Speakeasy forum: The smoke makes the news.....

Jesus told his disciples to go out and sell what they had and buy some swords. He was informed the group was already in possession of two. He believed in self defense and the right to bear arms, even if it made him a transgressor of Rome's sword control laws.

the whole of that piece of scripture notes Jesus as saying that he had been there to take care of their travel needs...(no purse required, thus no danger)...but the time was soon that they'd need to carry cash and that the cloak that would protect them from the weather might not be enough to keep them from harm.

but there was a reason for ornate churches and it wasn't about money as these churches were built by those who attended them and not by high priced contractors. The desire was to create a sense of awe rather than one of homespun comfort. The church was a place where people gathered to be in the presence of God and that means they need to made humble upon entry. For mere humans, the decor worked well to do that back then. You may have heard the story about how God appeared to Moses and captured his curiosity with an awesome sight but stopped him saying to remove his sandals...that he was on holy ground. In a nutshell, this describes something of how Catholics are to view and treat their assembly place. Modern Catholic churches may not be as ornate as the older ones because the artisans who knew how to build and furnish them are all but gone. It's that way by design but I can understand how outsiders want to view them with a price tag.

"On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of involvement in the kidnapping by the Navy in May 1976 (during the Dirty War) of two Jesuit priests.[17] The priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, were found alive five months later, drugged and semi-naked. Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. Jalics refused to discuss it after moving into seclusion in a German monastery.[18] Horacio Verbitsky, an Argentine investigative journalist and former montonero, wrote a book about this and other related events titled El Silencio: de Paulo VI a Bergoglio: las relaciones secretas de la Iglesia con la ESMA.[19] Verbitsky also writes that the Argentine Navy with the help of Cardinal Bergoglio hid the dictatorship's political prisoners in Bergoglio's holiday home from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.[20]

"According to the book, after their release, Yorio accused the then Provincial of his Jesuit order San Miguel, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to have denounced him. Father General Pedro Arrupe in Rome was informed by letter or during the abduction, both he and Orlando Yorio were excluded from the Jesuit Order." Wikipedia entry on Pope Francis. How convenient, and how cleverly timed.

And is he aware of any irony in his choosing the designation Francis. Francis of Assisi survived into old age, but immediately after his death, the Franciscan order was subject to an Inquisition led by the Dominican Order which killed a majority of his followers as heretics. Francis himself was able to appeal to the Pope during his lifetime to fend off accusations of heresy, but after his death, that route was no longer available. Francis, in todays terms was a leftist. A man who preached to and loved the poor. The Catholic Church was rooted in the support of the wealthy with whom they had a symbiotic relationship, donations in return for support.

I am deeply suspicious, far more suspicious than of Ratzinger himself, whom I detested.

Rob

I look forward to a third or more of the Catholic clergy being found insufficiently Aryan, or whatever term Francis chooses to use. Insufficiently strict, insufficiently backward looking, insufficiently 17th Century (the Counter Reformation) to continue in the Catholic Church.

the Falklands War by about 4 years. Catholic priests were targetted in that war, and there are allegations that Bergoglio was complicit in singling priests out if not for elimination at least for "non-protection". The Dirty War was entirely about Right and Left. The Military Junta were the Right, and the people targetted were liberals, writers, intellectuals, advocates for the rights of the poor, and priests who sided with the poor, in other words what the Right considered to be the Left whether true or not.

Additionally, to make the whole thing more horrific, a systematic system of rape of arrested women with a view to producing children who were then put up for adoption most often by the rich while the mothers were either strangled, or given a plane rid out over the ocean and thrown out from several thousand feet.

All of this is clearly written about in numerous books, and on Wikipedia under The Dirty War. You don't believe me, look it up.

Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) was a member of the Hitler Youth, and later one of the most Right wing of all the Cardinals. The Vatican helped Nazi's escape to South America following WW2. The Catholic Church has been virulently opposed to most liberalization of even the most trivial sort, and is harshly anti-union.

How else can one see this except as a struggle between Right and Left, between Conservatism and Liberalism. Daniel Ortega former president of Nicaragua was a priest. He's seen by Americans as being practically a Communist.

The Post was from Wikipedia on Pope Francis, sorry for the absence of a link

Rob

we can tell.

ignorance is not necessarily a vice. We are all born into complete ignorance but it's our own choice as to whether or not we want to relieve ourselves of this condition. There are some who seek to educate themselves out of it but I sadly believe there are some who deliberately seek to educate themselves deeper into it as well. I just haven't figured out why but we know them by their continuing expressions of both the hatefulness itself and their odd justifications for it. I would like to think that, before we find a pill to cure Alzheimer's, cancer et. al., we find a cure for hatred and bigotry but it won't be medical science that can accomplish this because it's more of an addiction. The cure is actually within us now. It's not something we can take but something we can stop taking.

and some read to reinforce what they already feel. Too often what they feel is hatred and bigotry and it seems important that they keep that feeling...perhaps as does a drug addict. I could be wrong but you seem to me to be of that character. Reading without experiencing the times, events, or feel the pulse of the people at the time of them does not need to create hatred. It can also help to create understanding and tolerance. You cannot use today's thinking as a yardstick for yesterday's. I know I'm wasting my breath but it's mine to waste.

The "inescapable terms" are orthodox and heterodox.

Still, and regardless of whether your readings are inescapably true and properly described, you might consider that past as the past and look at what a person has been doing more recently before wanting to hand them over to the impaler.