Looking at the field of contenders for next pope, I am thinking that
the next pope will not be black or from the third world or non-European.
I am also thinking that the next pope will be I-talian.
Eliminating all the Italian cardinals over seventy years of age
for someone you can get ten to fifteen years of work life out of, the field gets
narrower.
I am thinking that with current Vatican Corruption Scandals, the new
Italian pope cannot be an insider Vatican bureaucrat.
The one contender I see who is corrupt but not too corrupt, a
Vatican insider but not recently, and not within the shadow of the current shadows of that corruption,
and a man who has zero John Paul II Global CIA Superstar appeal, and has worked in South America
– hasn’t that Superstar media stuff worn thin on the pope product of late? –
and who looks like an old fashioned
Italian pope on a holy card, and or an old fashioned parish priest type – back to
basics?
I have to think that the announcement
that Pope Benedict, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s” decision to stick around the Vatican
in a Convent is a poor decision and or says too many negative things to me.
CONVENT RETREAT
After he leaves office on February
28, he will go first to the papal summer residence south of Rome and then to a
cloistered convent inside the Vatican walls, exchanging the splendor of his
16th century Apostolic Palace for a sober modern residence. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/12/us-pope-resigns-idUSBRE91A0BH20130212
While I know that an 85 year old man’s
capacity to annoy his successor on minor points of occasional gossip is to be
expected.
That he needs the protection of the
Vatican as in an armed Mafioso type bunker, in a convent, says so much of the
reality sitting outside the Vatican Gates for Crimes Against Humanity charges
floating around the legal ether in various political realms in Europe and or
North and South America.
While I can see maybe a half dozen
close friends and or confidants and with ranks of Archbishop and or Cardinal
knocking on the Convent door for a few ten minute sessions of “What would you
do in a situation like this?” type of friendly chit chat, I have to wonder if
Benedict’s chosen successor will be a full and or partially stringed marionette
dancing to the John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s regimes agenda hampered in modern times (Modernism is truly a Bitch!) by public
scrutiny and modern social technical communication intercourse.
In other words, is Benedict really
retiring or is he merely moving the RCC control center out of public view.
And the next pope will be a fully
functioning Disneyland minimum wage costumed employee greeting the tourists in the street
while the real power of the Vatican and its international banking and business
empire disappears from view?
And or is revenge, payback German
style being plotted as part of Benedict’s immediate pre-retirement and
post-retirement plans?
Suddenly, Bishop Richard Williamson's apology to who(m)ever is not good enough?
I think that he has done a great deal considering his limited - very limited historic matrix - half or three quarters of an apology is better than none.
Perhaps the front line hierarchy in the Armani clad red silk Cardinal and white Papal robes might consider opening their own personal hearts in a similar manner to the Jews and the Shoah as they suddenly are asking an aged catholic dinosaur to do!
Like for the survivors of the Shoah and Nazi Holocaust, the everyday grind of life goes on.
So too in the Catholic sect of Christianity, life goes on and here are some narrower or is it futuristic views of that vision?
Some collateral follow-up on I hope a lighter side to show all sorts of sides to a church in a constant state of flux, looking for a stable mission and or mission statement after Vatican II.
Rather than be considered as a person doing a witch hunt on Richard Williamson and his anit-Semitic views, he is a gift that keeps giving to me in terms of the tangents and the bits and pieces of the so-called Traditionalist movement in the RC church that I find in further research on the Internet.
I call it Medieval Revivalism as opposed to Traditionalist and or anti-Modernist, like Pius X, who was not saying anything correct in using the word Modern, pro-or-con, in their temporary selfish me comfort philosophy.
Apparently there are all sorts of break away groups in and out of papal favor and or approval - in and out of “union with Rome”.
An interesting article about two brothers who studied under Richard Williamson who in their youth got a full dose of vitriol against Jews and Women when they studied in a SSPX seminary.
Oppenheimer, the seminarian with the Jewish sounding name who was belittled by crazy Dick Williamson in the seminary appears briefly in one of these videos showing his small sect doing the Latin Mass thing. The Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem was founded none other than by Archbishop Raymond Burke, the next pope, the future “Pius XIII“ (?), now head of the Vatican Supreme Court.
In retrospect, the French video shows in an odd way how the exact rubrics of a Council of Trent (anti-Protestant) Tridentine (not a chewing gum) Latin Mass.
In a way, nostalgia for the Latin Mass fits into the original Modernist critique of devotional reflection as something close to conveniently looking into a mirror or a well, seeing ourselves and calling it God and or Jesus. (a Gnostic view?)
In a way, nostalgia for the Latin Mass is nothing more than liking your grandmom’s fudge brownies better than your mum’s. The physical requirements for a Latin mass are more like staged Opera different than the performance of rap music and or fast food at Mickey D’s as many have called the new mass etc.
All in all, with so many wanting its own particular approach to the divine in all these spoiled RC splinter groups merely confirms my belief in the ultimate success of the Protestant Reformation was in the desire for all to reach God in an easier fashion than previously allowed under the monolith of the medieval church.
To each, his own. God save our constitutionally guaranteed “religious liberty” in the USA.
