/pt/ – Petrarchan

>>13960 I admit, I am not a Catholic nor from a Catholic background. But the Papacy was involved in "politics" in the sense of big powers and nations, Christendom, hoarding mass amounts of wealth and clandestine information... and not voting in midterm elections. It's not a coincidence that this piece of news is frequently described as a "historical first". John Paul II supported Solidarity, but did he sit in the dockworkers' weekly meetings over who was going to get paid what? Pope Francis motioned at socialist and internationalist ideals but didn't vote in Argentinan elections either. Midterms are an especially pointless song and dance of the electoral system. Not just senator and governor positions but the fucking county treasurer, comptroller, lead prosecutor, whatever local resolutions are on the ballot, it's like completing a test in school. Do you even know what the comptroller does in your local governance? Is that something Pope Leo should be spending his time mulling over? I mean, he's probably voting D downballot automatically like almost every person does. I think it's pretty obvious that even if the Papacy is "involved with politics" that there is a certain distance the Pope and other heads get from the actual day-to-day mechanical, bureaucratic processes of life that normal people have to wade through. They don't fill out every single paper form themselves. Pope Leo had to call his bank in Chicago to change his address using the same telephone line as the rest of us plebs and they still wouldn't let him. You think any of the historical popes had to deal with that trivial bullshit? Just the sheer amount of bureaucratic bullshit we all have to deal with is orders of magnitude more than what existed in the past, which only supports my point that this is the triumph of the faceless mundane machine over the exalted.

>>13961 >Midterms are an especially pointless song and dance of the electoral system. Not just senator and governor positions but the fucking county treasurer, comptroller, lead prosecutor, whatever local resolutions are on the ballot Are you retarded? You’re just describing voting. That’s what voting is. What the hell did you expect lol

>>13978 >the pope should renounce his citizenship for the sake of sovereignty of the Vatican I think part of the tradition of the Papacy is specifically the selection of popes from diverse areas who retain a dual identity, one to their background and one to the structure of the Catholic Church. This was the case all the way into antiquity when the tradition of the Papacy started, as Christianity from its very beginnings emphasized this aspirational dual state of one's geographic origins with spiritual community: Christendom, of which Islam took inspiration from and made their own as well. Of course it's an imperfect construction, and the fallible, tribal nature of humans shows itself, but it still persists, eventually giving us the secular descendant of liberal nationalism. I perhaps didn't make my point clear enough, as the replies in this thread seemed to jump on the fact that I mentioned politics in the first place. I was never trying to say that the position of the Pope or the Vatican was non-political. There is no purpose in trying to untangle politics from religion as both are cut from the same cloth. I was making the specific distinction of modern electoral politics. I emphasized the bureaucratic aspect of midterm elections and other American favorites like tax returns to contrast the mundane from the holy. I wanted to show the hierarchical distinction that used to exist between the ruling class and the lower classes, which no longer lives in actuality but only in remnants of rhetoric. Kings in the past lived in parallel universes over their subjects, they ate foods that were utterly unheard of to the average peasant, wore cloth that hadn't been seen by them let alone been touched, rode in chariots and carriages which only they could step in. Now our leaders eat the same mass-market slop food and watch the same banal audiovisual propaganda. Some memory of luxury persists in retail goods but that is quickly succumbing to the flattening machine. See the decline in quality of "luxury goods" which used to distinguished by their exclusivity - you literally could not buy them even if you magically had the money - but after the democratization of the market distinguished itself by exclusive materials, handcrafted/artisan techniques, and so on. If the hierarchy between the ruling class and the lower classes persisted into the modern era in the same stratified way it was in the past, heads of state would have their own exclusive roads, would have personal technology that was orders of magnitude more powerful and complex than what we had access to, and so on. The billionaires have private jets and cars, but they still travel on the same roads and use the same airport infrastructure, their cars conform to the same engineering standards and their planes and boats still have to communicate with local infrastructure and regulations. Kim Kardashian uses the latest model iPhone, but so does an Indian IT worker who lives in a hovel and diligently saved up to buy one. The same exact phone. Bringing this back to the Pope and voting, he engages in a bureaucratic, institutional structure that is his leader, and not the reverse. A Pope of the 16th century would have sent a letter to the, let's say, equivalent of the comptroller of Chicagoville, requesting or informing the local authorities on who should be selected. That's involvement in politics -- I'll reiterate it one more time for the kids on this board. But our modern voting process is anonymous and uniform by design. That's the central conceit of electoral politics. Everyone's vote matters and everyone's vote is equal under the law. That's the big sell of democracy. But there's an inherent philosophical contradiction now-- you can either be humbled and anonymized under the law, or you can be a Pope, a spiritual figurehead that is, or at least was, at one point, supposed to be higher than the normal person not because of his wealth but of his spiritual connection to God and the holy realm. And nearly every society has these spiritual in-betweens that, as a condition of their unique connection to the spiritual realm, must forfeit some of the mundane, earthly habits that the rest of us have to, or get to, participate in. This could be not marrying or engaging in sexual relations, abstention from foods and drink and so on. The details aren't important, what is is that there is at least an appearance of retreating oneself from the mundane. I can't speak for Pope Leo himself. It's clear he's an American through-and-through and definitely sees himself in that tradition. The younger folk today wouldn't understand this - as western cultures quickly retreat to post-ideology Darwinian relations - but the older generation of Americans truly did see themselves in that soon-to-be-forgotten democratic paradigm, and they acted accordingly. They were proud of the anonymized tradition of voting, they were active participants in their local community, the soft but respectable ideal of meritocracy. It existed, tenuously, for a time, in the US, and Pope Leo is one of the last of that era. But it's in direct conflict with the Papacy, with the pomp and circumstance of the Vatican, with its traditions, with the Roman Catholic character of rulership, hierarchy, centralization, cultivation and ornateness in art and aesthetic. That contradiction, I think, will probably start to define his tenure as Pope. >>13992 Thanks for the compliment and sorry for the cursing, it's a habit.

>>13978 >the pope should renounce his citizenship for the sake of sovereignty of the Vatican I think part of the tradition of the Papacy is specifically the selection of popes from diverse areas who retain a dual identity, one to their background and one to the structure of the Catholic Church. This was the case all the way into antiquity when the tradition of the Papacy started, as Christianity from its very beginnings emphasized this aspirational dual state of one's geographic origins with spiritual community: Christendom, of which Islam took inspiration from and made their own as well. Of course it's an imperfect construction, and the fallible, tribal nature of humans shows itself, but it still persists, eventually giving us the secular descendant of liberal nationalism. I perhaps didn't make my point clear enough, as the replies in this thread seemed to jump on the fact that I mentioned politics in the first place. I was never trying to say that the position of the Pope or the Vatican was non-political. There is no purpose in trying to untangle politics from religion as both are cut from the same cloth. I was making the specific distinction of modern electoral politics. I emphasized the bureaucratic aspect of midterm elections and other American favorites like tax returns to contrast the mundane from the holy. I wanted to show the hierarchical distinction that used to exist between the ruling class and the lower classes, which no longer lives in actuality but only in remnants of rhetoric. Kings in the past lived in parallel universes over their subjects, they ate foods that were utterly unheard of to the average peasant, wore cloth that hadn't been seen by them let alone been touched, rode in chariots and carriages which only they could step in. Now our leaders eat the same mass-market slop food and watch the same banal audiovisual propaganda. Some memory of luxury persists in retail goods but that is quickly succumbing to the flattening machine. See the decline in quality of "luxury goods" which used to distinguished by their exclusivity - you literally could not buy them even if you magically had the money - but after the democratization of the market distinguished itself by exclusive materials, handcrafted/artisan techniques, and so on. If the hierarchy between the ruling class and the lower classes persisted into the modern era in the same stratified way it was in the past, heads of state would have their own exclusive roads, would have personal technology that was orders of magnitude more powerful and complex than what we had access to, and so on. The billionaires have private jets and cars, but they still travel on the same roads and use the same airport infrastructure, their cars conform to the same engineering standards and their planes and boats still have to communicate with local infrastructure and regulations. Kim Kardashian uses the latest model iPhone, but so does an Indian IT worker who lives in a hovel and diligently saved up to buy one. The same exact phone. Bringing this back to the Pope and voting, he engages in a bureaucratic, institutional structure that is his leader, and not the reverse. A Pope of the 16th century would have sent a letter to the, let's say, equivalent of the comptroller of Chicagoville, requesting or informing the local authorities on who should be selected. That's involvement in politics -- I'll reiterate it one more time for the kids on this board. But our modern voting process is anonymous and uniform by design. That's the central conceit of electoral politics. Everyone's vote matters and everyone's vote is equal under the law. That's the big sell of democracy. But there's an inherent philosophical contradiction now-- you can either be humbled and anonymized under the law, or you can be a Pope, a spiritual figurehead that is, or at least was, at one point, supposed to be higher than the normal person not because of his wealth but of his spiritual connection to God and the holy realm. And nearly every society has these spiritual in-betweens that, as a condition of their unique connection to the spiritual realm, must forfeit some of the mundane, earthly habits that the rest of us have to, or get to, participate in. This could be not marrying or engaging in sexual relations, abstention from foods and drink and so on. The details aren't important, what is is that there is at least an appearance of retreating oneself from the mundane. I can't speak for Pope Leo himself. It's clear he's an American through-and-through and definitely sees himself in that tradition. The younger folk today wouldn't understand this - as western cultures quickly retreat to post-ideology Darwinian relations - but the older generation of Americans truly did see themselves in that soon-to-be-forgotten democratic paradigm, and they acted accordingly. They were proud of the anonymized tradition of voting, they were active participants in their local community, the soft but respectable ideal of meritocracy. It existed, tenuously, for a time, in the US, and Pope Leo is one of the last of that era. But it's in direct conflict with the Papacy, with the pomp and circumstance of the Vatican, with its traditions, with the Roman Catholic character of rulership, hierarchy, centralization, cultivation and ornateness in art and aesthetic. That contradiction, I think, will probably start to define his tenure as Pope. >>13992 Thanks for the compliment and sorry for the cursing, it's a habit.