Pope Francis on "an essential force for social change"

[Scuba]

[Warren Stupidity]

1. meanwhile the catholic church is fighting to dismember the ACA and fights against equal rights.

[Scuba]

2. Yeah the American Catholic heirarchy is having big trouble reconciling their behaviors with Francis.

[themaguffin]

6. true, he can change everthing over night.... retroactively too. Amazing.

[el_bryanto]

3. Thank goodness - another opportunity to discuss Pope Francis. nt

[Scuba]

5. I have been, and remain, a harsh critic of the Catholic Church, but will give this guy props....

... he's moved the needle further in a couple months than his predecessors did in 16 centuries.

[Major Nikon]

8. The doctrine hasn't changed

When they start editing the catechism, then the church will have moved. Until then it's really only lip service. You can still be excommunicated for advocating Marxism, socialism, abortion, birth control, or gay marriage regardless of what the latest pope has said.

[laserhaas]

4. I've got many bones to pick with "the church"; but this guy Rocks!

He is stating stuff - oh so good to hear - from one held so dear!

[Major Nikon]

7. Pope quotes from the last 80 years...

In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.
-- Pope Pius XI, 1931

We consider it our duty to reaffirm that the remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful. It must be determined in accordance with justice and equity; which means that workers must be paid a wage which allows them to live a truly human life and to fulfill their family obligations in a worthy manner.
-- Pope John XXIII, 1961

Workers not only want fair pay, they also want to share in the responsibility and creativity of the very work process. They want to feel that they are working for themselves --an awareness that is smothered in a bureaucratic system where they only feel themselves to be "cogs" in a huge machine moved from above.
-- Pope John Paul II, 1981

Other factors too enter into the assessment of a just wage: namely, the effective contribution which each individual makes to the economic effort, the financial state of the company for which he works, the requirements of the general good of the particular country ... and finally the requirements of the common good of the universal family of nations....
-- Pope John Paul II, 1981

Yet the workers' rights cannot be doomed to be the mere result of economic systems aimed at maximum profits. The thing that must shape the whole economy is respect for the workers' rights within each country and all through the
world's economy.
-- Pope John Paul II, 1981

It is right to struggle against an unjust economic system that does not uphold the priority of the human being over capital and land.
-- Pope John Paul II, 1991

Meanwhile Catholic dogma on central economic planning remains unchanged.

Fidel Castro, excommunicated, 1962

Sebastian Kappen, disciplined by the Catholic church, book disavowed, censured, 1980

Leonardo Boff, disciplined by the Catholic church and suspended from religious duties, 1985

Tissa Balasuriya, disciplined by the Catholic church and excommunicated, 1997

Countless other Catholics and priests received all manners of removal and disciplinary action for daring to challenge the official position of the church.

So what has changed exactly?