@PeterTurner he lost 200 pounds? Good on him! That’s dedication. Love that guy

Also, very odd but I was looking at affable geeks profile, and the link to the episcopal church website that he built goes to a weird Japanese porn spam website. That’s sad, I wanted to see what the site looked like.

@LukeHill That's pretty bad, I'll see if I can remove that link - not a good way to remember him. He was a youth pastor at a few churches in North Carolina. Very, very amiable gentleman and a good Christian.

@PeterTurner Just read up on a recent decision that Pope Francis has signed off on reversing the choices of Benedict and John Paul II as regards celebrating the {Pre 1962} Tridentine Mass (ad orientum, in Latin, etc) - which seems to me to be yet another step he has taken toward dividing the church and alienating many of its adherents rather than uniting it. (My wife is still not OK with his allowing animists to perform their rituals on Holy Ground)

short attention span version is here

@KorvinStarmast it would be nice if there was some explicit give and take, like. We'll trade ad orientum for a complete and utter repudiation of priests and bishops who abuse the Missal as written starting with Michael Pfleger and ending with every priest with an opening monologue. Technically, that's what the Pope is saying, that priests have to take the actual missal seriously, but nobody seems to care about that aspect.

In my parish, our priest does 4 masses. 4:30 vigil for the farmers and the elderly, 9:00 AM NO mass for those who want it, 10:30 AM TLM Mass for almost every family with children and the older people who appreciate it and every unmarried person. 12:00 Spanish Mass (because our priest is the best priest in the world).

So if our bishop ever made him get rid of the TLM, he might as well get rid of the 9:00 AM Mass too, which doesn't really help anybody (except give him less work on Sunday morning)

@PeterTurner Pope Francis is tone deaf; that's my take.

@LukeHill Did you try Internet Archive's Wayback Machine ? I have been using it to update a few links on old C.SE posts when I cannot find the new places (most often is because the website became defunct).

@KorvinStarmast Is there a mechanism for cardinals / congregation of bishops to overrule a Motu Proprio? Something like a check & balance in the 3 branches of Federal gov? Even Congress has 2 chambers that check and balances each other!

@GratefulDisciple Pflieger seems to be a case of the road to hypocrisy being paved with the best of intentions

@GratefulDisciple Of course not. Checks and balances is not in the medieval structure of the top down church authority model. When a pope wants an opinion, he convenes a council of bishops or cardinals to get their input. Once he makes a ruling his subordinates are expected to obey. Obedience is a key issue, a key element, in the ordination of a priest, deacon, or bishop.

On the other hand, in the modern era all popes regularly seek the input from their servants/bishops.

Just a thought, formed in the best of intention: maybe subsequent Pope can establish a check on his own powers through something like 4/5 votes of the College of Cardinals, who elected him in the first place? So concerned bishops can appeal to them if necessary?

@KorvinStarmast Yes, it's a good trend. Anyway, history will judge Pope Francis's decisions in 50-100 years.

@GratefulDisciple That's a great way to frame it. 😊👍

@PeterTurner yea pretty sad, I never knew him but reading back through his comments and posts he seemed like a man of God.

@GratefulDisciple I'll try that unless Peter already removed the link. My only concern is I don't want to go to that website again, not about to risk malware on this computer 😂

Oh darn Peter removed the link. The church of God may last forever, but I guess that churches website didn't :)

On the topic of Popes, my uncles boyfriend is a Catholic (he doesn't attend mass regularly, I think he may be lapsed), but we were at dinner a couple nights ago and he praised Francis but dissed Benedict, that was too far for me 😂 I love Benedict, super interesting fellow.

I did remove the link, it was aldiechurch [dot] com I did find it on the wayback machine, but I didn't want to link to anything that would subsequently link to a compromised domain. I didn't see him on the page, I do remember him showing me some other page where he explained what he did for his church. I don't think it was at that particular parish.

@LukeHill I was trying to find the article I read a while ago, I thought it was on the national catholic register, had a whole bunch of Pope Benedict XVI quotes that people would assume came from Pope Francis. But I did find this: catholicworldreport.com/2014/05/10/… which was pretty interesting from an economic standpoint.

That's a good trick to play on people who think that Pope Francis is a liberal pope and Pope Benedict XVI was a conservative one.

Or that Pope Benedict XVI somehow lacked compassion in a way that Pope Francis makes up for.

Yea he didn’t not speak well of Benedict, he said the pope that came before Benedict (I forget the name) was more progressive.

@LukeHill Being an outsider, I try to see what possible long term benefits from Pope Francis's decisions to the whole of Christianity, not just Catholics. Talking about 2.4 billion people, it's a big ship, older encyclicals are still making their impacts today. I have mostly agreed with past encyclicals I read, esp. from Pope Pius XII, Pope JPII and Pope Benedict XVI. We'll see how Pope Francis's encyclicals + decisions fare.

DISCLAIMER: I have a bias to Pope Benedict XVI for 2 reasons: 1) Any classically trained pianist who ALSO loves Mozart's Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto earns my trust before saying anything

2) He's a well published theology AND biblical scholar whose work are respected by Protestants as well, such as his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy whose 1st volume received high praise from well regarded Protestant NT scholar Craig Blomberg who is well published himself.

Another reason: 3) He practically wrote the 1992 catechism, a statement of faith that I continue to agree and admire whenever I read sections of it.

@LukeHill St. Pope John Paul II, yeah, people have that perception. I think it's unfounded, Pope John Paul II just bridged the gap better.

Read any little bit of the Theology of the Body and it doesn't leave you thinking that Pope John Paul II was in favor of anything approximating "free love".

@GratefulDisciple yeah, it'll be interesting how his encyclical on how much Donald Trump stinks fares in 100 years. cent animus annus?

@PeterTurner Interesting. You know more about it than me, I'm too young 😂.

@PeterTurner LOL. You made me push my learning Latin up a notch! I have to make room sometime this year to at least finish a few chapters of Wheelock's Latin.

Random question, does anyone else notice that Nigel J is an incredibly rude person at times? I don't know, I just picture a 70 year old grumpy British man

@GratefulDisciple ha, I don't know latin (other than some prayers) was a play on Centesimus Annus

@PeterTurner Oh, I didn't know that. Shows how dismal my Latin is, except a few theological terms courtesy of St. Thomas. I need to start watching TLM videos to appreciate them before they are all extinct :-(.

@GratefulDisciple I'm as much as an outsider as you to be honest. I don't even attend mass or confession due to my parents requests (They want to spend church with me before I go off to college and aren't catholics). I just study the theology and accept the claims of the Church.

I guess I could go to Saturday evening mass, I don't know. What do you think Peter?

@LukeHill Well, to his defense, I strongly believe he really loves Christ, but rather set in his way of interpreting the Bible. So when I have disagreement about interpretation, I don't argue with him, just appreciating his insights from his own way of reading the Bible, which actually I mostly agree. At least he truly respects the Bible as the Word of God.

@LukeHill yeah, we've had to ask him to tone stuff down from time to time. He's usually agreeable.

He's had a lot of life experience, some of the stuff he's said about working for labs concerning stem cells was particularly interesting.

I'm different than him that I'm more flexible in allowing multiple legitimate ways to interpret the Bible, given my exposure of many more theologies than he does, I think.

@GratefulDisciple I don't think TLM is going anywhere, seems like they just keep popping up everywhere nowadays. There is another notion in Catholicism, interestingly enough Affable Geek pointed it out to me, pretty similar to Vox Populii, Vox Dei

@GratefulDisciple @PeterTurner yea it’s just recently he reported me for a joke I made under SRIs answer to a question

I was actually surprised to see SRI post an answer, I didn’t think he had opinions or anything.

@LukeHill Ahh, I've gotta delete all that, too chatty.

I can ping Spirit Realm Investigator to chat if you want, I'm not above shameless use of mod powers

@PeterTurner Yes, his background appears to be pharmaceutical / chemistry, not humanities. Not having a seminary or liberal arts education can make one a little less tolerant with other theologies. I didn't have one either (my formal education is in computer science), but my deep questions about life in my college years took me to philosophy, theology, psychology, etc. Plus I have great respects for scholarship, which probably why I gravitate to people like C.S. Lewis, Pope Benedict, etc.

@PeterTurner @PeterTurner dang it! I was proud of that joke 😂 I thought you could make light humor under the post. Maybe I should have included the generic "+1 good use of citations" that keeps it protected.

@PeterTurner No it's all good, though I wouldn't mind conversing with him.

@PeterTurner To me, you're the Pope of C.SE ! 😊

@GratefulDisciple Peter is the cool mod

@LukeHill Each mod here is really good too, as I always try to see beyond specific decisions. I only have good things to say for Ken & curiousdannii as well. Ken has a lot of inside, real-life knowledge of Catholicism. curiousdannii has (Protestant) seminary education and linguistics degree; I learn a lot from his comments on theology and Bible as well as his posts. We have a good mod team here, and they are all open to give their explanation, which I find reasonable.

@GratefulDisciple yea Dannii is very smart, Ken gives great answers to my questions but I lose track of what he saying from time to time. Wise men, they put my ego in the ditch (probably for the better). It's nice to have Catholic people that I know online, because my circle of IRL people are either anti-catholic or disinterested in the topic.

For reference, I go to a private Christian School which generally consists of reformed, baptists, or reformed baptists :) (plus the occasional evangelical fundamentalist). One other catholic goes here, makes it slightly more bearable.

@LukeHill That's great. It's all about growing our love for God and the body of Christ. I do hope you'll meet flesh & blood Catholics that you can talk and learn freely. You're lucky that you're still young when Internet is brimming with videos, podcasts, blogs, online books, etc. that can supplement the current lack. I wish I had this when I was in my early 20s.

@GratefulDisciple yea I am thankful for the time I grew up in (for the most part). I can't wait for college where I can find more people like me. The internet is a wonderful place.

@LukeHill It certainly can broaden someone's horizon. We just need to be smart in distinguishing good and bad info. Some perspectives peddled by polished, convincing presenters with marketing skills can deceive, such as prosperity gospel "evangelists". BTW, do you know what your major going to be?

@LukeHill newman centers can be a pretty good help, I think they're on most campuses. I went to UW Madison where there was previously an ultra-modern brutalist church on campus (black glass and concrete), they replaced it with an amazingly beautiful church with a residence hall. It actually is a good time to be a Catholic on some campuses, I think.

@PeterTurner Wow, much more beautiful interior, more conducive to prayer for sure. But as a musician, I don't see pipe organ in the new building though. In the old building it must have sounded nice, given the placement of the pipes (top left of picture), which is close and thus can sound intimate to the congregation. No piano either.

You're right, and I'm pretty sure that's the Pastor's decision there. The priest at the Catholic Center now was the priest in my parish where I was confirmed - when I was in High School. He wasn't a fan of the choir up front and center.

At the old church, they were practically on stage, right across from the altar

They're using the St. Michael Hymnal at the new church, praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/02/16/… which might give you an indication of the kind of music there.

@PeterTurner Yes, I don't agree with the big piano next to the altar either; too distracting. I have seen Catholic churches where the choir is on the balcony opposite the altar (on top of the entrace) where they also put the pipe organ there. On some installations, they managed to put some pipes on the sides and on the front rather inconspicuously.

@GratefulDisciple That's how it is in my parish right now. They sometimes play organ, sometimes piano, and the Spanish Mass is just a guy with a guitar (unless they bring in the Mariachi band, which is fun)

@PeterTurner Yes, seems like the trend is they have different style music for different mass, depending on demand from congregation. Try to make most people happy and can worship God :-).

@GratefulDisciple most likely computer science or economics, I don’t want to get a degree in something that can’t provide for a family (especially a larger family since no birth control :)) so I won’t be doing a humanity (though I will probably do a minor in one). I plan on attending a couple different schools like Montana state, A&M, or Westmont, plus a few more. I have a 4.0 and high SAT so I can go most anywhere. The main issue is cost.

@LukeHill Sounds right to me. Cannot go wrong with computer science. Make sure you start machine learning programming from year 1; it's the future. For that, you'll need to have good math as well, esp. statistics and matrices. Learning humanities can always be on the side, maybe electives.

Then you can be a faith defender for people who say that people are nothing but a bunch of neurons. We need Christian neuroscientists or Christian AI expert. If the apologists don't have enough science chops, no-one will listen to you.

@PeterTurner @LukeHill Gotta go. It's great talking to y'all.

@LukeHill I got married before my junior year of college and had a baby going into senior year, that seemed to help a lot, the National Science Foundation randomly paid for my senior year. Keep a GPA over 3.5 and you should be very happy in Comp Sci.

@PeterTurner thanks for the advice. Having a child along with college sounds difficult. @GratefulDisciple good talking to you and yes I’ll study machine learning.

@GratefulDisciple that’s actually a really good point, I want to be involved in science but I’m also highly political so Econ is a fascinating topic to me. I guess I could double major.

Oh man, the new layout is definitely a step in the crappy direction. I went back to the homepage after hanging out in chat for a bit and I was like, how do I get to the real homepage.

looks like a reddit-headed brainchild

Yea I was wondering if it was a glitch. Terrible looking, it looks even worse on mobile.

Stack exchange is great as a concept and I love CSE but the company and their decisions are questionable. Especially with that whole controversy over that Jewish mod that was banned and the PC rules.

It’s odd, looking at the way back machine, it seems the churches website was sold around the same time AG died. I wonder if that’s a happy coincidence or something else @PeterTurner