Frankly, I’m surprised that more popes haven’t resigned. Usually, they hang on way past their sell-by date and this pope is such a hard ass, I really have to wonder if it was as voluntary as they say it is.
What’s amazing is that the comings and goings of this one old dude in Rome still has the power to take up space on the front page of the NYTimes. You don’t see that with other religious leaders. Maybe Pat Robertson and the Dalai Lama will get prominent obituaries. But in spite of all the progress we’ve made since the 16th century, the pope still has the world’s attention and this one’s brand of hard line, uncompromising patriarchal authoritarianism has been particularly irksome.
What are the chances that out of the Yes men he has undoubtably surrounded himself with that one will emerge who will modernize the church?
Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
What are the chances we could get the NYTimes to stop paying so much attention?
Filed under: General | Tagged: Pope Benedict, Resignation, Vatican |
The Confluence 
“What are the chances we could get the NYTimes to stop paying so much attention?”
Easy, drape a flag on the coffin when it comes home from the war.
Riverdaughter
D’ya think he’s resigning to spend more time with his family??
Award-winning documentary film-maker Alex Gibney’s latest: “Mea Maximum Culpa: Sex, Lies and the Catholic Church” points out that this Pope was the head of the “modern” Church’s Inquisition Department (the Congregation For The Doctrine of the Faith) for years and years. His office was ground zero for the collection of every scrap of Church documentation relating to the worldwide plague of predator/pedophile priests and it’s longtime coverup.
D’ya think he may be resigning one step ahead of another big shoe dropping smack on top of the Vatican bosses?
Just wondering…
The thought had crossed my mind. But I think if the past was going to catch up to him in a major way, it would have done so already. Some intrepid reporter would have received the goods.
My sister thinks he wants to pick his own successor…. A young guy….
To keep the church in line with his vision for a full generation.
Why do the Pope and the Catholic Church have so much influence in the USA? I don’t know.
In my rural area of PA, the senior meals on wheels menu has fish (except for one vegetarian dish) every Friday throughout lent this year. That’s a subtle influence and to my mind an antiquated practice.
Couldn’t this “antiquated practice” be due in part to the fact that these are senior citizens who grew up with the fish on Friday practice – especially during Lent? I’m not a senior, but I’m old enough to have experienced this myself as a kid. Not just during Lent. And I’m not Catholic.
I don’t mind fish on Friday. It’s just a habit at this point in time. But any excuse to add a little fish to your diet is not a bad thing.
The Pope resigns, the World yawns.
I’m thinking an Alzheimers diagnosis?
The Pope resigns. News because it is a rare event. Three more people dead in a shooting incident at a Court in Delaware. Not news because the shooting of the day is a daily event. The previous day it was in Georgia. The shooters are almost always adult white males. The victims are usually not.
The Catholic Church exercises a huge influence, not so much for the good. It was a big proponent of the war in Vietnam. It elected George Bush in 2004 and basically supports conservative Republicans and anti-gay policies.
The influence, or should I say the confluence, of the Catholic Church hierarchy and conservative Republicans may indeed be a reason that Meals on Wheels in rural PA serves only fish and vegetarian dishes on lenten Fridays.
and now the most recent shooting to take place was a University of Maryland student shooting one roomate to death, the other shot but survives, and then turns the gun on himself.
Nothing to see here folks…move along!
Most of the shooters are white males? Including the shooters in the nation’s black slum ghettos? The gang-bangers and the drive-byers?
About three quarters of gun deaths are suicides (that is 30,000 per year). The last national statistics showed that 83% of suicide victims are white and only 5.5% are black. Even among the number of murders committed by guns about half the victims are black and half are white. The number of gun deaths related to gang violence among blacks was 294 in the last available year out of over 41,000 gun deaths. So yes, most of the shooters are white males.
The number of hispanics and the number of blacks in an area actually correlates negatively to gun ownership.
Hmmm . . . if these figures are true, then Black America could teach White America about resisting the temptation to suicide. Because I doubt that Black America is any happier than White America. So their relative suicide-resistance must be due to something else. Something perhaps learnable.
Much of the difference in the suicide numbers is simply due to the availability of guns. Suicide attempts with guns are over 90% likely to result in death. Not so with other weapons.
So the next thing to research would be suicide-rates for black/people families with gun-availability versus suicide-rates for white people/families with exactly equal gun-availability . . . to control for the differential rates of gun availability/possession/access.