New Pope

What key characteristics should the new pope have to advance the interests of the Catholic Church?

1. A true vocation to serve the Lord. All priests start with this, only God knows for sure who still has a true vocation but some church leaders (not naming names here) give the appearance of having lost it and replacing it with greed/lust for power etc as they climb the hierarchy.

2. A strong personality who is able to deal firmly and appropriately with those who allowed predator priests to continue. OK maybe they could have believed the priest when they claimed that the first accusation was lying, a mentally ill victim etc. But the second? And the third? Some of these guys had dozens of documented reports to the church. Those that enabled these men to continue should at the bare minimum be removed from their posts and sent to spend a long time praying in an isolated monastery.

3. The church needs an evangelist to spread its message to both disaffected Catholics as well as newcomers to the church. So it needs the Catholic equivalent of Billy Graham or Rick Warren.

4. The Catholic Church is huge, far to big for one man to run on his own. So the next pope needs to have the gift of selecting the right staff. Knowing how to delegate and how to pick who to delegate to is critical to the success of any large organization, the Catholic church included.

The key characteristic she should have is the courage to stop protecting both the paedophiles and those who have protected them in the past.

I have my own thoughts on this outgoing pope which i will keep to myself to avoid it being construed as flaming or coming down on someones religion. lets just say my feelings are INTENSE.

Any true priest is taught, and believes, that everyone will be forgiven if they honestly admit their sin and seek penance. It's why Catholics don't support the death penalty.
It may also be a contributing factor in the Church's decision to protect the priest's who sinned in that fashion.

I'm not saying I agree with that, but as men of god, they hold the seal of confessional, and they truly believe that sins can be forgiven through the grace of god. And, on top of that, the priesthood is a tightly-knit community, one that is ultimately very small if you consider the population of the world.

These factors may have helped make those decisions, however wrong they were. I can only pray that the Church finds it's way to a moral decision.

Until the Catholic Church realizes that it is totally out of step with the current realies of the world, even a Billy Graham is worthless to them. Their destuctive and outdated policies have driven people like me to ignore them after leaving the church. Until the policies stop preaching hate and death, they are worthless.

If you're a Catholic, it will undoubtedly be a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss". If not, why care?

dscott8 wrote:Returning to topic, I do not believe that a government has any right or duty to regulate personal relationships between legally competent consenting adults. Such regulation, including the government's involvement in the religious rite of marriage, cones from the days when the only people who could read or write were churchmen, and churches were the de facto governments. I do not understand why we still put up with such nonsense.

dscott8 wrote:If you're a Catholic, it will undoubtedly be a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss". If not, why care?

The Catholic Church has been one of the biggest obstacals to social reform for the last 5 centuries. They have been more vocal on many topics than other religions and they have done more to organise their people than other churches. Because they have one leader, they have maintained a more coherent message. There are more Muslims and Hindi adherants but they do not have a single world-wide voice. Nor have they been as vocal on the political stage. Their protests have been more inclined to individual acts. Those protests simply get lost in the noise of the general news day.

KNick wrote:The Catholic Church has been one of the biggest obstacals to social reform for the last 5 centuries. They have been more vocal on many topics than other religions and they have done more to organise their people than other churches. Because they have one leader, they have maintained a more coherent message. There are more Muslims and Hindi adherants but they do not have a single world-wide voice. Nor have they been as vocal on the political stage. Their protests have been more inclined to individual acts. Those protests simply get lost in the noise of the general news day.

If you take the long view of history, the Catholics (and religions in general) are losing ground as agents of socio-political control. It's a drawn-out process, but it's moving in the right direction.

Hi guys

IMO, the Catholic Church is an organization run by fallible humans, and as such will never meet its own high ideals.

It is also not a democracy since its leader holds complete control over the church's doctrine.

I believe it was Plato who said the ideal form of government was benevolent dictatorship - - the only problem IMO with that statement is that it is impossible to find a benevolent dictator!

Having said all that (and implying that it will be impossible to find an ideal candidate as the next pope), I think the Church's next leader needs to start cleaning up the internal corruption (sexual, financial, anti-female bias etc ...) in the Church and do his best while he is still alive.

Should that happen, I also think there would be a very high probability that he would be assassinated.

?? Comments ??

R

biochem wrote:What key characteristics should the new pope have to advance the interests of the Catholic Church?

1. A true vocation to serve the Lord. All priests start with this, only God knows for sure who still has a true vocation but some church leaders (not naming names here) give the appearance of having lost it and replacing it with greed/lust for power etc as they climb the hierarchy.

2. A strong personality who is able to deal firmly and appropriately with those who allowed predator priests to continue. OK maybe they could have believed the priest when they claimed that the first accusation was lying, a mentally ill victim etc. But the second? And the third? Some of these guys had dozens of documented reports to the church. Those that enabled these men to continue should at the bare minimum be removed from their posts and sent to spend a long time praying in an isolated monastery.

3. The church needs an evangelist to spread its message to both disaffected Catholics as well as newcomers to the church. So it needs the Catholic equivalent of Billy Graham or Rick Warren.

4. The Catholic Church is huge, far to big for one man to run on his own. So the next pope needs to have the gift of selecting the right staff. Knowing how to delegate and how to pick who to delegate to is critical to the success of any large organization, the Catholic church included.

Very thoughtful.

A true vocation is absolutely essential. A powerful will is also essential, because there are so many people trying to manipulate/persuade/change the Pope and the Church, that the next Pope needs to have an extraordinarily high intelligence, great wisdom, and an iron will with respect to people but a submissive heart with respect to God. It's a tall order.

People focus on the Church's pedophile priests, and with good reason: the crime of child abuse is horrible beyond my ability to express fully, but coming from someone in the position and authority of a priest, it is far worse. The next Pope should have no tolerance for pedophile priests, but he should also have zero tolerance for any priest, monsignor, bishop, archbishop, or cardinal who has protected a pedophile priest. A priest who is accused of any crime -- even child abuse -- is innocent until proven guilty, but on many occasions Church leaders had clear proof that priests were abusing children, and they hushed up the crime and moved the priest off to another parish. Such leaders must not be tolerated. They must be removed from office and from any power or control over what the Church does and says.

The "professionals" in the Curia are a huge burden to the Church. I'd like to see the next Pope fire/pension off most of them. Sure, you can make an argument for keeping this one or that one, but the Curia collectively hinders the Church's mission and message, and the current members of the Curia need to be forced out as soon as possible.

The next Pope needs to know how to guide the Church to preach the timeless message of the Church in a socially relevant way. There are lots of people who want to the Church to be socially relevant, but that misses the point. The Catholic Church claims to have a message is timeless and absolute. If it does have a timeless, absolute message, then "social relevance" is irrelevant to the content of the message; however, the way that the Church presents the message needs to be loving, tender, thoughtful, and socially relevant.

I'm sure that many people disagree with me. That's okay.

I do appreciate the thoughtful way in which you presented the topic.