Do you think the Pope should resign?

@McTag,

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the then cardinal (who was in overall charge of church discipline, errant priests and all that, and was known to be very thorough and very strict), was perhaps aware of such a letter on such a subject from such a country, and was consulted on the form of his subordinate's reply?

If the person who was in charge of church discipline never saw the pertinent correspondence, he had better name the staff that withheld such information from him and make sure that they are demoted to altar boys and sent to an appropriate parish to serve under an appropriate priest.

If such a person was that incompetent in his job as church disciplinarian, WTF is he doing as pope?

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@spendius,

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That it provided an inspiration to love virtue and to restrain the impetuosity of the passions which, in the circumstances of the time, were revolutionary ideas.

And as soon as they were able to do so they brought the fire and the sword, in a loving manner, to any religious community who disagree with any element of dogma.

So you are one of those people who rewrited history for the greater glory of Jesus. Not a bit surprise for some reason.

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@mags314772,

mags314772 wrote:

whether the pope resigns or not, thr church has to face the fact that the current system of training priests is a pedophile's dream. Young men enter the seminary at puberty, and the object of sexual desire never matures. Celibacy doesn't work, and is not fundamental to catholicism, but came about as a means to control the wealth of the church.

I had to hunt for this quote - that I agree with - as I couldn't remember if I saw it as a comment to one of the NYTimes articles or here.

The church through the ages has had various problems of temporal (land rule, for example) and spiritual dimensions, but it seems to me that the closed culture of patriarchy in the guise of religion intensified with the difficulties of living a celibate life when that became a requirement. What I had noticed in my early twenties was also noted in various articles I've recently read, that Joseph Ratzinger was disinclined to a managerial role, being far more fascinated with mores and morals about chastity, contraception, and abortion and the rooting out of people who disagreed with his theological opinions. Views on that will vary; mine is that his very restrictive takes were manifests of a kind of ultimate patriarchy. I'm not a person who uses the word patriarchy often as it sounds rather paranoic at the same time it is a jargon word - but it seems to fit this situation.

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@McTag,

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On the other hand, and without unnecessarily looking for hidden agendas among the critics

I trust, Mac, that you are not trying to provoke me into making a list of what might be included in a list of such "hidden agendas".

I decline if you are. I am unpopular enough as it is. And it would take me a long time too.

I myself am firmly of the belief that those who break the law should be answerable to the law but with the officially approved proviso that it is in the public interest.

I'm thinking of the British Areospace bribes business but there are a few others. You're naivete astounds me Mac. A man of your age and experience.

And the Chilcot Enquiry holding some sessions in private.

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@spendius,

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I myself am firmly of the belief that those who break the law should be answerable to the law but with the officially approved proviso that it is in the public interest.

It is always in the public interest to have those who break the law answerable to the law, Spendi. That it often doesn't happen is just another sad comment on society.

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@McTag,

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From what I've read,

Aw gee!! Clued up are you from your newspaper.

I hardly ever read the shite myself. Tonight in the pub the Mail on Sunday and the News of the World had been left on the bar. I leafed through them in a desultory fashion. It gave me the impression that we have all gone stark staring mad. I imagined millions of people pouring over them to while away Sundays in neutral.

Then people wonder why I don't vote. The ex-editor of The Sun, Britain's biggest selling newspaper confessed to being on 4 bottles of wine a day during his tenure in office and having to read his paper in the morning to find out what he had said yesterday.

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@JTT,

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WTF is he doing as pope?

He was voted in by the electoral college of Cardinals. WTF were they doing as Cardinals one might just as easily ask.

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@spendius,

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WTF were they doing as Cardinals one might just as easily ask.

True, true, Spendi, a shining example of The Peter Principle.

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@JTT,

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It is always in the public interest to have those who break the law answerable to the law, Spendi. That it often doesn't happen is just another sad comment on society.

Are you an anarchist JT? We elect people to rule over us and if they say, as they sometimes do, that the public interest is more important that the principle under scrutiny here, we have to abide by that. The alternative is unthinkable.

I'm afraid your statement is a mere affectation which might gain nods of approval at a ladies coffee morning but which would cause smirks in the offices of those we have chosen to look after us. Condescending smirks I mean.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
WTF is he doing as pope?

He was voted in by the electoral college of Cardinals. WTF were they doing as Cardinals one might just as easily ask.

There have been many new cardinals since the days of John XXIII; as I understand it but can't cite references, those invested after John's day have been generally conservative down the line. What they were doing before they got to be cardinals, was being conservative bishops. And so on.

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@ossobuco,

How they got to be Cardinals osso probably varies a bit. I should think American ones get there the American way.

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@JTT,

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True, true, Spendi, a shining example of The Peter Principle.

There has been some interesting speculation by expert etymologists on the word "peter".

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@spendius,

I mentioned earlier that one of the ideas underpinning Christianity was the restraining of the impetuosity of the passions.

Media is dependent on the passions being unrestrained. It can be seen in most adverts from which most of Media income is derived.

Hence Media's obsession with defrocking anybody who resists.

The amount of unrestraint can be easily measured. The personal and collective deficits. So, obviously, Media jumps all over incidents which can be used to discredit any institution which is inimical to unrestrained unrestraint.

The more it jumps all over such incidents, appealing to natural sensibilities, the less attention is paid to its own role which a significant number of people think is diabolical. It's a fairly subtle form of only slightly obvious cover up. Your attention has been diverted due to your interest in certain matters.

Often very cost effective too. Paste and copy jobs. And it leaves it on the moral high ground and not just in relation to the odd incident but its normal method of operations.

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@spendius,

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There has been some interesting speculation by expert etymologists on the word "peter".

No doubt.

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I mentioned earlier that one of the ideas underpinning Christianity was the restraining of the impetuosity of the passions.

Media is dependent on the passions being unrestrained. It can be seen in most adverts from which most of Media income is derived.

Hence Media's obsession with defrocking anybody who resists.

Why do you keep falling back to an argument that has no merit, Spendi? Why shoot the messenger?

How quickly do you think a defrocking, possibly worse might come to a Vatican insider who leaked the truth?

It doesn't seem to me unrealistic to expect that those charged with "the restraining of the impetuosity of the passions" do their job?

The magnitude of the hypocrisy is truly UStounding.

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Perhaps, this is an opportunity for the Catholic Church to show that they can reform from within (no second Reformation needed), and change the Hierarchical Organization Chart and respective job descriptions, so each country's hierarchy is totally reponsible for all temporal matters and the Vatican/Pope are only involved in interpretation of theology. In other words, under such a paradigm, any temporal problems within a country's Catholic church would not go up to the Vatican for any reason. The "buck" stops within the confines of each country. The assignment of clergy between countries could be handled by a spin-off function of the Vatican, with offices in each country.

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Christianity was the restraining of the impetuosity of the passions.

Total hoseshit. They act the same as anybody else. They just try to hide it from view.

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@Foofie,

Sorry my friend but the mother church had been an evil organization for the last two thousands years no matter how well it PR is or is not doing at any given moment.

The fact that pedophiles had found a warm and comfortable welcome is just one of it countless shortcomings.

About time people accept the fact that no amount of lipstick on that pig is going to improve the situation.

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Quote:

At rally in Britain, protesters demand Pope Benedict XVI quits over clerical sex abuse cases

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However, Benedict won support from Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols who insisted the pope wouldn't - and shouldn't - quit.

"The pope will not resign, frankly there is no strong reason for him to do so," he told BBC television. "In fact, it is the other way around. He is the one above all else in Rome that has tackled this thing head on.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100328/world/eu_britain_church_abuse

'head on', really, that's 'head on'? making some generic speech, what, ten years, a dozen years after it had to have come to light to the very person who was in charge of discipline for the Vatican.

That doesn't sound so "head onish" to me.

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@BillRM,

Jeeze, Bill, just a couple of word changes and you're describing the USA.

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@JTT,

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Jeeze, Bill, just a couple of word changes and you're describing the USA.

The US ended the Nazis death camps for one thing not pretend that they was not happening.

Not to mention saving Western Europe from a new dark age not once but two times in the last hundred years.

Jeeze too bad you know no history at all.

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Do you think the Pope should resign?

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