What are your thoughts about this interview with Pope Francis?

I do not see anything different contentwise in this message.
Do not be fooled by the wording. Nothing has changed.

Well, most if not all of the Protestant denominations already officially think the Catholics are little better than pagans anyway.

As far as the message itself, I don’t see much difference. This Pope saying “It’s not my place to judge” simply means that he’s washing his hands of it, since God will do the judging anyway. Those gays can be all the gay they want, and if they don’t make their Act of Contrition in their death throes, they’ll go to hell all the same.

I will say that this Pope is much better at PR than his predecessor. Of course, he is trying to hold together a religion that’s been in steady decline for about 500 years…

Remember that the conservatives assassinated John Paul I for sounding more liberal. He lasted all of 30 days.

This current pope may have just signed his own warrant.

I am very happy about this.

Thing is most Catholics in America are not obsessed with discussing gay rights, contraception, abortion, nor do they judge. They also understand separating religion from politics and law. Many Protestants won’t care how liberal the Pope comes across, they have little respect for the Catholic church and some don’t even consider Catholics to be Christian.

But, I like the message. I like that he wants to focus on helping people. I think it is a world message of acceptance and diversity.

A breath of fresh air into the Holy See.

Next time Dolan in New York starts making anti-gay, anti-health care, anti-abortion noise, Francis can say, “hey, knock it off”.

I am an outsider to Catholicism and religion in general, but I like what I see the current pope doing. He is taking a back to basics approach. He has turned away from some of the perks that come with the job and he wants to stop discussing issues that are peripheral to religious belief. He reminds me of Pope John XXIII.

@ragingloli is correct. He is going through the motions to be PC & more acceptable, nothing more nothing less. Churches want people back in the doors giving them our money, and this is their latest attempt to make that happen.

I think a common misunderstanding of Catholicism is that Catholics think things like homosexuality are a sin. He is explaining how it’s normal to be homosexua. So he’s battling a misunderstanding. It’s a big difference from other Christian denominations.

I’m glad they are toning it down, but it’s not a sign of much more progress than just limping into the 21st century. Most of the more civilized parts of both western Europe and the English-speaking world have ceased to find homosexuality abnormal. That they haven’t toned it down more is probably because many of the more conservative parts of the Latinized Christian world, including places relatively near Rome like Italy and Poland, have not made as great strides. They have to balance that against the fact that places with high proliferation of Catholicism like France and the northeastern USA have gay marriage.

If they want to show real change, they’re going to have to rout out the sexual repression (and worse) in their own ranks.

Is the catholic church now going to start paying taxes in the areas not covered by their nonprofit status?

If not, then no real change here.

Give the man credit. He has the courage of his convictions. I am fairly certain that he became Pope because people were weary of the mess the faith is in. I am not a Catholic – I am Anglican – but I know a little about church politics.

As a rational atheist, I think this is the most rational thing I have heard a Pope say in my lifetime. Good for him.

@dxs Are you saying that the Catholic church does not think that all homosexual sex is a sin? Or are you just saying that they don’t think homosexuality is a sin?

I think that this is a distinction that most Christian denominations would agree with, if pressed. To say that homosexuality is a sin is a kind of shorthand for all of them.

@elbanditoroso
Right. The conservative faction of the Council of Cardinals hired the KGB who hired the Bulgarian secret police to hire the inept peasant who shot the Pope.

@Espiritus_Corvus – you are screwing up your popes. JP2 was shot at. JP1 was poisoned.

@glacial Catholics accept that people are naturally homosexual. The acts are still considered sinful. Nowadays a lot of Christian denominations are on the same page as them, so I may have exaggerated, but I have personally heard it be referred to as “sinful thoughts”, so that’s where that came from.

@dxs Well, the Christians think any sex thought outside of marriage is a sinful thought, don’t they?

@JLeslie True, but I don’t think they offer counseling for getting rid of those thoughts.

@dxs Good point. I don’t think the Catholics do that sort of counseling, just the other Christians. Too many priests have those sort of thoughts, it would be too hypocritical. Not that hypocrisy always stands in the way.

@JLeslie: probably depends on the Christian. I don’t think there is strictly anything in the New Testament that declares sex sinful inside or outside of marriage. Paul gives a hint that maybe it is, at least within his milieu, when he says something like it is better to marry than to burn [in sexual apprehension, not Hell].

Even the Catholic Church historically took a fairly live-and-let-live view of the matter.

@bolwerk I never mean all Christians. Too many sect and too many people to assume anything about all of them. Just generalizing.

I have a hard time believing there isn’t something in the bible about sex before marriage, but definitely possible. The Christians seem to be obsessed with it. I will go as far to say all of Christianity believes sex before marriage is not ok, if there is an exception I am shocked. Maybe it was in the old testament? Jews also as far as I know only condone sex in marriage, but the very big difference is Jews generally feel and teach sex is a wonderful thing shared between spouses, while some Christians, especially in the past, made sex out to be a horrible thing that women endure. Or, an obligation to the husband. In Judaism the woman’s pleasure is acknowledged. I only bring up Judaism, because I brought up the old testament. I see shows like Oprah with these women who have a hard time having sex with their husband because they think of sex as a forbidden, or dirty thing, and I just cannot imagine growing up like that.

@JLeslie: I figured you didn’t mean all, but it might actually not even be “most.” There is plenty about sex in the OT, not much in the NT, and where it comes up at all the message can sometimes be surprising, like Christ admonishing a mob to not stone a whore who was caught in the act – one unsaid thing in this parable is, where is the man who must also have been caught in the act?

In any case, I don’t think there is a universal Christian sexual ethos, even as a generalization. The ethos almost always comes from the Christian society in question, which might range from nutty in parts of the Middle East and USA to delightfully slutty in parts of Europe in the wider Americas. I think it’s fair to say it’s the Anglo-American fundamentalist Christians who are obsessed with abstinence specifically. Others around the world have their own sexual hangups (homosexuality is a common one), but many Christian societies are pretty open about sex compared to the USA and English-speaking world in general.

Then, even the Muslim world might sometimes surprise you.

Re Jews: At least here in the New York region, they seem less rigid than American Christians as a whole when it comes to premarital sex, if you discount the highly Orthodox anyway. And I have, ahem, been in bed with a fair number of even Orthodox Jews.

@bolwerk Are you talking about Christian individuals? Or, the leaders of the churches? I am talking about the church leaders and the expectations of the church, not the average Christian. Christians are boinking all over the place. Pretty much all the girls I know who are having babies as teens are Christians, two were Catholics (I’ll separate the Catholics out for this Q, I do in general anyway). I am not saying the Christians are having more sex than other religions, just saying plenty of them are having sex. As far as adults, most of them all have sex out of wedlock, no matter what their church says, and no matter what they tell their kids to the contrary.

@JLeslie: either, really, and it would vary very much within a single communion/church. Most American mainstream churches are probably probably a bit like the Reform-Conservative spectrum of Judaism, with a range of opinions on sexuality from full-on support for homosexual marriage to fairly rigid views on gender roles.

It seems that when it’s unacknowledged that sex happens anyway, it just leads to more pregnancy, but not much less sex. Kind of makes you wonder if abstinence is a strategy to encourage babies under some evolutionary psychology scenario.

@bolwerk

Citation re: sex acceptance and increased pregnancy rates?

@bolwerk “Kind of makes you wonder if abstinence is a strategy to encourage babies under some evolutionary psychology scenario.”

In my more cynical moments, I have wondered about this, too.

Encouraging, but too soon to celebrate. The Catholic Church is still the largest organization in the world in which discrimination is part of the official program. I will give the new Pope credit once official rules are officially changed. It seems far more possible with this Pope than the last two. No one would have expected Mikhail Gorbachev to change the Soviet Union when brought to power.

@Seek_Kolinahr: reduced acceptance of sex maybe increases pregnancy. Look at how U.S. states where abstinence is taught actually have higher teenage and pre-marital birthrates.

Forgive me, my brain removed the“un” in unacknowledged.

@bolwerk – Then, even the Muslim world might sometimes surprise you. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

@elbanditoroso Yes, my knowledge of the Pope Johns is found lacking, it seems, but a modern pope being poisoned by his cardinals? I find that hard to believe. I would have to see some mighty pristine references on this before I could take it seriously. Any links? These princes of the church, who, granted, in the distant past have not always been models of humanity, now have other, legal ways of getting rid of an unwanted pope, and murder—a messy, distasteful act of the desperate—is now unnecessary. I cite the recent retirement of Benedict—an act which in itself puts the infallibility of the pope in question—and the smooth transition to the first Jesuit pope ever, Francis.