The Cardinals will close the doors tomorrow and stay removed from the rest of the world until they elect the new Pope. Vatican intrigue, bureaucratic turf wars not to mention sex scandals plus debates on same sex marriage and women priests....rumors of money laundering as well as calls for a global monetary authority and increased social justice in the Holy Land and the Muslim world. Who wants to apply for that job? Plus the old boss is still around, just trying to mind his own business in the back. No wonder tradition dictates if one of the cardinals openly embraces the idea of becoming Pope he is immediately disqualified....anybody crazy enough to want the job can't be trusted. All kidding aside....what does everybody think? Personally I think all the talk of reform is misguided...conservative Italian is the most likely outcome but who knows. I also think it will be a long conclave....
Many critics of the Church want a Pope who will soften the churches stance on abortion, contraception, and gay marraige, but that won't happen. The next Pope will be doctrinally orthodox in the lines of John Paul the II and Benedict XVI. It won't be a North American Cardinal. No matter how popular Oulet and Dolan may be they are both to closely linked to unorthodox teaching. I have liked Peter Turkson for years, but he likely has little chance.
Wasn't Turkson the one who wrote that report calling for the creation of a global monetary authority? That doesn't sound like a good idea to me....what we need is a free market and a debt jubilee.
How about a Pope who actually brings the Catholic church into the realm of reality......Priest should marry, have girlfriends etc, can't expect someone to give relationship sermons on relationships when they have no idea what it's like to be in an intimate relationship......it's craziness. I'm Catholic but this church has to to evolve...it might save a few little boys along the way too.
I think if you read the John Jay report you would back off that statement. The Church had many failings in how sexual abuse was handled, but the reality of what happened was very different than the perception of what happened. It is very hard to be proactive when two thirds of the allegations come more than 30 years after the abuse and over half the accused priests were either dead or out of ministry when allegations were made.
To the contrary, many of the Eastern Rite churches allow priests to be married. I think the shortage of priests in the western world will lead to an eventual move for all priests to be allowed to marry, or at least to allow the married to be ordained.
Off the top of my head, i would prefer the first non-European pope, specifically an African or a South American, as the church has large followings on both those continents I do think a consevative Italian stands a great chance of being the Bishop of Rome, of course (although since the late 70's, the church has gone away from Italians and even Latin Europe, going with a Pole/Slavic Europe and a German/Germanic Europe instead) ...but a conservative Italian wouldn't necessary be a bad thing, not counting John Paul I (Albino Luciani), who died a month after becoming pope, the last two conservative Italians turned out to be pleasantly not-too-conservative: -John XXIII ( Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli ), reshaped the face of Catholicism and profoundly reformed the church by convoking the Second Vatican Council as soon as he became pope (in the 60's, the same time the U.S. was going through great reforms like the Civil Rights movement, etc) -Paul VI ( Giovanni Battista Montini ), re-convoked the Second Vatican Council, which was automatically closed with the death of John XXIII, and gave it priority and direction.
