“Pot, this is Kettle.” “Kettle, Pot”.
Opinions on the catholic church, papal politics, etc from the usual GD crowd here:
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?143192-Pope-Francis-Releases-84-Page-Manifesto-Demanding-That-Global-Sharing-Of-Wealth.
Best hope for this thread is to keep it narrowly to the Vatican and 2A, personal protection, etc.
Has anybody actually read the article?
The title seems like clickbait and the actual quote lacks context:
“It makes me think of … people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn’t it?” he said to applause.
He also criticized those who invest in weapons industries, saying “duplicity is the currency of today … they say one thing and do another.”
We’re lacking lots of details. And if this is all that the Pope said, he isn’t exactly calling people who are involved in the arms trade ‘unChristian’. It seems he might be criticizing the Ford Motor Company’s manufacture of war materiél for the Nazis using Jewish slave labor. But since there is very little or no context…
“A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.”
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.177.than.html
So he’s going to call out those involved in firearms manufacturing but not restaurant staff who serve alcohol to obviously intoxicated people and allow them to drive, pharmacists who prepare birth control prescriptions, car salesmen who sell windowless vans to child molesters…
Yeah go back to your clueless crowd who still think you’re God’s anointed messenger.
http://visnews-en.blogspot.com/2015/06/meeting-with-young-go-against-grain.html
He’s calling people who make weapons and call themselves Christians hypocrites.
Logical fallacy. Falls under tu quoque, or an “argument from hypocrisy.” It is illogical to assume that since the church has previously made actions counter to their current ones, that they cannot make a reasonable argument today. You are attacking previous actions rather than providing real support for the issue at hand.
Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, the tragedy of the Shoah. The great powers had photographed the railway lines that carried the trains to the concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, to kill Jews, and also Christians, Roma, homosexuals, to kill them there. But tell me, why did they not bomb them? Interests!
He’s going to have to explain what the ‘interests’ were that favored the killing of the Jews. A conspiracy person would assume that the Allies were tacitly allowing the Nazi’s to kill the Jews. Were we more ‘interested’ in taking out military targets?
Sooo, revisionist infallibility? We’re right until we admit we were wrong before, but that makes us right instantly again.
He’s the CEO of the world’s largest corporation.
Does that include the companies that arm the Swiss Guards who keep his head on his shoulders?
Thanks for the link. Provides better context.
“At times I have said that we are living a third world war, but in pieces. There is war in Europe, there is war in Africa, there is war in the Middle East, there is war in other countries … But can I trust in a life like this? Can I trust world leaders? When I go to vote for a candidate, can I trust that he or she will not take my country to war? If you trust only in men, you have lost! Think of the people, leaders, entrepreneurs, who say they are Christians and then produce weapons! They say one thing and do another. Hypocrisy … But we see what happened during the last century: in 1914, or rather in 1915 precisely. There was the great tragedy in Armenia. Many people died. I do not know how many, but certainly more than a million. Where were the great powers of the time? They looked away. Why? Because they were interested in war: their war!”
Presumably the original speech was given in Latin or Italian. It may be difficult for a translator to differentiate between when the speaker is referring to small arms and weapons suitable for personal defense and when the speaker is referring to heavier arms such as mortars, artillery, ATGMs, &c. in a language that likely uses the same word for both types of weapon. Considering this and the context in which the three offending sentences occurs, it seems more likely to me that the Pope is warning against the crony capitalism of a global Congressional-Industrial-Military complex which is enriched by unending global war. I don’t think he’s decrying Gaston Glock for making pistols, I think that he’s saying you’re a hypocrite if you call yourself a Christian while selling arms to Syrian rebels and Libyan militias, and then ignore the plight of those fleeing the ensuing sectarian violence.
100% agree. I really do not get where he is getting this from. But it could be as simple as this, that when he talks off the cuff, he trips not only all over himself, but also all over Catholic teaching and principles, and then the next day, as we have already seen more than a few times unfortunately, some Vatican spokesperson has to walk back the Pope’s comments and “clarify” what he was “trying to communicate”.
In any case: http://taylormarshall.com/2014/02/patron-saint-of-handguns-meet-st-gabriel-possenti.html
Thanks for the link, that actually puts rather a bit of a different perspective on it.
For example the article from the link in the OP has the Pope saying this: “If you trust only men you have lost.”
But in the article from your link it has the Pope saying this: “If you trust only in men, you have lost.”
Which of course is not in any way a controversial comment for the Pope to make. Of course he is going say we must also and always look to God.
I have to read it a few more times, but it is possible he was trying to say something along these lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
I must be on Belloc’s ignore list.
:laugh:
:eek:
Holy shit, this is the second thread where Belloc and I have actually kind of agreed on something!
:ph34r:
Clearly the apocalypse is nigh.
I just hope hes the last pope and the end is near, half the time he makes sense, the rest of the time hes an idiot.
And everyone disagrees on the halves.
I still don’t get his comments about WWII and the Holocaust.
When the Catholic Church starts paying taxes…then they can have a political voice.
Until then…the Pope needs to keep quiet and go back to feeding the hungry…ok?
Hummm…yet, he’s guarded by men with guns…so who does that make the Hypocrite?
So the 47% or so of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes cannot have a political voice?
Do you realise that all employed Catholics, yes, including priests, pay taxes?
What if you lost your job and were on unemployment, do you then support you not having a political voice?
And all those Americans who for over 120 years before the 16th Amendment, what were they ever thinking?
And why ever would you support growing the federal government even more?
And what exactly do you suppose would be the consequences of eliminating all tax exemptions for non-profits and charities, which include scientific and educational institutions as well?
And when exactly did the Church ever, in her entire 2000 year existence, stop feeding the hungry?
And just curious, have you yourself ever bothered to feed the hungry?