UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Modern Popes have surrounded the papacy with historical myths that are drilled into Catholics as children. Pope Benedict XVI just destroyed one of the fundamental myths. Being Pope is just a job and, if he cannot perform, he needs to retire.
What? John Paul II had acute Parkinson’s Disease that disabled him fully for years. What Benedict is saying is that John Paul should have resigned, which is why John Paul’s secretary seems livid that Benedict retired. Of course, as with the priest child abuse and the financial scandals, Benedict did little effectively to address this need for papal performance standards.
If, as Benedict has clearly indicated, a Pope should go if he is unable to perform his duties, should he be removed if he is unwilling to perform or performs badly? Should there be term limits or maximum age limits? Of course, the only logical answer is yes to all of these related questions. But the Vatican is run by power politics, not logic, or even spiritual values for that matter. Some Vatican Cardinal will likely leak soon the real reasons Benedict is retiring.
It is time to change that and restore Catholic leadership to the consensual approach that Jesus and early Catholics followed for over three centuries until Roman Emperors converted the Catholic Bishops, including the Pope, into an imperial bureaucracy dominated by a Vatican clique that dictated top-down to Catholics to fill the clique’s coffers.
It is time for many more Catholic scholars to step-up and start telling uninformed Catholics the full story now, before another Grand Inquisitor is installed by “Ex-Benedict” and Cardinal Sodano. And they need to use the media and Internet now to do so. Enough with the comfortable evasions. It is high time to speak prophetically, and not just pedantically. …
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