Pope resigns months after launching social networking effort Pope Benedict announced his resignation today, becoming the first pope to relinquish the leadership of the Catholic Church in six centuries - and just months after becoming the first pontiff to join Twitter. The 85-year-old will step down at the end of the month, clearing the way for a conclave to elect his successor. He is …
Right, let's put this to rest once and for all most Germans of his age were in the Hitler youth. You can't hold him responsible for that.
But most Germans of his age haven't knowingly aided and abetted paedophiles in their evasion of justice. You can hold him responsible for that.
" or risk being given a bad reference."
It would be interesting to hear the conversation when he finally meets his venerable predecessor St Peter at the Pearly Gates - the Highest Court. Scoring all the boxes - and then it gets to "little children" and Peter repeats the Lord's criteria:
"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
I'm not religious, and I certainly never was a big fan of this Pope (I never cared really, since I'm convinced universe was created by a couple of dices thrown). But geez, get the negationists back in church, for Pete's sake !
However, I think the guy needs our hats off for having the courage to resign, as this is not really the fashion of the company. I can imagine all the court faces around him when he announced that ...
I'm sure I would do the same if being forced to do my current job, when I'm 85 ...
So long mate, have a deserved rest !
Some of my best friends are Catholics. I know what topics cause them grief and avoid raising them. Like all such organisations one reserves appropriate criticism for the leaders - not the infantry. I still remember the anguish of friends in the 1970s who had expected their use of artificial contraception to be approved as part of the modernisation.
The recent vitriolic campaign against same-sex Civil Marriage did the Church no favours in English public opinion. Especially when Jacob Rees-Mogg MP in a radio interview starts by saying that in matters like this "I take my whip from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church". Private conscience is one thing - blind obedience to a foreign state is something else.
"Practising" Catholic?
I've always thought that particular phrase makes it sound like the whole 'love thy neighbour' thing is a bit too difficult and just doesn't come naturally, so you really have to work at it...
I gave up on the whole thing after noticing that some Catholics still weren't particularly nice people after 30, 40 or even 50+ years of "Practising"!
Yes, but more than that, I am now completely sure that I can never be anything other than completely unsure as to the nature of life, the universe and everything? (I'm also completely sure that I don't use the "Oxford comma" -- I'm not from Oxford!)
I was mostly agnostic when I was Catholic, because I accepted on a fundamental level that even the most unshakeable faith is not "certainty", merely "faith".
Well the voting panel has already been rigged so that no matter who wins - they will be singing off the same hymn sheet as the retiring Pope.
Predictions:
1) the Roman Catholic Church will split along liberal and conservative lines. The former will be in the developed western countries - the latter in Asia, Africa, and South America. Once again the prospect of two, or more, Popes leading the separate groups.
2) the Anglican Communion will split along liberal and conservative lines. The former will be in the developed western countries - the latter mostly in Asia, Africa, and South America.
3) the liberal groups will form an alliance to try to benefit the poor and downtrodden. The conservative groups will enter a state of war, figurative or literal - sacrificing their followers in trying to prove which is the most fundamental in their biblical adherence.
"Why would the conservatives be in South America, where Liberation Theology got started?"
It started there - but I seem to remember the Vatican stamping heavily on those priests who sided with the peasants. The same can be seen in the USA today with the Vatican's disbanding of nuns' "feminist" groups.
There was also the case of a mother and doctor who were excommunicated by Brazilian bishops. Their religious sin was a legal abortion on a 9 year old girl who had been raped - and was pregnant with twins. Her attacker was not excommunicated.
http://www.examiner.com/article/doctor-who-performed-abortion-on-9-year-old-rape-victim-excommunicated
In recent years the Vatican has lost its hold on the congregations in USA, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and Italy - to name a few. It damaged itself badly in the UK recently by trying to order its congregations, including school children, to sign petitions against several civil law changes.
Pope Benedict has reversed several liberalising trends. His new cardinal appointments, over half of those eligible to vote, all appear aimed at producing a conservative successor.
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The Italian bloc at the Vatican Casino have had enough of him. He's failed to whitewash their dodgy property dealings, relentless banking irregularities, child molesting, right wing and mob connections, and general medieval hysteria.
He had them by the balls as Torquemada-in-Chief, but as a titular head of state, he's a toothless figurehead who can't say anything about the crooks around him without toppling the house of cards that keeps his saggy arse in the clouds.
They deliberately promoted him to a position beyond his competence to get him off their backs. In the same way our glorious despotic rulers throw a Chief Whip into the role of Party Chairman when he's getting too big for his boots. Plus ca change.
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