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Pope Benedict steps down.


Sentinel947

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The College won't begin meeting until mid-March. Thank goodness another horserace came along to distract the media.

 

And best wishes to Pope Benedict. It's a tough job, and he followed a rock star. Hopefully, he'll spend his retirement in a way he enjoys.

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Just read a theory that he has Congestive Heart Failure is unable to continue. First time in 600 years that a Pope has resigned his office. In regards to packsaddle, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I thought the same thing about CHF being the cause.
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If memory serves, the Vatican has pushed for a mandatory retirement of 75, except the Pope. I know my pastor, when he retired, did pastoral work on a cruise line for a year, and then did pastoral work with various hospitals. Some retired priests will serve as needed to give other vacations and fill in in emergencies, and some teach.

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So what do retired Popes do? Can we expect photos in People of him in a Speedo and expensive sunglasses on some beach in the Med? Or in a big cardigan eating oranges in an olive grove (a la Michael Corleone in Godfather III)?

 

I'm betting on the Godfather thing.

He will live in a monastery from now until he passes away. I will be sorry when he passes on, but I suspect that may be sooner rather than later and I don't think he is long for this world. He will write and publish during the time has has left (Ratzinger is one of the greatest living theologians, as even most Protestant theologians have acknowledged - his 3 volume series "Jesus of Nazareth" is amazing) - but will no longer have papal infallibility upon his divestiture. This must have been an incredibly hard decision for him, but the position requires extensive travel and public speaking and I think he made the hard decision that he could no longer fulfill the physical responsibility of the role. In his letter, he hints that both his physical and mental health are the reasons for his departure, so if an increase in cognitive problems is the issue, he probably made the decision to leave before it caused any potential problems. Ratzinger has always been sharp as a whip, so this is a sad thing to hear, and his orthodoxy has been just what the Church has needed. Faced with the worst sacnadal the modern Church has faced, Pope Benedict XVI made the hard decisions that had to be made...which is why the curent abuse scandal has dropped to almost no new cases, with just the sad detritus of the recent decades with which we still have to cope. We seem to get the Pope we need at various times in history (the rise of Fascism found a powerful opponent in Pope Pius, and the Soviet Empire met a powerful opponent in Pope John Paul II), so we shall see how the demands the current problems of the age are answered by the next Pope.
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