Philosophy Now Forum

The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 am The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

The papacy still amounts to an incredibly influential TikTok influencer with lots of views, likes, followers, and channel subscriptions. I certainly do not underestimate his ability to thoroughly "influence".

Just as an example, with the press of a button, he could launch a memecoin and get millions of illiterate peasants to buy it, and make billions of dollars in the process. If even Donald Trump can pull that off, then can you imagine how much the fake representative of God on earth could rake in?

I am telling you, I also want that job title. It's too good to be true. I would make gazillions of dollars from that fake stuff. It is more lucrative than a gigantic Chinese factory churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags!

godelian wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:52 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 am The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

The papacy still amounts to an incredibly influential TikTok influencer with lots of views, likes, followers, and channel subscriptions. I certainly do not underestimate his ability to thoroughly "influence".

Just as an example, with the press of a button, he could launch a memecoin and get millions of illiterate peasants to buy it, and make billions of dollars in the process. If even Donald Trump can pull that off, then can you imagine how much the fake representative of God on earth could rake in?

I am telling you, I also want that job title. It's too good to be true. I would make gazillions of dollars from that fake stuff. It is more lucrative than a gigantic Chinese factory churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags!

...especially if sold as a modern, updated form of Indulgence for the remission of sins. It would be offered as an investment for the here and now and an infinitely greater one in the hereafter for a mere pittance based on the rewards. It would be classified as the ultimate investment ensuring success in both worlds! What could possibly go wrong when insured by the agent of god on earth!

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:04 am

godelian wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:52 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 am The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

The papacy still amounts to an incredibly influential TikTok influencer with lots of views, likes, followers, and channel subscriptions. I certainly do not underestimate his ability to thoroughly "influence".

Just as an example, with the press of a button, he could launch a memecoin and get millions of illiterate peasants to buy it, and make billions of dollars in the process. If even Donald Trump can pull that off, then can you imagine how much the fake representative of God on earth could rake in?

I am telling you, I also want that job title. It's too good to be true. I would make gazillions of dollars from that fake stuff. It is more lucrative than a gigantic Chinese factory churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags!

...especially if sold as a modern, updated form of Indulgence for the remission of sins. It would be offered as an investment for the here and now and an infinitely greater one in the hereafter for a mere pittance based on the rewards. It would be classified as the ultimate investment ensuring success in both worlds! What could possibly go wrong when insured by the agent of god on earth!

As another amusing sidenote, does anyone else here think that that bit involving the black and white smoke signal coming from the Sistine Chapel chimney would be a good premise for a Cheech and Chong escapade?

I mean, can't you just picture Cheech Marin bursting out through the chapel doors in a dense cloud of white smoke, and in his stoned iconic Chicano accent, announcing his and Tommy Chong's divinely inspired decree of who the new pope will be?
_______

seeds wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:11 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:04 am

godelian wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:52 am
The papacy still amounts to an incredibly influential TikTok influencer with lots of views, likes, followers, and channel subscriptions. I certainly do not underestimate his ability to thoroughly "influence".

Just as an example, with the press of a button, he could launch a memecoin and get millions of illiterate peasants to buy it, and make billions of dollars in the process. If even Donald Trump can pull that off, then can you imagine how much the fake representative of God on earth could rake in?

I am telling you, I also want that job title. It's too good to be true. I would make gazillions of dollars from that fake stuff. It is more lucrative than a gigantic Chinese factory churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags!

...especially if sold as a modern, updated form of Indulgence for the remission of sins. It would be offered as an investment for the here and now and an infinitely greater one in the hereafter for a mere pittance based on the rewards. It would be classified as the ultimate investment ensuring success in both worlds! What could possibly go wrong when insured by the agent of god on earth!

As another amusing sidenote, does anyone else here think that that bit involving the black and white smoke signal coming from the Sistine Chapel chimney would be a good premise for a Cheech and Chong escapade?
_______

No I don't! Both being perennialy stoned, it's only a matter of time before they burn down the Sistine Chapel!

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 am The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

While I believe I well understand anti-Catholic sentiment, and even more a Modernist aversion to “rigid traditionalism” which old-school pre-Vatican ll liturgy embodied, I do not think it accurate to say that the Vatican “has no power to change anything”. Those attempting to hold to the older liturgy and the traditional Catholic belief-system (which indeed it is) very definitely take issue with the pronouncements of the post-Vatican ll Church. Their view is that Vatican ll completely altered Catholicism.

And because that is so (it really is) their effort is the induce Catholicism to “return to its roots” in specific and defined theological positions. If it did so the effect would be dramatic and tangible. Francis was not only understood as revolutionary to established doctrine, but literally as heretical.

To get a sense of a genuine Traditionalist’s position vis-à-vis Modernism (as defined by Catholicism) see Bp Sanborn here who prognosticates on Leo XlV.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

Catholics comprise 1/8th of the world’s population. So what Catholics believe and think cannot be merely a footnote. Put another way: if total secularization did occur in Catholicism the effect would be dramatic. And so too if Catholicism (from the top) became far more traditionalist, the effect would also be dramatic and tangible within the wider Catholic world.

One can, I think, locate the essential argument on which the opposition to both Catholicism in an abstract, ideal sense, as well as to the structures of Catholicism, is based:

It is in the idea of a (coming) Kingdom of God and the Kingship of God (understood both tangibly and metaphysically). And concrete opposition to the Idea.

The coming of the Kingdom of God is perceived to mean more than the triumph of Israel: it is triumph of Religion over Materialism, the visible justification of the ways of God to man. “The true and universal religion must be born of a nation, but it must rise above it.”

P.E.T. Widdrington, from an essay

Once one has clarified the central opposition, I think many things come into clearer focus.

heard he is a White Sox fan

-Imp

Pope Bob.

We will be hearing that a lot.

There is something seriously wrong with the latest batch of British govt. MPs.
David Lammy, a Labour MP, accused the BBC of being 'racist' for mentioning black smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney. He thought that black smoke meant a black pope The same genius also claimed recently that men can 'grow a cervix'.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer thinks that saying only women have a cervix is 'transphobic' and something that 'should never be said'.
Poor England. What is to become of you?

Try this:

Once you have undermined any realness to the idea that God communicated to the Prophets, and that a “will” was conveyed, at that point God becomes unreal: baseless, invented, contrived, imagined. At that point there is no longer an operational belief.

If God did not speak to the Prophets, he did not — does not — speak to the Church. And it follows that he does not (never did) speak to Man.

Any notion, therefore, of “ordering the world in righteousness” is scam. A political trick functioning through indoctrination. And for this reason the Catholic Church is understood to be just such a scam.

The entire notion of Authority no longer has a platform.

Here is an interesting contrast:

Once, it was accepted that the imminence of the coming Kingdom required moral repentance. Now, the very idea means nothing.

And today we (seem to) await the imminence of AI systems that will take over processes, and perhaps decisions (?) in all fundamental areas of human life. (Or do I engage in paranoid reasoning?).

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 12:39 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 5:08 am The power of the Vatican consists mainly of tradition and ceremony with no power to change anything. Its glory days have vanished forever. It now operates as a huge business conglomerate feeding on its millennial history. In effect, it has become a secular institution, which to a great degree, it has always been dealing in power and wealth. At its most powerful, it was also the most corrupt.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

While I believe I well understand anti-Catholic sentiment, and even more a Modernist aversion to “rigid traditionalism” which old-school pre-Vatican ll liturgy embodied, I do not think it accurate to say that the Vatican “has no power to change anything”. Those attempting to hold to the older liturgy and the traditional Catholic belief-system (which indeed it is) very definitely take issue with the pronouncements of the post-Vatican ll Church. Their view is that Vatican ll completely altered Catholicism.

And because that is so (it really is) their effort is the induce Catholicism to “return to its roots” in specific and defined theological positions. If it did so the effect would be dramatic and tangible. Francis was not only understood as revolutionary to established doctrine, but literally as heretical.

To get a sense of a genuine Traditionalist’s position vis-à-vis Modernism (as defined by Catholicism) see Bp Sanborn here who prognosticates on Leo XlV.

Whoever is Pope makes no difference to the world at large. The Papacy has long become a footnote.

Catholics comprise 1/8th of the world’s population. So what Catholics believe and think cannot be merely a footnote. Put another way: if total secularization did occur in Catholicism the effect would be dramatic. And so too if Catholicism (from the top) became far more traditionalist, the effect would also be dramatic and tangible within the wider Catholic world.

It's the heretics who are most likely to create the conditions for Catholicism to maintain a degree of validity going into the future, one in which a medievalistic mind set would find it impossible to survive. It's a process which requires a sociological influx as much as its theological underpinnings can absorb without breaking down. If it ever did succumb due to total secularization as you mention, the effect wouldn't be merely dramatic, but nullifying. The Pope Benedict mentality would have hastened the decline immeasurably.

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 6:38 pm It's the heretics who are most likely to create the conditions for Catholicism to maintain a degree of validity going into the future, one in which a medievalistic mind set would find it impossible to survive. It's a process which requires a sociological influx as much as its theological underpinnings can absorb without breaking down. If it ever did succumb due to total secularization as you mention, the effect wouldn't be merely dramatic, but nullifying. The Pope Benedict mentality would have hastened the decline immeasurably.

That’s a bold statement. But how would you back it up? What example of heresy might you refer to? Or are you merely being bold and controversial? (I am sincerely interested to know your view).

If Francis was heretical, through what heresy of his has Catholicism advanced?

So it settled then. The italian working class now has a new, perfectly useless bourgeois snake-oil selling freeloader to take care of with their tax dollars.

Guy's prolly got his eye on one of the choir boys already.

poke at the pope...one at a time: https://youtu.be/utCjMTaP43s?si=Y78ibWTC6MwaKHGh