A Latino pope : a problem for USA?

[njlisa]

The beauty of the Catholic Church is that we are one in Christ Jesus.

@adamhovey1988: Thanks for making those excellent points.

Latin America is diverse. Speaking as someone with Puerto Rican roots, I am a mix of indigenous Taino, African, and European.

Puerto Ricans are as different from Argentinians as the English are from Americans.

If you ask a person from South American what their background is, they’ll reply with the name of their country.

Thanks again for those points.

 

[EssentialBeing]

Pope Francis is Italian not Latino. Even though he lived in Argentina for many years his family was 100% Italian iirc.

He was born in Argentina and has Italian heritage via his parents. He is ARGENTINIAN first and foremost, with Italian heritage.

You will find that the majority of westernised countries colonized by the motherland (Europe) have vastly complex mixtures of their original founders.

A Spanish speaker and their nation was influenced by Spain, the same way an English speaker is an Anglophone & whose nation was influenced by England or a French speaker is a Francophone whose nation was influenced by France…

With this being true then we must accept we belong to the nation of our birth and that our ancestors only provide heritage & history.

 

[phil19034]

Margaret_Ann:

Pope Francis is Italian not Latino. Even though he lived in Argentina for many years his family was 100% Italian iirc.

He was born in Argentina and has Italian heritage via his parents. He is ARGENTINIAN first and foremost, with Italian heritage.

You will find that the majority of westernised countries colonized by the motherland (Europe) have vastly complex mixtures of their original founders.

A Spanish speaker and their nation was influenced by Spain, the same way an English speaker is an Anglophone & whose nation was influenced by England or a French speaker is a Francophone whose nation was influenced by France…

With this being true then we must accept we belong to the nation of our birth and that our ancestors only provide heritage & history.

I really fail to understand what you are trying to say here. Of course he is Argentinian. But he is not “Latino” in the ethnic sense.

Many people use “Latino” to refer to Spanish & Portuguese speakers with indigenous blood or mixed race spanish/portuguese speakers.

Another others simply refer to “Latino” as anyone from Latin America.

My mother is from “Latin America” and I have to be honest… we all find it very peculiar that Spanish & Portuguese speaking nations “need” to be identified differently than countries that speak any other language on the planet.

 

[EssentialBeing]

It was a response to

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) Margaret_Ann:

Pope Francis is Italian not Latino. Even though he lived in Argentina for many years his family was 100% Italian iirc

And I highlighted your quote because it is correct. I was not questioning or doubting the Popes Nationality I was only clarifying to Margaret_Ann as they stated he was defiantly Italian.

The Pope is ARGENTINIAN

 

[Anicette]

C’est vrai, it is a rich heritage and culture indeed. The typical American has no idea what “philosophy” even is . Some college students might take it as a single elective class. I was blessed to have a mentor-priest in high school who was a philosophy student, and I took a course to learn more, then three more classes. Much of my study in college was intellectual history and the history of ideas.

I had done also History studies. When I was in high school, I was in litterature cursus, so I have 7 hours of philosophy the last year! It was the main subject!
Now there were reform, distinct strict cursus and the numbers of hours have decrease by almost half.I don’t know well the American system, but I think we go closer to an Anglo saxon system with much more choices of topics.

I am not completely sure, but I have heard through the media that philosophy as we do it in high school is a cultural french exeption. We do dissertations on a question, where we used philosophical quotes with their explanation but where we had to think a lot to structure our thinking. We have to let go easy answers and prejudice to and come to a rational conclusion. That we don’t even have think when we start!

To compare, one friend made a school year in Finland and we came to the conclusion that the philosophy subject was treated very differently. They did history of philosoph and philosophsy not philosophy like us.

History is another topic of great interest as it is so controversial, but I out of the topic of this threat!

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I am not completely sure, but I have heard through the media that philosophy as we do it in high school is a cultural french exeption. We do dissertations on a question, where we used philosophical quotes with their explanation but where we had to think a lot to structure our thinking. We have to let go easy answers and prejudice to and come to a rational conclusion. That we don’t even have think when we start!

Unless things have changed since I went to high school (1970s), philosophy as a separate subject is not taught in American high schools. In America, philosophy is not regarded as something important. Many people, if you asked them, would confuse it with psychology. I went to a Catholic high school where all the priests had majored in philosophy, and one of our priests was very proactive in incorporating philosophy into his literature classes. We were very fortunate to have him. This was not typical of American high schools.

 

[Anicette]

Thanks you @HomeschoolDad!

Yes philosophy and psychology are very different! The one is a reflexion on hard topics such as ethical or moral one.
The second is a science to listen people and help to relieve them from their burden (more or less).

The fact that philosophy is not teach can explain a lot… yet it is a prejudice from me to said it.

Religion is thinked in Philosophy. We studied some thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Pascal…But on the majority part, the philosophers we studied were far from any religion, and their conclusion don’t match at all with Catholicism, For hard topics such as euthanazie, practice of the cult or marriage for eg. That’s why me and many Catholics friends were not confortable in class because when we said our thinking we were categorized as… well as… our thinking not evoluated enough to agree with theanticipation of societal changes! So not valued a lot. As catholics, we can say! We even had a conversation with our priest and said that philosphy is incompatible with religion. The priest who was a former hidden Philosophy graduate of University reply “oh, you phink so?” but don’t try to change our mind!

Yet, even if it was challenging and sometimes toxic for my faith, I had learnt the rigor that is needed to confront some public societal challenge (suchas bioethic) in the correct way. That is without the help of religion because an opinion based only on religious argument is not heard or acceptable in France in public debates.

That’s why I don’t understand why many people answers some hard topics such as procreation or marriage, only with a religious (legalist) answers and not raised much more on a universal answers when it is possible. because a religious argument only is weak outside of concinced people.

 

[Anicette]

I don’t see in the extract of La Croix that the OP quote that the journalist said the pope is a Latino. She speaks of a Latin America Pope, and that is true!

I think that the OP made a shortcut in her title, because Europeans are not used to these topics.

But definitely that don’t change what the article said, and that seems accurate. The Pope is a Latin American, of Italian Origins.

And the main argument is that his views on human dignity, particularly the poor, the ill person, is not compatible a lot with many aspects of American society. That’s why we have more voices (I don’t say more individuals) who disagree with him on theses topics (not to overgeneralized to others topics) in North American than in Europe.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Yes philosophy and psychology are very different! The one is a reflexion on hard topics such as ethical or moral one.
The second is a science to listen people and help to relieve them from their burden (more or less).

Americans would only confuse the terms because they sound similar in English, and because they both begin with the letter P.

Religion is thinked in Philosophy. We studied some thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Pascal…But on the majority part, the philosophers we studied were far from any religion, and their conclusion don’t match at all with Catholicism,

Unless there are high schools I’m not aware of, studying philosophy is something that is just not done in American high schools. I understand that the French are very much aware of the need for good reasoning skills, and that intellectuals occupy a prominent place in French life and social conversation. America is not like that. In America, it is all about facts and results, “the bottom line” as it is called in business. We really don’t have much in the way of public intellectuals — Noam Chomsky, Camille Paglia, and though they are no longer with us, Gore Vidal, William F Buckley Jr, Saul Alinsky, and Norman Podhoretz, that’s about it. Sad state of affairs.

If the world can ever get back to normal, I may actually get to “live” in Paris for about a month, in 2022 — I am trying to persuade my son to let me treat him to a couple of weeks there, after he has visited his mother’s family in Poland, and I am going to stay there while he is in Poland, before he comes to join me. Or it may end up being London or somewhere else. If I do get to spend some extended time in France, perhaps then I will get more of a feel for what French life is “really like”. I truly respect the French concept of “just being” (être) as opposed to “doing” (faire), and I am pleased to know that there is a society such as France where, even though money is always important everywhere, money is not the most important thing about the society. Does that make sense?

 

[EssentialBeing]

The definition of philosophy noun

1.1

the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

1.2.

a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.

But back to the OP the position of any office is never perfect & makes sense as to why an Argentinian Pope would be a problem for anyone. No matter who it is they are always going to have a balance of opposition & followers & applying the principals of democracy must always prevail

There are more supporters than opposes

 

[Ridgerunner]

Well, the people who live in small spanish speaking parts of Africa and the spanish speaking parts of the Philippines are technically considered “hispanic” too.

Interesting. The “language of officialdom” in the Philippines is…English. The minutes, for example, of the Manila City Council are taken in English. If you want to attend the “Harvard” of the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas, you have to speak English because all of the classes are in English. The reason for all of that is that there are dozens of languages that are not mutually intelligible there. I once had occasion to meet a Filipino doctor and his wife. The only language the two had in common was English. Many or most of their surnames are of Spanish origin, but I have yet to meet a Filipino who can speak Spanish.

 

[Ridgerunner]

We really don’t have much in the way of public intellectuals

We might be better off for it. Public intellectuals are sometimes destructive of the societies in which they live, and oppressors of those who disagree. As pedestrian as I suppose I am, I would far rather listen to a discourse by Maria Bartiromo than Noam Chomsky any time.

 

[phil19034]

phil19034:

Well, the people who live in small spanish speaking parts of Africa and the spanish speaking parts of the Philippines are technically considered “hispanic” too.

Interesting. The “language of officialdom” in the Philippines is…English. The minutes, for example, of the Manila City Council are taken in English. If you want to attend the “Harvard” of the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas, you have to speak English because all of the classes are in English. The reason for all of that is that there are dozens of languages that are not mutually intelligible there. I once had occasion to meet a Filipino doctor and his wife. The only language the two had in common was English. Many or most of their surnames are of Spanish origin, but I have yet to meet a Filipino who can speak Spanish.

I don’t know how many of them speak Spanish as their first language any more, but here is a Wikipedia page regarding this

Spanish Filipinos - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know how many of them speak Spanish as their first language any more, but here is a Wikipedia page regarding this

I would question how many nowadays have Spanish as even a second language, English is so pervasive. But the article is interesting. One Filipino explained to me how “mixed” the people are there. There are people with some Spanish ancestry, some with Japanese, some with Chinese, some with Melanesian, some with whatever the most common ancestry is.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

We really don’t have much in the way of public intellectuals

We might be better off for it. Public intellectuals are sometimes destructive of the societies in which they live, and oppressors of those who disagree. As pedestrian as I suppose I am, I would far rather listen to a discourse by Maria Bartiromo than Noam Chomsky any time.

Could you be more specific? What would be an example of public intellectuals working to the detriment of their society, or oppressing anyone?

Many or most of their surnames are of Spanish origin, but I have yet to meet a Filipino who can speak Spanish.

The way I heard it, Filipinos were “assigned” surnames, sometimes arbitrarily, by the Spanish colonial masters, as they really didn’t have surnames.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Could you be more specific? What would be an example of public intellectuals working to the detriment of their society, or oppressing anyone?

Oh, offhand I would nominate Lenin, Marx, Camus, Alfred Rosenberg, Mao Zedong.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The way I heard it, Filipinos were “assigned” surnames, sometimes arbitrarily, by the Spanish colonial masters, as they really didn’t have surnames.

Could be. Of course, I think the king’s agents assigned names for the Domesday Book. That’s how people acquired names like Miller, Seward, Cowherd, Cook, Farmer, Hunter, etc.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Could you be more specific? What would be an example of public intellectuals working to the detriment of their society, or oppressing anyone?

Oh, offhand I would nominate Lenin, Marx, Camus, Alfred Rosenberg, Mao Zedong.

Touché.

Not clear how “destructive” Camus was, but as for the rest, not nice guys. Marx never put anyone to death, or anything like that, but he created a very seductive philosophy that has turned everything it ever touched to rot.

I had in mind more the public commentators who get interviewed for books, magazines, and television, such as Bernard-Henri Levy and, in his day, Jean-Paul Sartre.

 

[Anicette]

. If I do get to spend some extended time in France, perhaps then I will get more of a feel for what French life is “really like”.

Paris is not really all the France. Parisian region count 1/6 population and is overepresented in medias, politic and art. It was very “Paris et le désert français”.

Recently there is a trend in fictions films and TV series to locate them more in the regions.
Where do you have the beautiful landscapes, the countryside, the mountain, the sea?
The villages, the churches, the castles, the space?
A less costy lifstyle, less narrow appartments, less run against the time, less polluated air?

If you go to Paris to smell the intellectual culture, you should have to go where she is, theaters, conferences, museums, libraries. The places are various.

I am pleased to know that there is a society such as France where, even though money is always important everywhere, money is not the most important thing about the society.

Thanks to our social model. As people in difficulties are more help, universitieas are almost cost free, health care is partly taken in charge by the society, yes money is less a goal in itself than in America.

But as you know with a lack of money it is very difficult to have the life you want to have, the insecurities to a non steady job or unployement are stressful.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

 

[Anicette]

Americans would only confuse the terms because they sound similar in English, and because they both begin with the letter P.

Same vocabulary in french, philosophie et psychologie.
Pronounced differently than in English.