Not my soaps!!!
"STUFF IT OLD MAN. It’s NOT your “lawn!”
Yes young people, it is better to use your time to serve God. Of course, since we’re catholics, by serve God we mean – serve his emissaries-on-earth.
So you know, get to servicing those priests, young people! 
Rest of the world to pope: “Get off our teens”
See, I actually LIKE this most recent pope. Francis seems like an incredibly level headed, reasonable, humble, positive, likeable guy.
And I’m not a Catholic, nor even a Christian - I’m staunchly agnostic. But I’m just not seeing the “ZOMG, The Pope Hates The Internet and Teenagers!” angle that it seems is being editorialized into this via the headline.
I can certainly see the old Christian angle of “Focus more on the Church’s values, less on other things which distract from them”, and I can see where people would disagree with that notion on basic principle.
But I mean, he’s addressing altar servers for crying out loud - he’s literally admonishing devout members of the church administration itself to focus more on church activities and less on worldly things. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask of people in such a position, no? If the government asked government employees to spend less time reading Facebook and more time trying finding ways to be the best public servants they could be, we’d be ecastatic.
How the hell does that get reframed as “Pope to Teens: Get Off The Damn Internet”? He’s not talking to teens at large - he’s merely talking specifically to church administartion members who are incidentally teens.
Although yknow… he does kinda have a point.
You mean regarding hating teenagers, yeah? Well that makes thing even worse, doesn’t it?
I mean, if you hate teenagers (for whatever reasons), and then you chastize the Pope for telling them off for doing something he hates to see them do, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
Naa, I like them fine, I even let mine sleep indoors. I myself spent several years of my life being a teen. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
But too much chat is maybe not a good thing. Fresh air and sunshine, don’t’cha know?
That’s not mutually exclusive. Just put e-ink displays to cellphones.
Meh. He has a point. I am sure most of us have things we SHOULD be doing rather than watching TV or goofing off on the Internet.
[quote=“Glitch, post:6, topic:38572, full:true”]
See, I actually LIKE this most recent pope. Francis seems like an incredibly level headed, reasonable, humble, positive, likeable guy.[/quote]
Well, I had thought he’s kind of a fresh face, too. But no, it’s all facade and PR, according to Salon:
Pope Francis’ new clothes: Why his progressive image is white smoke and mirrors
(a very interesting article)
This particular outing doesn’t bother me at all, I agree with your whole post on that. One should focus on the other things he does/does not do instead of catchy soundbites.
Who thinks being gay is a character defect, that people should marry before developing an intimate relationship, that people should be barred from accessing contraception, that abortion is a matter for the clergy, not a woman and her doctor, and that women are incapable of doing his job.
Hmm, no, he sounds like a rather unbalanced, unreasonable, arrogant, negative and unlikeable person.
Like marching up and down the square?
Except that his idea of “productive” activities are probably literal. Get married in a heteronormative context, screw, don’t use birth control, and produce more customers of the enormously profitable Roman Catholicism, Inc.
It would be great if everyone everywhere came around to my way of thinking immediately, but in the meantime I think I’m allowed to be happy about a global power figure who is distinctly less horrible than anyone expected him to be. Real progress never was anything but gradual.
The Pope is 100% right on this one, and I say this as a person who spends far too much time on the internet. He’s clearly not saying “YOU DARN KIDS WITH YOUR INTERPHONES AND YOUR FACEWEBS,” he’s saying “think about what you’re doing with your time on this Earth; don’t let it trickle away checking Facebook over and over and over.”
Is he, though? What substantial changes has he made in the Church’s doctrine?
I’m more focused on the part where he said the internet was a gift from God. I thought it was the hard work and dedication of many brilliant minded people that studied their entire life to understand and master the exchange of information.
Or is this going to be one of those “Yes, but it was God who made them so they COULD do all the things that they did” cop out?
Probably something like this:
Lord of science, Lord of art,
Lord of map and graph and chart,
Lord of physics and research,
Word of Bible, Faith of church,
Lord of sequence and design:
all the world of truth is thine.
