This is So Un-American

Published on by D. G. Hart

While Rome burns with Pentecostal fire, Jason and the Callers continue to play mind games.

The latest Protestant to try to ascend Bryan’s holy cap is Mark Hausam, who is, according to his blog, “a member at Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, UT, a catechumen with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, an instructor in Philosophy at Utah Valley University in Orem, UT, and an instructor at the New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy. I am a husband and a father of seven. I am an officer in the Reformation Party.” (I had not heard of the Reformation Party. It does not look like it is “a par-tay.”)

Mr. Hausam tried to show — it was a fairly long-winded piece — that Rome did an about-face on the matter of religious liberty of freedom of conscience. I don’t know why this is such a hard point to grasp. Protestants also did an about-face. Consider justifications for executing Servetus (or heretics in general) versus Witherspoon’s support for a Constitution that tolerated heretics (as Presbyterians understood them). What many fail to grasp — maybe even Mr. Hausam but certainly Bryan Cross — is that modern notions of freedom of conscience are strikingly different from pre-modern ones. For the Puritans, for instance, someone’s conscience was free if his conscience was rightly formed. If someone’s conscience was in error, then it was no infringement of liberty to coerce a poorly formed conscience. In other words, your conscience was free if it knew and followed the truth. If it didn’t, it needed to be bound. Today, in civil society we make no judgment about the right or wrong of someone’s opinions. We simply protect them under the umbrella of freedom of conscience.

Whether this is an improvement depends on your conscience, I guess. But I do think I’d rather have the modern version if or when a ruler who comes to power does not approve of my opinions.

Be that as it may, Mr. Hausam tried to interact with Bryan on the changes that have taken place in Roman Catholic teaching, especially at Vatican II. And what did Mr. Hausam receive? The classic Nun-like wrap across the knuckles with the ruler of logic. It even came to this riposte from one of the Callers:

The problem with Mark’s article is that his explicit purpose is to establish a formal contradiction within irreformable Catholic teaching. Establishing a formal contradiction requires great precision in the use of terms and in the construction of argument. Long paragraphs laden with assertions make it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to pick out the actual premises which are supposed to establish the formal contradiction. I simply do not understand why you or Mark, in the context of an article whose express purpose is to establish an exact logical fault, namely a formal contradiction; would continue to resist calls to package the verbiage of the article into a logical form where the formal validity of the argument as such can be easily established, so that interlocutors may then proceed to fruitfully explore the truth of the various premises.

Well, if this is the problem, then logic is an impertinent bystander to the issue at hand. If Roman Catholic teaching is irreformable, then no amount of syllogisms or premises could possibly show a contradiction. It is impossible, which is sort of the situation when trying to have a conversation with the Callers.

Word to the wise: Vatican II happened. It embraced modernity, complete with the sort of debates and diversity that modern societies have negotiated. If Jason and the Callers want to return to a time when debates were simply an indication of infidelity, they may want all they want. It is a free country. But they should also realize that this was the debating posture that made many Americans wonder if Roman Catholics — the ones really really loyal to the pre-Vatican II papacy — were capable of living in a free republic.

58 thoughts on “This is So Un-American”

  1. “The problem with Mark’s article is that his explicit purpose is to establish a formal contradiction within irreformable Catholic teaching. Establishing a formal contradiction requires great precision in the use of terms and in the construction of argument. Long paragraphs laden with assertions make it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to pick out the actual premises which are supposed to establish the formal contradiction. I simply do not understand why you or Mark, in the context of an article whose express purpose is to establish an exact logical fault, namely a formal contradiction; would continue to resist calls to package the verbiage of the article into a logical form where the formal validity of the argument as such can be easily established, so that interlocutors may then proceed to fruitfully explore the truth of the various premises.”

    This really begs the question about the possibility of honest dialog. And just when a Protestant begins to think he/she is making progress the “differing paradigm” card gets played. I think I’m beginning to understand…

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  2. FYI, my friend Mark Hausam holds a PhD from the University of Wales (I believe that’s where it’s from), having defended a dissertation on Puritan theology. It should be, “Dr. Hausam.”

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  3. @internet:

    I’m not going to announce winners or say who I think is winning over at CtC (dont tempt me, or I’ll re-publish my golf and theology article faster than BC can come over here and say “paradigm”).

    In my experience, M. Hausam is the first to mount the kind of attack of this kind against them. I happen to think he is going about it in the right way, and going where the discussion needs to be, namely Vat 2. As a conservative protestant, thatlittle wrinkle in RC history means I wouldnt feel home in Rome. Along with msny other reasons to boot.

    Peace. Oh, and thanks, D, for weighing in.

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  4. The Reformed Party duma seem to all share a common exodus out of the OPC to a “truly Reformed” body. Even the OP is too progressive for some folks, I guess.

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  5. One more:

    This really begs the question about the possibility of honest dialog. And just when a Protestant begins to think he/she is making progress the “differing paradigm” card gets played.

    That’s scores a ding in my playbook

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  6. But didn’t he say he is (presently) a member of the Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah? Anybody know anything about the priests who administer the sacraments in that congregation?

    At least we know he’s “Reformed” and a member of the true catholic church….

    And again, I agree–no baptist is “Reformed”, even if more of them are into 2k and less of them are into Reconstructionist versions of “the federal vision”.

    mark

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  7. Thanks for this article Dr. Hart, and for your others.

    Having been born in the mid 1970s, I remember always being perplexed as to why Kennedy being RC was such a big deal at the time. Articles like these and my own general knowledge of church history are making it completely understandable.

    It’s almost as if Bryan, Jason, et al would love to go back to the pre-Vatican II days, but since they know they can’t, they do their best with handwaving and paradigm cards. Its both comical and tragic to watch. They’re trying to be V1 Roman Catholics in a post-V2 world and it just doesn’t work. Seems to me that most cradle RCs recognize this, don’t try to settle the tensions, and just figure everything is good if they make it to mass a few times a year and tip their hat in Rome’s direction. These converts just don’t get it. They’re trying to bring a concern for rigorous theology to a communion where the laity don’t much care about it. They’re assuming RC laity is like the Reformed laity. No wonder they’re frustrated.

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  9. Robert – Having been born in the mid 1970s, I remember always being perplexed as to why Kennedy being RC was such a big deal at the time.

    Erik – Any WASPs who knew what a skirt chaser he was surely knew they had nothing to worry about. The Virgin Mary was the least of his interests.

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  10. If I were Mark (which I am clearly not, as posting this comment proves), I’d sit back for a few days and let the article written sink in to the caller psyche. Again, this is new territory, for them. It’s not new for Xiandom, of course. But maybe for Bryan C it is.

    In other words, break out the popcorn and watch this unfold. Real cool like, yo.

    Folowing my own advice,
    AB

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  11. Basically Bryan Cross rebutts Mark’s 2 lengthy articles by saying, “according to official Catholic interpretation of the two documents, there is no contradiction. You may think there is, but that’s because you’re misinterpreting it by not following the official interpretation of it. Go home, silly Protestant.”

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  12. I just wish Cross would change his usual sign of from “In the peace…” to #Winning. Given his impeccable use of logic, and Floyd Maywether ability do elude punches (or the refusal to admit any punches are landed), just seems more appropriate.

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  13. For the historians, help:

    1. When was “Unam Sanctum,” 1301, officially repealed? Does Vat 2 accomplish that? Whatever Rome’s action, the Italians whittled down their temporal jurisdiction to about 100 acres just up from the Tiber a 1000 feet or so.

    2. More to my general line of inquiry, when was “Regnans in Excelsis,” 1570, appealed or changed? Is Queen Elizabeth still burning in hell, officially cut off from Christ, and the conduits of salvific-controls? It may have been modified in/about 1588ish, but the inquiry goes on.

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  14. Erik,

    There’s no math at CtC. Accusing a philosophy assistant professor of doing math is like accusing a normal man of bedding a cheerleader. You can just say he’s being an officious twat (British sense!) and he’ll be like “ad hominem!” and you can be like “you should go back and read what I said because actually an ad hominem argument would be if I said ‘Bryan says x and Bryan is an officious twat ergo Bryan is wrong’ but I didn’t say that so you should interact with what I said and not what you wish I said because that’s what the charitable person would do in the peace of christ erik”.

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  15. “If someone’s conscience was in error, then it was no infringement of liberty to coerce a poorly formed conscience. In other words, your conscience was free if it knew and followed the truth. If it didn’t, it needed to be bound. Today, in civil society we make no judgment about the right or wrong of someone’s opinions. We simply protect them under the umbrella of freedom of conscience.”

    Very true — unless, of course, someone happens to be a baker whose conscience prohibits him/her from baking a wedding cake for a gay couple’s “wedding” reception, or a florist whose conscience prohibits him/her from making a flower arrangement for a gay marriage celebration, or some other business person whose religious conscience prohibits him from “celebrating” that which he regards as sinful perversion of the creation ordinance of marriage. In those circumstances, contemporary “civil society” kicks them out from under the umbrella of protection, exposing them to harrassment, loss of business, and potential legal penalties. (After all, the homophobe must have his conscience “rehabilitated” and set right — it’s for his own good and the good of “civil society.”) But I suppose that’s a lot better than being burned at the stake.

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  16. Geoff, the other interesting question is what some contemporary religious authorities might make of a conscience under their charge who is persuaded that selling flowers and cakes is mainly a business transaction and doesn’t carry the moral weight others suggest. Will he earn a rehabilitative effort to set his conscience on the right path?

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  17. Andrew, not rhetoric, but the quest for historic and theological help. Is poor Elizabeth 1 still stirring in the smoke and bowels of hell since “Regnans in Excelsis,” 1570, or have modern recent Popes left her writhing in hellish or purgatorial agonies? Are there no merits in the treasury for her release? Or, do we need more Massing services to get her “Get Out of Hell Card.”

    I think the Pope did some dancing on the 1570 ruling, but not sure.

    When Darryl mentions fire, Pentecostals, Mr. (Pope) Bertogoglio, and the changing landscape post-Vat II, I’m still trying to figure out this 1570 Bull. Did this Bull survive or get flushed?

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  18. Donald V., I meant rhetoric it in a positive sense, if you’ll allow me. There’s a reason I found your Twitter account and follow you, brah.

    I wish I could write blogs like you, Darryl, and Mark do. I’m a padawan, not afraid to admit it.

    Ultimately, Bryan Cross can write blog upon blog, and Caths can come here and declare their opinions on where Martin Luther’s soul currently resides. I think we all know, so I don’t give Caths the satisfaction of feeling I am seeking them and their pope for answers. This is an old fight which some (hello Bryan Cross) want to resurrect for reasons God only knows.

    Again, he’s free to love his church, as am I, as fallible, corrupt, and problematic it’s doctrine and ways are.

    Indeed ask our dude. He’s way to gracious with people of my composition. I’m still waiting for him to apply the Doug Sowers rule to me (though I won’t tempt fate, and instead, will check out and leave you all to this nice blog. I have my Twitter feed to get all Andrewish on the few poor souls who subject themselves to the same).

    Adios, muchacho!

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  19. Now who is being audacious? Francis says, “The church does not need apologists of its causes nor crusaders of its battles, but sowers humble and confident of the truth, who … trust of its power.”

    Jason and the Callers aren’t listening.

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  20. Henry Van Til wrote a book that we perhaps ought to be re-reading this week, Liberty of Conscience, The History of a Puritan Idea. It’s not as clear and as comprehensive as Bainton’s The Travail of Religious Liberty, but it certainly does support Hart’s point that even the “Reformed” definition of conscience has changed over the years.

    George Edward Ellis–
    The inane assertion, so often flippantly repeated that the Massachusetts colonists came here to seek and to provide a field for the enjoyment of liberty of conscience, and then proved faithless to their profession by securing the right for themselves and denying it to others is simply false to all the facts of the case. What is now really meant by the phrase liberty of conscience was something which those Puritans regarded with shuddering abhorrence. It might with much more truth be said that the leaders of the colony came here to be rid of the liberty of conscience, which was working and showing its fruits in England as will appear on our future pages.

    Nor is it an adequate interpretation of their errand here to say that they were seeking liberty even for their own consciences. That liberty was already pledged and fettered put under bonds and limitations it was held in subjection to a stern and exacting rule of life and duty found not in their own thinkings and willings but in the Word of God. This complete abnegation of the privilege and license which we associate with liberty of conscience must be kept in mind in all our reading about the beliefs and doings of these Puritans. Fallen and wrecked as in their belief the nature of man was, they would not entertain the thought that any one, however EARNEST he might be, could find his rule within his own resources of thinking and believing.

    They read the sentence repeated several times in the Book of Judges that in the lack of any supreme authority every man did that which was right in his own eyes as equivalent to saying that he did what was wrong in the eyes of everybody else.

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2013/07/23/institute-on-the-constitution-bringing-puritan-back-2

    mark: it was those “Aimee” anabaptists who thought that “every man under his own fig tree” doing what was right in his own eyes was utopia, or at least way better than more judges and kings…

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  21. Zrim wrote: “Geoff, the other interesting question is what some contemporary religious authorities might make of a conscience under their charge who is persuaded that selling flowers and cakes is mainly a business transaction and doesn’t carry the moral weight others suggest. Will he earn a rehabilitative effort to set his conscience on the right path?”

    GW: Good observation. As an example, I would agree that church sessions should not bring charges against members who work for businesses that cater to such events, and who view their involvement in such events as a pure business transaction. But the point I was making is if we really live in a truly civil society with genuine freedom of conscience, then private businesses and their owners should have the freedom to decide whom they wish to do business with (freedom of association, etc.), and to run their businesses according to their religious convictions if they choose to do so. Violations of genuine freedom of conscience can exist not only within a theocratic Christendom; they can also exist in supposedly secular, “tolerant,” pluralistic contexts as well.

    While a bit off-topic, I have to wonder: Would those who, in the name of anti-discrimination, want to force religious bakers, florists, etc., against their conscience to provide services for gay wedding ceremonies and/or receptions, also want to force a gay baker to prepare a cake with an anti-gay (“God hates fags”) message for a Westboro Baptist Church type of anti-gay event? I say in a truly free country that honors freedom of conscience, the gay baker should be allowed to refuse his services to anti-gays if he chooses without fear of legal sanctions, just like the Christian baker should be allowed to refuse his services for a gay couple’s “wedding.” Genuine tolerance is a two-way street, or it isn’t real tolerance at all.

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  22. Geoff,

    Doesn’t the government, in providing general protection to all its citizens, have a responsibility to ensure that its citizens have equal access to goods and services? Imagine in one of our islands, a severe hurricane is approaching, and the local citizens are stocking up on food and water at the few stores that are open, and those store owners choose not to sell to black people, or gays. Wouldn’t that be a situation where you might expect the local government to enforce non-discrimination laws on businesses?

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  23. Darryl, probably because Francis isn’t speaking infallibly there. Selective infallibility strikes again. I bet Luther would’ve liked to have that luxury when it came to the book of James. But a humble Sowers? What’s that?

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  24. Todd,
    I think the distinction is when a message is included. Sure the state should make sure that a gay couple can buy flowers and Westboro baptist can buy cakes from any florist or baker. But when the state forces them to attach a message they disagree with we’ve crossed a line.

    I’m not particularly sympathetic towards these florists, bakers, etc… who don’t want to provide their services to gay wedding ceremonies (I somehow doubt that they would refuse to provide a wedding cake for the fourth or fifth wedding ceremony of Newt Gingerich or Rush Limbaugh). But it isn’t society’s job to judge the rightness of people’s religious convictions. It is hard to see how a narrow exception tied to messaging would be such a grievous burden to society.

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  25. Geoff, I get your point, but don’t these examples get silly and almost useless? In reality, chances are pretty good that particular groups wouldn’t want to patronize establishments bent on making a point against them anyway. And I bet Fred Phelps knows how to make his own cake. So much of this seems like rhetoric in service of the culture wars. But where human beings actually live, cakes and flowers have ways of sorting themselves out just fine regardless of what the pundits say and legal eagles decide.

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  26. DGHART,

    Vatican II happened. It embraced modernity,

    Making assertions is easy. Proving those assertions not so much.

    But they should also realize that this was the debating posture that made many Americans wonder if Roman Catholics — the ones really really loyal to the pre-Vatican II papacy — were capable of living in a free republic

    What people may “wonder” does not disprove anything Bryan has said. Whether or not Roman Catholics should live in a free Republic does not disprove anything he has said.

    …….. Beat him to it!

    Oh yeah,

    In the peace of Christ

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  27. “But when the state forces them to attach a message they disagree with we’ve crossed a line. ”

    sdb,

    Agreed, but could you provide an example when the U.S. government has done such a thing?

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  29. Andrew,

    Yo Kenny, wassup? How that Papal love treating you lately

    Oh you know still just trying to earn my salvation on that sacramental treadmill. Still enjoying that legal fiction?

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  30. Kenloser, you act as though I don’t read Cross’ words.

    I know where you got that. Why not link to the CTC combox and properly cite?

    Chill dude and enjoy your weekend with your family. Thanks for stopping by and posting.

    PS do you like my golf article?

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  31. I’m doubting a response, so I will explain what is going on in the latest exchange between myself and Kenneth Winsmann. Then I check for a while.

    Dr. Bryan Cross of CalledToCommunion knows the reformed doctrine of Justification, and rejects it. He makes blanket assertions in comment sections of CtC with no challenge, while asking others to avoid lone assertions.

    I for one am glad when Catholics comment on this website, run by a man who upholds the reformed tradition. Dialogue is good, between sons of Rome and sons of Geneva.

    As for name calling, it’s indeed infantile and adolescent, but so to is the schoolmarming reformed Christians receive at the hand of Cross and his band.

    The reason I’m posting so much is because I’ve dialogueed with Dr. Hausam, who goes to the same church as I do. That is who this post by Hart is about.

    Now Hausam vs. Cross is an intellectual battle that will have either side stand or fall on their own merits. No one wins out of the gate. Both must run the race (or tee off and see who gets the longest drive).

    It’s your turn to post, unknown reader of OL. All the best,
    Andrew

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  32. AB, he means sola fide is a legal fiction. Though if he means the treadmill image is a Protestant caricature, does he also mean the legal fiction charge is a Catholic one as well? Small Reformed minds want to know.

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  33. Zrim,

    Yes, It was an attempt at a light hearted greeting using alleged caricatures by both sides…. Guess it got lost in translation. Hope you are all doing well. For the record I tried to help Mark out by supplying the argument in his article in the form of a syllogism but got rejected at the moderation

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  34. I think the cases of the florist in washington, baker in Oregon, and photographer in NM are examples of this. I think in each case the offender objected to participating in a SS wedding ceremony as opposed to providing neutral services to gay customers. The non-discrimination law in at least two of these states required that the business owner provide the service for the wedding or be shut down. Personally, I think this is a pretty silly hill for Christians to fight on, and I doubt that most of these Christians are equally scrupulous about other trivializations of marriage.

    A more serious violation (happily remedied) was the treatment of JWs who refused to say the pledge of allegiance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minersville_School_District_v._Gobitis

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  35. Millman: I know many people who find proselytism religiously objectionable. Why shouldn’t a proprietor be allow to discriminate against individuals who engage in such activity?

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  36. Small minds indeed, Mr. Zrim.

    Oh, and my bad for always needing a translator in these forums. I blame reading too much the words of philsosophers. I need to get to the Word..

    You missed your shot on the breaking bad thread, a few doors down, KENWINS. I honestly didn’t know what your last name was, and thought the dg, h, play on your name was a BrBa thing only.

    Blogs are weird. Peace.

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  37. Ken, no humor lost on me–here’s one anti-nomian and schismatic Protestant who just can’t put his legal fiction down.

    Sinning boldly in Christ.

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  38. zrim wrote: “Geoff, I get your point, but don’t these examples get silly and almost useless? In reality, chances are pretty good that particular groups wouldn’t want to patronize establishments bent on making a point against them anyway. And I bet Fred Phelps knows how to make his own cake. So much of this seems like rhetoric in service of the culture wars. But where human beings actually live, cakes and flowers have ways of sorting themselves out just fine regardless of what the pundits say and legal eagles decide.”

    GW: You’re right that my example may not have been the best, but let’s not let the principle I’m driving at get lost in the details of a less-than-perfect illustration. And I don’t think this is as far from reality as you might imagine. For example, I seem to recall hearing awhile back about a baker who had refused to bake a birthday cake for a boy whose Nazi parents had named him “Adolf Hitler,” so the world of the ridiculous is becoming a reality. In my opinion the baker in question who refused to bake the cake for this boy’s birthday was perfectly within his conscience rights to refuse the business of little Adolf’s Nazi parents; but if the principle of legal non-discrimination in providing services to the public gets applied consistently (and not simply applied selectively as in special “uber-rights” for select, protected “victim” classes like gays), then the baker would have been forced by threat of legal sanction to bake that Nazi birthday cake.

    Seems to me our society needs to make a choice: Either apply “non-discrimination” legislation to business practices consistently, across-the-board to all classes of people (no “victim” classes with special rights allowed); or allow everyone to exercise their conscience rights (including the right to discriminate in business practices for whatever reason). The latter might be much more messy, but I would prefer it to the potential tyranny of the former.

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  41. Geoff, again, I get your point and largely agree. But it does seem still that it’s a point that assumes legalities can do more than they are really able. I mean, even when I am told I don’t have to bake cakes and supply flowers to those with whom I have moral problems, and I take advantage of that liberty, have I really gotten anywhere with my neighbor? Or have I made sure I’m living at moral ease and in personal comfort?

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  42. Zrim
    Posted February 28, 2014 at 4:26 pm | Permalink
    Ken, no humor lost on me–here’s one anti-nomian and schismatic Protestant who just can’t put his legal fiction down.

    Sinning boldly in Christ

    I’ll admit my cold Calvinist heart makes it hard for me to see the forest for the trees, and enjoy a good laugh at the CTC vs OL blogwar.

    But the fact is, I see NO remedy, and DGH will be blogging and reading CtC until the end of time.

    Look, I see that Reformed Xians must develop some strategy regarding those who leave our ranks and claim to “blog about the greatness of our former tradition, Calvinism.”

    What I mean, is, Are the CTCers paying attention is always a forever necessary as a recurring channel at OLTS, as it is a symptom of our divided Xianity and blogdom.

    My experience finding blogs and theology mishmahsed had this one defining characteristic: a greivance against papalism.

    Now potentially Jason and Bryan could clean up their act, and we could get along the say Mafhen did with the Roman Priest during WWI because the protestant Sunday worship (read: liberal) was worse. He wasn’t “caths and evangels” together, but he acknowledged that Bosnian church was doing things that made him feel more at home in Rome than with his brothers.

    Zrim, I’m still a kid at heart, on my better days, so I’ll look for the humor in all this more often. But maybe I just need to leave the reading and commenting at CtC to the professionals (hello Mark and Darryl). There’s a way forward. I do happen to think Caths and confessional prots May enjoy golfing together, and maybe even should do so..

    Lates.

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  44. I mean, really. The representative of Catholicism Kenneth Winsmanncomes over here mocking Bryan Cross (in a sense) by a posting a comment in this thread that we know has all the hallmarks of the Crossian response.

    Maybe no strategy is needed, we all must be patient with those lost in the woods as I was above. We all need to be talked down off the ledge sometime.

    I’m out.

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  46. sdb – I think in each case the offender objected to participating in a SS wedding ceremony as opposed to providing neutral services to gay customers.

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  51. AB, it would remiss not to return the favor and acknowledge the good times, noodle salad reference. When my publisher’s secretary asks me how I write women so well I tell her, “I think of a man and take away reason and accountability.”

    And when my wife wants affirmation I tell her: “I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you’re the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.” That’s as good as it gets.

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  52. Zrim, you’re a gentleman and a scholar.

    Don’t tell Dr. Cross, but they corrected me rightly at CtC. My first syllogism out there (print screen posted here) was erroneous.

    We should trade missives oneday, off blog. I think you have my e-mail, I rung the bell at the outhouse.

    Grace and peace, brother.

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  53. For the record I was not mocking Bryan Cross. I was making fun of his frequent caricature like convos with Daryl. If anyone would like to prove that I was mocking him (assertion) I would need to first read that in a peer reviewed syllogism where the conclusion follows logically from the premises.

    Sometimes I wonder if DGHART is trolling Bryan by intentionally bringing up irrelevant non deductive criticisms….. But then I think “nahhhh he just doesn’t get it”…..

    Then I wonder if Bryan is actually the one trolling Daryl….

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  57. VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has played down the notion that he is a “superman” who will bring sweeping reforms to the Roman Catholic church, stressing that its ban on contraception and opposition to gay marriage will remain in place.

    The pope, in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper published on Wednesday, also said no institution had moved with more “transparency and responsibility” than the Church to protect children in the wake of its sexual abuse scandals.

    continue reading

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