Hypothetical Pope Question

I smoked the Pope's Dope-on-a-Rope and coped with his Christian trope. Nope, I will not mope; for the Pope, I have hope.

you sufficate to death, your skin respires naturally through the pores, if they are covered you will die even if your mouth and nose are not obstructed.

As a Filipino, I must take issue with this. The Catholic Church's stance on contraception may be a factor in the long-standing issue of poverty and malnutrition in the Philippines (and this is vigorously debated back home, as you can imagine). However, the blame must mailnly be laid on the government and its ineptness.

And while you correctly point out that the popes have done bad things, they have also made significant contributions to the advancement of humanity. We only have to look at John Paul II's singular contribution to the fall of Communism.

Like any human institution, the Papacy and the Catholic Church has had its share of great achievements and great failures. We can only pray that in the years to come, there may be more achievements than failures.

I was at the market today, and on the cover of the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS I saw "GAY MAN CLIMBS MT EVEREST IN FUR COAT AND HIGH HEELS". I immediately thought that it might have been you....

Maybe you haven't noticed, but there are child molestors everywhere. In a world where many people have the belief that no sexual act is wrong, things are going to sink to the lowest possible level, no matter how low it is.

Let's get our facts straight:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/141/story_14121_1.html
"U.S. clerics accused of abuse from 1950-2002: 4,392.
That's about 4 percent of the 109,694 serving during those 52 years."

now, according to the Dept. of Justice's crime statistics:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/xl/03tbl01.xls
There's take or give about 35 forcible rapes per year per 100,000 people reported.

Multiply by 50 years and you get 35x50 = 1750 per 100,000, or 1.75 per 100... assuming 1 attacker per 1 victim, that's 1.75% of all Americans commited a rape in the last 50 years. Now, we know that rapists almost always commite multiple rapes, so that actual percentage is likely significantly lower.

Assuming the percentage of crimes reported is about equal for general statistics and for the Catholic priesthood, we're talking at best that the Catholic priesthood commits more than twice the number of sexual assaults than the average US statistic. At best! And again, that is assuming 1 culprit only ever commits 1 assault, which we know isn't true, and would put the priest percentage higher!

So yes, there's an epidemic in America.

quit being rude. Pope is dead, long live pope.

I am the Pope for The High Holy Church of Cthulu.

That was totally inappropriate.

Sniff, why?

that's one fucked up movie trailer.

Interesting thing about the whole celibacy issue is that historically, neither priests nor popes were celibate.

For the first 1200 years after the Church’s beginning, priests, bishops and 39 popes were married. Celibacy was only practiced among hermits and monks, and it was considered an alternative lifestyle. Politics brought about the mandatory celibacy for priests.

Are you surprised? ****/sigh

In AD 313, the Roman emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, becoming one himself. His intentions in adopting Christianity were not entirely spiritual, his position was being challenged by political groups and he needed to display his power. Forcing other politicians to become Christians was a test of their loyalty.

(Wow - does this sound like Bush and the neo-con agenda or what?)

Priests began to receive pay and special privileges for their services, many of them were not priests at all but actually just politicians. The Catholic Church began to mirror the Roman government with large buildings, church tribunal courts, rulers and subjects which replaced the family-based small churches that were served by the local married priests.

Celibacy was just another political opportunity for ambitious priests and bishops (who were really Roman politicians). They used the celibate lifestyle as a political tool to lessen the influence of the married priests. A negative attitude towards women and sexuality began to emerge during this time as well (where previously family was seen as healthy).

In 366, Pope Damasus declared that priests could continue to marry, but that they were not allowed to express their love sexually with their wives. In 385 Pope Siricius abandoned his wife and children to gain his papal position. He then decreed that all priests could no longer be married, but could not enforce it.

In 1075, Pope Gregory VII said that nobody could judge a pope except God essentially decreeing that Rome can never be in error. Which opened the door for using mandatory celibacy to claim ownership of the churches and the lands owned by married priests. The church also began to collect taxes.

(See it all boils down to power and money at some point).

In 1095, Pope Urban II ordered that married priests who ignored the celibacy laws be imprisoned for the good of their souls. He had the wives and children of those married priests sold into slavery, and the money went to church coffers.

The Italian bishop Ulric of Imola, actually argued that the hierarchy had no right to forbid marriage to priests and urged bishops and priests not to abandon their families. Bishop Ulrich said that, "When celibacy is imposed, priests will commit sins far worse than fornication."

So they had some idea even then that celibacy was an unnatural state for most human beings.

Even now, they resist allowing priests to marry because of the cost and speed of relocation of a priest when including a family reinforcing their overall war on sexuality and their devaluation of women in any role of power.

You would think that the decline in the number of people joining the priesthood and the disporportionate percentage of molestations that have occurred would move them to consider re-instituting married priests.

But I doubt it.


.

people are flawed and sometimes don't live up to their ideals??? OMG!!!1

Untrue! The Mythbusters said so.

Rose,

I agree with you on the celibacy issue. It is biblically incorrect, and probably is one of two chief factors I see in the sexual abuse.

The second factor I believe contributes to it is the practice of having them sit in a confessional for several hours a day listening to their paritioners list all of their sins.

Think about that... Listening to people tell you all of their sins, which of course includes those of a sexual nature. Now what do they do with that? They have absolutely no way to get rid of all of that, so some of them crack and do reprehensible things....

I'm not excusing the behavior at all, as there is absolutely no excuse for it, but just providing some things I've heard/read about as a Christian counselor.

While I dont find this innapropriate in any way since weve already run the gamut of blaspheme in this thread, I would like to note that if youre a pope of His church you should probably be able to spell His name correctly (Cthulhu or possibly Kui-Tai-Lo-Hai or Kadulu if you're big on history), I'm sure its just a typo.

and now a brief message from the Church of Chthulhu:
PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULHU R'LYEH WAGN'NAGL FHTAGN!
IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!
IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!

Some believe that it was also a move to bring about much needed solidarity. In other words, unite the Roman Empire by using Christian zeal.

I like nuns.

Especially flying nuns.

lets face it, whatever good the catholic church does, and it does do a lot of charity work and comforts many millions of people, it also is an organisation that feels that it can make it's own rules and this is wrong when the rules contradict those of the societys' the church exists in.

I don't care if they say I will burn in hell and all that, but the second they commit a felony they must be held accountable. Not disclosing a known child molestor to the local authorities is not only illegal, immoral and downright sick, it can get the organisation involved in condoning such acts of omission in big trouble, it is called 'conspiracy' and in the USA can be punished under the RICO act.

The problem is the church has hundreds of lawyers and ties and resists the rule of law. Their lawlessness will only perpetuate their culture of repressed sexual perversion and thus result in more bizare crimes towards the innocent.

I don't care if you choose to say you are closer to god than me or you're sacrificing a normal life for one of helping god, I think you're just a lazy person who wants to have everything taken care of for you, including being told what to think, and you can be a conformist sheep if you wish, but if you cross the line of civilized society and your boss allows you to escape punishment you are both guilty and perhaps your organisation has ceased being welcome in our neighborhoods.

Daz,

I agree with you. Everyone involved in the molestation scandel and it's coverup needs to step down or be permenantly removed from spiritual leadership, and be subject to the laws of this country.

Being a priest, pastor, bishop, monk, iman, ect does not place you above the law...

Blessings

They have already done that. At least one Cardinal had to resign for his role in the coverup. The candidates for priesthood the last twenty years or so have been scrutinised and tested a lot more than they were, and I haven't heard of any RECENT abuse cases. Most of them date to the early nineties or before that.

if you knew that your employee was molesting children and you did nothing or just moved him to another classroom of kids and then he was then convicted of molesting a kid YOU would also be in jail or be held accountable, not these bosses of the molesting priests, they get to comfortably retire...