Pope's foot in mouth disease

Solipsism personified.

Tribal Indians condemn pope

Indian leaders in Brazil have reacted angrily to comments by Pope Benedict that they had been purified by the Roman Catholic church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492.

In a speech to bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil on Sunday, Benedict said indigenous people of the Americas had welcomed European priests after conquest.

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief co-ordinator of Coiab, an Amazon Indian group.

The pope had said the peoples of the Americas had a "silent longing" for Christianity and welcomed European priests' arrival.

He said the church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Colonisation
Since Colombus's landing, millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonisation backed by the Roman Catholic church through murder, disease or enslavement.

Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

Indian groups sent a letter to Benedict last week asking for support in defending their ancestral lands and culture.

The letter said the Indians had suffered a "process of genocide" since the first European colonisers had arrived.

Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on tribal Indians.

'Poorly advised'
Other tribal leaders also voiced their criticism on Monday.

Dionito Jose de Souza, a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state, said: "The state used the church to do the dirty work in colonising the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that ... so is the pope taking back the church's word?"

Pope John Paul II spoke in 1992 of mistakes in the evangelisation of native peoples of the Americas.

"We repudiate the [pope's] comments," said Sandro Tuxa, leader of the movement of northeastern tribes.

"To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening.

"I think [the pope] has been poorly advised."

The Roman Catholic church's own Indian advocacy group in Brazil also criticised Benedict's speech.

Paulo Suess, the advocacy group's adviser, said: "The pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D809D115-1128-4092-9BA6-30F716C56052.htm

Really? I've followed the man for years. Our opinions may differ.

That's a little like saying it's all right for Hitler to condemn Jews because what would you expect of him, he's a Nazi after all. Benedict really shows a profound ignorance of the history of the Americas when he says that. The church really was a part of genocide and cultural genocide, forced conversions, forced labor, and collusion with oligarchies that monopolized all resources for the benefit of the few. The Spanish, the Portugese, the English, the French all behaved shamefully. To say that the indigenous peoples had a silent longing for that forced conversion is a supremely silly statement. I find it offensive that someone would try to whitewash what went on, and I'm not indigenous, just trained as an Americanist.

If you think The Pope an ass, leave the Catholic church because he, and not you, is the Holy See.

xingu.....

The Catholic Church is not a democracy.
The Pope was not elected by the people

The Pope is the Supreme Head of the Catholic Church. His edicts, proclaimations, etc are not up to debate.
The Pope represents Christ on earth, not the people.

If a person feels they are are devote Catholic, they may very well not agree personally with the Pope, but they are bound to obey him.

Based on a quick Google, here are THE FUNCTIONS OF THE POPE

Those who so disagree with the Pope have gone out and splintered from the Catholic Church, or left completely.

Otherwise, one submits to the will of the Church.

However, the notion that a Catholic who does try to live by the laws of the church is not in a position to ignore or pick and choose which proclaimations of the the pope he/she agrees with and would like to follow.

Chai wrote:

However, the notion that a Catholic who does try to live by the laws of the church is not in a position to ignore or pick and choose which proclaimations of the the pope he/she agrees with and would like to follow.

Not true.

But Papal Encyclicals, even when they are not ex cathedra, can nonetheless be sufficiently authoritative to end theological debate on a particular question.

Otherwsie, only Papal dogmata are 'law'.

Pope: Other Christians not true churches
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 10, 3:59 PM ET

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.

The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.

"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council.

It was the second time in a week that Benedict has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 meetings that modernized the church. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass ?- a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists but criticized by more liberal ones as a step backward from Vatican II.

Among the council's key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers its erroneous interpretation by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed before becoming pope, said it was issuing the new document Tuesday because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.

The new document ?- formulated as five questions and answers ?- restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation."

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains.

The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession ?- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles ?- and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said.

The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said that although the document contains nothing new, "I don't know what motivated it at this time."

"But it's important always to point out that there's the official position and there's the huge amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at all levels, certainly between Anglicans and Catholics and all the other groups and Catholics," she said.

The document said that Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they do not recognize the primacy of the pope ?- a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular church," said a commentary from the congregation that accompanied the text.

Despite the harsh tone, the document stressed that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.

"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants, but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.

The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church status" was required for any ecumenical progress.

In a statement titled "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or that they are 'churches of another type' ?- but none of these bridges is used" in the Vatican document.

The Vatican statement, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul ?- a major ecumenical feast day.

There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release it now, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles.

Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics or that the congregation was sending a message to certain theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the congregation.

In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian clergyman who left the priesthood and was a target of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s.