Why doesn't the Pope have more "personal appearances"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter malachi_a_serva
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
malachi_a_serva said:
I am thinking more in line of speaking more definitively on what the church teaches, reason behinds things, plans moving forward etc…etc…

PR stuff I guess…

George Bush is a busy man - we always see/hear him 🙂
Click to expand...
What more could he say that hasn’t been said in one way or another over the last 2000 years. He can only clarify or restate.
Did you realize how much time it takes to make sure he’s saying something correctly? Because of people like you (and me) who need to be spoken to clearly, he must go through oodles and oodles (or as Carl Sagan said ‘billions and billions’) of words, pray over them, etc. because he cannot change what Christ taught!

You see GWB on the news every night, but you never see him on Oprah.
 
Yes, I said that…

He is Just the Pope. So he is not perfect, he is just a man who is limited in his capacity to be everywhere at once, to do everything perfect, to look perfect and to act perfect.

So who cares if he has personal appearances or not, the only way to attack him is to hold him to an impossible standard, which is to define a standard and then show that he doesn’t fulfill it and attack.

I am not in any way denigrating the Pope, who is the Supreme Pontiff and the successor of Peter. Everyone must submit to the Pope and be Catholic to enter Heaven. Everyone in Heaven is Catholic. My point is that to attack the Pope you need to set an impossible standard then attack that, which is what non-catholics have to do to attack Catholicism.

Nobody can be honest, study the Catholic Church and reject it. Every attack must be based on bad Catholics or dishonesty. Never truth or good will.

I did not mean to imply that I take the position of the Pope in any negative way. I just don’t hold to the anti-catholic position that we think he is God. The Pope is infallible, not impeccable.

In Christ
Scylla
 
malachi_a_serva said:
I am thinking more in line of speaking more definitively on what the church teaches, reason behinds things, plans moving forward etc…etc…

PR stuff I guess…

George Bush is a busy man - we always see/hear him 🙂
Click to expand...
He’s not the President of the United States. He’s the spiritual leader of the whole world. You aren’t going to hear President Bush in Thailand as much as you’re going to hear him in the U.S. If you want to see more of the Pope, I’d suggest going to Catholic news outlets. Try Zenit. You’ll hear something from the Vatican everyday.
 
malachi_a_serva said:
George Bush is a busy man - we always see/hear him 🙂
Click to expand...
WOoooooaaaaaaaaahhh…you did not just compare the Holy Father; the Supreme Pontiff; the Successor of Peter; the Vicar of Christ; the leader of the visible Church on Earth…to George Bush.
 
Philothea53 said:
As a ‘Senior Member’ of the Forum, is that kind of attitude the best you can do? I was questioning some statements made by the poster that I quoted. You know, you could have tried to answer them or at the very least give me your thoughts on the points I made instead of insulting me.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Hey, It’s not that I don’t share some of your feelings on the matter, but a rant doesn’t really offer much of an answer, y’know?🤷

I wasn’t being insulting, I simply pointed out that the rant was not a very good answer.

If you look around the apologetics forums and maybe a bit in Sacred Scripture and Non-Catholic Religions forums, you’ll see that I answer plenty of stuff.

To be honest, I think this topic is not really an issue. Besides…Doesn’t His Holiness actually do like an audience every week or something?

Why should he have to be like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts and all those guys?

There are those who seem to have a calling to that TV stuff. Bishop Sheen and Fr. Corapi are two that come to mind.
 
Philothea53 said:
Well, I have apologized twice in the last 30 minutes on two other threads. Third times a charm, I guess. If this was a compliment, heck, even if it wasn’t, I APOLOGIZE. Don’t know why I am feeling so thin-skinned today - maybe I need to spend some time away from the computer :gopray2:
Click to expand...
And I do too if you felt insulted. That was not my intention at all at all. 🙂

(Hey, when it gets bad…I go play Pirates on the Xbox.😃 )

I’ll trade ya some of my prayers for you for some of yours for me. 👍
 
The pope does not make more appearances on television nor does he give interviews to the press because both of those for a would demean his office in a way that simply cannot be analogized to politicians such as George W. Bush. Politicians, especially in democracies, go on the air and grant interviews in order to make arguments for their various policies and why they chose to do things in one way and not another. It’s conceivable that there could be any number of defensible avenues to take on a particular issue and politicians have to make their arguments based on reason and evidence that their choices were correct.

The pope, on the other hand, does not have that luxury. For him, there are no legitimate choices, only the one, singular Truth which he must proclaim. His job is to proclaim it and we, in humble obedience, must obey its tenets. Such a thing is not open for argument, debate or questioning. Therefore, the idea that he would go on Larry King to, say, to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, is therefore offensive to the Faith.

If one needs to know what the Church’s arguments are, then one ought to develop a modicum of literacy and read those documents that make them. [In the case of the Immaculate Conception, that would be the Papal Bull *Ineffabilis Deus available to read online here.] One should wean oneself from the gross presumption of believing it is the responsibility of the Pope to enable the sloth of those who simply can’t be bothered to take an active interest in the Faith…
 
Our 80-year-old supreme pontiff is amazing. He has recently published a book, written various documents, has his weekly general audience and many private audiences, speaks in seminaries and various cities in Italy. He’s gone to Germany, Turkey, Brazil … did you know he’s trying to work out a visit to the U.S. next year?
 
I always get very surprised by many topics on this forum. 😃
If the Pope gets on TV very often, then someone will says the pope wants to be a hollywood’s superstar.

He’s reached to every corner of the Earth without the need of being on TV like Oprah. 😃
 
malachi_a_serva said:
Like lets say on Oprah…
or Larry King…

??

Be more out there …
Click to expand...
as if, do you think he needs the approbation of Oprah or Larry to validate his message?

can you think of a pope who was more “out there” than JP2? still travelling the world in his 80s.

B16 seems to be taking up the challenge of world travel as well. Also the pope are on the tube regularly, as papal Masses and other events are broadcast on religious and even commercial networks. There he is seen in his role as supreme pastor and teacher of the Church.
 
puzzleannie said:
as if, do you think he needs the approbation of Oprah or Larry to validate his message?

can you think of a pope who was more “out there” than JP2? still travelling the world in his 80s.

B16 seems to be taking up the challenge of world travel as well. Also the pope are on the tube regularly, as papal Masses and other events are broadcast on religious and even commercial networks. There he is seen in his role as supreme pastor and teacher of the Church.
Click to expand...
Ah, but “malachi” would have the Holy Father dance to Oprah’s and Larry’s tune:

Matthew 11:16-19

“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon’; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, `Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
 
FCEGM said:
Ah, but “malachi” would have the Holy Father dance to Oprah’s and Larry’s tune:

Matthew 11:16-19

“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon’; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, `Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
Click to expand...
I don’t know if that is what MaS is really saying. I suspect that he’s really just used to the n-C TV evangelist type guys and doesn’t see why we should be any different. That’s understandable I think.🤷

I was just thinking though that perhaps he might benefit from looking into things like papal visits to different countries and World Youth Day in particular.

Over time I think I understand what is going on with MaS and though he can be a bit weird, (like with this thread), he really isn’t a bad dude. Hey, I’ve seen way worse that him. In spite of himself…I think he’s really sincere. 🙂
 
Church_Militant said:
I don’t know if that is what MaS is really saying. I suspect that he’s really just used to the n-C TV evangelist type guys and doesn’t see why we should be any different. That’s understandable I think.🤷

I was just thinking though that perhaps he might benefit from looking into things like papal visits to different countries and World Youth Day in particular.

Over time I think I understand what is going on with MaS and though he can be a bit weird, (like with this thread), he really isn’t a bad dude. Hey, I’ve seen way worse that him. In spite of himself…I think he’s really sincere. 🙂
Click to expand...
You’re probably right, Michael - I hope you are. 🙂
 
The man is 80 years old, and has the largest group of Christians in the world to take care of…🤷
Heck, all** I** have to keep track of is one tiger cat, and the housework (which mostly isn’t done), and I don’t have time to watch Oprah…🤷 even if I cared to. (Which I don’t. Think maybe the Holy Father might consider her as:rolleyes: irrelevant as I do??? (Nah!!🙂 He’s too nice for that…).
 
malachi_a_serva said:
Like lets say on Oprah…
or Larry King…

??

Be more out there …
Click to expand...
Well, the Pope has Papal Audiences every Wednesday, if you count that as a ‘public appearance.’ EWTN broadcasts the Wednesday audiences, I believe.

But him appearing on Oprah has less chance than finding a billion dollars under your bed overnight; he’s a busy man and he hasn’t beengiven the grace to either bilocate or do his job fastly or teleport from one place to the other (after all, we Catholics don’t believe the Pope can just pop out at our living room despite locked doors or walk in thin air or shoot lasers from his eyes :D). He has a billion or two of ‘spiritual children’ to take care of, and you know how unruly some kids can get!
 
malachi_a_serva said:
Like lets say on Oprah…
or Larry King…

??

Be more out there …
Click to expand...
Because talk show hosts are dedicated to their ratings, not to spreading truth. The Pope does not normally do interviews, my knowledge, and for good reason, I’m sure: interviewers control the discussion. The does a fine job of “teaching the nations” by speaking in a context in which he controls what gets said, and he leave the interviews to his spokesmen, who can explain what he said if need be.

The cool part of that is that the interviewer can’t corner the Pope with trick questions; he or she is left to ask “What did he mean when he said XYZ?” That way, he remains in control of his words.

Peace,
Dante
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top