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Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History

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#2
Zinjanthropos Online
Just a question: If the controlled are weak, then does that make the controller powerful?

Not sure on how much more stronger than a weakling one should be in order to be labelled powerful. If the Pope is powerful then so is every bully in existence. Maybe he smells bad, real bad....I can equate powerful with a strong odor. Still it's not the same as a kindergarten teacher's power over his/her students. Although to those innocent minds, the teacher represents more power than they can muster.

Nah, I can't give the Pope the distinction being powerful. He's more like a performance enhancing drug. Is this an opiate of the masses thread?
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#3
Secular Sanity Offline
(Mar 15, 2018 03:19 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just a question: If the controlled are weak, then does that make the controller powerful?

Not sure on how much more stronger than a weakling one should be in order to be labelled powerful. If the Pope is powerful then so is every bully in existence. Maybe he smells bad, real bad....I can equate powerful with a strong odor. Still it's not the same as a kindergarten teacher's power over his/her students. Although to those innocent minds, the teacher represents more power than they can muster.

Nah, I can't give the Pope the distinction being powerful. He's more like a performance enhancing drug. Is this an opiate of the masses thread?

Well, he has the power to forbid by an indisputable authority and to permit by an indisputable authority.

The Vatican is not only a religious institution, and a center of political power, but also an economic institution with vast financial holdings.

Politics of Vatican City (wikipedia.org)

"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven."


"Papal Supremacy is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that the Pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ and as pastor of the entire Christian Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered: that, in brief, "the Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls."

You guys are always having ephinanies.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a true epiphany before.  I have thoughts and questions, but when I look back on them, I always think, "WTF was I thinking?"  Confused

But here’s a thought…

You might call it an "Eve" gene, if you like, i.e., ecological dominance. Animals live within their limits, but as humans reached beyond their limits to control the environment (external forces), we removed ourselves from the garden/nature where we once heard the voice of god. We left the garden to till the ground. Agriculture replaced the ways of the hunter-gatherer. Society favored Abel’s offerings, and once we mastered the hostile forces of nature, we became a force of nature ourselves, i.e., social competition.  We became like gods, knowing good and evil, and like Cain said, the lack of social acceptance can sometimes be more than we can bear.

An individual becomes powerful by surrendering his will to the whole. So, absolute moral authority over 1.2 billion people—controlling, not only their behavior, but their reproduction, as well.

Yeah, I’d say that he’s pretty damn powerful.

"We delude ourselves.  The holders of great power may be physically frail, gentle in manner, tender in sentiment, Christian by profession, may wear but a loin-cloth; but power is power, and its nature is to grab hold, to seize possession, to overwhelm. Whatever appears in human life that seems unrelated to power, or even—like love, like charity, like self-sacrifice—contrary to it, is, if it endures, but another mask of power."
—Allen Wheelis
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#4
Zinjanthropos Online
Yeah, I guess even if that which you have power over is weak, it's still enough to warrant the powerful tag. But that's only until something comes along that renders the power impotent. If the Pope was omnipotent then I'd have no problem labelling him as powerful. If I see him on a beach then I'm going to kick sand in his face just as a test....lol
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#5
Secular Sanity Offline
(Mar 16, 2018 05:21 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: If the Pope was omnipotent then I'd have no problem labelling him as powerful. If I see him on a beach then I'm going to kick sand in his face just as a test....lol

That's like knocking down someone's sand castle.  
Once you do it, you better run like Cain because you just gave 1.2 billion Catholics a "cause". Big Grin
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#6
C C Offline
Candidates for the Papal Awards?

My nominations for receiving a Golden Ferula trophy would be Pope Boniface VIII for the Power Ego category. Pope John XII for Best Horndog Antics. And Pope Alexander VI for Notorious Family Background. Honorable mention to Pope Stephen VI for a currently non-existing Righteous Tenacity category; you've got to admire a divine leader who digs up his rotting predecessor and subjects him to trial.

~
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#7
Zinjanthropos Online
(Mar 20, 2018 08:51 PM)C C Wrote: Candidates for the Papal Awards?

My nominations for receiving a Golden Ferula trophy would be Pope Boniface VIII for the Power Ego category. Pope John XII for Best Horndog Antics. And Pope Alexander VI for Notorious Family Background. Honorable mention to Pope Stephen VI for a currently non-existing Righteous Tenacity category; you've got to admire a divine leader who digs up his rotting predecessor and subjects him to trial.

~

If the legend of Pope Joan (855-857) is true then she gets my vote. The rest of them mean little to me.
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#8
Leigha Offline
I think the Papacy used to be ''powerful''' but not anymore. Catholicism still retains many members, but it's dwindling. Why the Pope still makes headline news every time he has an epiphany is beyond me.
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#9
Zinjanthropos Online
(Mar 24, 2018 05:24 AM)Leigha Wrote: I think the Papacy used to be ''powerful''' but not anymore. Catholicism still retains many members, but it's dwindling. Why the Pope still makes headline news every time he has an epiphany is beyond me.

Wegs....I wonder if the Pope has ever had an epiphany re Rap Music. I am a basketball referee in my spare time and go to many Catholic schools as well as other faith based schools. Many times during warmup or intermission when Rap music is playing I can discern the 'F' bombs loud and clear (only because players and table officials tell me to listen closely to some parts) that administrative staff (faculty) & non Rap enthusiastic fans can't clearly make out. Pretty funny when I look up and see Bible & Papal quotes plastered about.
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#10
C C Offline
(Mar 24, 2018 07:12 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
(Mar 24, 2018 05:24 AM)Leigha Wrote: I think the Papacy used to be ''powerful''' but not anymore. Catholicism still retains many members, but it's dwindling. Why the Pope still makes headline news every time he has an epiphany is beyond me.

Wegs....I wonder if the Pope has ever had an epiphany re Rap Music. I am a basketball referee in my spare time and go to many Catholic schools as well as other faith based schools. Many times during warmup or intermission when Rap music is playing I can discern the 'F' bombs loud and clear (only because players and table officials tell me to listen closely to some parts) that administrative staff (faculty) & non Rap enthusiastic fans can't clearly make out. Pretty funny when I look up and see Bible & Papal quotes plastered about.

f bomb - F bomb refers to the strongest weapon in one's verbal arsenal. In a time when words like 'bitch' and 'ass' have lost their shock value in pop culture, the word 'fuck' is still like dropping a bomb in polite conversation.

Only problem is, it's difficult to see how it is still the "strongest weapon" in the verbal arsenal. What carries the most shock-value potency now in any public or private setting is politically incorrect vocabulary. Which is why people are increasingly flirting with career disasters by using those words as their emotional cathartic. Unlike the traditional profanities that have lost their potency via gratuitous overuse, the Social Justice Micro-Management taboos still deliver a sledgehammer effect (especially in terms of consequences).

Which isn't to say that one still cannot evoke a rise in some people by uttering Ef in a public formal setting or ceremony. It's just a rather tame / lame shock compared to the glory days of Ef-dom.

Forty years ago HBO policy might have been a fine example of how to kill the potency of the F-word, albeit it is just the monotonous beating of a dead horse in this era. Which is to say, there almost seems to be some kind of rule that a screenplay for its own productions has to feature a variation of the F-word at least three or four times every 5 minutes. The Leftovers especially comes to mind from the recent past, where even though there's this "critically acclaimed" series you're supposedly sampling, there's simultaneously the feeling that you're watching something written by a teenager. Where all the adults are actually late-maturing, "Yo dude", junkie Jesse Pinkmans in disguise. [I'm actually being somewhat unfair to Aaron Paul's character, whose favorite cliche for commencing or ending discourse was a demure calling everybody bitches. AMC's *Breaking Bad* instead featured a plausible degree of everyday Ef usage.]

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