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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of interesting to read Breitbart comments on any article related to Pope Francis. A few posters are convinced he is literally the Antichrist. Many others feel the Pope is not Catholic (which of course is impossible by definition).

In 1998, a small group of American Catholic separatists elected one of their own as Pope Pius XIII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Pulvermacher

I wonder if something similar is around the corner. The mood in America certainly has long been towards creation of shadow structures that ensure you don't have to meet with anyone who disagrees politically.

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> Many others feel the Pope is not Catholic (which of course is impossible by definition).

interestingly enough this could make sense (although quite likely not in the case of Breitbart commenters).

For example, the eastern orthodox church, like the roman church, defines itself as "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic", so an eastern orthodox christian may well refer to itself as "catholic" while denying the Pope is.

This seem to be the reason that in some places people often refer to "catholic" as "roman catholic".

> This seem to be the reason that in some places people often refer to "catholic" as "roman catholic".

That's not really why, is it -- it's because there are also the Eastern Catholic (as opposed to Eastern Orthodox) churches that recognize the Pope as the leader of the Church while using different rites (including allowing married men to be priests).

There are also Anglican Catholics that believe basically the same doctrine as Roman Catholics but have the Queen of England as head instead of the Pope.

Looking at the original meanings of the words: catholic means simply "universal" (as in "in charge of the Universe") and orthodox means "having the right belief" (right as opposed to wrong, not to the left). Only the later use of the words in some specific parts of the world gave some new (today often automatically assumed) meanings (created in the lands of their old opponents). The "orthodox" churches are proud to have "the right belief" and they don't think about the newer less positive meanings. They also consider themselves, of course "universal" because they used the very term before the schism too.

Unsurprisingly both modern "Catholics" and "Orthodox" churches claim that their influence is "worldwide" and that they are right.

> while denying the Pope is ..

So you probably can't use the old "Is the Pope a Catholic?" line anymore.

Back to the bears.

There was pushback after Vatican II, resulting in quite a few splinter groups, even in Europe (eg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Saint_Pius_X).

Unless Pope Francis makes significant changes officially, I’m not sure this would happen again, regardless of his popularity.

There is still a lot of activity around the Piux X society. They're allying themselves with partners like the Parti de la France, Jean-Marie Le Pen and friends, and organising themselves around organisations like Civitas[0], the "European party" Coalition pour la Vie et la Famille [1], etcetera. The Front National is not sufficiently right wing and conservative for many of the people around them, and they at least reek of antisemitism...

Have a look at how Civitas and the "Coalition pour la Vie et la Famille" grabbed 500k€ of European parliament subsidies for its "European policital party" with as members a hodgepodge of a Greek neonazi MP, a Slovak neofascist MP, a Polish extreme right wing populist, ... and one Latvian social democrat [2].

But now I'm really starting to digress from the topic I guess...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civitas_(movement) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_pour_la_Vie_et_la_Fa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihails_Zem%C4%BCinskis

Yes, unfortunately I know more than I wish I did about their activities. In the grand scheme of things though, i thing their influence is waning.

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