For most people, the reckoning with the infirmities of advanced old age is a poignant but mundane part of the life cycle. Not so for popes, as this week’s global astonishment suggests, for they are thought to hover over human affairs just as the church itself does. “The church is distinguished from civil society,” Pope Leo XIII solemnly declared in 1885. “It is a society chartered as of divine right, perfect in its nature.” This perfect society, Leo wrote, cannot “be looked on as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it.” This manifesto hints at the larger significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign his office: If a pope can come and go so easily, then how is the church different from a country or a company?
After Benedict’s surprise announcement Monday, much has been made of the nearly 600 years since the last papal “resignation” — a misnomer, since Pope Gregory XII, one of multiple claimants to the Chair of Peter, was, in effect, fired by a reforming church council. But for far longer than that the papacy has been the linchpin of the Catholic Church’s claim to transcendence. That popes are human has always been clear (St. Peter, the first pope, denied Christ three times), but popes have also been living signs of the sacred. In modern times, the boundary separating the Roman pontiff from all other humans is reinforced by his mode of dressing, his rhetorical style, and his isolated splendor. He is himself a sacrament of what “distinguishes” Catholicism, in Pope Leo’s word.
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We can only hope and pray that in the coming weeks somewhere will emerge a spiritual brother of John XXIII.
I agree. I was only a boy then, but I still remember the feeling that I had when he was reaching out to the world. A true Pope! Have not had that feeling in a long time. There's a Dislike on your post though. Apparently Mr Law still checks in from his Roman palazzo. His true "reward" is coming soon, one hopes.
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Another Pope John the XXIII would be great. The next pope might not be European.
"then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to every Catholic bishop defining crimes “perpetrated with a minor by a cleric” as falling under his jurisdiction — a mandate widely interpreted as requiring strict confidentiality and cutting civil authorities out." Sweet angels of God!! No wonder if feel the man is evil incarnate.
Every day I am grateful that I was born into a non-religious family. The thought of having the abuse I suffered be in the name of "God" would just add to the pain.
It is a shame that Jim Carroll took off the collar and chose not to work his way up the church hierarchy. I have always admired his sanity. And the extraordinary intelligence of his books. If he were wearing a cardinal's hat, I have no doubt about whom I would want for Pope.
I grew up R.C. altar boy parochial school the whole thing..............
The mangement of the R.C.Church from Diocese's to Rome is a Grievous Breach of Trust.. against the congregations for decades...
The Coverups are worse than the actions.....
If a local School Superintendent moved teachers around like the bishops did priests the superintendent and the teachers would go to jail...
A good portion of the R.C Administrations here and in Rome is a fraud..
I think what the Butler did was A-OK
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"as as alter Christus" Funny, but I don't get that. Is it a "priest thing"?
I hope the new pope Really Does care for the poor and promotes birth control!
The clergy want to stay in power and don' listen to the folks in the pews. The Church is losing power and influence by the clergy's behaviors and the rules like no married priests and no birth control. It will die out soon without a revolution
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