The RC Pope relaxes on abortion and SSM, time for us to make a stand?

What a simplistic, banal and sweeping reply. Of course it's not a question of either/or. The Pope is the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world, a an ancient Church steeped in history and tradition. That does not make him the anti-Christ. Some Popes have been good (eg John XXIII), others less so.

 

Well you know me, always aim to entertain; after all, earnestness doesn't matter an iota next to accuracy. Far too many people who try to show me they're 'saved' by being pompous and serious and morose.

I'm glad you begin to see the absurdity of your own position. There's no particular reason why the opponents calling him antichrist should be right and the supporters who refrain wrong, and besides everybody seems to use it for different reasons depending on their grievance. It seems less of a thought out conclusion based on reasoned argument and more an opportunity simply for venting spleen. Which you know is fine, everybody takes unjustified cracks at people they don't like when under stress. Yet, when people call the pope the antichrist, nobody actually seems to seriously believe he is THE ANTICHRIST and start preparing for the end of days. Just seems a polemical shorthand for saying they don't think he represents 'true' (whatever that is) Christianity.

Also I'm intrigued to know what you mean by 'correct'? Valid or accurately recorded? There's a vast world of difference of course. As a bolshy young English student I once wrote an essay, completely backed up with quotes from the play demonstrating that Emelia from Othello was in fact, a talking dog. Doesn't mean it was the bard's intention, however.

And as my learned colleague has pointed out it's not really a question of either/or. The Orthodox opinion is a third one, or there's even the rather more sane view that we all fall short of the glory of God, and he's just a good man of the cloth working in a unique and complex position in his church.

 

Seems rather anglican to me...
"Neither the Pope, nor any other worldly creature can no more be head of the whole Church, or a bishop over all, than he can be the bridegroom, the light, the salvation, and life of the Church. For the privileges and names belong only to Christ, and be properly and only fit for him alone. And that no Bishop of Rome did ever suffer himself to be called by such a proud name before Phocas the emperor's time, who, as we know, by killing his own sovereign Maurice the emperor, did by a traitorous villainy aspire to the empire about the six hundredth and thirteenth year after Christ was born. Also the Council of Carthage did circumspectly provide, that no bishop should be called the highest bishop or chief priest. And therefore, sithence the Bishop of Rome will nowadays so be called, and challengeth unto himself an authority that is none of his; besides that he doth plainly contrary to the ancient councils, and contrary to the old fathers; we believe that he doth give unto himself, as it is written by his own companion Gregory, a presumptuous, a profane, a sacrilegious, and an antichristian name: that he is also the king of pride, that he is Lucifer, which preferreth himself before his brethren: that he hath forsaken the faith, and is the forerunner of Antichrist." -John Jewel, Apologia

 

Lovely stuff! The forerunner, eh? Well done! "Sithence" is particularly fine.