In the greatest rebuke yet to Pope Francis, the Catholic bishops of Africa and Madagascar issued a unified statement Thursday refusing to follow his declaration allowing priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples and asserting that such unions are “contrary to the will of God.”

The statement, signed by Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo on behalf of the symposium of African national bishops conferences, marked the closest thing to a continent-wide dissent from the declaration Francis approved Dec. 18 allowing priests to offer such blessings.

That declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has sent shock waves through the Catholic Church, thrilling LGBTQ+ Catholics as a concrete sign of Francis’ message of welcome but alarming conservatives who fear core doctrines of the church are being ignored or violated.

  • Gazumi
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    3611 months ago

    This will be interesting! A new break away Pope?

    • teft
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      3311 months ago

      They’re called antipopes. The last one was in the 15th century.

      • Neato
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        1311 months ago

        What happens if a Pope and Antipope collide?

        • teft
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          2211 months ago

          When popes and antipopes collide, the popes destroy each other, with a huge energy release. Depending on the colliding popes, not only is there a great energy release, but new, different popes may also be produced (such as neutrinopes and various flavours of quarkpopes – see figure below). These new popes will have a lower mass than those in the original collision, due to the law of conservation of ecclesiastical energy and Einstein’s very famous equation E=mc2 – some of the energy goes into heat and light, some into forming the new popes.

              • teft
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                511 months ago

                We actually can’t tell if the funny hats are conserved. We call this the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

                This guy Heisenberg came up with it:

              • FaceDeer
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                211 months ago

                In my experience funny hats can be created out of non-funny hats pretty easily. I don’t think that conservation law holds.

                • @twack@lemmy.world
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                  411 months ago

                  That is because all non-funny hats are also funny hats at the same time. It is only at the moment of observation that a hat decides whether it is funny or not funny.

                  We refer to this phenomenon as Schrödinger’s hat.

                • @hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
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                  11 months ago

                  Ah but the total funniness of the hats is still conserved; you may be creating a funny hat from non-funny hats, but the total funniness is the same as the sum of the earlier hats.

      • limonfiesta
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        211 months ago

        Call me a traditionalist, but I much prefer the antichrist.