New Pope, New Direction?

~ Laura

Catholism is very divided right now between those who want to emphasize
Catholic teachings about service to the poor and critiques about economic
distribution and those who want to emphasize its teachings on social behavior.
I'm in the economic distribution camp and am hopeful that the new pope will
move the church in that direction.

But the proof is in the pudding. Let's see
what happens. 

Published by Laura

10 thoughts on “New Pope, New Direction?”

  1. Instead of waiting to see what happens, Slate apparently managed to hire the Tridentine-booster version of Grandpa Simpson.

    Like

  2. I want to know how inside (to various degrees) the Catholic church are feeling about the choice. My first outsider’s take was that he is too old. Can a 76 year old really lead any significant changes (including significant shoring up?).
    In what I’ve been reading, a key area in which a pope could make a difference is in his role as CEO of a huge organization (rather than as spiritual leader setting the rules of doctrine or the emphasis of political involvement). Can a 76 year old really do that, or will we be seeing the same dependence on the civil hierarchy in the Vatican that I’m reading about in the newspapers.
    As an outsider, I don’t care about most of the issues that trouble Catholics — my main area of interest is where the huge organization interacts with secular politics and law (issue for which the previous pope’s choice was problematic).

    Like

  3. I’m not Catholic, but I am from Buenos Aires, so I know his figure pretty well. I would say he’s done both as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. His work servicing the poor has been impressive. But he is also very conservative, socially speaking. What will he emphasize? I don’t know.

    Like

  4. His work servicing the poor has been impressive.
    Do you include his support of murderous military dictators in that? I’d be very interested to know what he says about that stuff these days. The impression I get is that he was, at least, complicit with it.

    Like

  5. @Matt: Check my post on my website, I highlight that.
    Without trying to defend him, that is a contested accusation. Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the Argentinean who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his defense of human rights and his denunciation of what was going on in Argentina, affirms that Bergoglio had nothing to do with the dictatorship and was never implicated in Human Rights abuse. I have family (uncle and grandfather) who were tortured by the dictatorship, so I don’t take those accusations slightly. But I also respect Perez Esquivel a lot, for what he did. So I don’t know what to think. And the photo that was going around the internet of him giving communion to Videla is a fake, by the way.

    Like

  7. It is useful. I am pretty sure he stayed silent, more than anything. He wasn’t at the top of the hierarchy, but he certainly had some power. One thing to be noted is that more than those two Jesuits were kidnapped in the same raid (all the other non-religious people). The two Jesuits were the only ones who actually reappeared.

    Like

  8. And by the way, staying silent says a lot about his morals (in a negative way, in my opinion), given the fact that he was not a nobody. However, from there to say he supported the murderous junta, it’s a stretch. It might have happened, or not

    Like

Comments are closed.