Is the Pope Catholic?

March 18, 2019 • 1:30 pm

Here’s a video from the British comedy game show QI (“Quite Interesting”) about the official title of the Pope Francis. It turns out that it’s not “Pope”. Further, you’ll learn that THE POPE IS NOT A CATHOLIC! In fact, the man who is officially the Pope is also NOT a Catholic. Listen and learn.

h/t: Michael

32 thoughts on “Is the Pope Catholic?

    1. I don’t think that the Coptic pope is “Catholic” but it’s somewhat confusing. As I understand things, the Coptic Orthodox church is an Oriental Orthodox church but it not Catholic. This church is headed by the Patriarch of Alexandria and is also called the Pope of Alexandria.

      The Coptic Catholic Church broke away from the Coptic Orthodox Church and joined the Catholic communion, their pope is the dude in Rome.

  1. This show is well worth watching. It’s funny, insightful and always tries to be as scientifically correct as possible without getting too incomprehensible. Lots of episodes can be found on Youtube!

    1. I agree – series A to M were hosted by Stephen Fry, series N to current by Sandi Toksvig, as in this clip.

  2. “Defender of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church…”
    It’s instructive to notice that nearly the entirety of the job description doesn’t have anything to do with doing good for anyone. It’s mainly to protect the the Church( from: embarrassment? humiliation? irrelevance?). This is consistent with the history of the Church from the early invention of political means of self preservation, accommodation of tyrants, the accumulation of vast wealth, to the defense of the Church against charges of pedophilia.

  3. At least “primate” is in his title.

    The honorific “pope” descends directly from Pontifex Maximus, the highest priest in pagan Rome.

    1. I’m not so sure it is derived from Ponrifex Maximus, I thought it was derived from Greek Pappas, meaning father.
      IiRC there were many Popes; Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, etc, and of course Rome.

      1. It Wikipedia, so proceed with caution.

        The word “pontifex” and its derivative “pontiff” later became terms used for Catholic bishops,[8] including the Bishop of Rome,[9][10] and the title of “Pontifex Maximus” was applied within the Catholic Church to the Pope as its chief bishop and appears on buildings, monuments and coins of popes of Renaissance and modern times. The official list of titles of the Pope given in the Annuario Pontificio includes “Supreme Pontiff” (in Latin, Summus Pontifex) as the fourth title, the first being “Bishop of Rome”.[11].

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_maximus

        1. I know he is the Pontifex Maximus, I meant that I think the word ‘Pope’ is derived from ‘Pappas’, not from ‘pontifex’.

  4. Since Francis is Vatican’s ‘One’,
    Has chance for romancin’ begun?
    So Fathers can wed,
    Or Pontiff instead,
    Say chance for romancin’ is nun.

    [From “101 Conservative Limericks: Righter-than-left Rhymes for the Times”.]

  5. The length of that title reminded me of every time they announce Daenerys’ full title in Game of Thrones, except this one was even longer.

  6. We can all be Popes according to the Principia Discordia, which is of course the only religious text worth reading.

  7. All hairs successfully split…

    I love/hate QI. My enjoyment of the bizarre facts detailed by Stephen Fry is often killed by exasperation at the ‘panelists’ trying to be funny at length and interrupting Stephen’s narrative. “Shut up and let him get on with it…!”

    cr

  8. Excerpt:

    The term has been incorporated into the name of the largest Christian communion, the Catholic Church (also called the Roman Catholic Church). All of the three main branches of Christianity in the East (Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and Church of the East) had always identified themselves as Catholic in accordance with Apostolic traditions and the Nicene Creed. Anglicans, Lutherans, and some Methodists also believe that their churches are “Catholic” in the sense that they too are in continuity with the original universal church founded by the Apostles. However, each church defines the scope of the “Catholic Church” differently. For instance, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox churches, and Church of the East, each maintain that their own denomination is identical with the original universal church, from which all other denominations broke away.

    Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_(term)

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