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 sebster wrote:
What good does it do anyone, anywhere on this whole blue planet to discover that you, some guy on the internet, have denounced a religious figure?

Hopefully it makes people look in to it more, read their bible again, read some history and decide if their trust is well placed. Obviously one random person on the internet isn't going to do that, but hopefully the more they read opposing views the more learned they'll become.

Whether they then choose to keep following that religious figure or not, I respect their decision either way. But as I said previously, out of the supposed 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, I think the number who have had a good read of their bibles, had a good read of history written from multiple sources and spent some time objectively questioning their beliefs and after all that still care about what the pope says is probably relatively speaking quite a small number. And of those people, they probably have the backbone to hear people criticising their religious figure anyway.

If they feel bad because they think they're being persecuted, well, they should read their new testaments I guess

 sebster wrote:
And why do that? What good does it do anyone, anywhere on this whole blue planet to discover that you, some guy on the internet, have denounced a religious figure? And not denounced because of some earthly thing he did to harm someone, but because of doctrine.

You've basically said 'my doctrine is different from there doctrine'. Well, yeah, that's why you belong to different religions. So go your own separate ways then. And maybe do it with enough humility and grace that you don't need to go about telling other people they're doing religion wrong by not being the same as you.

You can apply that exact same argument to any other subject. What good does it do anyone to discover that you support Trump/Clinton/none of the above? What good does it do anyone to discover that you think that {40k unit} is overpowered? Etc. If you're going to consistently apply this principle instead of treating religion like a special snowflake that can not be criticized then you might as well shut down the forum entirely.

Quite interesting. Mr. Bergoglio's statement may strain even more the tense relationship between the more reserved and the pro-ecumenical orthodox churches .

I dunno about that - in context, the statement ("apologize to those against you have sinned") isn't very controversial.

 Manchu wrote:
I dunno about that - in context, the statement ("apologize to those against you have sinned") isn't very controversial.

In case that was referring my post:

The Orthodox churches have the habit of being quite marginal in their official position on any sеcular matters being in discrepancy with the official dogmats and cannons. The Pope's statement may aswell be viewed by them as a further lessening of catholic canons (which in turn may lead to dogmatic changes) concerning homosexual people. While I'm most certain that there won't be any official statement by most of the patriarchs, concerning the statement itself, ( mostly because, as you all know, according to the Orthodox church the Pope is a heretic, as are all catholics, and their position on homosexual people have remained unchanged ) there will be some finger pointing in the communication between the various Orthodox churches based mostly on some patriarch's contact with the Pope. It would largely be not about the message itself ("apologize to those against you have sinned"), but about the fact that the catholic church involves itself with it.

 CoreCommander wrote:
the habit of being quite marginal in their official position on any sеcular matters being in discrepancy with the official dogmats and cannons

This is a pretty confusing statement - is you point that Orthodox bishops do or do not get involved with civil matters?

In any case, the current bishop of Rome has mentioned homosexuality in other-than-denunciatory terms on several occasions - I am not aware of this having caused any significant rifts with the East so far.