Pope Benedict Resigns!

Christianity group: http://www.librarything.com/topic/149835

Does the Pope get to return to being a cardinal?

Doesn't he count as a cardinal now? And I expect he will still be a bishop albeit with a purely nominal see/diocese.

Based on what I heard on the news as I drove home this morning, he'll have no position within the church, and will be on an extended "retreat" and make no statements regarding the church so that he's not seen as being in "competition" with the new pope.

Even if he were still a cardinal, he's too old to vote for his successor.

I was struck by something the Pope said in his resignation message: "I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering."

Do Catholics see part of the Pope's role as suffering for his people (or all people)? If so, is this considered to be some sort of continuation of Christ's suffering?

My mother often told us to "offer it up." Whatever small suffering we complained of, if given the right motivation, could be used for good in the universe. As the pain and suffering get sharper in my loved ones lives, I've had the opportunity to remember this and minister the same message.

http://www.fisheaters.com/offeringitup.html

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/05/offering-it-up

So, yes, it is, not so much a continuation, but a joining in Christ's suffering. We are, after all, his body here. And not just the Pope, but each one of us is invited to participate.

he'll have no position within the church

If I'm most mistaken he'll still be a bishop, canonically. I don't think he needs to be formally assigned to another bishopric, but it might be a good idea.

I was struck by something the Pope said in his resignation message: "I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering."

I read that as "My predecessor thought X and I'm not saying he's wrong, but…"

Do Catholics see part of the Pope's role as suffering for his people (or all people)? If so, is this considered to be some sort of continuation of Christ's suffering?

Pope John Paul's suffering was often spoken of in these terms. I found it all in rather bad taste. The Pope was old and worked hard. I'm sure that involved real and great suffering—suffering which I have, obviously, not suffered and should not make light of—but it did not exceed that of many lesser men, whose suffering with age and concerns were not cushioned by the sure knowledge of personal security, the love of those around you and so forth.

>8 timspalding: he'll still be a bishop

Indubitably. An emeritus (retired) bishop.

>8 timspalding:: "If I'm most mistaken he'll still be a bishop, canonically. I don't think he needs to be formally assigned to another bishopric, but it might be a good idea."

According to the Vatican's spokesman, he will move to Castel Gandolfo upon the resignation, "and, once he has finished the tasks he has in progress, he will take up residence in the former cloistered monastery in the Vatican."

He continued: "Benedict XVI will have no role in next March's conclave, nor in the running of the Church during the time between popes, the time of Sede Vacante. The Apostolic Constitution gives no role in this transition to a pope who resigns."

Source: http://visnews-en.blogspot.com/2013/02/director-of-holy-see-press-office-on.html

While I understand the cloistered part, I'm surprised he wouldn't chose one a little farther away from the action, as it were.

>10 nathanielcampbell:

His brother said that. I agree. It's a little odd to stick around. I could understand if he wanted to stay in touch with friends, his favorite walks, his favorite restaurants, etc. But if he's in a cloistered monastery, he won't leave, will he?

I note, however, he's said he's going to Castel Gandolfo during the Sede Vacante. It ain't his, but it's not like anyone else is going to use it!

>11 timspalding:: The only other time we had an ex-Pope whom folks actually respected, he just wandered back to the hermitage from whence he had been summoned (Celestine V), until somebody murdered him. Presumably, the likelihood of that latter outcome today is much more remote.

(And hopefully the great poet of the next generation won't consign him to hell for it, either...)

12: Well, it was Limbo, and he was placed there for "having made the great refusal." (Which is vague enough that it could refer to other people (see: Pontius Pilate) but probably does refer to Celestine V.)

> 13. Well, it was Limbo

But weren't Virgil and Homer et al. in Limbo, the first circle? Celestine and his companions are in some sort of antechamber to hell, kind of hell's waiting room.

Which has always seemed odd to me, because this ante-room seems much more unpleasant (stinging insects, sweating blood, dashing around aimlessly, etc.) than the first circle, which seems more like a picnic or a garden party.

14: Yes, you're correct about that. Celestine and friends are outside hell with people who did neither good nor evil in life.

And I agree that it seems odd; the "waiting room" and Limbo should probably be switched.

Betting: Who will be the next Pope?

Paddy Power has Cardinal Turkson at 7:2.

They also have Richard Dawkins at 666:1, which is nice.

Ladbrokes has Cardinal Ouellet at 3:1.
They have Tony Blair at 500:1

> 16

They also have Richard Dawkins at 666:1, which is nice.

Good one!

>16 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Are they true markets? No, right? I'd be interested in what market, like the various markets now up in politics and movies, would say.

Me, I'm intrigued by the possibility of Turkson: he was ordained locally here, so I'm pretty sure that I have a 'Turkson Number' of two (or three, depending on how you count), by a couple of different routes.

>19 AsYouKnow_Bob:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/peter-turkson-cardinal-pope-successor-k...

Garry Wills says he's Given Up Hope.

>21 AsYouKnow_Bob:

I've found some of Garry Will's books useful and instructive—even quite holy—but he's gone well over the edge for me in denying core doctrines of the faith, notably priests and the reality of the eucharist. (He's very eager to use St. Augustine on the latter, but not, obviously, on the former.) I find his arguments about priests and the Letter to the Hebrews strained. Theological texts do not spontaneously generate core functions and traditions in the way he believes. One might as well believe that the first chapters of Genesis caused the Jews to take up a sabbath.

His piece shows some rather sloppy reasoning—he can, of course, think very clearly, but he's not doing so here. One may, for example, think that Humanae Vitae was wrongly decided—that birth control is not ipso facto immoral—and still understand why forcing Catholic bishops to buy what they think is immoral is an invasion of religious liberty. (I think the Amish are a bunch of loons, theologically. That doesn't mean I think they should be coerced to do thinks against their religion.)

>22 timspalding: Diane Rehm interviewed Gary Wills (and a Monsignor Pope, believe it or not!) on public radio yesterday. I didn't think he did that well in debating. (They both seemed to talk past each other.) Also, he didn't have much of a vision for church with no priests, except that he wanted to keep the tradition while losing the priests, and not just join a Protestant Church that's already ditched priests.

Where will LT's interview with Wills be posted? (I couldn't find 'newsletter' in my quick search.)

(Just when one thinks the laundry can't get any grayer, I heard last night on BBC radio that for the first time "a court in Argentina's western province of La Rioja found Feb. 13 that the country's Catholic Church was complicit with crimes committed during the dictatorship's "dirty war" on leftist dissidents between 1976 and 1983"... http://www.ww4report.com/node/11993 . Boy, do we need a new broom!!)

>23 margd: The judgement came in a case concerning the slaying of Carlos de Dios Murias and Gabriel Longueville, two members of the Movement of Third World Priests (MSTM), a grouping of left-wing Catholic clergy, who disappeared in 1976, their mutilated bodies dumped near train tracks.

Thanks, margd. I think it's worth pointing out, though, that these murdered priests were also "the Catholic Church". The hierarchy often has a very poor record on human rights, support for right wing causes, dealing with sexual abuse, etc. But the Catholic Church is also the dedicated laity, priests and nuns who often put their lives on the line to implement Catholic Social Teaching and to work for justice and peace.

> 24

That's a useful distinction, John. The usual suspects denigrating the "Catholic Church" might be more on-target if they were to assail the "Catholic hierarchy."

(ETA: But the Catholic hierarchy -- no matter how clumsily designated -- is likely to be the focus of a "Pope Benedict Resigns!" thread.)

>22 timspalding:: "but he's gone well over the edge for me in denying core doctrines of the faith, notably priests and the reality of the eucharist"

(We saw him on the Colbert Report earlier this week -- and even Colbert was taking him down with verbatim quotes from Scripture.)

The problem is that he even abuses Augustine on the Eucharist, because he's got the Berengarian notion in his head that the True Presence must mean that we actually digest and excrete the human flesh of Jesus! That is, he has not the slightest conception of what a "sacrament" is -- he needs to reread De Doctrina Christiana, or maybe just the following passage from City of God, Book 10, chs. 6 and 20:

This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.
(...)
Thus He {Christ} is both the Priest who offers and the Sacrifice offered. And He designed that there should be a daily sign of this in the sacrifice of the Church, which, being His body, learns to offer herself through Him. Of this true Sacrifice the ancient sacrifices of the saints were the various and numerous signs; and it was thus variously figured, just as one thing is signified by a variety of words, that there may be less weariness when we speak of it much. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have given place.

(I also stumbled across this handy collection of quotes from Augustine's letters and sermons affirming the Real Presence: http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/fathers.htm {scroll down to the bottom of the page}.)

You'll notice in this passage quoted from City of God that Augustine had (of course) a classically patristic notion of the Eucharist as a participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ -- a sacramental sacrifice thus also echoed in the martyr's act of imitatio Christi. As a sacrament, it is woven into the very fabric and identity of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

he's got the Berengarian notion in his head that the True Presence must mean that we actually digest and excrete the human flesh of Jesus

But that is what many folk on the street, even some Catholics, take "transubstantiation" to mean. With the disappearance of Aristotelian physics, the word is practically meaningless, and the Lutheran and Anglican traditions have always avoided it in favour of "Real Presence" to avoid this misunderstanding. Given that "transubstantiation" is technically vacuous, the alternatives are either the popular interpretation as "transphysicalization" or some form of "transignification" (I never understood why the Catholic hierarchy condemned this approach, other than sheer conservatism).

>27 MyopicBookworm: My own experience of ordinary Catholics on the street is that even those who may have heard the word "transubstantiation" (which is by no means all of them) don't worry about it in enough detail to think about digesting and excreting the human flesh of Jesus. They have a sense that it is "real", and that's enough for them.

I remember 30-odd years ago reading of a survey of Catholics, Anglicans and maybe other denominations where the punters in the pews generally had very similar understandings of the Eucharist regardless of the theological definitions of their own denomination.

>26 nathanielcampbell:

Yes, I saw that. Colbert is not only a Catholic, he teaches kids catechism, as you probably know.

>29 timspalding:: Did you read James Heffernan's piece in HuffPo? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/stephen-colbert-for-pope_b_2662177...

NCR: Garry Wills Please Go Away by Michael Sean Winters
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/garry-wills-please-go-away

Ouch.

Mr. Wills apparently thinks that catholicism can be made palatable to the average sane person if certain of its more asinine doctrines are dropped.

He is wasting his time.

I.e., one can spray all the perfume one wants on a t.u.r.d. to make it smell better. Nevertheless, the end result is that all you still have after your expended energy is a g.o.d.d.a.m.n. t.u.r.d.

BTW, if it is OK for the pope to quit then it is OK for anyone to quit the catholic church. So why do people still want to identify with the child-rape church? I mean decent people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/16/bill-maher-pope-resignation-hillary-cli...

What a delightful and deep analysis.

d.e.l.I.g.h.t.f.u.l a.n.d. d.e.e.p, rather.

> 33, >34 timspalding:

If we can't make fun of religion then what is its purpose?

If jesus was still alive I'm sure he would agree. He was the original anti-pharisee.

I don't think he would have cared much for you two. I understand he hated hypocrites.

>32 JGL53: The pope has not quit the Catholic Church, he has simply resigned from a particular ministry within it. But why let accuracy stand in the way of a good rant?

>35 JGL53: If we can't make fun of religion then what is its purpose?

You'd probably be surprised at how much religious people make fun of their own religion. Was there anything funny in your post >32 JGL53:? My apologies, I must have missed it amongst the turds and the implication that Catholics are not "decent people".

"The pope has not quit the Catholic Church, he has simply resigned from a particular ministry within it. But why let accuracy stand in the way of a good rant?"

It was an analogy. Analogies are never utter clones.
Logic 101. And you FAIL.

"You'd probably be surprised at how much religious people make fun of their own religion. Was there anything funny in your post..."

Are you talking to me or just to yourself? Some religious people can make fun of their religion up to a point. Others not so much. I believe these are well-known facts.

And what is or is not funny is a judgment call. And I don't trust your judgment. LOL.

"...'Catholics are not 'decent people.'"

1. Those who support child rape are not decent people.

2. By their very membership catholics support child rape.

3. Q.E.D.

(But I am sure you can laugh off thousands of raped children. I can't.)

37: Logic fail. You could as well say that by their very citizenship Americans support the gunning down of small children.

> 38

Wrong. A country in not analogous to a religion. Not in any useful sense.

1. No country is free from the worst kinds of crime. E.g., there was even a mass murder in Norway recently. And we all HAVE to live somewhere - generally a country. So living in a particular country in no way ipso facto indicates a person endorses crime in that country.

2. In contrast to a country one's membership in a religion is optional. It is certainly not a necessity, like living in a country - though one could do like Captain Nemo, I suppose, assuming one can afford one’s own submarine.

3. So then - if one continues to voluntarily belong to a religion that is involved in the rape of THOUSANDS of children and the cover up of this horror by the highest echelons of leadership* in that church, then one is therefore endorsing the child rape.

One can protest all one wants that such is not so.

But one’s appearance of endorsement by one’s continued voluntary membership in a child rape church - that is a fact. And facts are facts.

Logic 101. You FAIL, MB.

BTW, no one can best me in criticism of such inane religions as scientology and mormonism (i.e., specifically the mainline non-polygamous mormon church).

But in the final analysis are either of those two religious institutions associated with the rape of THOUSANDS of children? And a conspiratorial cover-up of same?

No? Then on a scale of evil both are preferred to the R.C.C.

*http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14041403-child-sex-abuse-cover-up-alleged-in-pope-benedict-resignation

Can we not be distracted by stupidity and personal attacks? Just ignore it. Trolling has a purpose. You lose by playing.

> 40

So then, by your own admission, you've already lost.

But by admitting to being a loser you promote honesty.

So that's good.

>40 timspalding: Thanks, Tim. Good advice.

I'm just going to have to learn to stop making sense.

Logic hurts people's feelings.

Obviously.

(sung to the tune of Do, Re, Mi)

T = a troll, a diehard troll
R = a really foolish rant
O = a word to precede "shit"
L = a load of worthless cant
L = a redunancy of L

and that brings us back to Troll, troll, troll, troll...

O is a letter. Oh is the word.

> 45

"O" is also a word. See, for example, Willa Cather's book, O Pioneers! or William J. Kennedy's O Albany!

O is a word too. It's the English vocative particle.

> 46

I read "My Antonia" last week.

I am actually just now finishing reading "O Pioneers!".

I start on "The Troll Garden" next.

And so we come full synchronistic Jungian circle.

>48 JGL53: Message hidden because you blocked the member

Ah, blessed quiet.

>49 2wonderY: Amen!

I wonder what heath reasons he resigned for, it must suck to have all that drama in his life.

It could have just been for health reasons but I prefer to believe in conspiracy.

Pope retires because of blackmail http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/21/pope-retired-amid-gay-bishop-blackma...

53: Of course, from a non-catholic perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a man (even though a priest) having consensual sex with another man is there?

Well, if a person has taken a vow of celibacy, I'm not sure it's unreasonable to expect them to keep it.

Well, if a person has taken a vow of celibacy, I'm not sure it's unreasonable to expect them to keep it.

It's not unreasonable for Catholics to expect them to keep it. I don't see how it is of any interest to anyone else though.

It is a strange things though that the Catholic church requires homosexual men to be celibate, offers the priesthood as a celibate way of life and then seems surprised that many priests are homosexual.

> 57

I've never been particularly surprised by the fact that many many catholic priests are homosexual.

But the thousands of children raped by hundreds of priests - I did find that quite surprising at first.

Being celibate because one is asexual or through lack of opportunity - that is understandable - but taking on celibacy as a vow, when one really wants to get it on - that has always seemed rather insane to me.

54> I don't care who the pope boffs, but the Church does. Hence, it can be blackmailed.

58: but taking on celibacy as a vow, when one really wants to get it on - that has always seems rather insane to me.

You could say it is like insanity, but at the time they took the vow, I assume they honestly meant to keep it. The problem is that celibacy can be thought of as a refuge for people troubled about their sexuality. But no vow, organisation, or ten foot thick monastery wall is a refuge from one's self.

If you are talking about the sexual abuse of children by some priests, that is a completely separate issue to what I was talking about, but similarly, it seams reasonable to suggest that a person with a sexually related psychological disorder like pedophilia mat also be attracted into the church seeking celibacy as a refuge.

Although it is not reasonable to suggest that Catholics or the church are in any way tolerant of the sexual abuse of children, the question does seem to raise a serious doctrinal question for Catholics and Christians in general. That is how notions of sin, repentance and forgiveness fit with modern theories of subconscious, and even innate behavioural preferences.

If a priest comes to his superior and confesses that he has committed a sexual act with a child, he appears deeply and honestly ashamed and remorseful of what he has done and vows never to do it again, does the superior accept his vow and move him elsewhere away from the situation, or does he refer him to a psychiatrist and permanently remove him from any situation in which he has access to children? The second option I think most people will agree is what he should do, but how does that fit with doctrine?

I think as Freud said, astronomy has removed man from the centre of the universe, evolution has removed him from the centre of forms of life but psychology has removed man from the centre of himself (*). Have most Christians come to terms with all of these?

* If someone knows where I can find the correct quote, please let me know. I've been looking for it for ages.

(edited to fix spellign)

> 60

"...Although it is not reasonable to suggest that Catholics or the church are in any way tolerant of the sexual abuse of children, the question does seem to raise a serious doctrinal question for Catholics and Christians in general..."

I'm going to nominate the last part of that observation as the understatement of the year. I will pass on the first part without comment since I don't think it necessary to go down that particularly mind-numbing road again.

NCR: "Thoughts on the Vatican's 'gay lobby' "
from John Allen, NCR, CNN, NPR.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/thoughts-vaticans-gay-lobby

It's not unreasonable for Catholics to expect them to keep it. I don't see how it is of any interest to anyone else though.

Promises matter. I don't, for example, care whether you promise to uphold the tax laws of France—indeed, I rather think they take too much. But I would be very suspicious of trusting a French judge who flouted them.

The second option I think most people will agree is what he should do, but how does that fit with doctrine?

At core, forgiveness is an interior thing, and does not effect either punishment or--what shall we call it?--wariness. The church has no doctrinal opinions about the latter factors. It has often been speculated, of course, that a certain understanding of forgiveness was at work in the child sex-abuse scandals--a view that saw abuse as sin, not sickness, sin of a sinner, not injustice to a victim. Maybe so.

But as I've said many times, the real scandal with sex abuse is not that some priests were pedophiles, or that people who should have known better didn't fully realize the enormity of the problem, but that people in authority (usually bishops) sought to protect the institution, and thought little for the safety of their flock. Disgusting as one is, a pedophile is a sick person, deserving of our pity—once they're safely in prison—or anyway not someone I can feel great anger toward, as I can't feel anger toward a wolf who eats babies. I don't think the bishops who moved pedophiles around parishes or sent them out of states or countries to escape the law (and scandal) deserves anything better than our contempt. Many deserve to be prosecuted, not to mentioned defrocked.

I think as Feud said, astronomy has removed man from the centre of the universe, evolution has removed him from the centre of forms of life but psychology has removed man from the centre of himself (*). Have most Christians come to terms with all of these?

Worth another topic, perhaps, but I don't think Freud's anywhere near as secure a springboard. The size of the universe and the common descent of creatures are facts. Freudian psychology is not, and indeed has largely been found wanting and discredited, at least in the forms Freud himself proposed. Yes, a certain view of mind has been weakened—the unitary, autonomous, wholly dualistic, reasoning mind—but that was largely a creation of the Age of Reason anyway, and is by no means intrinsic to Christianity. If there is a threat to a Christian worldview from that direction it comes from mechanistic theories of mind, but these too have hardly achieved the success that astronomy and evolution have!

Last, I beg all here not to feed the trolls. Disagreeing with me does not make you a troll—theoria, for example, is not one. But we certainly have some. No good comes from feeding them.

Vatican attacks Pope resignation 'gossip' (BBC)

On another forum someone asked "Why is ratzinger not in jail?"

Good question.

#62: a pedophile is a sick person, deserving of our pity—once they're safely in prison

Let's make the distinction between someone with the desires and someone who acts on them, especially as many child molesters are opportunists who seem to have no particular predication for children.

On another note, The Atheist's Guide to the Next Pope is interesting. It's serious, critical and not mocking.

>65 prosfilaes:

I'm obviously not seeking to minimize the harm pedophiles do. But they do a lot less harm when there isn't an institution to protect them. Perverted monsters are going to happen. Immoral systems don't need to.

64~

Statutes of limitations? or other escape hatches to religion by ignoble design?

> 67

Yeah. I think the question was more of a wish for justice than a serious question.

The fact that ratzinger was a hitler youth should have been a tip off that he was not a good risk for a position of power and influence, especially over children. Yes, I know he was just going along to get along, but who knows what permanent damage was done to his psyche by that experience? I myself was raised by a pack of southern baptists. That was bad enough. I can't begin to imagine the horror that probably was ratzinger's early environment.

The fact that he eventually became head of the inquisition should be the other tip off that the guy might be a freak. Promoting him to pope was the ultimate insult. That and the fact that the evidence seems to indicate he was neck deep in the cover-up of world-wide child rape.

I would say good riddance to bad rubbish but I'll wait to see which robot they replace him with. Could be worst. We all might wish the rat-man hadn't flown the coop.

The fact that ratzinger was a hitler youth should have been a tip off that he was not a good risk for a position of power and influence

That would have excluded an entire generation of the German population from any position at all. What would you have done with them all? Slave labor? Concentration camps?

(But then, when I'm in a illiberal mood, I'd happily exclude anyone with a Southern Baptist upbringing from any position of authority.)

>69 MyopicBookworm:

There are many reasonable reasons someone might conceivably hate Ratzinger. The Hitler Youth thing isn't one of them. The law drafted all 14 year-old boys into the Hitler Youth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/23/cardinal-keith-o-brien-accused-inapp...

I'm not sure what is most disturbing about this article. The mind blowing hypocrisy, the fact that priests are so completely dominated by their bishop or that a man who is meant to have a spiritual calling seems to have negligible self awareness.

And (ignoring the presumption of innocence) he going to get a vote on who the next pope will be?

>71 marq: I just commented on this on one of the other "pope resigns" threads:

I think this is a good example of the Church's new professional standards protocols being followed. When serious allegations are made against a cleric, he is suspended; in this case he was only a month away from retirement as archbishop so he has brought his retirement forward, and will also not carry out his duties as a cardinal. He has denied the allegations and a full investigation will take place. In this case presumably it won't be a criminal investigation as the allegations do not involve crimes but "inappropriate" approaches and/or acts with adults.

Cardinal O'Brien will not be voting for the next pope.

> 72

Cardinal O'Brien will not be voting for the next pope.

And yet Cardinal Mahony, who covered up decades of child sexual abuse by priests, will. He arguably violated California's mandated reporting statute. He sent priests out of state to avoid criminal charges, which may, in itself, be a criminal act. But he's voting on your next pope.

> 62 Freudian psychology is not, and indeed has largely been found wanting and discredited, at least in the forms Freud himself proposed.

In the context of the putative paraphrase from #60, Freud's specific ideas (about psychic development of the individual, cathexes, complexes, neuroses, etc.) are less significant than the general psychological concept of the unconscious. I don't think that's been "found wanting and discredited" for most schools of contemporary psychology.

Talk to the scientists about that one! I believe you will find neuroscientists that will agree with it.

Even if you do believe it, the tripartate nature of the unconscious is surely in dispute.

Freud had one good idea, and did no research.

> 75

My point here is that "Freud" is a red herring with respect to the sequence described in #60. The issue is the decentering of the conscious human actor (what was sometimes called "ego" in English even before that was used for a translation of Freud's Ich.) The unconscious mind wasn't even Freud's idea; it goes back to Schelling and Coleridge.

Actually it goes back to Shakespeare.

>69 MyopicBookworm:

"That would have excluded an entire generation of the German population from any position at all. What would you have done with them all? Slave labor? Concentration camps?

(But then, when I'm in a illiberal mood, I'd happily exclude anyone with a Southern Baptist upbringing from any position of authority.)"

I said it was taking a chance making an ex-hitler youth pope for the stated reason that his psyche might have been damaged by his environment as a youth. (Notice the qualifiers "taking a chance" and "might".) I said nothing about putting anyone in a concentration camp or making anyone do slave labor. Also, I said nothing about excluding anyone with a southern baptist upbringing from anything.

So, MB - besides reading into my words a crapload of non sequiturs - do YOU have a point?

It still seems to me that it would have been easy to promote a cardinal to pope who hadn't been a hitler youth. I mean, did ALL the cardinals belong to the hitler youth? lol.

Plus, were there no other cardinal who could do the job if selected - they HAD to choose the head of the inquisition? The effing INQUISITION? No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Ditto the german one. lol.

Plus, were there no other cardinals available who had clean hands on the child-rape cover- up scandal? They HAD to choose the one guy who was in charge of the world-wide cover-up?

Being associated (even peripherally) with hitler was the least of this slimeball's problems. And yet the college chose him to be god’s (alleged) mouthpiece here on planet earth.

Yeah, baptists are messed up. But they aren’t THAT messed up.

>78 JGL53:: For somebody who says that he values reasoned inquiry above all else, you seem frequently to fail in that endeavour. You know that that charging Ratzinger with any complicity in Nazi crimes is foundationless and without merit (if anything, his experiences of that war affected him in the same way they affected Pope John Paul II, i.e. with a grave and abiding horror at the inhumanity of violence) -- and yet you insist on parroting the ridiculous "Hitler-youth pope" meme without the slightest rational consideration. (Do you have any evidence for your claims? Or is yours the idle speculation of a person who knows very little about the life and thought of Pope Benedict XVI?)

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while technically the institutional successor to the Inquisition, is NOT the Inquisition, and you know that. Calling the CDF "the Inquisition" is as historically accurate as referring to the current U.S. government as the Confederation.

But instead of engaging in honest and rational conversation, you trade in patently ridiculous stereotypes.

(I'm hoping Tim will now step in with a reminder to me not to feed the troll.)

Original: I think as Feud said, astronomy has removed man from the centre of the universe, evolution has removed him from the centre of forms of life but psychology has removed man from the centre of himself (*). Have most Christians come to terms with all of these?

Me: Freudian psychology is not, and indeed has largely been found wanting and discredited, at least in the forms Freud himself proposed

Comment: My point here is that "Freud" is a red herring with respect to the sequence described in #60. The issue is the decentering of the conscious human actor (what was sometimes called "ego" in English even before that was used for a translation of Freud's Ich.) The unconscious mind wasn't even Freud's idea; it goes back to Schelling and Coleridge.

So, I think there's much to recommend in your correction, paradoxosalpha. The part of Freudianism that was threatening to religion was the part that's largely been discredited—such as the rigid separation of parts of the mind, the weird theory of mental development, the centering on sexual desire, etc. That parts of our mind is not entirely clear and present to us always, which is the lasting residuum of Freud's confident and intricate theories, is not as threatening to Christianity. (While Freud's arguments against religion aren't necessarily superseded, they've lost some of their luster as we've come to see that Freud's "scientific" discoveries were largely bullshit, and indeed a baroque and unbelievable myth system adhered to by dogmatists splitting into ugly camps… well, as bad as any religion.) As you say, these ideas were not entirely new—or threatening. Recent brain-science discoveries, which tend to support a more mechanized view of the mind, hostile to dualism, are far more troubling philosophically. Their "technical" results—take a pill and get happy without God, prayer, sustaining love, reconciliation with other people, serious engagement with your life, etc.—raise no new philosophical questions, but they kick the shit out of conventional ideas about the good life.

It is somewhat remarkable how Freudianism once looked—recently looked—like a solid discovery about reality. As for fiction, from science fiction to literary fiction, inclusion of Freudian concepts was almost a requirement for being taken seriously. Nabokov's total rejection of it—and repeated attacks on it in his fiction—made him look like something of a crank, or at least an ill-informed romantic. In fact, he was one of the few clear-headed people around.

(I'm hoping Tim will now step in with a reminder to me not to feed the troll.)

Nope. That would be feeding the feeder.

Actually it goes back to Shakespeare.

Gilgamesh!

> 79

What in the holy name of the Wide Wide World of Sports are you yammering about, Nat?

If I were to use the same leap-of-logic tactics of you and your cohorts on this thread then I suppose at this point I would accuse you of being a child-molester since you are a blatant apologist for the child-molestation church.

But I won't do that. I am a cut above you and yours and your sniveling overt distortion and purposeful misinterpretation of whatever I say.

I'm beginning to believe, from the evidence and not ad hominem, that you are about as dedicated to the truth as Mitt Romney.

As an example of your LIES:

http://www.nndb.com/people/365/000091092/

Quote: "...In 1981, Ratzinger was named Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the organization which until 1965 had been called the Holy Office of the Inquisition, making him successor to the Grand Inquisitor...."

Please ignore me from now on, Nat. I am sick and tired of your lies and distortions.

If YOU are the perfect example of a dedicated christian then all I can say is THANK GOD I'M AN ATHEIST.

>81 JGL53:: "If I were to use the same leap-of-logic tactics of you and your cohorts on this thread then I suppose at this point I would accuse you of being a child-molester since you are a blatant apologist for the child-molestation church."

Color me confused. You are the one who made the leap of logic of thinking that Pope Benedict must be inherently evil because he was forced as a youth to join the Hitler Youth (from which he fled at the earliest possible opportunity). You are the one making the leap of logic that equates the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the Inquisition.

Quote: "...In 1981, Ratzinger was named Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the organization which until 1965 had been called the Holy Office of the Inquisition, making him successor to the Grand Inquisitor...."

I was pointing out the leaps of logic that have confused your thinking -- but apparently, you are even more confused than I initially thought, for you seem to think that 1981 came before 1965.

ETA: I just saw this, and thought it was apropos: Nobody expects the Modern Inquisition!

(Since I know JGL has problems with this whole comprehension thing, I'll spell it out for him: the office devoted to maintaining the doctrinal integrity of a Roman Catholic Church comprised of more than 1 billion people has a combined full-time and part-time staff of 89 -- 25 cardinals, archbishops and bishops, 33 other clergy and religious staff members, and 28 mostly part-time theological consultors.

By comparison: That's about the same number of people employed by the Wikimedia Foundation. By contrast, Google employs more than 50,000 people.)

> 82"...You are the one who made the leap of logic of thinking that Pope Benedict must be inherently evil because he was forced as a youth to join the Hitler Youth..."

You are the one making the leap of logic that equates the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the Inquisition..."

Joseph, Mary and Jesus roasting on an open fire, the Holy Ghost nipping at your nose, etc.?

1. I never say anything about ratzinger being "inherently evil" because he was in the hitler youth. I explained quite clearly what I actually meant. Can't you read simple English?

2. The congregation for the doctrine of the faith = the Inquisition. They just changed the name. And their tactics may be more mild-mannered now than in past times. Again, can't you read plain simple English.

Apologetics is (are?) not your strong suit, Nat. Move on to something else.

>83 JGL53:: "I explained quite clearly what I actually meant. Can't you read simple English?"

That's right -- you explained that you believed that the few months a young Joseph Ratzinger spent enlisted in the Hitler Youth so thoroughly warped his psyche that he was left unfit to be Pope.

You have no evidence for this assertion. I'm guessing you have not read any of the Pope's memoirs (he wrote one back in the 90's, I believe) or any of his theological writings. You are not at all familiar with his background or his thought.

But apparently, your lack of knowledge is sufficient to declare the man incapable of the job that he was elected to do by men who had considerably greater knowledge about him, including significant personal experience working with him on a daily basis. You show not a single blink of awareness of the factors that went into his election--his close personal work with Pope John Paul II, the galvanizing statement made by his homily at JPII's funeral, or his seniority within the operations of the Catholic Church and as Dean of the College of the Cardinals. His is one of the most skilled theological minds to ever hold the Chair of St. Peter; and he was mostly chosen as a place-holder, to offer the Church a period of stability after the saintly papacy of John Paul II--a sanctity that came with its own dangers of rock-star idolization. In the final analysis, his pontificate will likely be judged to have done that successfully; and his abdication now will hopefully open up the possibility a bold new leader who, with the distance of Benedict's papacy providing a clear evaluation of John Paul's legacy, will guide the Church well into the 21st century.

Furthermore, you know full well that your implication in the use of "Inquisition" was that Ratzinger was some crazed fanatic like Torquemada--again, without any evidence or apparent knowledge about his background as a theologian. Don't try to pretend otherwise: your rhetorical gambit was plain for all to see.

Torquemada inspired a great song, though.

"...you explained that you believed that the few months a young Joseph Ratzinger spent enlisted in the Hitler Youth so thoroughly warped his psyche that he was left unfit to be Pope...."

No I didn't and you know I didn't. I merely said it may have adversely affected him and that the r.c.c. was taking a chance (that his early traumaitic life didn't have a lasting effect on him).

That is quite different.

So you are a LIAR.

I didn't bother to read the rest of your post. I have no doubt it is all LIES too.

How can you live with yourself, being such a LIAR?

Isn't one of the ten commandments not to bear false witness, i.e., not to lie?

I don't believe in hell, being an atheist, but if I am wrong then an unrepentant LIAR like you will be going to hell. Unless you repent.

At lease I am an HONEST atheist.

Oh, BTW, did I mention? - YOU ARE A LIAR.

(The evidence is there for all to see, so this is not ad hominem. You are just a blatant LIAR.)

> 85

I've no doubt the Torq had a lot of good qualities. No one is utterly evil. For all we know he may have had a collie dog named Blondie of which he was quite fond.

Or am I thinking of someone else?

“O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you don’t hurl from yourself the evil, but even worse, embrace it and kiss it by silently tolerating corrupt men. The whole earth is in confusion on account of the ever-recurring false teaching whereby human beings love what God has brought, to nothing. And you, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death.”

Fox, Matthew (2012-09-03). Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times (Kindle Locations

> 88

That seems about right.

> 80 The part of Freudianism that was threatening to religion was the part that's largely been discredited

Well, to be fair, Freud was overtly hostile to traditional religion, explicitly comparing it to neurosis, and suggesting that it was an epiphenomenon of social and cultural trauma.

Freud's "scientific" discoveries were largely bullshit, and indeed a baroque and unbelievable myth system adhered to by dogmatists splitting into ugly camps… well, as bad as any religion.

Interesting rhetorical acceptance of the "badness" of religion, there. In any case, I would suggest that not only Freudian theory, but couch-trip practice have both been functionally religious, although in a secularized, vaguely anti-metaphysical way.

I suppose the problem in psychology, more so than any other science, is mistaking the intellectual model, the useful ways of thinking about the mind, for discoveries of real structures that must exist in the brain. Although much of Freud's thinking is a bit wacky, I don't think we can say that thinking about the mind in terms of a conscious and subconscious does not continue to be a useful way of thinking about it.

I am old enough to remember nuns rapping children over the knuckles with a ruler for attempting to write with their left hand. The Catholic Church continues to explicitly reject the consensus that male homosexuality (at least the dimension of behavioural preference) is innate (i.e. a combination of genetic and environmental factors that determine orientation before birth).

There will still be debate over the "size" of the subconscious. From one extreme where we are not more than automatons with our minds generating a consciousness complete with the illusion that we make conscious moral decisions to a view that rejects the subconscious completely. I suspect that many in the Catholic Church are somewhere near the right end of that spectrum and that has consequences for how they think about behavioural problems in its clergy.

On 72: I think the strongest criticism of Church leaders in all these scandals is that priority number one has been to avoid embarrassment to the church. Doing the right thing, including protecting children, priority z. Now we see the unprecedented sacking of Cardinal O'Brien by the Pope on the basis of unproven allegations of sexual harassment. I see priority number one, avoid embarrassment, priority z, do the right thing. Has something changed?

Freud (trained MD) had a reason to be skeptical of religion: antisemitism on the one side, and the persistence of moral evaluations and condemnations of psychical problems on the other side.

Correctly understood, Freud placed religion on a continuum of thought (psychical acts) running from animism to science. What is common to all three is the belief that thought is omnipotent (the world can be controlled by ideas). Where they differ is this: science acknowledges the existence of reality outside of thought, which contradicts the sense of omnipotence.

Religion, science, and art (among other cultural phenomenon) are all products of neuroses, which he distinguishes from perversions (the condition of psychological dysfunction). Neuroses are normal and contribute to civilization.

In the course of centuries the naive self-love of men has had to submit to two major blows at the hands of science. The first was when they learnt that our earth was not the centre of the universe but only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness. This is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus, though something similar had already been asserted by Alexandrian science. The second blow fell when biological research destroyed man’s supposedly privileged place in creation and proved his descent from the animal kingdom and his ineradicable animal nature. This revaluation has been accomplished in our own days by Darwin, Wallace and their predecessors, though not without the most violent contemporary opposition. But human megalomania will have suffered its third and most wounding blow from the psychological research of the present time which seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in the mind. (Freud, Standard Edition, 15,485-5).

>91 marq: Has something changed?

Yes. Most national bishops' conferences have put in place professional standards protocols which reduce the risk of clerical sexual abuse happening and being covered up. The number of new incidents of sexual abuse has dropped dramatically, and those being covered up has dropped even more. The historical cases of abuse are being investigated and prosecuted. Dealing with those who covered up cases decades ago is meeting more resistance and is progressing more slowly, but the fact that cardinals such as Mahony and Dolan in the USA are having to give evidence in depositions is a step forward.

the unprecedented sacking of Cardinal O'Brien by the Pope

Did the pope "sack" O'Brien or did he resign of his own volition? I rather think the latter. Similarly when Cardinal Pell was accused of an offence a couple of years back as far as I know he suspended himself voluntarily until the case was investigated and he was cleared.

Edited to add: Although the Grauniad seems to accept the pope sacking angle (Pope forces out Cardinal Keith O'Brien) in one article while also showing a video of Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor saying that O'Brien wasn't asked to step down and did so out of his own conscience and another article entitled Pope did not ask Keith O'Brien to stand down, says English cardinal (Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor says no pressure was put on the former archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh to quit).

94> Thanks for clarifying John. I fell for the sensationalism.

Australia is going to have a judicial enquiry into child abuse which will investigate not only churches but other institutions. Cardinal Pell welcomed the enquiry when it was announced and said "Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse. Ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage has deepened this uncertainty." We shall see.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/12/australia-judicial-inquiry-child-abuse).

While Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism are both important to understanding Freud's take on religion, I've attempted to sum the matter in my review of The Future of an Illusion.

ETA: It's interesting to read the entire small collection of reviews for that third title. Their opinions run the gamut from considering Freud to be sober and incisive, to thinking him crazy and stupid, to considering his positions "boring."

>95 marq: Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse

I think it's true that public opinion remains unconvinced. In part that is because public opinion is not aware of the real changes that have taken place within the institutional Church. In part it's because while new cases of abuse have dropped dramatically and are generally not being covered up, and while old cases are actually being investigated, those who covered up the old cases are still resisting. And in part it is due to "one-sided media coverage". "Church makes constructive but fairly boring technical changes in the way it operates" is not a very eye-catching headline.

96> Which is why it's a waste of time to read reviews.

> 98

I think most reviews (on LT and elsewhere) usually give enough clues within themselves as to whether they are expressing opinions that I should take seriously. They don't all just cancel each other out.

ETA: In my own reviews, I try to offer something more than a mere verdict on a book's worth.

Interesting rhetorical acceptance of the "badness" of religion, there.

Certainly those are some of the ways religion can go bad. And whether it's Stalinism or Freudianism, secular religions often ape religion's worst parts.

I had an interesting chat about this with a close friend here who's a new psychiatrist. He's very much on the "talk" side of the fence—not the "give them a pill" side, which is more and more dominant. But he reported that his training involved almost no Freud, and his professors referred to his work as a pseudoscience. Ouch.

I think the pseudoscience argument is thrown in both directions. We have to remember that the behaviourism of Skinner that reduced us to no more than Pavlov's dogs was the result of an attempt to put psychology on a solid scientific foundation. Psychology seems to face a problem similar to physics quantum mechanics versus relativity. The trend in modern clinical practice is more towards behavioural therapies like CBT but my understanding is that CBT is at odds with the neuroscience and in terms of the neuroscience, although Freud may have been unscientific, he turns out to be about right. I think it just goes to show that in psychology, it is dangerous to simplify, or at least to insist that the useful simplification represents something real.

#100: Certainly those are some of the ways religion can go bad. And whether it's Stalinism or Freudianism, secular religions often ape religion's worst parts.

Given the problematic nature of the phrase "secular religions", it seems almost circular to argue that secular religions ape religion's worst parts; things that don't ape religion's worst parts don't tend to get called "secular religions". Moreover, it seems quite a stretch to say that Freudianism apes religion's worst parts; if that includes pushing unverifiable claims and claims in contrast with scientific reality and questionable ideas about sex, that seems to match up with most of the religions on the planet, and certainly not the horrible oppression and violence that most of us associate with religion's worst parts. (Take, for example, Aztec religion. I do not recall Freud proposing human sacrifice.)

>60 marq:

If a priest comes to his superior and confesses that he has committed a sexual act with a child, he appears deeply and honestly ashamed and remorseful of what he has done and vows never to do it again, does the superior accept his vow and move him elsewhere away from the situation, or does he refer him to a psychiatrist and permanently remove him from any situation in which he has access to children? The second option I think most people will agree is what he should do, but how does that fit with doctrine?

I'm a little late to the party, but I would actually hope that the superior would get the police and the child's parents involved. That's what would (or at least should) happen if a teacher, librarian or any other professional that works with children admitted this to his or her boss.

> 103

I would actually hope that the superior would get the police and the child's parents involved.

In some states, clergy are mandated reporters, meaning that they must tell the appropriate authorities if they have reason to believe that a child has been sexually abused, and not all of them allow priest-penitent privilege in that context.

Up here we had a priest (a friend of mine) who was in a stressful situation, and realized he was becoming attracted to children in the village where he lived. He self reported through confession. He was immediately yanked from his post, and sent for six months of therapy in the Lower 48. When he was finished with therapy, he was strongly encouraged to pursue a lay vocation, and is now a paralegal, although still, I believe, a priest.

In confession? Are you sure? That would be a very dire violation of church law. Indeed, it's a matter for automatic excommunication remissable only by the Pope!

Q: Was he attracted to a 17 year-old or to a child child, as it were. Although anything under 18 is illegal, it makes a difference.

> 106

Yes, I'm sure. There's a good summary here: https://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/clergymandated.pd... It's not true everywhere and, frankly, I don't know if the situation has ever actually arisen or such laws contested. But they're on the books in some states.

Although anything under 18 is illegal,

That depends on where you are.

After confession, the priest talked to him, and my friend told him he could take it out of the realm of sacramental....confession be more than just talking...the priest receiving the confession can give advice.

He did not tell the ages.

>107 lilithcat:

I don't know if mandated reporter has ever been tested against confession or not. I think it's essential that it not. Even without theological justification, this is defensible in a system of justice that decrees that a man cannot be forced to testify against himself—not to mention his wife, lawyer, etc.

Bruce Schneier discusses Hacking the Papal Election; http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/hacking_the_pap.html . (Perhaps the exclusion of both Alice and Carol complicates things a bit.)

NCR, John Allen: "Picking the pope a contest among four camps"
http://ncronline.org//news/vatican/picking-pope-contest-among-four-camps

NCR, John Allen: "Debunking 'conventional' conclave wisdom"
http://ncronline.org//news/vatican/picking-pope-contest-among-four-camps

"The late Cardinal Franz König of Vienna once me told that far from being the kiss of death, some sort of media prominence is almost a prerequisite."

Australia's Cardinal Pell was fairly critical of Benedict on his last day. Saying he was a great theologian and teacher but a poor leader. He also made the point that his resignation would hamper future popes. I suppose that previously, no one would have called on the pope to resign because they had not thought it possible. Will future popes be put under pressure to resign when he or even any of the clergy are involved in scandal or error?

(http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-28/pell-defends-comments-critical-of-popes-leadership/4544256)