If you’re not a Catholic it means nothing. He’s just another old person that 99.9% of the earth never knew personally.

When he pulled the Jesus piece out, bitches like peace out….

The mouthpiece for the biggest fraudulent organization in history? The one who has the final say on covering up pedophilia in the Catholic ranks? C’mon man, how you gonna discredit Allah that??

There's a DC thread.

I think it's an ominous sign that the Bishop of Rome died on the day of the resurrection.

PAPAL CONCLAVE SEASON DURING DRAFT SEASON?!?!?!?!

Oh man, this is just way too much stimulation...

There is an estimated 1.3 billion Catholics world wide and about 1 billion Protestants. So roughly 2.3 billion Christians. Roughly 1/2 of all Christians do not follow the Pope.

The pedophilia cover-ups were exposed before he became pope, though.

My understanding is that the major difference between Catholicism and the Protestant denominations is essentially that the Catholics believe the Pope to be the final authority (Protestants point to scripture).

So yeah, if the Catholics believe that the Pope is essentially a living Bible of sorts, that's a pretty big deal.

That said, I'm not sure why the Pope should carry any influence over the Protestant religions at all. They exist largely BECAUSE the Protestants didn't believe in the plenary authority of the Papacy. If you don't believe in papal supremacy (and the Pope very obviously does) then why would you consider him a leader of your Church?

Francis?

I never knew him, the last I recall a Pope was John or Paul, Something like this.

I'm not Catholic, can't ya tell? :hmmm:

I believe you are getting the Pope confused with The Beatles. Easy thing to do.

Time to go back and review the Eurotrip movie. I don't know if the process will be the same since Michelle Trachtenberg died, though.

He doesn't. This is only how protestants are viewed by non-protestants.

I'm currently reading a book about the history of England from the Roman occupation to the present. I'm up to the early 1600s now.

A lot of English history through that time is linked to the island's relationship with Catholicism. The first hiccup came when an English philosopher in Roman times came up with the novel concept that people could impact their own afterlife and weren't necessarily ruled by church (i.e., Catholic rules). So England took a different path early on as this took hold.

The next big hiccup was in the 1200s (I think). There were essentially two governments, a secular one in England and a religious one based out of Rome. There were two justice systems, one for priests (and other religious folks like monks) and one for everybody else. The priests were running wild on criminal stuff because the church courts wouldn't punish them, so that led to a lot of conflict. Around that time, the pope decided that kings should report to the pope, and was trying to get the kings around Europe to acquiesce. One English king did due to financial problems, but then England backed out of that deal.

Then we made it forward to Henry VIII in the 1500s, and we know how that turned out. But apparently it wasn't just a whim of Henry to break away, but rather the result of 1,000 years of popes trying to make England a vassal state when the English people didn't agree with some of the basic tenets of Catholicism. Plus, the church was appointing Italian (and maybe French) bishops into English operations, and they were notorious for doing nothing religious and just collecting taxes from the locals, which caused resentment.

Interestingly, this author also mentions that Ireland is predominantly Catholic not because of embracing Catholic beliefs early on, but because they needed an ally against English expansion and the Catholic church had the power to be that ally. The church never really helped them, but the Catholic tradition got entrenched.

There's probably some stuff here that I'm misunderstanding or overly simplifying, but it's interesting to read how powerful the Catholic church was back in the day, and how a lot of early popes used that power for secular reasons.

Is the Vatican still tied up with the Mafia like in the Godfather movies?