Image via Secular Gentlefolk on Facebook.
In honour of our most recent big, exciting Catholic news, let’s look at some Benedict-specific stories circulating on the Interwebz right now, from the silly to the serious.
- Granted, it’s been a long time since the last papal resignation . . . but a modern papacy is hard on the elderly men eligible to become the pope. Give a guy a break!
- One thing he definitely shouldn’t get a break on: his role in sheltering sexual abusers from the consequences of their actions. Survivor groups hope the resignation will make it easier for them to get justice.
- Pink News has a reality check for anyone who’s hoping for a pro-gay, pro-choice papacy next time around: the process of making somebody a cardinal rules out anybody who dissents from Benedict’s teachings, so we’re not likely to get a breath of fresh air any time soon.
- Nonetheless, National Catholic Register passes on the call for a new pope who’s willing to at least listen to the perspectives of LGBTQ Catholics. After my longtime addiction to the heavily bigoted and angry LifeSite News comments threads, the comments here are downright pleasant.
- Speaking of LifeSite News – which, by the way, finally got around to blocking me again some time in the last fifteen minutes – you just know I had to throw their perspective in here. Here’s their primary reaction piece, as well as a piece about gay Catholics’ hopes for a more progressive papacy and a piece about how the new pope can’t be pope if he isn’t vehemently anti-abortion.
- What are the odds of Richard Dawkins becoming the next pope? Not good . . . yet, so fantastic! (And, curiously, he’s still got a better chance than Bono.)
- You can also check the odds of your favourite name being chosen as the next papal name, the new pope’s country of origin, the length of the conclave, and more.
- Of course, what’s really important is what your favourite celebrities think of the papal resignation. Actually, they mostly don’t, but a few celebs had some thoughts, mostly along the lines of “I didn’t think a pope could do that”.
- Will this next pope be the last pope? End-times prophecies say it’s so.
Working on an article about the papabile (prospective future popes) – look for it coming up in the next few weeks.
For someone who rejects the Catholic church you are awfully obsessed with it like when people break up with someone else yet they are still obsessed with what they do, when they do it, who they are currently dating, etc….
If you don’t subscribe to it then that’s fine. Just break away and live your life. Stop worrying about what they are doing, it may take away from the stress in your life.
This is a very cynical write up. The author seems hurt, angry. Why? God does not change; God Is. We must adopt God’s laws in order to love God and to live with God eternally and to be happy eternally. We can not make our own laws and then demand that God live by our personal whims – this is because God loves us and created us to be happy with Him according to His design, not our own. Life is not about sexual relations alone. Life is about virtue which has no dependency on the sexual act with the execeptiion of procreation and the necessary unity of the two, man and woman, who must care for each other in order to nurture the family which they brought forth – unitively – from each other – with each other.