Charlie Rose

sharm  03/17/2013 09:21 PM Report

While the Pope may be important, Charlie once again shows his Euro-centric focus by totally ignoring the recent new President and Premier of China.

In fact, given the sea of white faces on Charlie's "facebook" of past guests, you would imagine mainly only white people do anything meaningful in this world.

VicP  03/15/2013 09:19 PM Report

As a Catholic I found the election of a new pope incredibly moving and exciting. What I find disturbing is this meme that he is a sudden champion of the people. True he had his own apartment and prepared his own meals but even Cardinal Ratzinger lived "off campus" from the Vatican and may have had a housekeeper. Credit archbishop Brogoglio with leading a more middle class lifestyle but please don't make it sound like he lived in a hut. I'm sure he owned a HDTV and watched CNN along with soccer which he loved. My point of course that invoking this point along with the usual talking points of the sex scandal and lifestyle liberation reforms are incidental to what the mission of Christianity is all about.

sohokid  03/15/2013 07:43 PM Report

I know the Catholic Church is led by old men, but I am disappointed Frank Bruni couldn't find a woman to participate in the discussion of the New Pope.

VicP  03/15/2013 12:33 PM Report

This was definitely an hour of picking the low hanging fruit. As a fan of Pope Benedict, I am afraid that invoking "The Poor" is really a message to "The Rich" whom Benedict addressed in his last encyclical which none of these guest even mentioned. No folks, platitudes about "the poor" or direct addresses to "the rich" do very little to settle the age old "God Question" which I believe has a scientific answer which the intellects are still clueless about. Even when beloved Benedict addresses the philosophy of materialsim as the ownership of goods, I'm afraid we are watching the post-Brezhnev era of the Catholic Church.

Ellen_Dibble  03/15/2013 12:23 PM Report

There is an article on line from The National out of the UAE, called "Al Azhar seeks closer ties with tne new Pope, by Bradley Hope and Hugh Naylor, dated today, outlining the optimism around the Muslim world, and from Catholic bishops in Egypt and Jerusalem, that a leader such as the new pope can be a force for peace and cooperation, between Palestinians and Israelis, but on and on and on. I hope cultures are able to capture this feeling, this moment, as a reference point. Nature is cruel, and even without competition, it seems to me nature will exact terrible tolls in the coming century. Perhaps this can happen without the degree of hatred and revenge, scapegoating and blaming, that has been rampant. Humans can organize to create noncompetitive situations (the USSR seems to have been the prototype, but corporate power is doing a pretty good imitation), where the opportunities for self-fulfillment are thwarted on a huge scale, to the loss of all of us.

Gelles  03/15/2013 03:42 AM Report

True, the original was "better red than dead", but both work. It was a mean 20th Century. The optimists, like myself, who see ABUNDANCE coming fast and DEBT being re-defined (in accordance with logistical common sense and away from traditional false notions,) want what is fair and reasonable to be the common experience. But the Tower of Babel even where only one language is spoken illustrates the separateness of minds. We see the same things but they tell a different story-- nearly 7 billion different stories to each of us. We may want cooperation and even more than that. But even in a sweet conversation, competition is never less than half of everything we do and every thought we have.

Gelles  03/15/2013 03:26 AM Report

China's got its president, Rome has got its Pope. The list of needs is long. The outlook is good. Technology is on a tear, nuclear MAD remains in effect, law and economics work well for the very rich and not that badly for the merely free. If we were better dead than red (or various fascist colors) we are today better alive than not.

I enjoyed this welcome for the Pope by Charlie's invitees; especially I liked the interview between Charlie and the Archbishop of Washington DC (retired) who wanted what was best not just for a billion Catholics, but for 7 billion people. We all want that. For ourselves at least -- and for all others too. It's a tall order. But who can settle for less? Nature did. But Nature is cruel by almost any standard.

Krishna_D  03/14/2013 05:03 PM Report

Kudos to Frank Bruni for successfully filling Mr Rose's shoes. Fascinating and effective facilitation!

Ellen_Dibble  03/14/2013 02:29 PM Report

Can this church assume a kind of moral leadership, modeled on the way St. Francis "rebuilt" the moral foundations?

I look at trends, at where the human urge we think of as religion might take us and what might hold us back. The way I see it, this would take all the world's religions, and I don't see any United Faiths (corresponding to the United Nations in a way) situated maybe on an Anatolian peak, where the shared concerns that transcend national boundaries can be unshackled from governments and pool all our energies and resources.

To me, religions seem to have the opposite set of resources from all the other organizations, opposite from the United Nations, the World Bank... It is humankind before "Citizens United" decided to organize people according to power/money. Good luck world organizing around our values rather than our resources!

Pope Francis astoundingly to me does seem to represent that face of religion. Is this a blip? I knew a Hawaiian Jesuit in school about the time Bergoglio was studying. Yes, it is "different." So what preceded this pope, laying the path for him? From my perspective, Francis/Jesuits in some way are concerned how the "heart" of the planet can have the full joy of its entitlement (shall we say). I recall it was Benedict who reached out to the Jewish religion and Islam far more than his predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were from the Nazi era, just by their age and birthplaces. The idea of globally shared challenges were hardly on the horizon, not the way they are now, except for battling against. Not about battling "for." However, climate change, pollution's toll on many species, and global financial crises make plain we have to function as one, and I think religions are better placed to do that than superpowers.

To date, religions seem bent on making those of other faiths seem out-of-touch and misguided, maybe in order to bring in more members and more resources for themselves. Surely this is because they try to be the best, but so do we all. Catholicism seems as well organized as any other, and seems best placed to start a grand dialogue among people of good will.

Didn't Francis I say something about that yesterday, at the end for sure?

A lot depends on whether the various religions pick up on that cue. The object is not to be as different as possible, as offensively different. This is not like Democrats and Republicans fighting to control the budget and the elections. The object is -- hey, let the religious leaders say it for me.

rlnielsen  03/14/2013 01:03 PM Report

I hear the new pope has stated that black and white people intermarrying is an insult to God, and producing children from an interracial marriage is tantamount to child abuse. Oh wait, it wasn't interracial marriage it was about gay marriage. Well that is completely different. Maybe, as Father McShane said, he can say those hateful positions with compassion. Nothing says Jesus loves us like compassionate homophobia.

REMant  03/14/2013 12:23 PM Report

I think the selection of Cardinal Bergoglio sends several messages, the most obvious being that at age 76, despite having been a strong contender in the conclave which picked Cardinal Ratzinger at age 78, like him, he was probably the first choice of few. But, like many in such circumstances, it appears he doesn't offend anyone, and has enough affinity with conflicting groups to have garnered their support as a compromise. He has a clean record, except for fulminations against the ostentation of the Church hierarchy, and charges of complicity with Argentina's dictators. And he sends a clear message to those in faraway places, where the Church means so much, that they are not forgotten. He is, by all accounts, an unpretentious prelate, well-known for humility, social and humanitarian concerns, well-illustrated by the choice to become, although not a Franciscan himself, the first pope to be named for the figure most closely identified with the poor (if not, however, philanthropy).

He is not only the first to take the name of St Francis, but also the first Jesuit, and one who appears to conform to, not just their vow of poverty, but all the Society's injunctions. He is not only a doctrinal conservative, opposed to euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage and adoption by gay couples, but also a trained chemist, professor of philosophy and psychology, and noted for reforming the Argentine church.

There have been Franciscan popes before, but like St Francis, himself, and the Society of Jesus historically, this might well be considered a shot across the bow of the Roman establishment, except that both John Paul II and Benedict had already appointed Jesuits to important positions. (It has, incidentally, been authoritatively reported that it was Francis of Assisi, not Francis Xavier.)

St Francis can in many ways be considered the point of origin of the Reformation. It was Franciscans like Ockham, who in deploring the corruption and excess of Pope John XXII, and defending Conciliarism during the schism, argued for the separation of church and state, as well as, ironically, private property, (they had to in order to renounce it) and found themselves excommunicated. Founded only shortly after Luther posted his theses, and tho, as observants, Francis' heirs, the Jesuits, on the other hand, spearheaded the Counter-Reformation, and must be seen as theocrats.

Notorious for their support for papal absolutism, harsh discipline, and allegations of sexual impropriety, as much as their evangelism, the Jesuits have frequently found themselves out of, as much as, in favor with the Holy Mother Church, (no doubt why these gentlemen were shocked). They are, however, recognized for their establishment of schools and colleges to counter the complaint of an uneducated priesthood, if it stopped far short of the Protestant tenet of sola scriptura, and were notable in their opposition to the Nazis. Latin American Jesuits were active in liberation theology, a social gospel tied to Marxism, and condemned by Benedict some decades ago.

Since many have long advocated measures to counter the growth of Protestantism in Latin America this appointment really ought not be such a surprise. Whether he can reconcile opposing Church factions remains to be seen. But I would not think President Obama will find in him much of a kindred spirit, altho his wife will be able to talk shoes with him.

Personally, I find the Church's sex abuse position hypocritical, very much like the NCAA's on amateur athletics, or professional sports' on drugs, because they clearly knew it was there, it took Martin Luther to get pastors married, and now, all of a sudden, they are shocked, shocked! But consistency has never been Catholicism's strong suit. I might add that it puts gay rights folks in a pickle, as well.

I also have to take issue with all this talk of charity, which is one of the great things dividing Catholics and Protestants. Jesus, if we are to believe the Gospels, quite clearly recognized that no matter how many good works we do or rituals we follow, it cannot override justification by faith that God grants grace on his own initiative. It is one thing to treat others as ourselves, and quite another to expect otherworldly gain from philanthropy. Justification by faith also removes religion from worldly authority, which was the issue for the Franciscans, and provoked Protestants to follow scripture instead of bulls and precedents. If these gentlemen don't believe this was the message of St Francis as well - no one comes closer to a Rousseau than he - they might be in for a rude awakening. The analogy with everyday politics should be clear.