Bad Hussar
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Who will be the next Pope?
Surprisingly I can't seem to find a thread on this so...
It's too funny that I have to be the one to start this thread since I am an atheist and was raised protestant, not catholic. But I do have some sort of interest in and "respect"(not really, but can't think of a better term) for the Catholic Church. It has to be the oldest continually operating institution in the world today, and you don't get in that position without doing something right. even if "right" is taken to mean being ruthless in every respect.
My vote would be for the Canadian Bishop Marc Ouellet. Seems like the media is obsessed with getting a "Non-European" Pope. While a White French-Canadian isn't exactly what they have in mind, it may at least meet them halfway.
The media haven't completely thought through their desire for a Black or Hispanic Pope. The problem, from their point of view, of such a Pope is that he will inevitably be no different to a European Pope in that he will be against all the usual suspects: Gay marriage, abortion, female priests etc. etc.
For reasons I don't completely understand the Western left-leaning press have this ridiculous notion that all Black (and Hispanic) people everywhere are social liberals who are down with all the current left leaning social policies. I can't speak to Hispanics, since I have not traveled in Latin America, but in Africa that notion is literally comical. There is such a strong strain of social conservatism in Africa the average Western journalist would be in tears after a few hours here. Having a president encouraging violence against homosexuals, or a parliament passing laws criminalsing the practice (including death penalty in some cases) is unexceptional.
So the media need to be careful of what they wish for. How will they handle a Black (or Hispanic) Pope? Some president in Africa can easily be ignored, but the Pope is very high profile.
But back to the main issue:
For Catholic members, and others following the process. Who do you think will become Pope? Who do you think should become Pope?
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| 03-12-2013 01:10 PM |
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Ovid
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
All the cardinals are pretty liberal and blue-pill, despite the hate some of them get in the MSM for their supposed "extreme right wing" socially conservative views and whatnot. There's a cardinal from Sri Lanka who might make a decent pope (cut out the polititical correctness, stop catering to fags and softening up the presentation of church teaching to cater to Western sensibilities, etc) but his odds of getting elected are slim to none. Scola would at least be an Italian, which is what the Popes have typically been, historically. Ouellet, doctrinally, is another Ratzinger, it seems. Being younger, however, he might not have the visceral liberalism of his predecessor, I don't know.
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| 03-12-2013 02:02 PM |
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guerrilla
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
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| 03-12-2013 02:10 PM |
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Caligula
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
I'm an atheist but I have a lot of respect for the Church and its traditions. It saddens me to see all the degeneracy in the Church today; not that it's new, pope Leo X in the 16th century was probably an active homosexual.
The next pope should be a hardline conservative like Benedict. There's much internal pressure for reform, but the Church will lose its moral authority if it doesn't crack down on things like gay clergy. This is especially true, as Hussar points out, in Africa and probably Latin America where churchgoers are more conservative than the average European churchgoer.
It's a trade-off between losing moral authority with a more inclusive church, or restoring moral authority at the cost of alienating liberal Catholics.
Look at what's happened to the Episcopal Church - a lot of the stuff that goes on there like the ordination of women, gay marriage, support for abortion even today gets Catholics excommunicated. Incidentally there's a widening rift in the Episcopal Church between conservative third world bishops and and more liberal Anglo clergy.
The Catholic Church is not scared of asserting doctrine and stamping out heresy even in the face of changing social mores. That's a big component of its longevity and cohesion. There's a consistent, logical and clear set of rules there based not only on religious faith but grounded in the thinking of the great natural law philosophers of the Western tradition. Catholic laws are nearly independent of religious faith and the product of more than a millenium of refining and debate.
Catholics understand that you can't pick and choose which rules you want to follow, like other churches are doing. That undermines moral authority; Catholic conservatives understand that the short-term trade-off of being more inclusive in the short run leads to decline. That should be respected. And that's why the worst thing that could happen for the Church right now is the election of an aggressively liberal pope.
"A flower can not remain in bloom for years, but a garden can be cultivated to bloom throughout seasons and years." - xsplat
(This post was last modified: 03-12-2013 02:18 PM by Caligula.)
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| 03-12-2013 02:11 PM |
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The following 8 users Like Caligula's post:8 users Like Caligula's post
Bad Hussar, speakeasy, n0000, Titan, Hencredible Casanova, scotian, bojangles, michelin
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Aliblahba
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
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| 03-12-2013 02:28 PM |
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The following 1 user Likes Aliblahba's post:1 user Likes Aliblahba's post
dk902
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RCP
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
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| 03-12-2013 09:26 PM |
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Jaylow
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
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| 03-12-2013 11:14 PM |
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bojangles
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| 03-13-2013 07:31 AM |
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dk902
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
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| 03-13-2013 08:35 AM |
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jaakkeli
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RE: Who will be the next Pope?
(03-12-2013 02:11 PM)Caligula Wrote: The Catholic Church is not scared of asserting doctrine and stamping out heresy even in the face of changing social mores. That's a big component of its longevity and cohesion.
I'd argue the opposite and claim that focus on doctrine is why the church is increasingly irrelevant. Back in the day when the church was strong and everyone was at least pretending to be a believer, the popes were not celibate theologians who were interested in doctrine for the sake of doctrine, they were powerful men who kept whore houses for their needs and the focus of doctrine was creating justification for their moves, not the other way around.
True, leaping into supporting liberal fad causes of the day would kill the church pretty fast, but focusing on theology for the sake of theology is killing it slowly. The true solution would be to take the power back from the theologians and reduce them once again to the obedient class of interpreters who justify the machinations of the amoral alpha males in charge to the masses... but that's rather unlikely.
Quote:There's a consistent, logical and clear set of rules there based not only on religious faith but grounded in the thinking of the great natural law philosophers of the Western tradition. Catholic laws are nearly independent of religious faith and the product of more than a millenium of refining and debate.
That would be nice but over the past century or so we've gone through a very fundamental change in human conditions. It's an entirely different thing to abstain from sex until marriage, not use contraception and promise marriage for life when you're getting married at 17 and expect to live to 31 than when you're getting married at 31 and expect to live to 85. Insisting that nothing has changed is like insisting that those laws and rules that we developed over millenia for running a horse-based infrastructure don't need any updating for automobiles.
The church of course realized this very well which is why their response to contraception was to start a war against it... and by now it's incredibly obvious that they lost the war. First everyone up north was worried about Catholics taking over the world and then suddenly Catholic fertility bombed twice as bad as Lutheran fertility. The future will belong to religions that develop a good set of rules for the new situation and the Catholic church's army of closeted gays and no sex drive celibates aren't the people to come up with a ruleset that works for normals.
Still, I too of course want to see that black Pope for the insane fun factor. I can already imagine the media going nuts over the newest Obama and spending days and days gloating about how they've pressured the church into this victory over white male conservatives and I can already see the hilarity when they start to understand that the black dude isn't a liberal.
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| 03-13-2013 12:22 PM |
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The following 1 user Likes jaakkeli's post:1 user Likes jaakkeli's post
Caligula
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