Many years ago, in a land far, far away, when a Freeper by the screen name of NYer figured prominently on the religion forum, there was something of a war between the Sedes and the non-Sedes. In the midst of this, a working definition of Catholic was hammered out for purposes of the FR religion forum.
Years ago, I saw this working definition, and IIRC some sort of allegiance to the Pope is required to fall within the FR working definition of Catholic.
There is a big difference between calling Francis the worst Pope ever and saying that he is not the Pope.
The line is a very fine one, but FR has to have some basis for allowing rational discussion on at least some religion threads.
It may be that the caucus lines are worth revisiting given the present pontiff. The present pontiff is certainly causing many reflections and headaches.
As far as things that I am saying that you don’t understand, I’ll take a stab at explaining:
Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits. Theologically, there has been an intellectual war going on within the Church since at least the 16th century, though I’d take it back to the 13th to some degree, with the Dominicans and allies on one side and non-Dominicans on the other. The Jesuits have been the leading “other” group since the 16th century. Bellarmine did a good job, for a Jesuit, of combining holiness and learning—and if everybody gets to have a doctor of the church or two, I guess that makes him and Peter Canisius worthy of being Doctor’s of the Church—though being the Jesuit representative is sort of like winning the hockey title for South America or Africa. I think that Bonaventure is by far the best of the affirmative action Doctors of the Church, though his immaterial matter theory arguably gave us Scotus, who gave us Ockham, who gave us Luther and Descartes. I kind of prefer St. Anthony, who has some good homilies, got fish to listen and donkeys to kneel, and can actually find stuff. Of course, St. Anthony was trained and ordained as an Augustinian, not a Franciscan.
I think St. Francis was right in teaching that members of his order should stay out of universities, and I think that St. Ignatius was right in holding that the size of his order should be capped in double digits. I think neither should be blamed for the various follies perpetrated by their followers.
And I’ll happily acknowledge that the Dominicans etc. have not always been perfect either, but the tradition that they put forward seems to me more solid, so here I stand.
(ealgeone I hope you have lots of popcorn)
Allegiance to the pope? There is not one Catholic here who professes true allegiance to Francis, the man they “call” pope.
Where does the article rely “heavily” on a man with SJ after his name? You only read the snippets. The whole article at the link was laden with quotes from popes in addition to others.