He wouldn't be the first pope...

It's pretty obvious pope Ratzinger SHOULD resign, but I'll believe he will resign when I see him do it. Fuckslaves like him never actually take responsibility for the evils to which they're a party.

Anyone know if a pope has ever resigned? Especially one as old as this guy?

Several have, but the last one was in the 1400s.

What I want to know is why more Catholics (besides Sinead O'Connor, that is) aren't screaming for Ratzinger's resignation and/or prosecution.

i expect they'll poison him like they did john paul 1. if he makes it long enough to celebrate christmas mass, i'll bring a case of booze to the office of the stranger.

The people I feel sorry for are all those poor Catholics out there who've given so much to their Holy Mother Church and been so vilely betrayed.

Srsly, do the world's Catholics really care if the Pope committed crimes?

perhaps you've forgotten that the pope is infallible.

case dismissed.

If it was ever the case that someone became pope because he was deemed most "holy," living a life most like Christ, it certainly hasn't been recently. Karol Wojtyla was elected John Paul II largely to highlight the faithful living under Communism. Now it's clear that Joseph Ratzinger was chosen because the College of Cardinals thought that he, as the Grand Inquisitor and controller of information, stood the best chance of keeping a lid on the sex-abuse scandal. Instead, he's actually bringing the spotlight more and more to himself through his bumbling and ham-fisted attempts to divert attention.

@9
The pope is infallible only in terms of dogma , otherise he is as sinner as the next person
@7 you do not know how distressed we are and in which stalmate we found ourselves

Wikipedia tells me a pope hasn't resigned since 1402, but hey - there's no time like the present...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope#Resign…

Isn't this the guy who upon becoming pope denounced any liberal "moral relativism" in his Catholicism??? WTF does he think this qualifies as?

Hey folks, the Pope is head of state of a nation called the Vatican. Pretty sure he has diplomatic immunity.

seriously dude, this is some fucked up shit right here. it's times like these that phony duchebags like the pope better start praying that there is no god. not that i think all popes have been fakers in terms of their beliefs, i couldn't in good conscience make such a claim, but a situation like this spells it out pretty clearly for this particular pope. you can't be a party to and facilitator of one of the worst things imaginable and then try to play it down like it's not a big deal. if you really believe in god and divine retribution you better get your ass a-repentin' because i doubt you get any mulligans for shit like this in the afterlife.

I blame celibacy. Celibacy is a perversion, and if you insist on perversion as a prerequisite for priesthood, all you are going to get are perverts. It is so surprise that men who already know they can't have normal sexual lives sign up for the priesthood, and it is no wonder when the few non-perverts eventually leave so that they can have normal lives.

All this institutional corruption around sex abuse could only happen in a hierarchy stuffed full of perverts. Normal people with normal sexual lives could not have acted this way. Normal sexual beings see what a travesty and horror this is. Only a priesthood build on sexual perversion could have carried on this way.

The Catholic church will never have normal priests and leave scandal behind them until they abandon celibacy. I would never leave my children alone with a priest. Never.

Wow. This is absolutely horrible.

I wonder how much attention this is getting among the faithful in Latin America and Africa?

FUUUUCK.
My boyfriends parents escaped a communist country because they wouldn't let them practise their religion (catholicism).
My grandparents were denied work for being catholics.

I don't want to support these evil fucks, but wtf am I supposed to do? If I have a non-Catholic wedding our collective families will have a heart attack, and everyone over eighty will cry every time they look at either of us/die of an aneurism. GUHHHHHH

I see no reason for him to resign. That's a completely internal church matter.

But why the hell should the rest of world treat him and his old boys club with any kind of respect? Do they also respect the authority of the Principality of Sealand?

@19: tough choice, I know (been there, many years ago), but you would be in lots of good company. Recent surveys found that 1 in 10 americans is an ex-catholic. (this puts us higher than the combined percentage of US jews, muslims and buddhists, if I recall correctly. I'll look for the link.)

Would anyone be surprised if it was revealed that Ratzi diddled as well? A Nazi diddler!

Remember also that during Ratzinger's tenure as Chief Inquisitor, he was also harassing Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen for the unforgivable crime of allowing gay Catholics to use the church buildings and allowing them to attend Mass.

RE @21: Here's the relevant quote from the following link: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

"Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics."

@21.
ya, but WTF am I supposed to say to his parents? or my grandparents?
sorry...I know you fought in a war and starved in a boat for a month in the hot sun with nothing to drink, became a refugee and starting a new life so that you and your children would have the freedom to practice your religion...but I like, totally don't agree with how it's run, so I'm just gonna spit on that m'kay?

@25: Maybe you could point out how they came here in search of a place where they and their descendents could live their lives according to their deepest principles. Always better than living a lie.

Former Catholic here, escaped as a small child with my sanity, dignity and virginity intact. Yes, I was one of the few lucky ones. I don't think we can prosecute the old piece of shit, but I do believe we need to start taxing the church- all churches. And quit letting the parishioners park on the public roads on Sundays. Nobody else is allowed to park on many public roads on any day until Sunday rolls around.

Caralian, my advice would be to go ahead and have the wedding in the church. Yes, the church is corrupt (retired Catholic here!) but make the old people happy. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

As for the pope, that guy is a creep. He should resign, but he won't. He's a German, after all - and Germans are stubborn.

John Paul should have been forced to retired when he got too sick to perform his duties. The last ten years or so were like a cruel joke they way they kept propping him up for public appearances.

@11:
1. durr, it's a joke.
2. you assume i am not catholic. this is an error.

If any of us were caught covering up the molestation of children, would our bosses not ask us to resign, and possibly call the cops? It is covered by every company's Code of Ethics, and people get fired every day for violating it. Does the Church not have a Code of Ethics? They are supposed to be the image of morality and goodness - and now this. I'm going to Italy soon,and though I was planning a trip to the Vatican, I'll skip it now. I don't want to be near that house of sin - from the golden chalices, to the velvet thrones - they live in luxury while the majority of their followers live in poverty. They make me sick - and I am Catholic. I'll just stick to loving God, but not the church.

Do people still have weddings in churches? I can't remember the last church wedding I attended or even one that had a priest officiate.

@ 32, I hope you're joking. Do people still have weddings in churches? If you're not joking then you really live in an insular world. The only wedding I've been to that did not have a priest or minister officiate was my own.

Yep, caught that news last night.

Here is a rehash, along with a link to the names and addresses of your favorite U.S. diocese. A nicely-worded letter or email (or phone call) wouldn't go amiss.

Caralian, just think about how you will feel, because it is YOUR wedding. If your memory of your wedding day will be tainted (I want to marry in a place I like, not some place I associate with disgusting crimes) then you don't owe that sacrifice to anyone.

Who would have a clean enough record to replace him?

19/25, why don't you just tell your family that you're not willing to support an institution that condones, participates in, and covers up the raping of children?

The dilemma that really threatens the future of the church is a distorted notion of the vow of obedience and the tension it creates between loyalty to the Gospel and loyalty to the institution -- translate: "system."

The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century; it should have been abolished already in the 16th Century, when it was trenchantly criticized by the Reformers.

In this thread, Loveschild (who is apparently posting solely under his unregistered identities or is preparing a new identity) carpet bombs any criticism of the church as "Anti-catholic": http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

In this thread, Loveschild couches his argument against attacking the pope as part of sweeping anti-christian sentiment: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

In this thread, Loveschild deflects criticism of the pope by bringing up Roman Polanski, his favorite strawman: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

The Pope may have diplomatic immunity, but the US can still express severe disapproval.

Why not appoint one of these kids abused by priests as US Ambassador to the Holy See?

@ 18 none.

The catholi church in latin america is untouchable, and in some countries the rulers seek their advice.

Theyre growing in Africa as fast as the loony pentecostals.

There have been no child abuse scandals in latin america because they refuse to investigate them. When they finally come out its going to be worse than anything we can imagine.

Lets be serious, you believers are allowed to beleived in your zombie nazarene and all that, but all you christians who ask the muslims to condemn their corelioginists for their jihadists, you should be out there in front of the vatican and your churches demanding that the pope and every single cardinal in the catholic church resign.

I don't think the Pope will resign, but it's great that people like Dan are underscoring the hypocrisy of these sick f*cks.

@14, can't we vote the Vatican off this island earth, at least as a sovereign nation? The UN should give them the boot. If (when?) a scandal of the scope of the Irish one emerges in Italy, perhaps Italy will take the initiative. That should be one war they could win. Other than one shot from the gun he undoubtedly keeps in his bedside table that the Pope will use to martyr himself, it should be a fairly bloodless affair.

@4 - Pope Gregory XII in 1415, but for very different reasons. The only Pope I can tell that's ever resigned amid scandal was Pope Benedict IX in 1045, but became Pope again anyway when his successor died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_resig…

Caralain, You should have your wedding the way you (and your fiancee) want it to be. If that means having a Catholic wedding because of the way he was raised, that is fine.

First of all, your wedding is about you and your union more than it is about the church. The church has its opinions of the matter, but you don't have to share them. I am an atheist, but I had my very conservative Baptist minister brother in law marry my wife and I because that made sense in the context of my family.

It was nice to do it that way because of the family implications, and the fact that I don't share his faith had no real bearing on me. He gets to blather for a few minutes about his made up nonsense, and I get to have my brother in law officiate at my wedding. It was a fair trade, and it was as far as it goes. It doesn't mean I am going to organize my life or marriage around that nonsense.

Similarly, you can have your Catholic wedding so that your fiancee and his family can experience what they have dreamed about. It doesn't have mean that you have any dealings with the church after that, and no matter what the church might think about the implications of marrying in the Catholic church, you don't have to share those opinions. In the end, you are going to be in charge of your own life, your own marriage, and your own religious convictions.

Just don't let the priest have any unsupervised time with the kids in attendance and you should be fine. It is not really worth poisoning your relationship with your in-laws just because the Church is packed full of corrupt child rapists. Your marriage day is about you, your fiancee, and your respective families. Take what you want from the Church and leave the rest behind.

15: There's a story that when Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642 the pope, Urban VIII, was asked for a comment. He said, "If there is a God after all, he will have a great deal to answer for. But if there is no God I'd say he's made out rather well."

Caralain, I know a whole stack of inter-racial couples that have two ceremonies, each reflecting the cultural expectations of the different families. Sometimes they're done separately (eg if the families are in different countries); sometimes they're all part of the same celebration over a couple of days. Could you perhaps have a catholic service for your family, then have the "real" service (with the big shindig afterwards) for yourselves and your friends?

The sickest thing about Ratzi is that this is a fellow who watched his disabled cousin and the Jewish children in his town carted off to their deaths by the Nazis. Most people who saw that would dedicate their lives to preventing the systematic abuse and institutionalized torture of children. Apparently the teenaged Benny looked on such horrors as a career option.

@30, I'm sorry you're so full of hate. The only reason my bf and I are talking marriage is for immigration purposes. I'd be perfectly happy just to be bf/gf otherwise. And you know, in my country, marriage is a privledge granted to everyone over 18, not just heterosexuals. You can come here and be equal too, you know.

Thanks for responding, especially 28 and 35, 37, 47.
It's really tough, since I am totally one hundred percent against what's going on in the church right now. The reason I spoke up about my situation, is that what I'm thinking is what the majority of young catholics in western countries are thinking. Namely, WTF is going on with the church!?!! What can I do about it? and Jesus, what to I say to Grandma?
The problem is, the Church doesn't listen to it's followers, and it's not subject to law. At all. No one can make them do anything, basically. it's fucked up.
So I'ma try and push for the 'garden wedding' and see how much resistance I get. Thankfully, priests don't marry people outside. At the very worst, we might have to subject ourselves to a small church wedding, with minimal/no donations to the church, and an explanation WHY they're not getting any money from me.
Maybe we should just start a 'collection plate revolution', where we all go to church and fill the collection plate with paper notices illustrating the reasons why we won't be giving.

Not counting anti-popes IIRC the last papal abdication was Pope Celestine V, a saintly hermit who apparently was elected in 1292 without wanting the job or, indeed, being able to perform it and was allowed to abdicate in 1294.

I'll agree with the poster who called for a diplomatic solution. The US should demand and obtain a concordat with the Vatican cooperation in the investigation of (and where appropriate, prosecution of) abusive clergy; any diocese or individual within a diocese in the US who does not cooperate would open themselves up to criminal and civil penalties as well.

Since the Middle Ages states have forced tougher concessions from the Holy See and over far less worthy issues. And my hope would be that if the US leads the way countries like Ireland could follow suit with similar concordats.

The Pope can't be tried in the US. George Bush the younger did this in 2005, unfortunately.

When I was young and foolish I was a nun in a conservative order. Their take on the scandals was to blame society and the all-pervasive sexual climate for the abuse. Ridiculous! Now I'm out of the order, the church, and the closet and happy.

READ THE BOOK "VATICAN ASSASSINS" AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VATICAN AND HOW IT IS JUST A FRONT FOR THE ANTICHRIST...WHY DO YOU THINK THE CATHOLIC PRIEST ALL OVER THE WORLD RAPE THE CHILDREN, AND THIS POPE CONTINUES TO IGNORE IT. HE THINKS HE IS ABOVE ALL HUMANS LIKE THE ANTICHRIST. I HOPE HE GOES TO TRIAL AND THROWN IN PRISION AND GETS RAPED TO DEATH!!!!!