Pope retires

Didn't they also have a recent scandal when they reassigned the dude in charge of making sure their bank was on the up and up?

This has been a pretty scandal prone pope.

I think I read something about him going to live a cloistered life within the Vatican, something about remodeling a deserted nunnery for him or somesuch. Which sounds more like solitary confinement to me.

I'm with Saccaroa though, something does smell fishy. Popes don't just retire cause they feel old and tired (he's only the second.pope.ever to vacate the See like that). But then again, given how genuinely surprised everyone in the Vatican seemed, a brewing scandal seems unlikely as well. Besides, what kind of scandal could that be? Pedophile priests being protected, that's just another Monday for the Vatican, sadly. He would have to be responsible for something really outrageous, like, dunno, female priests or some other moral debauchery like that, and I don't think that's likely, given his track record.

eta: Just read an interesting theory in a local newspaper: his days are (really badly) numbered somehow and he knows it, so he retires now to have some influence over who becomes the next pope. Still doesn't explain away such a harsh breach with tradition, though.

Is it possibly a legal thing, seeing how he covered up nasty stuff they can avoid being sued?
or he's old and dying.

Or he's old and NOT dying (e.g., looking at dementia) and doesn't want a non-pope calling the shots while he's unable

Meet Cardinal Turkson:
"I'm not sure whether anyone does aspire to become pope"
"The process of politicking and lobbying has not come up; [at the last conclave] that did not come up."
"Those type of considerations muddy the waters ALTHOUGH..."

I give him a solid B+ for managing to speak for 3 minutes without saying anything. More importantly, I think it would be great if there was more leverage behind African Catholicism, simply because what is happening there with Evangelicals is fucking terrible. The Catholic Church: a force for good in a sufficiently dire scenario where you've already given up on birth control and basic attention to reality. There's a slogan for you.

Also, I think it's pretty crazy to say there's a top secret reason for his departure absent any real evidence. This is a guy who covers for pedophiles in plain sight of the law and does it with both middle fingers extended. A man with no shame is untouchable, in that sense. It seems far more likely that he's done what he came to do, and would like to avoid seeing the same downward spiral in church management that occurred at the end of JPII's tenure; he's not really breaking with "500 years of tradition" so much as implementing the last hundred years of life extension into the math.

For what very little I know about it, I'm not a big fan of African catholicism. It's like people there actually believe in it rather than treating it as an expedient mean of power management/social control. Then again, it may be true that chatolics are the lesser evil. Sometimes a hierarchy can be positive, 'cause it tends to suppress the most extreme drifts from the "reasonable" orthodoxy.

The tradition is (or is made up to be) 2000 years old, really, 'cause Celestine V was just an exception, and was later harshly criticized and imprisoned for what he did. Also canonized, but afaik that's a complicate compromise between middle ages folk catholicism, the church's hierarchy and secular authorities meddling in the internal factional disputes for their own goals.
Anyway, my point is that this break with tradition is very unusual and dramatic. If there aren't deeper reasons for it - and I agree that without further evidence conspiracy theories are unwarranted - Benedict's decision is a blatant "fuck you" to the traditionalist clique, which in the Vatican is the most influential one, and until yesterday counted the pope as a staunch supporter.

++, would like again

I don't really know what you are getting at. Do you want me to link the endless examples of what the competition is doing? I'm not really choosing sides, just as I don't particularly endorse Shias over Sunnis over Sufis in the abstract. But given that there is a competition, and the alternatives are often appalling, I'm going to go ahead and hope for the lesser evil. Kind of like voting in the US.

Mine is a specific reference to the last half-millenium of catholic practices and hierarchy following the Council of Trent and the counter-reformation, a generally accepted historical grouping. You can draw your own lines in the sand, if you wish, but don't imply that they are a correction to mine unless you're going to bring bigger guns than handwaving about mythology.

So, you think his purpose was to antagonize the traditionalists? Because if not, you're basically metagaming the vatican without much to show for it. I'm sure the prevailing headlines are all the sort of bullshit we see here about how unusual this is etc etc, but there's simply no reason to think it's anything but avoiding JPII's fate (and many to think the alternatives are silly, not least of which is his utter shamelessness). Beyond that, while some objections to it from people with actual weight to their words will be framed in terms of tradition and other ritualistic gestures, they are no more prone to flights of fancy than your hypothetical African primitives. They just can't get much out of saying "we needed another 2 years to consolidate our faction in order to reassert Italians in the papacy or keep it European/white/whatever" so the smart ones are going to sound like the Cardinal Nonsense interview that I linked above in public.

The Onion has been pretty good with the up-to-the-minute satire of late.

I'd expect to see this happen more often. Not only are people living longer, but the expectations of papal duties have changed quite a bit over the centuries; Catholicism has spread and travel is more feasible, so the Pope is expected to poke his tiara in all over the damn world these days. The pressure to keep the job 'til you grow feeble and croak probably won't stay practical for long.

I can't wait to turn on Coast to Coast in a few minutes and find out what the real crackpots are saying. And yes, they do have a guest to talk about the Pope's sudden resignation.

...and?
Chemtrails? Grey Aliens? Giant Sub-Mantel Counter-Rotating Dodecahedron's? Spill man...

This happened:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ff6b0fa-74da-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_blog.html

Yeah, they talked about the lightning strike. :-). But mainly the focus was on the prophecy about the next guy being the last pope. Conspiracy theories about why Benedict stepped down were mostly limited to what's already been mentioned, other than the "Vatican has been taken over by Satanists" angle. UFOs were mentioned by the guest, but only in the context of his forthcoming book about the Fatima secret/prophecy.

Yes! Nutbars successfully predicted!

Thanks for the great pope jokes all! They will feed my Facebook wall for a couple of days.

There's only one real conspiracy about this: He wants to ruin my birthday. AGAIN. The 28th is my birthday and instead all the headlines will read "Pope Retires".

Wait, you were expecting all the headlines to read "OTTERLOOP'S BIRTHDAY", instead? Fuck who you were on QT3, which world famous person are you IRL?

Is it not public knowledge that Otterloop is Taylor Swift?

I liked this and then unliked it just so I could like it again. Well done.

So this is only the second Pope-off that I remember. However, in other cases, all these news people come up with this list of cardinals that are in the running and all I can think is that it's so much more esoteric than who gets to be in the US cabinet.

This is only the second one you remember because Pope John Paul II was the pope for pretty much your entire life (he was elected Pope in 1978. :P).

I did hear on the radio today one of the more useless "journalists" excitedly proclaim its the first time EVER there will be two living "popes" only one of them wont be in charge.

Um yeah, not so much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism

I'm not a great student of papal history but even I could recall there was often a spare antipope stashed down avignon way.

Or in this case, one in Rome, one in Avignon and one in Pisa. Can't ever have too many spare Popes I reckon.




Pope. Pope. Pope. That is a fun word to say, no wonder everyone wanted to be one.

I'm rooting for the Antipope thing to happen again. Seems like this would be an appropriate time for one, since the next Pope is supposed to be the last. We haven't had one of those in about 550 years either. Seems about right to have one.

Yeah, I've kinda been wondering what the Traditionalists and sedevacantists think about this whole ordeal. I like the whole idea of an Antipope because the word sounds like something delicious that I should be seasoning with garlic.

After he's retired and they've chosen a new pope, Ratzinger should have fun fucking with Catholics and do a bunch of interviews where he says he didn't want to retire and the Catholic Church forced him out and he's technically still the pope and even in exile from the Vatican he will continue to lead the TRUE Catholic Church. Schisms always make for great pranks!

He should become a scientologist just to completely destabilize the church. "When I was pope I found out the thetans thing is totally legit!"

Now if only KOEI redid their strategy game. Romance of the Three Popes, the squees from LP forums could be heard from here.

I really hope this will happen. The Catholic church is a great substitute for reality tv.

Romancing popes? SHIT YES!

What, three final bosses? I'm out.

Just like in FTL :(

On tonight's episode:

We have one just across the border in Kansas!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bawden

That is a wuss of an Antipope.

Yeah I said it.

The WaPo has a good summary of Vatileaks and other things in light of the papal retirement.

Also good stuff on the trial of the butler itself.

It is no secret at all that Cardinal Bertone is the man who has truly ran the show in the Vatican for a while, I shudder to think what would happen if a man like him was elected, though thankfully it seems it would not happen.

It surprises me that this morally vacuous complete fucking sham of an institution still wields any power at all.

Oh, right, they have the money extorted from hundreds of years of poor people seeking salvation.