Catholic religion can never modernize

TheCatholic religion is very quick to modify its worldview especially when it comes to scientific discovery. Its traditions are slow to modernize. But, like many other religions, such apparent conflict is only important to their laity.The Catholic Church doesnt generally screw with trying to "set back the worlds clock" a few millenia like the Fundamentalist Christians or Lubovitcher Jews, or Wahab' Muslims.

When Pope John XXIII was in office, he modernized the Catholic Church.

Link

The Ecumenical Council made a lot of changes, IMO, to the good. Pope John Paul, on the other had, IMO, was a more traditional pontiff, and kept tightly to the "party line" in terms of contraception. abortion, etc.

I would be very interested as to whether the Pope that is to be elected will come from the more liberal, or more conservative wing of the Church.

Interested, too, in the affect of the new Pope.

How many cardinals who will be doing the electing are from the liberal (if that is an appropriate word) branch?

Change always comes slowly in any church structure. Fast changes result in a group breaking off and forming a new church.

<sigh> Not everyone has enough patience for the process. I know, I'm one of them.

Or in the case of some of the current whack-jobs, only back to the fifties.

this entry was meant for (the now locked) ts thread. hope you don't mind if i post here. i think it might fit in here.

perhaps this is somewhat off topic, but since topics such as abortion have been brought into this thread, i'd like to add a little to this discssion.

with the death of the pope many tv-programs dealt with his death and the admiration of many - both catholics and non-catholics -for him. i found an interview on CBC television most interesting. one of the persons interviewed was a professor from st. jerome college in toronto (ted schmidt ?). when asked about the cardinals gathering in rome to elect a new pope, he described them as "an angry lot ". he said that many cardinals felt that the catholic church (the pope) did not move with the times and in fact moved back. he stated that such subjects as : contraception, abortion, gay marriage, women priests ... had not been dealt with taking into account the times we are living in. he also stated that many cardinals felt that they had lost much of their discretionary power to the much more centralized power of the past vatican (the pope).

on another program (tim russert ) a professor from a jesuit college was interviewed. he stated that while most of his students admired the pope as a strong leader of the church, many - if not most - of his students had rejected the catholic church's stand on abortion, gay marriage, women priests ... and had long ago decided to use their own judgement in these matters.

it will certainly be interesting to watch and see if the catholic church will renew itself.

hbg

The major difference from the recently deceased pope should be the question of age.

I hope the cardinals have the good sense to pick a very old man.

Another young one would be horrible for the world.

The huge changes that ecumenical councils bring only come around about once every 100 years. But when they do the change is radical enough to cause schism. Negative reaction to the last one, Vatican II, produced the break-away Society of St. Pius X. Vatican I caused the breaking away of the Old Catholics.

You might just be in luck, most of the cardinals i see on TV look pretty old to me.