Just to balance all the glowing BS we seem to be getting in the media about this guy. http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1451750,00.html
Ding Dong the Pope is dead -now heres his obituary
by Zep 7 Replies latest social current
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Swan
He also objected to Gay Pride festivals in Rome, Italy (a separate country from the Vatican) and effectively shut down parades, etc. by pulling some bureaucratic strings. This was especially true in the year 2000, because this one day event in June conflicted with the so called Jubilee, a year long observance by the Vatican. He called gay people all sorts of awful things and treated them like scum. Some people in my family are gay, as there are in countless other families throughout the world.
While I didn't wish the man dead, I am not grieving his passing either. They say he is in heaven. If he is, I take great comfort in knowing that there he is just the FNG.
Tammy
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Zep
What is the attraction with famous dead people? From Jim Morrision ,to Pricess Diana, to Pope Paul, people go crazy over them the moment they keel over and stop breathing. They become more than what they ever really were. It's just silly.
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sad and lonely
damn!....heres to you guys,everyone acted as though he was god or something..hell i didn't make that much a deal when my mother and brother died..and i love the hell out of them!...i tell my kids all the time...people make a big deal out of those in the lime light ,when they die...do they do the same for their own family members?
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the_classicist
It's just another blatant piece of anti-Catholicism from England (where it still abounds, or at least it seems so).
The Catholic church had lived through its own brand of flower power in the 60s, known as the Second Vatican Council
Has this guy even read the Second Vatican Council? Many hippy things were done using the catch phrase "in the spirit of Vatican II," but what most people don't know is that Vatican II changed some disciplinary matters, it was a pastoral NOT a dogmatic council.
Once ensconced in power, John Paul II set about rolling back the liberal achievements of Vatican 2. Prominent liberal theologians were summoned to his throne for a dressing down. One of his prime aims was to restore to papal hands the power that had been decentralised to the local churches.
Again, this fellow has not read Vatican II. There were no liberal achievements, just ambiguities (seriously). When liberal theologians were teaching things blatantly against the Catholic faith as defined by ancient councils (that even the Orthodox and Anglicans accept), the pope had to act to preserve the Catholic faith, what they view as the truth. You cannot change truth.
The Pope's authority was so unassailable that the head of a Spanish seminary managed to convince his students that he had the Pope's personal permission to masturbate them.
If you can't see the illogical insinuation that this is making, you've been exposed to too much WT propaganda.
The result of centring all power in Rome was an infantilisation of the local churches. Clergy found themselves incapable of taking initiatives without nervous glances over their shoulders at the Holy Office. It was at just this point, when the local churches were least capable of handling a crisis maturely, that the child sex abuse scandal broke. John Paul's response was to reward an American cardinal who had assiduously covered up the outrage with a plush posting in Rome.
For one thing, the Holy Office does not exist anymore, it didn't even exist when John Paul the Great started his reign. Local churches are freely governed by their bishops who usually do whatever the hell they want in running their own diocese. Although, local churches cannot pick and choose their beliefs and change the Catholic faith as they see fit. The Catholic faith is catholic (from katholikos, meaning universal), it cannot be fully centered on the local diocese. The Pope can't just fire Bishops as this articles makes it out like he could've. He had to wait for Cardinal Law to resgin and then he moved him into a titular archdiocese in which he wouldn't rule (titular dioceses are the traditional dioceses of Rome, but only exist in name, nowadays), but he would just say mass, etc. What else could he do since he couldn't fire him and putting him in another diocese would simply anger people?
The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.
Why does he assume that people who are sinning, and therefore disobeying the church on premarital sex would suddenly obey the Church's direction on conodms? The Catholic Church teaches what it teaches. If you don't like it, you can go to another ecclesial community and your family will still be able to talk to you.
Loopy far-right mystics and Francoists were honoured, and Latin American political liberationists bawled out.
Why wouldn't the clergy support Franco? At least 4,000 Priests, Nuns, and Bishops were murdered by the 'republicans' (who were supported by Stalin, no less; and yes, I know Franco was supported by Hitler, but did Spain go to help Germany during WWII?) during the Spanish Civil War. -
Holey_Cheeses*King_of_the juice.
All of you heathens should stop picking on the poor old (ooops, sorry, deceased) pope. You should only speak good of the dead. He's dead. Good.
cheeses. who looks like missing out on going to heaven.
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Zep
Well, classicist, you seem to be quite well read on this stuff. But, anyway. We recently had a TV show down here in Australia where a public forum was held to discuss the papal legacy. The one big complaint that came from catholics themselves was the authortarian nature of his reign. These people honestly felt like power was being taken away from the local churchs... that they had no say. This is one of the reasons cited for the decline in the catholic religion in western countries.
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Zep
TO CLASSICIST: To me you seem to be ignorant of the aids problem in developing countries and peoples behaviour in general.First, not everyone who gets aids is sinning or engaging in premarital sex. For example, say I'm married to someone, and that person goes off and does the dirty(adultery) behind my back. Now, I haven't done anything wrong but i could be exposed to aids. This is the case for many women in Africa. Second you seem to think that people who are sinning(pre-marital sex and adultery), wont suddenly obey the popes directive on condoms, if he suddenly allowed their use. This were you are wrong. They will. My point is that religious people ARE quite irrational. We recently had case down here in Australia, and you can check it out, involving a high profile minister in the Australian government named TONY ABBOTT (a catholic).When he was a university student he had a girl friend and they had a kid(or so he thought at the time). Abbott, at the time he was sleeping with his girlfriend (Yep,HAVING PRE_MARITAL SEX) was considering entering the priest hood. Because he was considering entering the priesthood Abbott and his girlfriend stopped using contraception but continued having pre-marital sex!!! This is how a lot of religious people DO think...They pick and choose their morality, quite amazing isn't it, but it's not uncommon. Third, not everyone is necessarily a Catholic ,or practising catholic, or a perfect Catholic in the developing world. There are certain high profile politicians etc... in these countries who, because they are Catholic, shun and/or retard programs that promote condom use to the detriment of people who arn't Catholics, or who are Catholics but just far less "perfect" than these politicians and the Pope.