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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[redwallzyl]

I don't really know enough about Catholicism to have an in depth discussion, but I can say that I heard a coworker (in the United States) get into a heated discussion with another coworker about the pope's authority over him as a Catholic.  Evidently, as far as he's concerned the pope has no authority over his religious beliefs whatsoever, which came as a surprise to me and pretty much everyone else present.

Admittedly, having grown up in a Protestant community, just about everything in Catholicism seems mysterious, but as an outsider I was under the impression that the Catholic church had a very strong notion of religious authority, where the pope could (in grossly oversimplified terms) say one day that women could be priests and that would be that.  That's opposed to most Protestant denominations, where there's almost no central authority, and any individual church can always decide to just do things their own way if they don't care about leaving the conference they're part of (if they're even part of one).

Clearly, this is not a correct understanding of how Catholicism works.

Your coworker is probably exaggerating things to make a point, but he's largely correct (Disclaimer: I'm not a Catholic, I just read a lot about Christian religious history, and know some Catholics). The main power of the pope is that he's the head of a religious denomination and bureaucracy that over a billion people are members of. So what he says about religious matters is taken seriously, and he has some control over who gets appointed bishop and money matters. But the Catholic Church isn't and never was a one-man show, so there are plenty of people under the Pope who are also influential and counsel the pope and have their own jobs, like Vatican treasurer, or archbishop of Los Angeles, etc. So your coworker may or may not pay attention to what the pope is doing, but if he attends a church, his priest probably pays attention. And like Teneb and Grim Portent, said, Catholicism is not a monolith, and is very different in different places, because that's what happens with people.

There is a doctrine of Papal infallibility that says the Pope can make statements that are without error, or ex cathedra. But those are pretty rare and there's limits over what this can be applied to. Wikipedia cites a list of 7 or so papal documents that are considered infallible, with the caveat that its not a comprehensive list. But the most recent of the 7 was from 1950. I think this is what Arcvasti is talking about.

I know pope Francis has been getting a lot of flack from conservative Catholics in the United States, some of whom are part of the Religious Right, because he's too liberal for them (mainly over the issue of divorced Catholics). I've also seen criticism of him for not doing more about reforming the papacy to prevent corruption and covering up sexual abuse, but I don't know enough about that to make a judgement on that.

Again, I'm also not a Catholic, so if any of this is wrong, feel free to correct me.

The pope has not had the declarative power over policy for a long time. An influence sure but that power protestants imagine he has was broken centuries ago. There is however a mechanism to make large scale decisions that must be accepted, an ecumenical counsel. That has been the accepted mode of resolving disputes in the church since the beginning. When large scale reforms happen it's usually through agreements that come out of counsels.

[Grim Portent]

Most Catholic church major doctrinal decisions are made by the Ecumenical Council, which is usually composed of high ranking clergy picked by the Pope. There's not been many of them, just 21. I imagine there's more frequent minor decisions made by smaller councils or ones lower on the heirarchy, but such things are not really relevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_ecumenical_councils

The last one was in the 60s and was the beginning of the modern Catholic church era and estranged a modest chunk of Catholics who hold that the reforms are not binding and some of them even went as far as to declare bits of them heretical.

[redwallzyl]

They have a long history of being controversial. But really there is no other way to get a major change in policy as the church can not just tell people to do stuff it needs to convince them. That is both a strength and a weakness. like a highly decentralized government. It's sort of how I imagine a huge interstellar federation might function.

[Persus13]

The pope has not had the declarative power over policy for a long time. An influence sure but that power protestants imagine he has was broken centuries ago. There is however a mechanism to make large scale decisions that must be accepted, an ecumenical counsel. That has been the accepted mode of resolving disputes in the church since the beginning. When large scale reforms happen it's usually through agreements that come out of counsels.

Thanks for the mention of councils. Although the Pope does have a major role in ecumenical councils, since he's the one that usually calls for the council.

[redwallzyl]

The pope has not had the declarative power over policy for a long time. An influence sure but that power protestants imagine he has was broken centuries ago. There is however a mechanism to make large scale decisions that must be accepted, an ecumenical counsel. That has been the accepted mode of resolving disputes in the church since the beginning. When large scale reforms happen it's usually through agreements that come out of counsels.

Thanks for the mention of councils. Although the Pope does have a major role in ecumenical councils, since he's the one that usually calls for the council.

I'm a fan of church history. It's a very interesting subject.

[Persus13]

You've got a variation of the Byzantine flag as your profile picture, so I'm not very surprised.

[Egan_BW]

Yay, railgun!

[RAM]

Most Catholic church major doctrinal decisions are made by the Ecumenical Council

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TQuacxEjAU

[TD1]

I didn't click the link, but I'm guessing the words "that would be an ecumenical matter" feature

[Urist McScoopbeard]

The pope has not had the declarative power over policy for a long time. An influence sure but that power protestants imagine he has was broken centuries ago. There is however a mechanism to make large scale decisions that must be accepted, an ecumenical counsel. That has been the accepted mode of resolving disputes in the church since the beginning. When large scale reforms happen it's usually through agreements that come out of counsels.

Thanks for the mention of councils. Although the Pope does have a major role in ecumenical councils, since he's the one that usually calls for the council.

I'm a fan of church history. It's a very interesting subject.

Church history is awesome. Up there with Dune when it comes to drama!

[Rolan7]

Crom vs The Four Winds.
Good points both.

[IndigoFenix]

Fun fact that few are aware of: the Torah (Bible: Episode 1) never mentions any kind of afterlife whatsoever.

What are the specific circumstances that make a religion start focusing more on the afterlife?  Nowadays it's near impossible to find people who believe in God but no afterlife, to the extent that most people assume that the two are intrinsically intertwined, yet history implies that this was not always the case.

[Rowanas]

Fun fact that few are aware of: the Torah (Bible: Episode 1) never mentions any kind of afterlife whatsoever.

What are the specific circumstances that make a religion start focusing more on the afterlife?  Nowadays it's near impossible to find people who believe in God but no afterlife, to the extent that most people assume that the two are intrinsically intertwined, yet history implies that this was not always the case.

Probably that if there is a god and they can't be observed to do anything, then their only purpose must be post-mortal management. If god's not helping us or handing out miracles, what else is it for?

[Descan]

... Well, world-creation. Usually.