I get that he did a lot of unambiguously good things, many of which I will unreservedly praise in isolation, but he was still the head of an organization that protects child molesters, justifies hate and bigotry, hoards wealth at a rate that makes Saudi princes blush, etc. Thus the qualifier: he’s the least-bad pope I can imagine having, but he was still a pope. it’s like saying a serial killer should be praised because he spent his days teaching self-defense classes to women to keep them from being victimized, but while that’s definitely a good thing, at the end of the day he was still eating people.
Oh yeah, the church isn’t perfect, what they did to Sinead was completely uncalled for. They should have acknowledged her and started excommunicating the priests responsible. I’m just still of the opinion that the church can be fixed as opposed to just abandoning it. That’s about I think where we differ. Hell, there was a point where the church had a brothel in it! So it’s come a long way since then. Still not perfect. My hope is that incremental changes can make it better. Make it to a point where good completely outweighs the bad and even if not, the earliest form of Christianity didn’t necessarily have a central governing authority, so long as individual Christians keep the message that is still good.
I’m not making an argument as to whether or not it’s fixable. No, where we differ is in the argument I am making that, as it stands, the Catholic Church has caused and continues to cause enough harm in the world that that calling anyone who by their position bears some of the responsibility for that harm ‘good’ without qualification is problematic. Fix it or not as you see fit, I’m not a Catholic or even a Christian so it’s no skin off my nose either way, but I’m not going to paper over its abuses just to satisfy the cultural norm of not speaking ill of the dead.
I have replied with a long post to another comment in this thread stating some of the things he did.
I get that he did a lot of unambiguously good things, many of which I will unreservedly praise in isolation, but he was still the head of an organization that protects child molesters, justifies hate and bigotry, hoards wealth at a rate that makes Saudi princes blush, etc. Thus the qualifier: he’s the least-bad pope I can imagine having, but he was still a pope. it’s like saying a serial killer should be praised because he spent his days teaching self-defense classes to women to keep them from being victimized, but while that’s definitely a good thing, at the end of the day he was still eating people.
Oh yeah, the church isn’t perfect, what they did to Sinead was completely uncalled for. They should have acknowledged her and started excommunicating the priests responsible. I’m just still of the opinion that the church can be fixed as opposed to just abandoning it. That’s about I think where we differ. Hell, there was a point where the church had a brothel in it! So it’s come a long way since then. Still not perfect. My hope is that incremental changes can make it better. Make it to a point where good completely outweighs the bad and even if not, the earliest form of Christianity didn’t necessarily have a central governing authority, so long as individual Christians keep the message that is still good.
I’m not making an argument as to whether or not it’s fixable. No, where we differ is in the argument I am making that, as it stands, the Catholic Church has caused and continues to cause enough harm in the world that that calling anyone who by their position bears some of the responsibility for that harm ‘good’ without qualification is problematic. Fix it or not as you see fit, I’m not a Catholic or even a Christian so it’s no skin off my nose either way, but I’m not going to paper over its abuses just to satisfy the cultural norm of not speaking ill of the dead.