The Pope resigns

Pickle Juice said:
The Pope can't change the Catholic religion though, can he? The thing about religions is that they are the word of whatever god is recognized, handed down in some miraculous intervention hundreds of years ago. Even if they found a young person, they wouldn't make him Pope if he approved of abortion and homosexuality. Whoever becomes the next Pope, it's going to have to be more of the same. I don't see the Catholic church going against the word of its god.
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Catholicism is not a religion, it's a denomination within Christianity! And while all the denominations share the one holy book, they interpret it slightly differently. So I don't think it's completely impossible for the Catholic Church to change in a more human-friendly direction. But I do realise it's not an easy task, with thousands of years of church dogma, so it will have to be small steps. One perhaps slightly less controversial issue which still matters to a lot of people could be contraception, for example. If life begins at conception, then surely preventing conception from happening is not a mortal sin?
 
Well, depending on which church you talk to, Catholocism has very little in common with various Protestant denominations. One of the official positions of The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, for example, is that the Pope is the Antichrist. I don't think it's the only Protestant denomination with that view either.

ETA: Here's the official statement of the LCMS: http://www.creeds.net/lutheran/doct-17.html

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (another Lutheran denomination, more conservative than the Missouri Synod) has the same official position on the Pope, except that their position goes on for several pages on the subject.

BTW, neither the Missouri Synod nor the Wisconsin Synod permit the ordination of women. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America does, but I'd have to look up their position on the Antichrist thing. I grew up in the ELCA, and while it's by far the most liberal of the various Lutheran denominations in the U.S., I remember how we were instructed, in confirmation class, that it would be no more acceptable to marry a Catholic than it would be to marry a Muslim or a Hindu, and that it might be not quite as bad to marry an atheist, because there might be more hope for them. :p But really, one should confine oneself to Lutherans or, at a reach, some other kind of Protestant.
 
Another interesting bit of trivia - while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) considers itself to be a Christian denomination, many/most other Christian denominations do not consider the LDS to be Christian.

And then there are the various forms of Islam, Hinduism, and others.

That's all to say that what's a denomination and what's a religion becomes hazy and subject to debate in many instances. :p
 
Yeah, the word "denomination" is usually used in reference to protestantism. I've never heard the catholic church referred to as a denomination before, even by catholics.
 
That's interesting, I've always heard Catholicism described as a domination of Christianity. including by Catholics.
 
haven't they changed their mind on evolution? I seem to remember reading that they accepted it, although I think many Catholics still don't.

And there was the stuff about the Sun being the centre of the solar system.

And the big bang stuff.

I remember that the previous pope(JPII) said that science can look back to the big bang, but shouldn't look back any further. Which is a bit silly.
 
The Catholic Church never renounced the theory of evolution, as far as I'm aware. The Church didn't really address it for about a century, but when they did, it was basically to say that there wasn't really a conflict between the theory of evolution and the teachings of the Church, as long as it was understood that God created the human soul directly.

The Catholic Church in *modern* times has largely been accepting of science, much more so than many Protestant denominations.
 
Some seem to think he resigned to avoid being arrested, it doesn't sound too implausible. I would think he would do it to first save his own skin and avoid arrest, second to avoid having the Catholic church marred by an arrest of the pope.

The Pope will have immunity from prosecution regarding the mishandling of child sex crimes by staying within the walls of the Vatican, according to an anonymous Vatican source.Reuters reported Friday, Feb. 15, that church sources have explained that the retiring Pope Benedict would be “defenseless” if he leaves the Vatican.
This official news story comes on the heels of a statement issued by the International Tribunal into Crimes Against Church and State (ITCCS) that detailed the legal situation that surrounds the Pope and the Vatican. An unnamed European country and the ITCCShave issued a campaign to hold the Pope accountable for the Vatican’s cover-up of child sex crimes. There was an international arrest warrant secured for the Pope’s arrest:
On Friday, February 1, 2013, on the basis of evidence supplied by our affiliated Common Law Court of Justice (itccs.org), our Office concluded an agreement with representatives of a European nation and its courts to secure an arrest warrant against Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict, for crimes against humanity and ordering a criminal conspiracy...
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http://www.examiner.com/article/the-pope-seeks-immunity-the-end-of-the-vatican-could-be-near
 
^^^I think this is extremely implausible. If there were grounds to arrest him, there would be no greater safety for him than remaining pope.
 
Isn't he safe as long as he remains in the Vatican City? As pope he's expected to travel and make appearances. If a country issues an arrest warrant and he visits that country, as far as I know, they can arrest him.
 
Calliegirl said:
Isn't he safe as long as he remains in the Vatican City? As pope he's expected to travel and make appearances. If a country issues an arrest warrant and he visits that country, as far as I know, they can arrest him.
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No - the Pope is a head of state. There's a whole set of laws dealing with that, which makes heads of state practically impossible to arrest while visiting a different country.
 
From what I'm reading, at least one factor in the Pope's resignation is his disenchantment with some of the realities of Vatican power plays - much of the Vatican's real power lies within its bureaucracy, within which the Pope exerts little power or ability to change things. (Not unlike the way in which the eunuchs controlled much of the power in the Chinese Forbidden City.

This article makes for some interesting reading: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...ce0280-76c2-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html
 
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