this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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It’s all just fluff and disingenuous crap. Take the last one, Francis. He pretended to be soooo humble because he slept in a nice cottage still in the disgustingly opulent Vatican instead of the even nicer pope bedroom. As an absolute monarch he had the power to dismantle the entire system and give away the wealth to the previous victims of the church to make amends. But he didn’t. This one will say a bunch of nice stuff about migrants, but when the rubber hits the road nothing will change. And they’ll still force every one of their poor members to pay a 10% income tax while burying more gold in the Vatican.
One guy vs a globe of catholics? I realize he's supposed to be the voice of god and all, but... I just don't believe this.
So all those Catholics are just lying when they pledge their fealty, and they actually are willing to defy the voice of god? What a bunch of hypocrites.
Yes?
You've gotta think in terms of sociology. People aren't just pledging fealty to the voice of god; though they do submit themselves, it's still to a collective, social understanding of what they think being Catholic means.
Don't get me wrong, the Pope has a lot of social influence, but if he was too obviously antagonistic to his own role, I think a lot of people would make up some gobbledygook about this one being poisoned by satan and they would just take him out. The material interest of keeping the Catholic machine going is more valuable than strictly adhering to literally anything and everything this one guy might say.
As an analogy, you don't want to cool glass down too quickly because it will crack and shatter.
It's an old conservative scare-mongering line that's really cemented itself in the cultural consciousness - the idea that the pope is an absolute ruler and all catholics must do as he says was spread around (well, throughout all of history but specifically in the US) to turn people against JFK, a catholic. We can't have a catholic president, that'll put the pope in charge of the country!!
Reality is that the pope has a shitload of soft power and could start to implement reparations least at some level (and yeah, utterly dick move not to have done that, Frank...). Broad picture, canon law is beyond arcane and there's plenty of restrictions on the actual "money spending" powers of the papacy. The requirement for charity is probably the biggest one, but there's also the requirements for upkeep of the various shrines/churches/sites(?)/the holy see (obvs) as well as having to provide support for the many many agents of the church.