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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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In preparation for the currently ongoing papal conclave, I decided to read the official rules currently in force, UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS, issued by John Paul II in 1996. The document contains this provision (emphasis added):

”In the present historical circumstances, the universality of the Church is sufficiently expressed by the College of one hundred and twenty electors, made up of Cardinals coming from all parts of the world and from very different cultures. I therefore confirm that this is to be the maximum number of Cardinal electors”

Seems simple enough right?

Whoops.

”On Wednesday afternoon, under the gaze of Michelangelo’s frescoes, the 133 cardinals taking part in the 2025 conclave entered the Sistine Chapel.”

Here I was, a schmuck, reading the canonically promulgated apostolic constitution as if it mattered, as if the supposed men of God involved in this 2000-year-old institution might care about established procedures.

Sure, Francis could have changed the rules, as many popes have done throughout the centuries, but he didn’t. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and neither did anyone else with influence within the Vatican either. How am I supposed to take this seriously if the cardinals and popes don’t even take it seriously?

I wish Christianity were true. I really do. It would certainly make my dating life easier. I’d have a sense of purpose in life, defined rules of virtue to follow, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense. The inconsistency I cited above is relatively minor, but it is illustrative of what one finds everywhere when one digs into the claims of Christianity and treats them with the truth-preserving tools of logic. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and Vatican II, Matthew 24:34, these are fundamental truth claims that can’t be handwaved away like the finer points of ecclesiastical law.

Matthew 24:34

What's the fundamental truth claim here, in your reading?

That at least one person who is alive at the time Jesus made that statement will still be alive when the second coming happens.

That line doesn't apply to John the apostle seeing the book of Apocalypse play out from the island of Patmos?

Or John still being alive, which is the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) view.

Wait really? Can you expand on this?

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