Keely Anderson
Essay Topic #1- Comparing & Contrasting Popes
RELI 220.01 Wednesday Spring 2016
Dr. Karin Heller
Word Count = 974
A Pope for a Better World
Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis, while similar in many areas, such as the way they integrated into the community, carried out their roles as the pope differently, especially in regards to how they viewed and treated people, what they thought the church should encourage and teach, and particularly in how they felt about women in the church. Because of his compassionate, understanding, adaptive ways, I prefer Pope Francis for today 's world.
One of the similarities between these Popes is the way they belonged to their community. Though they both dealt with situations where they felt
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They viewed people on a completely different level. Pope Francis said, “I see the sanctity of God’s people, this daily sanctity. There is a ‘holy middle class,’ which we can all be a part of…” He viewed people as individuals who needed compassion, mercy, and guidance. Pope John Paul II was much more rigid. Roberto Suro from the Washington Post said, “It portrays the world, all of the world, as in the grip of what he calls ‘a culture of death.’ He sees humanity as having lost its sense of the sacredness of life, of the value of the individual human being.” Obviously these Popes are extremely different in their thinking of people. John Paul’s goal was to preach what he thought was the right thing and hopefully show people the correct way. He was angered when people didn’t agree with him or didn’t conform to his way of thinking. On the other hand, Pope Francis tried to be understanding. He wanted people to feel supported and went to great lengths to show love and …show more content…
The Popes were similar in the fact that they didn’t support any form of birth control or abortion. They differed in the way that they shared this message and how passionate they were on the topic. John Paul was obsessive on the topic. He wanted to put an end to these practices immediately and viewed all of it as evil. Contrarily, Pope Francis felt that these issues didn’t always need to be touched on. He feels that it is important to motivate people to do better, but that it isn’t always necessary to talk about this topics. There are ways to communicate appropriate actions and beliefs without insisting on such issues. Pope John Paul II felt that it was crucial to explain every topic in explicit detail with a justification on why a certain action should be taken. While Pope Francis agreed with some of John Paul’s opinions and teachings, he felt that it was way more important to evaluate everything on a case by case basis and to exercise mercy. He wanted people to feel close to God and to have another chance to make the right decision; he didn’t want them to feel tortured for making the wrong
In Jon Sweeney’s lecture and book, “ When Saint Francis Saved The Church”, he spoke about Francis leading a revolutionary life. There were two points that helped support with Francis leading a revolutionary life. Those points were friendship and poverty. Sweeney spoke about how important friendship and poverty was to Francis. These points helped with Francis learning what kind of person he would be and do with his life.
Pius XII gave back to the world by working hard in order to sustain peace throughout World War 2. This made a huge impact because many Christians blamed the Jews that were getting murdered for the death of Jesus. This is also where Cardinal Cushing took a very big
Modern life historians now know how different people were treated in different ways and how people changed the church and how the church changed
Some was to improve the methods of the church and some was to improve their lifestyle for the opportunity of themselves. The purpose in all this was to serve God and fellow the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The power of the Roman Catholic Church was the greatest when the cathedrals were built and from birth to death middle ages, population were dominated by the church. The weakest Roman Catholic Popes in my opinion were is Pope Leo X who sold indulgence for
The theme and objective of Cranmer’s sermon was that the Pope was the Antichrist. Additionally, Cranmer drew attention
This quote points out how influential the pope was. Even though Urban’s death was unspecified, many Europeans believed that the Muslims had something to do with it. The pope’s influential power had a great effect on medieval Europe as It changed the way Christians viewed and treated the
During this period the Renaissance Popes failed to fulfill the churches spiritual needs, and they were often involved in worldly concerns such as Pope Julius II who was a “warrior pope” leading armies into battle. Christians were disgusted, they viewed the Pope as their spiritual leader, someone to lead them spiritually not into battle with the enemy. The church failed as many of the church officials were ignorant of their spiritual duties and more concerned with accumulating more wealth, and the use of their position within the church offices to their advantage to further advance their careers and fortunes. (Duiker, World History, 421) While the spiritual leaders of the church were failing their responsibilities many of the people were looking for some sort of meaningful religious expression and most importantly salvation after death.
A couple of weeks ago the Pope spoke for the very first time to the American Congress. Behind his speech, it should be noticeable the contradiction between his liberalist image, which has been seen before when he discussed topics such as homosexuality; and his conservative tone when talking about families, in this specific occasion, for example. As Francis is supposed to, he represented the Catholic Church as an united institution to the modern world; smoothly trying to open the minds of extremists but not crossing border lines. To achieve his main goal, to please as many different mind sets as possible, he left some topics off his speech.
While he did completely attain his goal of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church, through negative language of equating these priests with the devil, Pope Gregory was able to move public opinion on issues of
People were unhappy with the way the clergy were treating their people and it was clear that corruption was throughout the Catholic church. The state of the Catholic church, while significant, was simply a backdrop for Martin Luther in his early life. Ironically, he was on the side of the Catholic church in his early life; he was “a university professor of theology and a member of the Catholic clergy,” (Dutton, 390). This close integration with the church made it surprising that he was the one to lead a religious reformation. However, it was his knowledge of scripture that made his message so
Michael Prestwich in his book Medieval People courageously attempts to encapsulate in few pages the early life, as well as the contribution of the Pope Urban II in the reform of the Catholic church and the creation of the first crusades, yet he fails to quote the Pope himself with regard to his speech with the reference to the Christian Holy War against Islam. Such an important missing element demonstrates his prejudice toward Christianity. In particular, Prestwich begins his brief chapter on the life of the Pope Urban II by recalling his contribution to the Crusades. Also, he provides an incisive background of the expansion of the Muslims and the Byzantine empire before the creation and the rise of the crusades.
One depicts Jesus’ act of washing his disciples’ feet compared to the high-and-mighty Pope displaying his grandeur whilst seated on a throne surrounded by his court (Document 2). The images are presented in such a manner as to draw attention to the humility of Christ juxtaposing his behavior with that of the distant, affluent Pope. This is significant because the Catholic Church traditionally emphasized a hierarchical progression driven by rank. This is evidenced by the extensive pecking order of cardinals, bishops, archbishops, etc. that made up the leadership of the church.
The Pope was taking the role of God and giving himself the
A discourse community implies all kinds of communication adding to a specific established manner of thinking employed by a particular gathering of persons who utilize, and thus assist in developing a specific discourse. In the subsequent text, I will be discussing the perspectives from two dissimilar discourse communities; an online subscription discourse community and one that is essentially academic based. I will additionally express my opinions regarding these discourse communities, how I think I am connected to them and the manner in which I can be more beneficial to them. According to the article “Protect desert land by bill – or my monument designation’’ by the editorial board for the SBSUN, Dianne Feinstein has presented a nice method
By questioning the sale of indulgences and arguing that the pope does not have complete authority over forgiveness of sins and, to a larger extent, salvation, Luther established a precedent for the word of the Church to be called into question rather than it having absolute authority. Given that Luther opens his 95 Theses with “out of love and concern for the truth,” it is clear that his intentions are not necessarily to completely undermine the authority of the Catholic Church, but rather to open a dialogue between the Catholic Church and its faithful on what is actually true in regards to God. The collective judgment of the Catholic community, particularly those who did not have positions of power in the Church, would then have a much greater effect on the direction in which the Catholic Church took than it would have before Luther’s 95 Theses.