of St. Peter's. [/quote]

[quote]Benedict is an old name but it sounds new. At least my greatest fear didn’t happen: they’d choose a Pope from Africa, and, unaware with the nomenclature of American marketing, he would call himself “Urban.” [/quote]

[geetarplayer]

Way to go, Fox! :cheer:

[Lil Red]

ash, great article...pm me where the full part of it is, okay?

[DemonSlayer]

Very surprising that they did that.

Edited April 23, 2005 by DemonSlayer

[Colleen]

'Nother good one: [url="http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006592"]Is the Pope Catholic? [/url]

[quote]Is the Pope Catholic?
Yes, of course. And critics are disappointed and annoyed that he is.

BY PHILIP F. LAWLER
Friday, April 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Ordinarily that question is a rhetorical device, intended to suggest that someone has said something foolish, ignoring the patently obvious. But as cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome this week, many commentators seemed to wonder whether the next pope would hold firmly to the age-old doctrines of the Catholic faith: Would the new leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics be ready to compromise on matters such as abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women?

The public speculation before the papal election suggested that anything was possible--that the church might strike out in a radically new direction. But the 115 cardinals who entered the conclave thought differently. They elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a remarkably quick conclave, because he was the obvious choice to inherit the legacy not only of John Paul II but also of 264 other Roman pontiffs in a line stretching back to St. Peter. There would be no break in that continuity, no shifts in fundamental dogma.

Yes, the pope is a Catholic. Yet that unsurprising result has clearly shaken many secular liberals--and more than a few liberal Catholics--who feel that they have been somehow cheated of an opportunity. Their vindictive snarls have been prominently featured in the coverage of the new pope's election. Benedict XVI has been characterized not merely as a "conservative" but as an "ultraconservative." Words such as "rigid" and "stern" are ubiquitous. Profiles of the new pontiff rarely fail to mention that as a teenager he was briefly a member of a Hitler Youth group (in which he was enrolled against his will) and the German army (which he deserted). When a London tabloid identified the new pope in a banner headline as "God's Rottweiler," dozens of more respectable journalists gleefully seized on the nickname.

The portrait thus being painted--of a cold, remote, autocrat--is completely at odds with the actual personality of Benedict XVI. In fact, he is a genial, diffident man. Those who meet him for the first time are invariably struck by the humility that camouflages his powerful intellect. My colleague Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, a former theology student of the new pope's, recalls how his mentor would "listen to absolutely everybody" before making his own comments. My own lasting impression is of the kindly man who, upon a family visit to the Vatican five years ago, took the time to introduce himself to each of my children, leaning down to the eye level of a shy three-year-old to make her more comfortable.

As the world comes to know Pope Benedict, and appreciate his self-effacing personality, the attempts to portray him as an ogre will become more difficult to sustain. But I can confidently predict that the vilification of the pope will continue, just as the public adulation of the late Pope John Paul was always tempered by an undercurrent of complaint about his own "rigid" doctrinal orthodoxy. Pope Benedict, the man, will be a convenient target for critics whose hostility is really directed against the Catholic Church and its moral teachings.

In the early 21st century, the clash between Catholic orthodoxy and secular liberalism is inevitable. An institution that demands respect for the dignity of every human life cannot make peace with a culture that sees some lives as expendable. The church will not cease to proclaim the existence of absolute truth, thus giving offense to those who cling--dare I say dogmatically?--to the self-contradictory principle that there are no absolutes.

Like his predecessor, Benedict XVI is a formidable theologian, well prepared for the ideological clash with modern liberalism. But many of this critics, rather than grappling with the claims of Catholic thought, prefer to reduce the clash to a question of personalities. By citing imaginary defects in the personality of the new pope, they distract attention from the real nature of their complaint: their bitter disappointment that the pope is a Catholic.

Mr. Lawler is the editor of the Catholic World Report and of the Web site Catholic World News (cwnews.com). [/quote]