"Pope's Visit" Commercial

[Maggyie]

Yeah I don't think anyone watching that video thinks to themselves "lol the pope looks stupid."   Cathokics need a sense of humor! What did St Teresa of Avika say about sour faced saints?

[Pia Jesu]

Vatican spokesman, Fr. Thomas Resica recently stated that "there are limits to satire and humor" especially in the ways we portray and speak of faith & belief.  Undoubtedly, Pope Francis enjoys being with people and is joyful in the Spirit, but he bears the weight of the Church on his shoulders (especially during this horrific period of history). The media's caricature of him as a rock star and cool dude who "performs" a magic trick diminishes respect for the Holy Office of the Papacy.

[Era Might]

44 minutes ago, Pia Jesu said:

Vatican spokesman, Fr. Thomas Resica recently stated that "there are limits to satire and humor" especially in the ways we portray and speak of faith & belief.  Undoubtedly, Pope Francis enjoys being with people and is joyful in the Spirit, but he bears the weight of the Church on his shoulders (especially during this horrific period of history). The media's caricature of him as a rock star and cool dude who "performs" a magic trick diminishes respect for the Holy Office of the Papacy.

So, to try and take this beyond the Twitter commercial, we no longer live in a world where there is a "Holy Office of the Papacy." I think the Popes themselves have long ago come to terms with that, and aren't bunkered down against modernity like the Popes before the turn of the century. The church has let go of its role as head of western civilization, it had no choice, society has changed. I think personally that the church needs to radically rethink its institutions, because the world has fundamentally changed.  The church since Vatican II has nominally been doing that, but I don't think mere reform is radical enough, it's only an adjustment to reality...but in adjusting to reality, the prophetic is lost, I think. I don't think the video is offensive, but I'm not looking at it from a perspective of sacred/profane because I don't think the world really makes that distinction anymore. I don't think the Pope is ever going to be head of civilization again, even if he walked around on a throne and tiara, which would only look absurd in the world we live in, because its symbolic value is lost. So, to me, the real trouble with the problem you raise is what is Christianity in the modern world? Another way of saying that is, what would you do differently if you were Pope? It's easy to say you would do this or that differently, but you would quickly realize that you're not living on your terms, you live in a world that has its own assumptions, and you can choose to scold the world, but that would quickly make you,and the church, an easy object of derision, and not just derision, but public absurdity. The church would not be triumphant, it would be grotesque. It would be like a monk having a family and treating his family like a monastery...family life has a very different character, and pious seriousness would not suit...which is why the monk is not in the world in the first place. The Pope is in the same kind of situation, he knows the world is not a house of Jesuits or a conclave of Cardinals. Never has been, but in the past the ordinary people didn't concern themselves with their rulers, they had their own culture...Carnivals, etc. But today there is not only a loss of secular/sacred distinction, but also no ritual/vernacular distinction. Culture and politics are irreversably democratic.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Era Might

[dominicansoul]

3 hours ago, Pia Jesu said:

The media's caricature of him as a rock star and cool dude who "performs" a magic trick diminishes respect for the Holy Office of the Papacy.

Or makes those who never paid attention to the Pope take notice of the papacy?  I've been surprised at how the people who you think hate the church have embraced our Pope.  When ISIS threatened him the first time, even secularists were saying "they better not mess with our Pope!"   I don't think the video is as bad as you're  perceiving it to be.  It's not like he was juggling chalices with The Blood of Christ sloshing around... In an age where everything offends everybody, we should save our complaints for the real hate that's out there...

[Gabriela]

Some people really need to get a sense of humor.

The Pope's got one.

12 hours ago, dominicansoul said:

Dominicans.  'nuff said.  

They tend to be highly educated, but dilute them in the mass of Franciscans and run the stats again.

 

[Credo in Deum]

8 hours ago, Pia Jesu said:

Vatican spokesman, Fr. Thomas Resica recently stated that "there are limits to satire and humor" especially in the ways we portray and speak of faith & belief.  Undoubtedly, Pope Francis enjoys being with people and is joyful in the Spirit, but he bears the weight of the Church on his shoulders (especially during this horrific period of history). The media's caricature of him as a rock star and cool dude who "performs" a magic trick diminishes respect for the Holy Office of the Papacy.

Modern society is against anything that resembles patriarchy.  Even in their own secular shows on t.v. the father is always portrayed as some buffoon or bumbling oaf, so it's not surprising that the media would do the same to the Pope. Anyway, I feel your frustration.

[Pia Jesu]

I think there is a cautionary tale here...about the effects of surrendering to what might be described as the spirit of the age.  To what extent do Christian beliefs, institutions, rituals, etc. need a major overhauling?  And to what extent, if any, can tradition accommodate the modern world?  We're steeped in a morass of ethical relativism and subjectivism.  Likewise, whatever tends to discredit authority--tends to discredit all its pronouncements, leaving no system at all!  To read (in an earlier post) that "choosing to scold the world" would make the Church a public absurdity--and ultimately grotesque--suggests this momentum.  In the spirit of aggiornamento the Second Vatican Council focused on radically assessing and rethinking the institutional church because the world had changed.  One of the sad results, however, was/is a decline in church attendance.  On a personal note, my pastor recently promoted the wearing of a badge that said, "Ask me about Jesus."  There were few takers.  I really think that we need to reflect on what it means to be a faith-filled individual.  On the jacket of A Thomas Merton Reader, Merton himself writes that the Christian is "one who sacrifices the half truth for the sake of the whole truth, who abandons an incomplete and imperfect concept of life for a life that is integral, unified, and structurally perfect."