I’m gonna miss the old sith lord. He was the best pope atheists could hope for. He started out as a Hitler youth actually wearing a Nazi uniform. As a Cardinal, he famously conspired to conceal sex crimes against children for the sake of the church. As pope, he addressed an audience in an AIDS ravaged area of Africa, and told them that use of condoms actually increased risk of STDs. His objection to birth-control took precedence over human life. That is how evil he is. Maybe after he is no longer a head of state, perhaps we can prosecute him properly. Let’s hope he trades in his elegant dresses for an orange jump suit and a retirement time-share at Gitmo. Darth Ratzinger will be a hard act to follow.
Pope Palpatine
In fairness though, not that I figure he really fucking deserves it: His being a hitler youth member wasn’t a choice. If I remember correctly; it was mandatory at the time.
Now, if he ever expressed fondness for those days, it would be a different matter.
Still, I share your hope that he’s able to be brought up on charges though. Fat chance.
You miss judge this man completely.
He is a great pope and a very good catholic.
The real problem is NOT the pope or his teachings or beliefs.
The real problem is the dimwitted, delusional, and enormous numbers of SHEEPLE
that also follow this benighted religion (and all others too).
Any catlicker I hear complaining about the church, I tell them the same and that they should GET OUT.
Better still start thinking and leave all religions.
So far the idea of thinking scares the bejesus right out of them.
Yep great Pope & Catholic and all round great human being.
Loving the church over decency, supporting pedophiles over their victims , Das Church Uber Alles. Great Pope.
The majority of sheeple , by definition from the word, follow the herd. When the herd is corrupt, self serving and venal so are the Sheeple. Get rid of the cankerous boil of the church hierarchy and perhaps, unlikely but perhaps, the sheeple will start to think for themselves.
The only hope for a positive out of the Catlickers is if a decent man comes in and overturns the conservative mantra. Oh wait they killed the last one of those. Shoot everyone from Bishop & above & start over.
Afraid that wont work.
Get rid of the church and the 20M delusional SHEEPLE will find some other dimwitted religion to follow so we end up with the same thing all over again.
On the plus side, he pretty thoroughly stacked the College of Cardinals. We’re likely to get a new pope who is just as horrifyingly ultra-conservative, who will say plenty of things to outrage the right-thinking world.
Is it bad that there’s a dark part of me hoping that his resignation is because of some deep, dark secret from his past, like just how far he went in his efforts to protect pedophile priests or perhaps something even worse… a deep, intensely personal motive for making sure those cases were covered up?
I know it’s not exactly positive, but I’m quite ready to die if it meant to the end of the Vatican and the Catholic Church (I would first need an unbreakable guarantee that my death would actually bring it about immediately, however). You say that Ratzinger will be a hard act to follow. Hate to say it, but I think the Vatican probably has someone even wore up their sleeve.
Pope John Paul II was no saint. He absolutely had his sins. But his efforts to repair the relationship between Catholics and Jews, update the Catholic Church with respect to modern science (with the exception of studying origins, of course), and so on made him kind of a… dare I say it… sympathetic bad guy. I have a feeling that the Vatican is attempting to slowly undo all of it, right down to the Catholic relationship with the Jews. They are, I’m quite convinced, trying to take the Church all the way back to the Dark Ages. Not only will they follow Ratzinger, but I’ve no doubt it will be easy for them. He’s just the beginning, as far as I can see.
I hate the Vatican with a passion, and I say that with half of my family being quite Catholic (my Grandpa is a Deacon, in fact, and I have quite a bit of love and respect for him). I really do mean it when I say I would give up my life if it meant the immediate and total end of the Vatican. They are pure, unadulterated evil, and can only commit evil in this world.
“someone even wore up their sleeve.”
Make that “some even worSe up their sleeveS.”
There’s also that little stint as The Grand Inquisitor, as head of The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, aka The Inquisition [Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition] renamed for the second time.
One thing that was fun was seeing Catholic apologists trying to defend him over at JT’s blog. It was weak, but fun.
“Let’s hope he trades in his elegant dresses for an orange jump suit and a retirement time-share at Gitmo”
You lost me there. Should he stand trial for crimes against humanity? Absolutely, yes. But detention in Gitmo? Oh hell no. Nobody deserves that, including the people who are there now. The prison at Gitmo harms the prisoners there, the people who work there, and is a blight on humanity.
“Darth Ratzinger will be a hard act to follow”
RCC lurking in the Vatican especially, are so full to the brim with ‘talent’ it should not be to much of a stretch.
Throw a shit sandwich in the conclave of Cardinals it will hit one with just as a tenuous grasp of reality and a personal history that put the Borgias to shame in their humane stakes.
I find it interesting that the RCC has tacitly given up on the traditionalistic seat of RCC dominance for 2000 yrs the ever faithful Western lands and Governments.
It has dawned on them that they are slipping down that greasy pole of supernatural cynicism which for the greater part has seen their stock in bums on seats diminish seriously in the last decade, it has been in decline a while but the meltdown this last few years paints the inevitable in a language that even the dumbest in their ranks can savvy, they are a discredited busted flush and it is all over now baby blue!
They are well past their sell by date and are now stinking up the supermarket aisles apart from the sickly miasma settling on the lino and making it extremely treacherous under foot.
So now they are casting ju ju bones and headed to the countries where that pesky rationalism is in so short a supply as to offer lush feeding grounds for the ‘crow’ banal drivel.
In order to that they need a popeness of the same colour as the indigenous they are going to fleece, that is confidence trickster tip 101…make it personal and relatable…it makes the shearing easier!
But it might divert their still impressive wallet south of the equator and abandon the traditional haunts of their insanity.
Ireland was a great shock to them and they see signs elsewhere, one Cardinal on a visit with Benny basically declared Blighty a ‘lost’ land…they are devastated of course but resilient as only the criminally motivated can be.
They are going to set up shop in the third world…that is their game plan and they need a new popeness to do that…one that fits!
While he will (allegedly) have no influence as to successor, the odds-on favorite is Cardinal Peter Turkman from Ghana, who is actually MORE of a reactionary, bigoted extremist than Maladict.
If Cardinal Peter Turkman is elected I think the RCC will jitterbug itself apart, no matter what the RCC claim they are as racist as the KKK, this is just desperation cos they want into the Southern lands and Africa and that Cardinal would be perfect…except the Northern traditionalists will not see it like that!
There was talk a while back that Benny made it known that he wants to see an Italian bum on the throne after his scrawny one departs this earthly realm or at least shuffles away from it, and to that end has raised a clutch of them to Cardinal status as a precursor.
But as for dogma…pretty much of a muchness, all to a doofus fundamentalist to absolute barking RCC, Benny purged the ranks of the Vatican’s liberally motivated as soon as his scrawny derrière hit the thrown…
Apparently Yahweh came to the Vatican and told Ratzinger to stay.