As interesting as prophecies are, it has been noted numerous times (both online, television and books) that there has been stretching to get St. Malachy's prophecy fit each pope. It will be interesting to see who Peter Romanus will be, if the prophecy is true.
What is most interesting about the retirement is.. HTML: In the years leading up to his death in 2005, some sources suggested that John Paul II ought to resign due to his failing health,[19] but Vatican officials always [B]ruled out this possibility[/B].[citation needed] However, Benedict XVI, his successor, announced his pending resignation for just this reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_resignation
Sure, but even you should understand that you need to see things in perspective - when I see some of the hate being uttered at an old man who simply announced that he is retiring due to health reasons, these people should question why they hate this guy so much, but don't care about much worse things done in the name of another religion. That includes you. Everything is relative. My point is very specific to the issue of Benedict: He doesn't deserve the hate he is getting when comparable religious leaders get away with much worse things.
The problem with prophesies is that we have a gazillion of them. Odds are, one of them can eventually come true. That does count as a prophecy but rather, a lucky guess.
It does bother me. I am not a fan. As I said, I hope that the next pope will be much more progressive. But I don't know the details of his involvement in a cover-up. I know that he met with victims of child abuse in the church in Germany and apologized to them. That's probably far from enough. But while I hardly agree on anything with him, I don't see him as the evil monster he is made out to be by some.
Well, you don't have kids, so I can see why you wouldn't think someone covering up the widespread diddling of kids should be considered an evil monster. I hope if you ever have kids, you change your tune.
What exactly did he do to ensure that criminal act was not repeated again and that the criminals were brought to justice?
I'll be honest, I don't know what exactly his involvement in the whole issue was: - If he abused kids himself (which I don't think anyone said), he would be an evil monster - If he knew of priests abusing kids and did not do anything to stop them although he had the power to do so, he would be a very, very bad person - I have not seen any proof of this, but I assume that is what is alleged? - If he knew of priests abusing kids and did not do enough to get them punished to the fullest extent of the law and if he did not do everything to prevent them from ever doing it again, then that severely taints any good he might have done, and effectively makes him a very bad and irresponsible person - I don't know if this is the case, but I assume this is possible and then he would have shown extremely bad judgment by prioritizing "protecting his own" before protecting the kids I guess the last thing is what is the most concrete and realistic allegation. As I said, I am not actually sure about his personal involvement there, but you are most probably right that he could and should have done much more to combat these things. I typed while you asked this - possibly (and probably) not enough. But one major difference I see between him and, e.g., someone like Ayatollah Khomeini and others like that is that he always preached peace. He never demanded from his followers that they murder someone. He preached forgiveness and peace, not anger and vengefulness. Did he fail at doing enough to prevent further abuse? Probably. But I can forgive failure out of weakness and bad judgment more easily than I can forgive actively preaching hate and murder.
The highlighted would essentially make him the Joe Paterno of the Catholic Church. Not too savory a label.
We live in an age of cynicism and we also just happen to have a wealth of historical knowledge. It would be rare indeed for anything relating to the kind of power the Pope has to be done simply.
I find amusing the opinion that this is so easy to explain away when it hasn't happened in nearly 600 years. It could very well be the explanation, but questions should arise as to why.
What does that mean? Corrected, and in that sense, I agree with your updated statement. Not sure of the purpose of that comment, but I have no hate in my heart for the Pope. So if you're saying I'm a HATERZ!1!! for criticizing, I guess that's your weird (but trendy) definition. I said he's not my favorite. I have criticisms of the Catholic Church, starting way back, like the reason they require celibacy (property inheritance) and their stance against Galileo, for starters. I have criticisms of everything, including myself. It's fun, analytical, and often useful, outside of this BBS at least. And you can't require me (even ME!) to go to your anti-Islam threads to post what you think would be sensible. My life has very few Muslims in it, for better or worse. My life has a number of devout Catholics in it. I'm more interested in the Pope than in the broad array of would-be religious leaders in the Muslim world. Deal with it? Fine and discuss that, but criticism is often independent of comparison. It's for deeds and words of a single person or entity. Period. There are (lots) of threads for that. I think you know where to find them. Whatever, I won't say anything again, and I know nobody can change your habits on this topic. I do reserve the right to parody said habits though.
I guess we have a difference on our moral judgement. I prefer to judge somebody by his/her actions - not words. I am presuming you are using the same logic when criticizing political figures?
Actions are far more important than words, but words of leaders lead to actions of their followers, so their words are also very important.
It means that you often hide behind humor (which I do as well sometimes, at least in real life, so I understand) and thereby avoid having to address the difficult points. There was nothing to correct - that my post reflected my personal opinion should have been obvious. No, I probably lumped you in with others, my bad. I think I just addressed you and not others because you were one of the first to post. I completely agree with your stance on the Catholic church and I also completely agree with your criticism of everything. Fair enough. Hmm, I disagree with that. When someone (like Batman Jones did) says he wants to see the Pope (who, as far as I know, has not personally abused anyone and has not actively aided anyone to do so or declared this to be acceptable and who has never preached anything but peace and forgiveness) raped and tortured to death, then my opinion is that this is crazy and excessive, and I reserve the right to point out that there are people who have personally done much worse things than the pope and who have, as leaders, instigated hate and murders, and neither Batman Jones nor most of those who portray the Pope as the incarnation of evil ever showed the same outrage regarding these other things. Sure. Just like I reserve the right to keep pointing out inconsistencies as far as more "outrage" over lesser evils compared to others.
I was talking about impact - if the Pope (or, let's say, the Dalai Lama) were to beat their subordinates, it would be bad, but as long as nobody would know about it, it would affect very few people (those who would get beaten). But if these leaders were to say "it's okay for you, my followers, to beat your subordinates", then the negative impact of that would be much bigger. Not sure what is there to disagree about. I didn't say that you don't lead by example. I just said that the words of leaders have an impact.
I agree with ATW to an extent, that words of people also matter a great deal. I do want to make the point, however, that this hidden cover-up can make things MORE dangerous. By not acknowledging the problem, you have legions of Catholics who believe that nothing wrong is going on and that it is irreverent to speak out against the church's actions or to accuse the church of wrongdoing. This is often MORE problematic, because many people don't recognize or don't seek out enough evidence to rectify the problem.
