Slashdot Mirror
Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC reports that Pope Benedict XVI is to resign at the end of this month in an unexpected development, saying he is too old to continue at the age of 85. In a statement, the pontiff said: 'After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.' Resignations from the papacy are not unknown, but this is the first in the modern era, which has been marked by pontiffs dying while in office."
What?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
and two months later quits his job. Coincidence? I think not.
Noah lived to over 900, and he was building Arks into his 7th century.
These modern God-botherers just don't have the stamina.
In a statement released by the Vatican Today, it was announced that his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will step down with immediate effect. When asked for a reason, a spokesman for his former holiness suggested that he would like to spend more time with his wife and children.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
I'm hoping it's viral marketing for the new iWatch from Apple.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
So abrasive atheists can whore for karma by railing against religion.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
"Why is this on slashdot?"
It's about a guy who can talk to the cloud without any computer.
Reading between the lines, I think HBO's recent "Mea Maxima Culpa" was probably a significant factor. His resignation will stave off the worst of the public outcry and demands for deeper revelations from the church about the matters raised there. Hopefully the Catholic Church will be pressed about the issues raised regardless, but his specific, key role in it all is the point at the moment.
To recap what I read elsewhere: prior to being Pope, he was the head of the modern (renamed) Inquisition, assigned there by the previous pope. In that role, he "took charge" of the recent wave of priest sex abuse scandals since the 90s, ordered all evidence be centralized in his department's archives, and then basically hid it all and did little to actually act on the mountains of evidence they still haven't revealed to prosecutors or the public. It's pretty damning stuff.
Talking to the cloud without a computer is simple - anyone can do it. It's getting it to listen that's the hard part.
So abrasive atheists can whore for karma by railing against religion.
I'll bite.
This molester-protecting fuck had the audacity to label transgendered people as 'abominations'.
This is possibly not news for nerds; but certainly, if you've any humanity at all, his departure from his vile office is most definitely 'stuff that matters'.
Actually, by retiring before he dies, he gets a strong voice in selecting his successor. That, along with the fact that he's been carefully selecting like-minded cardinals the last several years, ensures the next pope will by very similar to Benedict.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
People are still making references to the mythical Great Catholic Altar Boy Molestation Conspiracy Project?
Oh the "mythical conspiracy project"? Hmmm, let's see from the laundry list of cases we find:
In July 2010, the Vatican doubled the length of time after the 18th birthday of the victim that clergymen can be tried in a church court and streamlined the processes for removing "pedophile priests."
So they streamlined a process to cater to a "mythical conspiracy project?"
People like you are what's wrong with organized religion and one of the primary reasons of why I am atheist. The people that run the Vatican and those in the past that have stood up and protected that power structure at all costs are fallible mortals. Shut up and deal with it or I'll throw you in with Scientology.
And all those cases have dried up, right? Right? If you give money to the Roman Catholic church, that's what you're paying for, in part.
My work here is dung.
AFAICT, for the same reason US presidential elections are covered on slashdot. It's got nothing to do with "news for nerds" but it matters to a very large number of people.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Because everybody knows to whom you are referring when you say "The Pope".
How about an analogy:
Why is he referred to as RMS? Other people have the initials RMS too. Can we at least always refer to him as "GNU/RMS"?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Simple. The mathematical property of Transitive tells us:
Slashdot likes conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theorist like news on the Catholic Church.
Ergo, Slashdoters would be interested in this.
For example, we all know that the reason why Linux has not succeeded is that the Knights Templar control Microsoft. The only way to break their control over the monetary system is to move to BitCoin.
Or am I missing something here?
While the Church is a church of forgiveness, it is not a Church of forgetfulness. The Church can decide not to punish a molesting priest, but it should realize that it has a problem with that priest and should not let that priest around children again.
For the record, policy in the USA requires any Church members (from bishops down to Religious Education teachers) are required to take a course in child abuse detection and prevention (sexual and otherwise). One of the things that they teach there is if they see signs of abuse from anybody, they are to inform both the Church and the local constabulary.
The reasons that the Catholics have been singled out on the abuse angle are roughly:
1: We are expected to be held to a higher moral standard than even other churches, as well we should be
2: There are an awful lot of priests there. Roughly a third of the US Christian population is Catholic, and no other church has a quarter as many members as the Catholic church does. Again, more reason to keep our noses (and other parts) clean.
3: The ugly reason is that the Catholic Church is organized different from other churches, and thus easier to sue for big money. Because we are an authoritarian church, ownership is by hierarchy. When the scandal started up in Boston (the archidiocese I grew up in), people weren't suing a priest, or that priest's church, but the archdiocese itself, which draws its income from every Catholic church in the Greater Boston area.
None of these should be taken as excusing things that the Church and priests, but I do note that the above reasons may explain why we don't see similar scandals rocking other churches. I highly doubt that the Catholics have cornered the market on molesting clergy.
For my money, the fact that these pedophiles exist in the Church is horrible, but in a way understandable. Any large group will have some bad apples, and it's impossible to weed them all out. The fact that the Church had been protecting these priests [em]as policy[/em] is much worse. I for one would have loved to see Cardinal Law explain himself to a grand jury, and think in retrospect that Pope John Paul II did us all a disservice by getting him out of the country before that could happen.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't walk and text.