CNN article "Eight of the worst popes in church history"

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The bad Popes are such popular fellows.

I wonder if CNN will also a story on the eight best popes in history?
 
Your assertion was that there were several strings of evil popes. Now, if we take “several” conservatively to be at least 5, and “strings” to be at least 3, that comes out to 15 evil (not just bad) popes between the 12th and 15th centuries. A quick counts shows there were 54 popes in those 4 centuries. So you are saying over 25% of the popes were down right evil (again, not just bad or ineffective). History does NOT support that claim. Now, you may claim I am over parsing your words, but all I am doing is putting numbers to the way any one would interpret the words “several strings” and “evil”.

I understand the need to point out that the Church does not stand or fall on the morality of popes and bishops. But let us all acknowledge that when there are evil popes and bishops, indeed just ones who make a lot of perhaps well intentioned mistakes, it harms the faith. And we should not overstate the case as to how many of these popes existed.
 
And please, do not imply I am an Ultramontanist. Do not imply that I do not understand the limits of infallibility. Do no imply that I do not understand the Church does not claim that its leaders do not have human faults.

I am just taking you to task for your historical claims. A list of evil popes from those centuries by you should be forthcoming if you are not willing to retract your claim. The CNN article only talked about 8 in the entire history of the Church and they gave a list.
 
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Fauken said:
What leadership is there in Islam that can be compared to the Catholic Church’s? So far as I’m aware, there is none. There is no figure nor even group that Islam can look to as an authority.
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Kinda like Protestantism. And just like Protestantism, there is a lot of division and decent within Islam.
 
JamalChristophr said:
The bad Popes are such popular fellows.

I wonder if CNN will also a story on the eight best popes in history?
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It is sort of a subjective measure. If a pope is successful in achieving his objectives, is he “good” or “bad”? Well I guess it determines whether or not you appreciate his objectives in the first place. Is Urban II a success? He set out to inaugurate the crusades and actually did it, liberating the holy land. But if you hate the crusades, does that make him a failure?
 
and out of 2-4 in the 10th century and 3-5 in the late middle ages, you get “several strings” of evil popes? You could have said that initially and I would have let it go. You didn’t: you said “several strings”, where did I get 25%? I did a reasonable interpretation of those words. The type of interpretation that came to mind without putting actual numbers to them. I only put numbers to them to illustrate how far off your initial statement was. I stand by that. Good day.
 
Well now we’re both on the same page.

When I said “several strings” I meant a pattern of electing bad Popes in a certain time without any regard to actual numbers.
 
You said there were “several strings of evil popes”. That does not mean “bad” and it does not mean anything about patterns of elections. You are definitely pulling back from your initial assertion, without actually acknowledging it was wrong. Hence, I do not know if we are on the same page or not. Even your latest statement: there were 2-4 “truly bad” in the 10th century and “3-5” in the late middle ages, I do not know if I agree with. First of all: is “truly bad” the same as evil? Then I would need to do a review of those two centuries to see how the numbers fall. So I do not believe we are yet on the same page.
 
Did CNN wrote an article about the 8 best Pope’s in church history?
 
tafan2 said:
So I do not believe we are yet on the same page
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I don’t really care if we are or not.

There have been evil Popes in the history of the Church. Several of them. Man up and accept the truth and move on.
 
I never denied it, I just took exception to your blatant exaggeration.
 
Fauken said:
What leadership is there in Islam that can be compared to the Catholic Church’s? So far as I’m aware, there is none. There is no figure nor even group that Islam can look to as an authority.
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The quote mentions a human institution. I don’t see much emphasis of leadership mentioned in it?
 
7_Sorrows said:
The Catholic Church does not deny any of the history of these Popes.
The Catholic Church is still here after 2000 years.
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And CNN is on life support after 30 years? 😀

I’d love CNN to do an article on the Eight greatest popes, but I won’t hold my breath. 😉
 
When I swam the Tiber this was often thrown at me. I simply smiled and asked if they could name any other institution (for want of a better word) they could name which had survived so much (including persecution and prejudice) and is still flourishing today.
 
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